Mr. R. Holland-Martin's Annual Report on the Clearing House notes
the remarkable way in which cheques have supplanted legal tender. Barely sixty years ago, Lord Avebury, as we read in the Times, stated that out of £1,000,000 paid into his bank 2.7 per cent. consisted of bank-notes and coin. Mr. Holland-Martin's statistics show that the percentage of notes and coin paid into all the banks using the Clearing House is now less than 0.7 per cent. Cheques have, in fact, become so popular that, except for small current expenses, legal currency has been almost entirely superseded. The cheque based on credit is triumphant. Mr. Holland-Martin remarks that this economy of currency has had a beneficial effect on the exchange value of the £ The overwhelming use of the cheque means not merely quickness and facility in business transactions—with the help of the Clearing House, of course—but a spread downwards of the great principle of credit.
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