History of Banking in Scotland
By Andrew William Kerr (1908)
PREFACE
TO SECOND
EDITION
IN presenting a reprint of this
work, the writer desires to acknowledge the appreciative spirit in which
the first edition was received.
He has endeavoured to
give effect to the kindly criticism which was evoked;
and to supply to some extent what was lacking in the first essay.
It has been a great pleasure to
him to find that what was a labour of love has been of service to the
students, and of occasional interest to the older members of the banking
profession. If the present emendation prove as helpful as he is assured
the original effort has proved, he will be abundantly satisfied.
PREFACE
TO
FIRST EDITION
THE substance of the following
pages appeared as a series of articles in a financial magazine during
the years 1880-83. These articles are now presented in a collected form,
after revision and extension, in the hope that they
may be of service to those
who are interested in the progress of
Scottish banking.
The author cannot hope that he has
escaped making errors, but he has taken all possible care, by collation
of authorities and otherwise, to ascertain the correctness of his
statements of facts. As to the opinions expressed from time to time, he
is, of course, solely responsible.
No
similar work having,
so far as the writer is aware, been ever before
published, allowance will, perhaps, be made for incompleteness and other
faults, arising from the difficulty of obtaining information. Scottish
bankers, and financiers generally, have, with few exceptions, been slow
to record their experiences and opinions. Consequently the data from
which such a work as the present must be constructed exist only in a
meagre and scattered form. A general idea of the sources of information
will be obtained from the footnotes throughout the volume.
NOTE
SINCE this Edition was set up, the
number of banks of issue in Scotland has been reduced, by amalgamations,
from ten to eight.
The Caledonian Banking Company,
Limited, has been absorbed by the Bank of Scotland, who, in that
connection, increased their capital to 1,987,500 subscribed, with
1,325,000 paid up.
The Town and County Bank, Limited,
and the North of Scotland Bank, Limited, have united their businesses as
the North of Scotland and Town and County Bank, Limited, with a capital
of 3,260,000 subscribed, and 652,000 paid up.
In each case the authorised note
issues were conjoined, so that the aggregate note issues of the Scottish
banks have not been affected.
In 1290 the King of England, Edward IV banished the Jews to France,
which in turn drove them out 20 years later. In 1656 after the "puritan"
civil war and regicide that created the Commonwealth under Cromwell, the
Jews were invited to reestablish themselves in England, who by this time
had moved to Amsterdam and Venice. Shortly afterwards the Jewish
operating base in the New World, New Amsterdam, became New York. In
1691, two remarkable men, William Paterson and Charles Montagu, appeared
to promote, as a solution to England's debt crisis, the creation of the
private Bank of England for which Royal Charter was granted through the
passage of the Tonnage Act of 1694 the building housing it being built
upon the the spot where once stood a temple to Mithras, the Roman God of
Contracts.
Contents
Chapter I
Origin and Development of Scottish Banking
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