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First, by this attention they were enabled to make some tolerable

judgment concerning the thriving or declining circumstances of

their debtors, without being obliged to look out for any other

evidence besides what their own books afforded them; men being,

for the most part, either regular or irregular in their

repayments, according as their circumstances are either thriving

or declining. A private man who lends out his money to perhaps

half a dozen or a dozen of debtors, may, either by himself or his

agents, observe and inquire both constantly and carefully into

the conduct and situation of each of them. But a banking company,

which lends money to perhaps five hundred different people, and

of which the attention is continually occupied by objects of a

very different kind, can have no regular information concerning

the conduct and circumstances of the greater part of its debtors,

beyond what its own books afford it.