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The judicious operations of banking, by providing, if I may be

allowed so violent a metaphor, a sort of waggon-way through the

air, enable the country to convert, as it were, a great part of

its highways into good pastures, and corn fields, and thereby to

increase, very considerably, the annual produce of its land and

labour. The commerce and industry of the country, however, it

must be acknowledged, though they may be somewhat augmented,

cannot be altogether so secure, when they are thus, as it were,

suspended upon the Daedalian wings of paper money, as when they

travel about upon the solid ground of gold and silver. Over and

above the accidents to which they are exposed from the

unskilfulness of the conductors of this paper money, they are

liable to several others, from which no prudence or skill of

those conductors can guard them.