Page:Bankers and Credit (1924).pdf/281

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see our monetary authorities doing or trying to do.

Should we "devaluate" the pound sterling to something like its present gold value and so hasten the return to a gold standard? Or should we continue the effort that we have begun to restore sterling to its old gold value and its old parity of exchange with the dollar? Or should we abandon all connexion between gold and our currency, and go frankly to paper officially regulated as suggested by Professor Soddy?

I think most of us will rule out Government control in view of all the crimes and follies committed by Governments during and since the war in their handling and abuse of our machinery of credit, that had been brought so near to perfection by bankers working for industry and commerce. It is rather amazing, seeing that we live in the midst of a world brought very near to utter shipwreck by the failure of Governments to do their international job decently, to find that any one should propose to put new duties, of the highest importance to our welfare, into the hands of our political rulers.

In one of Lord Macaulay's speeches on the Reform Bill, lately quoted by the Times Literary Supplement, he asked whether there