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companies, by readily receiving their notes in all payments,and by encouraging all those with whom they have any in-fluence to do the same. The banks, when their customersapply to them for money, generally advance it to them intheir own promissory notes. These the merchants pay awayto the manufacturers for goods, the manufacturers to the far-mers for materials and provisions, the farmers to their land-lords for rent, the landlords repay them to the merchants forthe conveniencies and luxuries with which they supply them,and the merchants again return them to the banks, in orderto balance their cash accounts, or to replace what they mayhave borrowed of them; and thus almost the whole moneybusiness of the country is transacted by means of them.Hence the great trade of those companies.

By means of those cash accounts every merchant can,without imprudence, carry on a greater trade than he other-wise could do. If there are two merchants, one in London ,and the other in Edinburgh , who employ equal stocks in thesame branch of trade, the Edinburgh merchant can, withoutimprudence, carry on a greater trade, and give employmentto a greater number of people than the London merchant.The London merchant must always keep by him a consider-able sum of money, either in his own coffers or in those ofhis banker, who gives him no interest for it, in order to an-swer the demands continually coming upon him for paymentof the goods which he purchases upon credit. Let the or-dinary amount of this sum be supposed five hundred pounds.The value of the goods in his warehouse must always be lessby five hundred pounds than it would have been, had he notbeen obliged to keep such a sum unemployed. Let us sup-pose that he generally disposes of his whole stock upon hand,or of goods to the value of his whole stock upon hand, oncein the year. By being obliged to keep so great a sum un-employed, he must sell in a year five hundred pounds worthless goods than he might otherwise have done. His annualprofits must be less by all that he could have made by thesale of five hundred pounds worth more goods ; and the num-ber of people employed in preparing his goods for market,must be less by all those that five hundred pounds morestock could have employed. The merchant in Edinburgh ,on the other hand, keeps no money unemployed for answeringsuch occasional demands. When they actually come uponhim, he satisfies them from his cash account with the bank,