文档介绍：Lombard Street
A Description of the Money Market.
by
Walter Bagehot,
1873
CHAPTER I.
Introductory.
I venture to call this Essay `Lombard Street,' and not the `Money Market,' or
any such phrase, because I wish to deal, and to show that I mean to deal, with
concrete realities. A notion prevails that the Money Market is something so
impalpable that it can only be spoken of in very abstract words, and that
therefore books on it must always be exceedingly difficult. But I maintain that
the Money Market is as concrete and real as anything else; that it can be
described in as plain words; that it is the writer's fault if what he says is not
clear. In one respect, however, I admit that I am about to take perhaps an
unfair advantage. Half, and more than half, of the supposed `difficulty' of the
Money Market has arisen out of the controversies as to `Peel's Act,' and the
abstract discussions on the theory on which that act is based, or supposed to
be based. But in the ensuing pages I mean to speak as little as I can of the Act
of 1844; and when I do speak of it, I shall deal nearly exclusively with its
experienced effects, and scarcely at all, if at all, with its refined basis.
For this I have several reasons,one, that if you say anything about the Act of
1844, it is little matter what else you say, for few will attend to it. Most critics will
seize on the passage as to the Act, either to attack it or defend it, as if it were
the main point. There has been so much fierce controversy as to this Act of
Parliamentand there is still so much animositythat a single sentence respecting
it is far more interesting to very many than a whole book on any other part of
the subject. Two hosts of eager disputants on this subject ask of every new
writer the one questionAre you with us or against us? and they care for little
else. Of course if the Act of 1844 really were, as monly thought, the
primum mobile of the Englis