the balances at the Bank are to be considered therefore very much in the same light with the Paper circulation gen.

[A.Rezvov]

Собственно, особых затруднений фраза не вызывает, если не считать вопроса о том, что может стоять за написанием отдельных слов с прописной буквы.

Этот конкретный текст написан давно, в конце XVIII века (Henry Thornton, Evidence before the Committee on the Bank Restriction, 1797), но с практикой написания прописных букв в отдельно взятых словах я периодически сталкиваюсь и в текстах первой половины XX века.

[trtrtr]

А там речь о конкретном банке или нет?

[trtrtr]

Сейчас иногда выделяют то, к чему пишущий имеет отношение, причастность (тем или иным боком) или то, что потом объясняется в глоссарии.

[A.Rezvov]

Разыскав первоисточник, обнаружил, что там все существительные даны с прописной, прямо как в немецком.

Так что в данном конкретном случае речь идет о ныне исчезнувшей традиции написания. Интересно, кстати, в каких случаях она употреблялась: только в официальных бумагах или как-то еще?

[trtrtr]

А можете показать ссылку? Я никогда такого не видел.

[A.Rezvov]

Пожалуйста, вот ссылка, где все существительные с прописной.

[A.Rezvov]

Кстати, похоже, что более современные публикации того же самого документа воздерживаются от тотальной расстановки прописных букв в каждом существительном (вот пример). Но по нынешним меркам все равно многовато, конечно.

[trtrtr]

Books appeared in which all or most nouns were given an initial capital (as is done systematically in modern German) - perhaps for aesthetic reasons, or perhaps because printers were uncertain about which nouns to capitalize, and so capitalized them all.
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/10522/capitalisation-of-nouns-in-english-in-the-17th-and-18th-centuries

[trtrtr]

См. (и далее):

Capitalization
Daniel Fenning, the author of the highly successful spelling book of 1756, instructed that both schoolmasters and pupils are to write substantives with a "Capital Letter." It was custom, then, to begin every noun with a capital letter, which is the same practice the German language still holds today. However, by 1795, the discussion of capitals was dropped by Fenning and the practice of the capitalization of all nouns soon became a thing of the past. Noun capitalization, in the manner that it was originally practiced, gave printing and writing a crowded appearance and was difficult for readers to clearly follow (Osselton, 49).
http://britlitwiki.wikispaces.com/Eighteenth-Century+Grammars#Eighteenth-Century Grammars-Eighteenth-Century Spelling, Capitalization, and Type

Кстати, спасибо за интересный вопрос. Я, к примеру, не знал об этом, было любопытно.

[A.Rezvov]

Спасибо за интересный ответ.

[johnstephenson]

trtrtr's 19:16 comment explains it all. It used to be standard practice to capitalise all nouns in English, but this began to gradually die out towards the end of the 1800s. Over the next 20-30 years, some authors and printers continued to capitalise some of their nouns, but not others. Which they capitalised and which they didn't, was left to the individual author/printer -- so there was no consistency.

By WWI nearly all nouns apart from proper nouns were being written in lower case. The main exceptions were legal documents and some newspapers, which continued to capitalise the nouns in some of their headlines for a few decades until this practice, too, eventually died out.

[A.Rezvov]

to johnstephenson:

In fact, there were some other exceptions. For example, Lionel Robbins, a British economists, wrote in 1932: "The science of Economics, like all other branches of knowledge, recognises no limitations by national boundaries."

So, it seems to me that, for example, areas of study were capitalised even after WWI.

[johnstephenson]

A.Rezvov: That's true. In fact a few people still capitalise branches of knowledge. For example, they'll say 'I've a degree in International Relations' -- perhaps because it's the title of a course, so a proper noun, or to emphasise it eg when applying for a job.

However, in most situations people don't, unless (say) it's a word -- such as the name of a language -- which would normally be capitalised anyway.

http://goo.gl/Rnlcbf