NATIONAL STOCKS OF GOLD

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1849, 26 January 1880, Page 2

NATIONAL STOCKS OF GOLD

Comparative statistics have recently been published of deposits in the hands of English banks, and stocks of gold hoarded at the various European capitals. The aggregate deposits in banks of all descriptions in the United Kingdom, exclusive of the Bank of England, amounted in the autumn of 1878 to £520,000,000, and at present they are estimated at £480,000,000, showing a reduction of £60,000.000 in the twelve months. At the Bank eff England, however, the tendency is in an opposite direction. In the autumn of 1878, the deposits at that institution were about £24,000,000, against an average of £37,500,000 in the corresponding period this year, being an increase of £13,500,000, or a net decrease in the deposits of all the Banks of the kingdom unitedly amounting to £36,500,000. But the inquiry respecting the reduction of banking deposits in this country is invested with additional interest when the process of depletion to which stocks of gold have for some time been subjected all over Europe is taken into account. The aggregate value of gold held by all the several national Banks of Europe in 1876 amounted to £146,795,000, and at present it is estimated at £117,400,000, being a total decrease of £29,395,000 in throe years. At the same time the stock of gold in the United States has increased in the same period £10,000,000. Among tho European Banks, the Bank of France has been the greatest loser ; the latter institution since the beginning of July alone having parted with £7,478,000 in coin and bullion for abroad, and the drain continues. The reduction of gold stored at a Bank is either a favorable or an unfavorable symptom, according to circumstances. It may be caused by the balance of trade being abnormally adTerse, but it may also e-rige from the require-*

menta of a sound expanding com Tierce. It is to be feared that tt e simultaneous ehrinkago of gold supplies at European centres, is to a large extent attributable, however, to the abridged production of gold throughout the world, and the consequently growing disproportion bt tween th-i available supply and the increasing demand for that metal—arising not only from the extension of its use for ornamental purposes, but also in connection with the coinage requirements of countries favoring the adoption of a gold standard, and the natural currency exigencies incident to the improvement of trt de.