when they began to attend to the interest of trade, have frequently
enacted, that foreign bills of exchange of a certain value should be
paid, not in common currency, but by an order upon, or by a transfer
in, the books of a certain bank, established upon the credit, and
under the protection of the state, this bank being always obliged to
pay, in good and true money, exactly according to the standard of
the state. The banks of Venice, Genoa, Amsterdam, Hamburgh and
Nuremburg, seem to have been all originally established with this
view, though some of them may have afterwards been made subservient
to other purposes. The money of such banks, being better than the
common currency of the country, necessarily bore an agio, which was
greater or smaller, according as the currency was supposed to be
more or less degraded below the standard of the state. The agio of
the bank of Hamburgh, for example, which is said to be commonly
about fourteen per cent, is the supposed difference between the good
standard money of the state, and the clipt, worn, and diminished
currency poured into it from all the neighbouring states.

'Before 1609 the great quantity of clipt and worn foreign coin,
which the extensive trade of Amsterdam brought from all parts of
Europe, reduced the value of its currency about 9 per cent below
that of good money fresh from the mint. Such money no sooner
appeared than it was melted down or carried away, as it always is in
such circumstances. The merchants, with plenty of currency, could
not always find a sufficient quantity of good money to pay their
bills of exchange; and the value of those bills, in spite of several
regulations which were made to prevent it, became in a great measure
uncertain.

'In order to remedy these inconveniences, a bank was established in