Pagina 838 di 2651

But though they had been able by this method to raise money as

fast as they wanted it, yet, instead of making a profit, they

must have suffered a loss of every such operation; so that in the

long-run they must have ruined themselves as a mercantile

company, though perhaps not so soon as by the more expensive

practice of drawing and redrawing. They could still have made

nothing by the interest of the paper, which, being over and above

what the circulation of the country could absorb and employ,

returned upon them in order to be exchanged for gold and silver,

as fast as they issued it; and for the payment of which they were

themselves continually obliged to borrow money. On the contrary,

the whole expense of this borrowing, of employing agents to look

out for people who had money to lend, of negotiating with those

people, and of drawing the proper bond or assignment, must have

fallen upon them, and have been so much clear loss upon the

balance of their accounts.