صفحة 837 من 2651

In the long-run, therefore, the operations of this bank increased

the real distress of the country, which it meant to relieve; and

effectually relieved, from a very great distress, those rivals

whom it meant to supplant.

At the first setting out of this bank, it was the opinion of some

people, that how fast soever its coffers might be emptied, it

might easily replenish them, by raising money upon the securities

of those to whom it had advanced its paper. Experience, I

believe, soon convinced them that this method of raising money

was by much too slow to answer their purpose; and that coffers

which originally were so ill filled, and which emptied themselves

so very fast, could be replenished by no other expedient but the

ruinous one of drawing bills upon London, and when they became

due, paying them by other draughts on the same place, with

accumulated interest and commission.