credit, and bank-bills the balance of their cash would be always ten
millions sterling--a sum that everybody who can talk of does not
understand.

But then to find business for all this stock, which, though it be a
strange thing to think of, is nevertheless easy when it comes to be
examined. And first for the business; this bank should enlarge the
number of their directors, as they do of their stock, and should
then establish several sub-committees, composed of their own
members, who should have the directing of several offices relating
to the distinct sorts of business they referred to, to be overruled
and governed by the governor and directors in a body, but to have a
conclusive power as to contracts. Of these there should be -

One office for loan of money for customs of goods, which by a plain
method might be so ordered that the merchant might with ease pay the
highest customs down, and so, by allowing the bank 4 per cent.
advance, be first sure to secure the 10 pounds per cent. which the
king allows for prompt payment at the Custom House, and be also
freed from the troublesome work of finding bondsmen and securities
for the money--which has exposed many a man to the tyranny of
extents, either for himself or his friend, to his utter ruin, who
under a more moderate prosecution had been able to pay all his
debts, and by this method has been torn to pieces and disabled from
making any tolerable proposal to his creditors. This is a scene of
large business, and would, in proportion, employ a large cash, and
it is the easiest thing in the world to make the bank the paymaster
of all the large customs, and yet the merchant have so honourable a
possession of his goods, as may be neither any diminution to his
reputation or any hindrance to their sale.