ould be transferred from the House of Commons to the Governor
and Directors of the new Company. Bending to this last objection, a
clause was inserted, inhibiting the Bank from advancing money to the
House without authority from Parliament. Every infraction of this rule
was to be punished by a forfeiture of three times the sum advanced,
without the king having power to remit the penalty. Charles Montague, an
able man, afterwards First Lord of the Treasury, carried the bill
through the House; and Michael Godfrey (the brother of the celebrated
Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, supposed to have been murdered by the Papists),
an upright merchant and a zealous Whig, propitiated the City. In the
Lords (always the more prejudiced and conservative body than the
Commons) the bill met with great opposition. Some noblemen imagined that
the Bank was intended to exalt the moneyed interest and debase the
landed interest; and others imagined the bill was intended to enrich
usurers, who would prefer banking their money to lending it on mortgage.
"Something was said," says Macaulay, "about the danger of setting up a
gigantic corporation, which might soon give laws to the King and the
three estates of the realm." Eventually the Lords, afraid to leave the
King without money, passed the bill. During several generations the Bank
of England was emphatically a Whig body. The Stuarts would at once have
repudiated the debt, and the Bank of England, knowing that their return
implied ruin, remained loyal to William, Anne, and George. "It is hardly
too much to say," writes Macaulay, "that during many years the weight of
the Bank, which was constantly in the scale of the Whigs, almost
counterbalanced the weight of the Church, which was as constantly in the
scale of the Tories." "Seventeen years after the passing of the Tonnage
Bill," says the same eminent writer, to show the reliance of the Whigs
on the Bank of England, "Addison, in one of his most ingenious and
graceful little allegories, described the situation of the great company
through which the immense wealth of London was constantly circulating.
He saw Public Credit on her throne in Grocers' Hall, the Great Charter
over her head, the Act of Settlement full in her view. Her touch turned
everything to gold. Behind her seat bags filled with coin were piled up
to the ceiling. On her right and on her left the floor was hidden by
pyramids of guineas. On a sudden the door flies open, the Pretender
rushes in, a