The English Constitution

In 'Lombard Street', the money market is pictured as it really was in 1850-1870, and as Bagehot saw it with philosophic eyes. Beginning with the sentence, "e;The objects which you see in Lombard Street are the Bank of England, the joint stock banks, the private banks and the discount houses,"e; he describes briefly and clearly the respective functions of these different bodies in the organism of the city, according to his own close observation as a banker himself, knowing the ways and thoughts of the men he describes, and as a man of business likewise in other ways, knowing at first hand the relation of banking to the trade and commerce of the country.