SCOTTISH BANKS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
| Published date | 01 February 1965 |
| Date | 01 February 1965 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1965.tb00749.x |
| Author | F. S. Taylor |
SCOTTISH
BANKS
IN
THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
F.
S.
TAYLOR
THE section
of
the review article’ by
R.
H.
Campbell on
An Economic
History
of
Scotland in the Eighteenth Century
by the late Henry
Hamilton which deals with the part played by the Scottish banks in
the economic development of Scotland requires some comment. It
is
right and proper that the judgments of nineteenth century historians
on this point should now be called in question, but Professor Camp-
bell appears to impute to them a less critical judgment than some of
them in fact applied and, going to the opposite extreme, he implies
that,
so
far from aiding Scottish development, the banks may have
held it back.
A
few quotations illustrate his standpoint.
‘
It is regrettable that Professor Hamilton seems reluctant to
pass
a specific judgment on this issue, but the more conservative policies
generally followed by the Bank of Scotland, the Royal Bank of Scot-
land and the British Linen Bank receive general commendation, while
the
Ayr
Bank is condemned for “overtrading and a too liberal,
if
not extravagant creation of credit
”
’.
Professor Campbell, at least, is in
no
doubt. He bases his case
against the Chartered banks on three points.
‘
First, financial collapse
was not entirely avoided in Scotland. Second, and more important,
stability was much less necessary in Scotland then than now’. He
goes on,
‘
Financial collapses were less important in arresting Scot-
land‘s industrial growth in the eighteenth century than the country’s
desperate need for capital, especially capital willing to run risks. The
creation of occasional chaos was not too high
a
price to pay for the
more liberal creation of credit
’.
Finally,
‘
They (the Chartered banks)
did not provide an easy remedy for the problems which emerged in
the development of the Scottish economy
.
.
.
but, clearly, given the
state of the Scottish economy, their policies were major determinants
of the fluctuations. They placed limits on development
’.
This series of quotations bespeaks a lack of understanding
of
the
conditions under which the banks had to operate in the eighteenth
century and particularly in its first half, but, to take the last point
first, who ever claimed that the Scottish banks provided ‘an easy
remedy for the problems of development’?
Not
even Kerr, their out-
standing apologist, would have claimed
so
much. There was not, nor
110
1
In
the February
1964
issue
of
this
Journal.
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