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When, partly by the conveniency of discounting bills, and partly

by that of cash accounts, the creditable traders of any country

can be dispensed from the necessity of keeping any part of their

stock by them unemployed, and in ready money, for answering

occasional demands, they can reasonably expect no farther

assistance from hanks and bankers, who, when they have gone thus

far, cannot, consistently with their own interest and safety, go

farther. A bank cannot, consistently with its own interest,

advance to a trader the whole, or even the greater part of the

circulating capital with which he trades; because, though that

capital is continually returning to him in the shape of money,

and going from him in the same shape, yet the whole of the

returns is too distant from the whole of the outgoings, and the

sum of his repayments could not equal the sum of his advances

within such moderate periods of time as suit the conveniency of a

bank.