THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

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would be more likely to employ the money borrowed in soberundertakings which were proportioned to their capitals, andwhich, though they might have less of the grand and the mar-vellous, would have more of the solid and the profitable,which would repay with a large profit whatever had beenlaid out upon them, and which would thus afford a fund ca-pable of maintaining a much greater quantity of labour thanthat which had been employed about them. The success ofthis operation, therefore, without increasing in the smallestdegree the capital of the country, would only have transferreda great part of it from prudent and profitable, to imprudentand unprofitable undertakings.

That the industry of Scotland languished for want of mo-ney to employ it, was the opinion of the famous Mr. Law.By establishing a bank of a particular kind, which he seemsto have imagined might issue paper to the amount of thewhole value of all the lands in the country, he proposed toremedy this want of money. The parliament of Scotland ,when he first proposed his project, did not think proper toadopt it. It was afterward adopted, with some variations,by the duke of Orleans, at that time regent of France . Theidea of the possibility of multiplying paper money to almostany extent, was the real foundation of what is called the Mis-sissippi scheme, the most extravagant project, both of bank-ing and stock-jobbing, that, perhaps, the world ever saw.The different operations of this scheme are explained so fully,so clearly, and with so much order and distinctness, by Mr.Du Verney, in his Examination of the Political Reflectionsupon Commerce and Finances of Mr. Du Tot, that I shallnot give any account of them. The principles upon whichit was founded are explained by Mr. Law himself, in a dis-course concerning money and trade, which he published inScotland when he first proposed his project. The splendidbut visionary ideas which are set forth in that and some otherworks upon the same principles, still continue to make animpression upon many people, and have, perhaps, in partcontributed to that excess of banking, which has of late beencomplained of both in Scotland and in other places.

The bank of England is the greatest bank of circulation inEurope . It was incorporated, in pursuance of an act of par-liament, by a charter under the great seal, dated the 27th ofJuly, IG94. It at. that time advanced to government thesum of one million two hundred thousand pounds, for an an-