THE WEALTH O F NATIONS.

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on their projects for about two years longer than they couldotherwise have done. But it thereby only enabled them toget so much deeper into debt, so that when ruin came, it fellso much the heavier both upon them and upon their cre-ditors. The operations of this bank, therefore, instead of re-lieving, in reality aggravated in the long-run the distresswhich those projectors had brought both upon themselves andupon their country. It would have been much better forthemselves, their creditors, and their country, had the greaterpart of them been obliged to stop two years sooner than theyactually did. The temporary relief, however, which thisbank afforded to those projectors, proved a real and perma-nent relief to the other Scotch banks. All the dealers in cir-culating bills of exchange, which those other banks had be-come so backward in discounting, had recourse to this newbank, where they were received with open arms. Those otherbanks, therefore, were enabled to get very easily out of thatfatal circle, from which they could not otherwise have disen-gaged themselves without incurring a considerable loss, andperhaps too even some degree of discredit.

In the long-run, therefore, the operations of this bank in-creased the real distress of the country which it meant to re-lieve ; and effectually relieved from a very great distress thoserivals whom it meant to supplant.

At the first setting out of this bank, it was the opinion ofsome people, that how fast soever its coffers might be emptied,it might easily replenish them by raising money upon thesecurities of those to whom it had advanced its paper. Ex-perience, I believe, soon convinced them that this method ofraising money was by much too slow to answer their purpose;and that coffers which originally were so ill fdled, and whichemptied themselves so very fast, could be replenished by noother expedient but the ruinous one of drawing bills uponLondon , and, when they became due, paying them by otherdraughts upon the same place with accumulated interest andcommission. But though they had been able by this methodto raise money as fast as they wanted it; yet, instead of mak-ing a profit, they must have suffered a loss by every such ope-ration; so that in the long-run they must have ruined them-selves as a mercantile company, though, perhaps, not so soonas by the more expensive practice of drawing and re-drawiug.They could still have made nothing by the interest of thepaper, which being over and above what the circulation of

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