As, for example, suppose I have 100 hogsheads of tobacco to import,
whose customs by several duties come to 1,000 pounds, and want cash
to clear them. I go with my bill of loading to the bank, who
appoint their officer to enter the goods and pay the duties, which
goods, so entered by the bank, shall give them title enough to any
part, or the whole, without the trouble of bills of sale, or
conveyances, defeasances, and the like. The goods are carried to a
warehouse at the waterside, where the merchant has a free and public
access to them, as if in his own warehouse and an honourable liberty
to sell and deliver either the whole (paying their disburse) or a
part without it, leaving but sufficient for the payment, and out of
that part delivered, either by notes under the hand of the
purchaser, or any other way, he may clear the same, without any
exactions, but of 4 pounds per cent., and the rest are his own.

The ease this would bring to trade, the deliverance it would bring
to the merchants from the insults of goldsmiths, &c,, and the honour
it would give to our management of public imposts, with the
advantages to the Custom House itself, and the utter destruction of
extortion, would be such as would give a due value to the bank, and
make all mankind acknowledge it to be a public good. The grievance
of exactions upon merchants in this case is very great, and when I
lay the blame on the goldsmiths, because they are the principal
people made use of in such occasions, I include a great many other
sorts of brokers and money-jobbing artists, who all get a snip out
of the merchant. I myself have known a goldsmith in Lombard Street
lend a man 700 pounds to pay the customs of a hundred pipes of
Spanish wines; the wines were made over to him for security by bill
of sale, and put into a cellar, of which the goldsmith kept the key;