Not but that there are other great advantages a Royal Bank might
procure in this kingdom, as has been seen in part by this; as
advancing money to the Exchequer upon Parliamentary funds and
securities, by which in time of a war our preparations for any
expedition need not be in danger of miscarriage for want of money,
though the taxes raised be not speedily paid, nor the Exchequer
burthened with the excessive interests paid in former reigns upon
anticipations of the revenue; landed men might be supplied with
moneys upon securities on easier terms, which would prevent the loss
of multitudes of estates, now ruined and devoured by insolent and
merciless mortgagees, and the like. But now we unhappily see a
Royal Bank established by Act of Parliament, and another with a
large fund upon the Orphans' stock; and yet these advantages, or
others, which we expected, not answered, though the pretensions in
both have not been wanting at such time as they found it needful to
introduce themselves into public esteem, by giving out prints of
what they were rather able to do than really intended to practise.
So that our having two banks at this time settled, and more
erecting, has not yet been able to reduce the interest of money, not
because the nature and foundation of their constitution does not
tend towards it, but because, finding their hands full of better
business, they are wiser than by being slaves to old obsolete
proposals to lose the advantage of the great improvement they can
make of their stock.

This, however, does not at all reflect on the nature of a bank, nor
of the benefit it would be to the public trading part of the
kingdom, whatever it may seem to do on the practice of the present.
We find four or five banks now in view to be settled. I confess I
expect no more from those to come than we have found from the past,