Previously to the year 1783, the standard grievances with all Irish writers on political economy, were two in number, that there were none but private Bankers in Ireland, who issued notes without restraint or responsibility; and that the disparity of exchanges with England involved ruinous losses to Irish commerce. To these causes, by common consent, were the great runs upon the Banks, and the failures of 1720, 1745, 1760, and 1770, ascribed. We have, therefore, during the first stage, the fixed producing causes, and the sum of the consequent evils, in four panics, during a term of sixty-three years, and the failure of some seven or eight Banks. In the second stage, comprising a term of forty years, we have the same complaints of excessive paper money, and still more adverse exchanges, and a series of panics which left, as already stated, only four Banks out of fifty, not bankrupt, or retired from business. Instead of mitigating, therefore, the monopoly of the Bank of Ireland increased and aggravated the mercantile convulsions of the country. Strange and improbable as the principal incidents in the history of Banking in Ireland must appear, antecedent to the chartering of the national establishment in 1783, they are infinitely surpassed in wildness and inconsistency by the chance medley produced by subsequent events. Not only before the Bank was chartered, but even before the suspension of cash payments, the business of Banking in Ireland was principally confined to Dublin. There were not, in 1797, more than half-a-dozen Banks9 in the South of Ireland, and none in the north or west; but after that year almost every place had its Bank, and every conceivable mode and device for circulating money were resorted to. For instance, Wexford, a small town, which, even in 1821, had a population of only 8,326 inhabitants, and a proportionately limited trade, had, between the years 1800 and 1804, no less than seven Banks. The fate of such commercial establishments will be conjectured at once: - five failed rather quickly, and one gave up business. Two new ones immediately started to fill the vacuum thus created, which soon after shared the fate of their predecessors. Of the whole number, only one, that of the Messrs. Redmond, conducted business with honour and profit. It was the earliest of the Wexford Banks, and about the last private Bank that existed in Ireland.

9 Namely, three in Dublin, three in Cork, one in Clonmel, one in Limerick, and one in Waterford. - Lords' Committee on Circulation, etc. 1826, Evidence of J. Roche, Esq., p. 52.

New Ross, again, a smaller town than Wexford, and not more than twenty miles from it, had four Banks, only one of which was standing in 1812, and even that afterwards gave way. Similar instances, in abundance, are to be cited in various other places, but the repetition would be tiresome. The wild growth of these mushroom establishments has been already given in detail from the Commons1 Report of 1804, which shows that eleven Banks, in 1800, had become twenty-three in 1801; twenty-nine, in 1802; thirty, in 1803; and fifty, in 1804. In 1812, Mr. Wakefield published his Political Survey of Ireland, and stated, that of the fifty Banks, in 1804, there then remained only nineteen extant. One adverse circumstance or other had swept away the rest. Notwithstanding this sharp warning, new speculators had rushed into the field with as little prudence as fear, so that, notwithstanding the failure of thirty-one out of fifty Banks, between 1804 and 1812, only six years, there were still thirty-three Banks open in 1812.

These adventurers resorted to expedients of all kinds for the purpose of forcing a trade. They supplied small traders with their notes, and used to pay a premium to get them into circulation. The Bankers themselves were in the habit of attending markets and fairs like so many hucksters, each putting off his own commodity as best he might. Their favourite issue was not promissory notes, but post bills, at ten days' sight, which, being generally unaccepted, were paid, if at all, at convenience. But the mischief did not rest with the multitude of Bankers. Besides the fifty private firms already spoken of, there were as many as 295 petty dealers and chapmen, grocers, spirit dealers, apothecaries, and shopkeepers of all sorts, inundating the country with a species of I. O. U., called silver money, which was a direct violation of the law, and ranged in nominal amount, from threepence-halfpenny to ten shillings. This fraudulent paper was principally spread over the south and south-west of Ireland, which further suffered under an enormous distribution of forged notes, the unlettered population being, in that respect, easily imposed upon. In the north a more cautious and better informed people eschewed these evils for some time, and insisted upon a circulation of guineas, which they amassed, and retained to a large amount until the suspension of cash payments by Act of Parliament, and the tardy introduction of Banks into Belfast, so recently as the year 1808, gradually drove all gold out of the country.

At this period, 1804, guineas bore a premium of ten per cent., and the rate of exchange was 17l. 12s., or 9l. 5s. 4d. against Ireland; but though formal censure and public exposure were tried, they failed to mitigate the exorbitant evils which the Bank monopoly continued to engender. The Report of the Committee, already quoted, exhibited, in the most direct manner possible, and upon the most unexceptionable authority, the abuses committed by the Bank of Ireland, up to that period, in the manufacture of paper money; but the Bank, instead of taking the reproof as a warning, acted upon it as an encouragement to persevere, and nearly trebled, in the short term of sixteen years, the sum of the mischief it had been denounced for producing. In 1810 its circulation rose to more than 3,000,000l., and there was a panic; in 1820 it exceeded 5,000,000, and there was another panic. Then began an accumulative series of those rapid failures which seem to be known to no other country, and which spread indescribable calamity and consternation over the whole surface of the island. In the month of June the Banking firm of Roche and Co., of Cork, failed; and on the same morning, that of Leslie and Co. suspended payment in the same city. By the next Saturday, Messrs. Maunsell, of Limerick, had closed their doors. These embarrassments were quickly followed by the stoppage of Messrs. Riall, at Clonmel; Sause, at Carrick-on-Suir; Newport, at Water-ford; Loughnan, at Kilkenny; Alexander, at Dublin; until, within a single month, eleven Banks had broken, and in the whole South of Ireland, as previously stated, there remained open only two houses - Messrs. Delacour, at Mallow, and Redmond, at Wexford1.