Another MR correspondent thinks Walter Bagehot opposed free banking on consumer protection grounds. Were he to actually read _Lombard Street_, he'd discover that Bagehot regretted the Bank of England's monopoly status, preferring the "natural system" of coequal competing banks.

@JuhaTarkka “I propose to maintain this system because I am quite sure it is of no manner of use proposing to alter it...You might as well, or better, try to alter the English monarchy and substitute a republic” (_Lombard Street_, 1873: 329–30).