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The project of replenishing their coffers in this manner may be

compared to that of a man who had a water-pond from which a

stream was continually running out, and into which no stream was

continually running, but who proposed to keep it always equally

full, by employing a number of people to go continually with

buckets to a well at some miles distance, in order to bring water

to replenish it.

But though this operation had proved not only practicable, but

profitable to the bank, as a mercantile company; yet the country

could have derived no benefit front it, but, on the contrary,

must have suffered a very considerable loss by it. This operation

could not augment, in the smallest degree, the quantity of money

to be lent. It could only have erected this bank into a sort of

general loan office for the whole country. Those who wanted to

borrow must have applied to this bank, instead of applying to the

private persons who had lent it their money. But a bank which

lends money, perhaps to five hundred different people, the

greater part of whom its directors can know very little about, is

not likely to be more judicious in the choice of its debtors than

a private person who lends out his money among a few people whom

he knows, and in whose sober and frugal conduct he thinks he has

good reason to confide.