27? July 1801

Eden

Interest Notes

4

44

money lent to Bankers at much less than a real 3 per Cent or £2: 19s. per Cent,

and without the convenience of a security susceptible of circulation – of the

security afforded by an instrument promising payment to Bearer is still more in

use. In Suffolk (I have it from Mr Arthur Young) the terms are these. For any

sum under a £100, no interest allowed: if, after £500 deposited, a single

sixpence is drawn out, the interest of one of the hundreds is struck off by that

single sixpence. I rather think too – but am not sure – that, even in this case,

certain conditions are added – convenient to the Banker inconvenient to the

depositing Customer, and rendering the rate of interest less than what it seems:

such as that of interests not commencing till after a certain time; or

obligation of giving a certain length of notice before principal is drawn out.

The case of the Bankers, as referred to in that part of my plan, was referred to

only as an example: - an example of the demand already existing for this rate of

interest, among the customers for temporary interest alone, in the present state

of things, on terms of so much less advantage in comparison with mine. For a

measure of the possible amount of such demand, on the part of that class of

customers, under the proposed state of things, I took a much more extensive

standard.

In the very next page+ commences, under the different heads, a list of masses of

money capable of being employ’d in the purchase of interest as afforded by the

proposed Annuity Notes, supposing the holders to find their account in it: the

example of these Bankers Notes is brought to shew (and does it not shew?) that

people do find their account in purchasing interest-bearing paper, and do

accordingly purchase and hold it, and pass it on from hand to hand, at terms of

much less advantage. The true amplitude of the grounds of expectation with

regard to the proposed paper is the amplitude not of the existing mass of

Bankers’ interest-bearing paper – but of the aggregate of the the[?] masses of

money there encountered.

+ Plan p.43