The question facing public policy, then, was how to find a set of arrangements that would allow the necessary credit extension to support capital investment in pursuit of new technological opportunities, yet provide a stable monetary standard and a financial system in which the public could have confidence.
We should record that in the same era, questions of a qualitatively similar nature arose in the fledgling colonies of the Antipodes, even if they were, to begin with, at a lower level of sophistication. The Colonies needed both a system of mobilising capital and a means of making payments other than circulating paper claims over goods – be it rum or something else.