normal state
of affairs with regard to the foreign exchanges.

XIX

TIGHTENING THE FETTERS OF FINANCE

_March_, 1919

The New Meaning of Licence--The Question of Capital Issues--Text of
the Treasury Regulations--Their Scope and Effect--The Position of
the Stock Exchange--Wider Issues at Stake--Should Capital be set
Free?--The Arguments for and against--Perils of an Excessive
Caution--The New Committee and its Terms of Reference--The
Absurdity of prohibiting Share-splitting--The Storm in the House
of Commons--Disappearance of the Retrospective Clause--A Sample of
Bureaucratic Stupidity.

A contrast between liberty and licence is a pleasant alliterative
commonplace beloved by political writers, especially those with a
reactionary bias. In the light of recent events it seems to be going
to take a new meaning. Licence will soon be understood, not as the
abuse of liberty, to which democracies are prone, but as a new weapon
by which our bureaucracy will do away with liberty by tightening the
shackles on our economic and other activities. For imports and exports
the licence system is already familiar; if the mines and railways are
to be nationalised we may have to be licensed before we can burn coal
or go away for a week-end; if the Eugenists have their way a licence
will be necessary before we can propagate the species; and before
we can get a licence to do anything we shall have to go through an
exasperating process of filling in forms innumerable, inconsistent,
overlapping and incomprehensible. Finance is the latest victim of this
melancholy tendency. Under the guise of an attempt to give greater
freedom to it a system has been introduced which makes a Treasury
licence necessary, with penalties under the Defence of the Realm Act,
for doing many things which have hitherto been possible for those who
were prepared to forgo the privilege of a Stock Exchange quotation.
Let the story be told in official language, as uttered through the
Press Bureau, on February 24th, in "Serial No. C. 10917."

"In view of the changed conditions resulting from the conclusion
of the armistice, the Treasury has had under consideration the
arrangements which have been in force during the war for the control
of New Issues of Capital.

"The work of scrutinising proposals for new Capital Issues has been
performed during the war by the Capital Issues Committee, the object
being to refuse sanction for all projects not immediately conne