To explain what I mean; banks, being established by public
authority, ought also, as all public things are, to be under
limitations and restrictions from that authority; and those
limitations being regulated with a proper regard to the ease of
trade in general, and the improvement of the stock in particular,
would make a bank a useful, profitable thing indeed.

First, a bank ought to be of a magnitude proportioned to the trade
of the country it is in, which this bank is so far from that it is
no more to the whole than the least goldsmith's cash in Lombard
Street is to the bank, from whence it comes to pass that already
more banks are contriving. And I question not but banks in London
will ere long be as frequent as lotteries; the consequence of which,
in all probability, will be the diminishing their reputation, or a
civil war with one another. It is true, the Bank of England has a
capital stock; but yet, was that stock wholly clear of the public
concern of the Government, it is not above a fifth part of what
would be necessary to manage the whole business of the town--which
it ought, though not to do, at least to be able to do. And I
suppose I may venture to say above one-half of the stock of the
present bank is taken up in the affairs of the Exchequer.

I suppose nobody will take this discourse for an invective against
the Bank of England. I believe it is a very good fund, a very
useful one, and a very profitable one. It has been useful to the
Government, and it is profitable to the proprietors; and the
establishing it at such a juncture, when our enemies were making
great boasts of our poverty and want of money, was a particular
glory to our nation, and the city in particular. That when the
Paris Gazette informed the world that the Parliament had indeed