Unless the quality of the liabilities is considered as well as their quantity, the due provision for their payment cannot be determined.
These are general truths as to all banks, and they have a very particular application to the Bank of England.

The first application is favourable to the Bank; for it shows the danger of one of the principal liabilities to be much smaller than it seems.

The largest account at the Bank of England is that of the English Government; and probably there has never been any account of which it was so easy in time of peace to calculate the course.

All the material facts relative to the English revenue, and the English expenditure, are exceedingly well known; and the amount of the coming payments to and from this account are always, except in war times, to be calculated with wonderful accuracy.

In war, no doubt, this is all reversed; the account of a government at war is probably the most uncertain of all accounts, especially of a government of a scattered empire, like the English, whose places of outlay in time of war are so many and so distant, and the amount of whose payments is therefore so incalculable.