ave continued since, far more
important. It is unfortunately impossible to give any trustworthy
statistics of the position of banking in the United Kingdom extending back
for more than forty or fifty years. Even the Scottish banks, who have been
less reticent as to their position than the English banks, did not publish
their accounts generally till 1865. The figures of the total deposits and
cash balances in the Irish joint-stock banks were published collectively
from the year 1840 by the care of Dr Neilson Hancock, but it is only of
quite recent years that any statement of the general position other than an
estimate has been possible owing to the long-continued reluctance of many
banks to allow any publication of their balance-sheets. A paper by W.
Newmarch, printed in the _Journal of the Statistical Society_ for 1851,
supplies the earliest basis for a trustworthy estimate. According to this
the total amount of deposits, including the Bank of England, in England and
Wales, Scotland and Ireland, may have been at that date from L250,000,000
to L360,000,000. The estimate in Palgrave's _Notes on Banking_ (1872),
excluding deposits in discount houses and the capitals of banks, was from
L430,000,000 to L450,000,000. The corresponding amounts at the close of
1906 were, in round figures, including acceptances &c., L997,000,000. The
total resources, including capitals and reserves and note circulation (in
round figures L177,500,000), were for 1906:--

England and Wales--
Bank of England and other banks L922,297,000
Scotland 135,042,000
Ireland 73,707,000
Isle of Man 898,000
-------------
L1,131,944,000

The progressive growth in bank deposits since it has been possible to keep
a record of their amounts, affords some means of checking roughly the
correctness of the estimates of 1851 and 1872. Broadly speaking, it may be
said that the bank deposits of the United Kingdom have about doubled since
1872.

[Sidenote: Clearing.]

The purely city banks had associated themselves in a "Clearing House"
certainly by 1776. An entry in the books of the Grasshopper,[4]
namely--"1773 to quarterly charge for use of the Clearing-room of 19/6d.,"
points to an earlier and perhaps less definitely organized system of
settlement. A house was taken for the purpose in 181