most distant parts of the kingdom. Or if he wants money at
Newcastle, and has goods at Worcester or at any other clothing town,
sending his goods to be sold by the factory of the bank of
Worcester, he may remit by the bank to Newcastle, or anywhere else,
as readily as if his goods were sold and paid for and no exactions
made upon him for the convenience he enjoys.

This discourse of banks, the reader is to understand, to have no
relation to the present posture of affairs, with respect to the
scarcity of current money, which seems to have put a stop to that
part of a stock we call credit, which always is, and indeed must be,
the most essential part of a bank, and without which no bank can
pretend to subsist--at least, to advantage.

A bank is only a great stock of money put together, to be employed
by some of the subscribers, in the name of the rest, for the benefit
of the whole. This stock of money subsists not barely on the
profits of its own stock (for that would be inconsiderable), but
upon the contingencies and accidents which multiplicity of business
occasions. As, for instance, a man that comes for money, and knows
he may have it to-morrow; perhaps he is in haste, and won't take it
to-day: only, that he may be sure of it to-morrow, he takes a
memorandum under the hand of the officer, that he shall have it
whenever he calls for it, and this memorandum we call a bill. To-
morrow, when he intended to fetch his money, comes a man to him for
money, and, to save himself the labour of telling, he gives him the
memorandum or bill aforesaid for his money; this second man does as
the first, and a third does as he did, and so the bill runs about a
mouth, two or three. And this is that we call credit, for by the
circulation of a quantity of these bills, the bank enjoys the full