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288' ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
want to borrow at call or at very short terms is itself
limited by the nature of the transactions in which such
money is useful, then the share of that short nyJOey
held by foreign bankers and foreign merchants at any
time, must equally be limited. Clearly they cannot be
holders of all the short money in the market, because
home bankers and others find it equally necessary and
convenient to hold such money. At the most, then,
foreign bankers and merchafits can have but a share.
Whatever, then, may be the amount of the short money
borrowed and lent at a given time in the London
market, say, perhaps, £200,000,000 to £300,000,000
sterling, foreign bankers and merchants at the outside
can only be holders of a part, considering the magni-
tude of English banking money and the necessarily
large proportion of that money which bankers must
hold at call or short notice. My own. impression is,
that a sum of about £50,000,000 sterling held by
foreign bankers and merchants in London and liable to
be called at short notice would probably be a maximum
amount, but on this head, of course, the audience before
me will have better means of forming an opinion from
time to time than I can possibly have. But whatever
the amount may be, even if it should be such a maximum
as .£ 100,000,000 sterling, which seems far over any
possible mark, the point to be observed is that any
change in the amount of a fund of this nature from time
to time can have little to do with the question of the
nation living on its capital. The whole capital of the
nation at the present time is probably not far short of
£ 15,000,000,000 sterling, while the annual increase in
ordinary times must at least be between £ 200,000,000
1
and £300,000,000 sterling. A difference of a few
millions, therefore, say, ten or twenty millions in the
1 I have not made any recent calculations on the subject since the
publication of my book on the" Growth of Capital," which dealt with
the figures down to 1885, but, from the increase of Income Tax
Returns, it is evident that there has been an enormous growth since
then, justifying some such figure as that here suggested.