PARLIAMENT.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2697, 9 October 1871, Page 3

PARLIAMENT.

BANKS OF ISSUE. In moving on the 20th ult, for a committee to consider the expediency of establishing a national bank of issue, Mr Bathgate said it was a question whether the great depression was not intensified by the present banking system of the Colony. In tunes of plenty, when, as he had been informed by old colonists, everything they touched turned into gold, the people underwent no anxiety of mind by thinking of such matters, but that state of things had long since passed away, and they were now entitled to make such an inquiry as his motion sugIt must be well known that the Si banking system was very unsatis- , and he thought that was to be attributed to the fact that the banks were not local institutions but were foreign companies, taking away the profits of this colony to swell the riches of other colonies, and perhaps of the business people of Lombard street, so that they had the fact staring them in the face that although they were carrying on their trade with their own money they were enjoying none of the profits. He knew of a bank in Dunedin which carried on a large business for a number of years ; not carrying; on its transactions with oue penny of its own money but with the money of depositors. He would give them another case, in which the Union Bank of Australia, in Dunedin, in one year, swept away profits to the amount of between L 30,000 and L 40,000. Then there was the objection that the system of exchange in the colony was a very bad one, necessitating the amount of coin equal to a million and a quarter in the shape of reserves. In Scotland the system of exchange was so perfectly conducted by means of drafts that they need not employ more than LIOO, sterling, for the purpose of exchaage. He had seen enough bankruptcy cases in the Colony to excite his horror ; cases in which the hanks cared nothing for individuals, or national bankruptcy. ' These institutions he knew' were very conservative ; they objected to changes or interference of jiny kind, but he thought it was a question which, the public attention having been directed to it, should be taken up by the House. He hoped to see such a case as would warrant the Government in bringing in a bill during the next session.