part had
been paid. [702] A few notes thus marked are still preserved among the
archives of the Bank, as memorials of that terrible year. The paper
of the Corporation continued to circulate, but the value fluctuated
violently from day to day, and indeed from hour to hour; for the public
mind was in so excitable a state that the most absurd lie which a
stockjobber could invent sufficed to send the price up or down. At one
time the discount was only six per cent., at another time twenty-four
per cent. A tenpound note, which had been taken in the morning as worth
more than nine pounds, was often worth less than eight pounds before
night. [703]

Another, and, at that conjuncture, a more effectual substitute for
a metallic currency, owed its existence to the ingenuity of Charles
Montague. He had succeeded in engrafting on Harley's Land Bank Bill a
clause which empowered the government to issue negotiable paper bearing
interest at the rate of threepence a day on a hundred pounds. In the
midst of the general distress and confusion appeared the first Exchequer
Bills, drawn for various amounts from a hundred pounds down to five
pounds. These instruments were rapidly distributed over the kingdom by
the post, and were every where welcome. The Jacobites talked violently
against them in every coffeehouse, and wrote much detestable verse
against them, but to little purpose. The success of the plan was such,
that the ministers at one time resolved to issue twentyshilling bills,
and even fifteenshilling bills, for the payment of the troops. But it
does not appear that this resolution was carried into effect. [704]

It is difficult to imagine how, without the Exchequer Bills, the
government of the country could have been carried on during that year.
Every source of revenue had been affected by the state of the currency;
and one source, on which the Parliament had confidently reckoned for the
means of defraying more than half the charge of the war, had yielded not
a single farthing.

The sum expected from the Land Bank was near two million six hundred
thousand pounds. Of this sum one half was to be subscribed, and one
quarter paid up by the first of August. The King, just before his
departure, had signed a warrant appointing certain commissioners, among
whom Harley and Foley were the most eminent, to receive the names of the
contributors. [705] A great meeting of persons interested in the scheme
was held in the Hall of the Middle Temp