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But the easy terms upon which the Scotch banking companies accept

of repayment are, so far as I know, peculiar to them, and have

perhaps been the principal cause, both of the great trade of

those companies, and of the benefit which the country has

received from it.

Whoever has a credit of this kind with one of those companies,

and borrows a thousand pounds upon it, for example, may repay

this sum piece-meal, by twenty and thirty pounds at a time, the

company discounting a proportionable part of the interest of the

great sum, from the day on which each of those small sums is paid

in, till the whole be in this manner repaid. All merchants,

therefore, and almost all men of business, find it convenient to

keep such cash accounts with them, and are thereby interested to

promote the trade of those companies, by readily receiving their

notes in all payments, and by encouraging all those with whom

they have any influence to do the same. The banks, when their

customers apply to them for money, generally advance it to them

in their own promissory notes.