THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

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ways,' &c.; of the capital which the person who undertakesto improve land employs in clearing, draining, enclosing,manuring and ploughing waste and uncultivated fields, inbuilding farm-houses, with all their necessary appendages ofstables, granaries, &c. The returns of the fixed capital arein almost all cases much slower than those of the circulatingcapital,- and such expenses, even when laid out with thegreatest prudence and judgment, very seldom return to theundertaker till after a period of many years, a period by fartoo distant to suit the conveniency of a bank. Traders andother undertakers may, no doubt, with great propriety, carryon a very considerable part of their projects with borrowedmoney. In justice to their creditors, however, their owncapital ought, in this case, to be sufficient to ensure, if I mayso say, the capital of those creditors; or to render it ex-tremely improbable that those creditors should incur any loss,even though the success of the project should fall very muchshort of the expectation of the projectors. Even with thisprecaution too, the money which is borrowed, and which itis meant should not be repaid till after a period of severalyears, ought not to be borrowed of a bank, but ought to beborrowed upon bond or mortgage, of such private people aspropose to live upon the interest of their money, withouttaking the trouble themselves to employ the capital; and whoare upon that account willing to lend that capital to suchpeople of good credit as are likely to keep it lor severalyears. A bank, indeed, which lends its money without theexpense of stampt paper, or of attorneys’ fees for drawingbonds and mortgages, and which accepts of repayment uponthe easy terms of the banking companies of Scotland ; would,no doubt, be a very convenient creditor to such traders andundertakers. But such traders and undertakers would,surely, be most inconvenient debtors to such a bank.

It is now more than five-and-twenty years since the papermoney issued by the different banking companies of Scotland was fully equal, or rather was somewhat more than fully equalto] what the circulation of the country could easily absorband employ. Those companies, therefore, had so long agogiven all the assistance to the traders and other undertakersof Scotland which it is possible for banks and bankers, con-sistently with their own interest, to give. They had evendone somewhat more. They had overtraded a little, and hadbrought upon themselves that loss, or at least, that diminu-