It appears by the Commons' report of 1804 on the circulating paper of Ireland, that before the Bank of Ireland entered upon its unrestrained trade in paper money, in March, 17977, the exchange was, and had for a long time previously been, in favour of Ireland.

7 Report on the circulating paper, specie, current coin, and exchange of Ireland, pp. 7 and 8. Ordered to be printed, May and June, 1804; and reprinted, May, 1826.

The exchange began to rise in 1799, and the circulation of the Bank of Ireland was concomitant, and extended with it. Upon comparing the issues of the Bank of Ireland with the rates of exchange, a strong presumption arises of the connexion between an increased issue and a high exchange: for, in March, 1797, the paper of the Bank was between 600,000l. and 700,000l.; and exchange in Dublin, 5 1/2 to 6 3/4.

April, 1801, paper was £ 2,266,000 and exchange rose from ll 3/4 to 13.

January 1, 1804, paper was . . 2,986,999 and exchange rose to 17 and 18.

This Committee hesitated to assert that the evidence before it clearly proved that this increase of Bank of Ireland paper facilitated or encouraged the increased issues from Private Banks. The members deemed it necessary, however, to call the attention of the House to some remarkable facts, which, as they observed, afforded some proof that both the cause and consequence really and truly were as had been suggested.

In the year ending March 25, 1800, the number of Bankers issuing notes in Ireland was a great many more have been established, but the whole have failed one after the other, involving the country from time to time in immense distress, with the following exceptions: first, a few that withdrew from business; secondly, four Banks in Dublin; thirdly, three at Belfast; and lastly, one at Mallow."

Again, the number of notes paying duty, in the like periods, was,

The Committee indulged in no strained inference from this state of things, when it maintained that the high rate of exchange against Ireland at these periods was "a sufficient presumptive proof of the depreciation of paper; and that this depreciation was in itself also a strong presumptive proof of an over quantity of paper being in circulation."

If we estimate the total gains accruing to the Bank of Ireland, from the suspension of cash payments, upon the principle applied to the Bank of England, by the Lords' Committee in 1826, we shall find the result nearly as follows: -

8 The existing law required all notes under three guineas to be issued on a 1 1/2d. stamp; under 10l., on a 3d. stamp; under 50l, on a 4d. stamp.

The example set by the Bank of Ireland, in creating immense quantities of paper-money, prompted the private Banks to pursue the same reckless course. "These increased issues," says Sir H. Par-nell, now Lord Oongleton6, "led to corresponding increased issues by the private Banks, of which the number was fifty in the year 1804. The consequence of this increase of paper was a great depreciation of it; the price of bullion and guineas rose to ten per cent. above the Mint price; and the exchange with London became as high as eighteen per cent.., the par being eight and one-third. This unfavourable exchange was afterwards corrected; not by any reduction in the issues of the Bank of Ireland, but by the depreciation of the British currency in the year 1810, when the exchange between London and Dublin settled again at about par.

"The loss that Ireland has sustained by the failure of Banks may be described in a few words. It appears by the Report of the Committee on Irish Exchanges, in 1804, that there were at that time in Ireland fifty registered Banks; since that year 6Observations on Paper-Money.

Even these few exceptions have been further diminished since the publication of the " Observations" from which this quotation has been taken. The Mallow Bank of Messrs. Delacour has failed; the four private Banks of Dublin have been reduced to two, namely, Messrs. Latouche's and Messrs. Ball's; while the three Belfast Banks have been converted into joint-stock enterprises, respectively named the Northern, the Ulster, and the Belfast Banking Companies.

In this extremity, and not before, the Government of Lord Liverpool determined to try the experiment of joint-stock Banks in Ireland, as well as in England; and the Bank of Ireland, upon being allowed to add half a million to its capital, parted with so much of its monopoly as enabled Banking Companies with more than six partners to carry on the business of Banking at a distance of fifty Irish miles from Dublin. This was effected by the 1st and 2nd Geo. IV. c. 72, upon which, however, early doubts were raised, and legal opinions taken, which marred its practical utility for an interval. From what quarter, at whose instigation, and at whose cost these doubts were raised, canvassed, and enforced, it is hardly necessary to indicate. In the end it was successfully maintained, that every partner in an Irish joint-stock Bank ought to be a resident in Ireland; and thus the Irish were suddenly cut off from the cooperation of the English capitalists, without whose assistance they were themselves wholly unable to encounter the competition of the Bank of Ireland. So far, the Bank broke faith with Parliament and the public: it had obtained a certain boon, half a million of money, as the price of a fixed concession, and having secured its own share of the terms, it turned boldly round to pick holes in the Act of Parliament, by which the agreement was regulated, and sought to prevent the improvement which the national interests so urgently demanded. It took four years to effect a redress of this artful piece of injustice.

From the year 1783 to the year 1824, the terms of the monopoly enjoyed by the Bank of Ireland forbad the establishment of a second joint-stock Bank in Ireland; the Bank of Ireland had not Dublin alone, with its circle of fifty miles, exclusively to itself, but it reigned paramount over the whole island also. Nevertheless, during that long series of years, it never once extended itself into the Provinces - it set up not a single branch Bank; it left the country entirely dependant upon the circulation of private Banks, although the great majority of those concerns were well known to possess no adequate means, and the failures that ultimately took place amongst them, entailed on the public, losses estimated at the amount of twenty millions sterling; and yet, during this long interval, in the presence of these heavy sufferings, the Bank of Ireland confined its operations to Dublin. But the moment the urgency of the circumstances invited others into the field - as soon as London capitalists published a prospectus, in which they promised to afford certain towns in the country parts of Ireland that accommodation which the Bank of Ireland had so long denied them, the Bank at once set up an opposition in those very towns, and resorted to every means within its reach to embarrass and defeat the new adventurers. It thus not only refused to do the good required, when it alone had the power, but it laboured to deter others from rendering it, even when the Legislature had specifically interfered for the purpose. Such is the working of a National Bank chartered with exclusive privileges.