HOLLAND, John.

£2,250 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Ruine of the Bank of England, and all Publick-Credit, inevitable: First edition of this eyewitness account of the birth of British public banking, and a prescient warning of the instability of the Bank of England amid the South Sea Bubble. Starting out as a merchant, John Holland (1658-1721) was part of the group which secured backing for the Bank of Scotland Act in 1695: he served as its first governor for two years, and later assumed a consultancy role into the 1710s. The Ruine recounts Holland's concern at the state of government finance in the 1710s, and particularly at the commonly held belief that borrowing from the South Sea Company would be a viable source of public revenue.

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