284 THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

to replenish the coffers of their employers so fast as they wereemptied. In this case the resource of the banks was, to drawupon their correspondents in London bills of exchange to theextent of the sum which they wanted. When those corre-spondents afterward drew upon them for the payment of thissum, together with the. interest and a commission, some ofthose banks, from the distress into which their excessive cir-culation had thrown them, had sometimes no other means ofsatisfying this draught but by drawing a second set of billseither upon the same, or upon some other correspondents inLondon ; and the same sum, or rather bills for the same sum,would in this manner make sometimes more than two or threejourneys; the debtor bank paying always the interest andcommission upon the whole accumulated sum. Even thoseScotch banks which never distinguished themselves by theirextreme impruudence, were sometimes obliged to employ thisruinous resource.

The gold coin which was paid out either by the bank ofEngland, or by the Scotch banks, in exchange for that part oftheir paper which was over and above what could be em-ployed in the circulation of the country, being likewise overand above what could be employed in that circulation, wassometimes sent abroad in the shape of coin, sometimes melteddown and sent abroad in the shape of bullion, and sometimesmelted down and sold to the bank of England at the highprice of four pounds an ounce. It was the newest, the hea-viest, and the bes tpieces only which were carefully pickedout of the whole coin, and either sent abroad or melted down.At home, and while they remain in the shape of coin, thoseheavy pieces were of no more value than the light; but theywere of more value abroad, or when melted down into bul-lion, at home. The bank of England, notwithstanding theirgreat annual coinage, found, to their astonishment, that therewas every year the same scarcity of coin as there had beenthe year before; and that notwithstanding the great quantityof good and new coin which was every year issued from thebank, the state of the coin, instead of growing better and bet-ter, became every year worse and worse. Every year theyfound themselves under the necessity of coining nearly thesame quantity of gold as they had coined the year before,and from the continual rise in the price of gold bullion, inconsequence of the continual wearing and clipping of the coin,the expense of this great annual coinage became every year