interest, while he is anticipated by having paid to the banker three months discount interest on his bill; if a trader were to take his money systematically by discounts instead of by cash accounts, a disadvantage to him would arise. The same principle applied to small sums; if half or a quarter, or any part of the advance which he may have received upon the cash account comes into him, he immediately lessens the advance by paying it into the bank, and the interest being calculated at the close of the account, there is a progressive account of interest diminishing with the principal sum till it is extinguished. So far as to actual benefit of interest; but the convenience of getting money when wanted affords a very material advantage independent of the actual benefit.

What are the facilities that exist in obtaining this sort of advantage, compared with those of obtaining an ordinary loan?—When a person applies for a cash account, which is not an immediate advance of money on the part of the bank, but a conferring of the power or privilege of drawing upon the bank to the extent specified, the person proposes two or more personal sureties: a bond is made out, and he draws as occasion requires. In this way, he has never more from the bank than is absolutely necessary for the purposes of his business. The account is never recalled, unless it has ceased to be beneficial to the bank, by having been but little operated upon, and thus not having promoted the circulation of the bank's notes. Whenever it becomes a dead advance, the bank calls it up. In the case of a person obtaining a loan, he would probably, in the first place, have to pay the interest down at once; he would have to pay it upon the whole sum, whether he should require it ultimately or not, and it would be liable to be recalled by the lender at his pleasure."-(Commons, 205.) The person who procures a cash credit, does so upon the security of two or three substantial individuals. He may be a man of little property, but upon that security he gets a credit, perhaps, of £500-his bill to any thing like that amount without those securities, would not be discounted.

After the permanent credit is given, the option of using it lies solely with the borrower, not with the bank, as does also the option of the period of repayment.

"If a small trader borrow of an individual (not a banker) £100, that individual would not be disposed to receive back his money in £5, or £10, or £15-he would wait till the term expired, when he would receive the whole. When a credit is granted, the individual, perhaps, draws out £50 to-day and pays in £40 to-morrow, and goes on in that way, always having credit with the bank to the extent originally stipulated.

"The repayment as well as the overdraught is permitted by the bank to be made in small sums piecemeal: so that by attention in his repayment, the borrower saves himself from paying interest on more than the precise advance for which he has occasion at the moment, and can constantly convert to a safe and profitable purpose the money

which he may receive in the course of his trade, however small the

amount.

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These advantages are steadily and uniformly afforded at all times to the industrious tradesman, or farmer, the merchant, the professional man, and the landlord."

3. Cash credits supply capital for carrying on extensive branches of trade, employing the population, and constructing public works.

Cash credits for small sums enable the poor to be as instrumental, as far as their means go, in increasing the capital of the country as the rich are. For the produce of that industry which cash account credits enable to operate, and of that capital which they leave at liberty to be employed in trade, goes to increase the real wealth and capital of the country; and a great proportion of the transactions, carried on through the instrumentality of cash accounts, consist of those of the poorer classes.

I apprehend that those cash credits have enabled a large number of manufacturers to carry on business, and to employ the population of the country, who if they had not such credits, could not have carried on such business, nor employed such population.

There

Cash credits are granted to almost all descriptions of persons throughout the country. Every young man who has a prospect of success on entering life, applies for a cash credit. A great many gentlemen have cash credits, and a great many farmers. is hardly any public work undertaken in Scotland that the first object is not to apply for a cash credit, to carry it on to advantage. All the roads in Scotland are managed by Parliamentary trustees; and I believe, there is hardly any one of those sets of trustees which have not cash accounts for the purpose of carrying on their operations. I am sure many of the most important public works in Scotland would not have been carried on, or certainly not with the same advantage, but for the credits they obtain from the banks."

4. Cash credits prevent large manufacturers setting up as bankers, and thus they exclude those evils which in other countries have resulted from the failure of private banks.

"When the system is applied to the case of large manufacturers, employing hundreds or thousands of workmen, and possessing a cash credit to a proportionate amount, upon sufficient security, one obvious effect is, that the temptation is removed from the manufacturer of attempting to issue notes, and becoming himself a banker-an error or temptation which, if what is said is true, has been the main cause of the institution of many insufficient English bankers, whose part

ners, from being good traders, became bad bankers, and brought upon their own district the distress which bad banking sooner or later always produces."

5. Cash credits have a considerable moral influence upon the habits and character of the people.

"The security afforded to a bank by its debtor, or rather its customer on a cash credit, is by bond with two sureties at the leastoccasionally there are not two sureties, but frequently many more; the practical effect of which is, that the sureties do, in a greater or less degree, keep an attentive eye upon the future transactions and character of the person for whom they have thus pledged themselves. And it is, perhaps, difficult for those who are not intimately acquainted with it to conceive the moral check which is afforded upon the conduct of the members of a great trading community, who are thus directly interested in the integrity, prudence, and success of each other. It rarely indeed, if ever, happens, that banks suffer loss by small cash credits.

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This system has a great effect upon the moral habits of the people, because those who are securities feel an interest in watching over their conduct, and if they find they are misconducting themselves, they become apprehensive of being brought into risk and loss from having become their securities, and if they find they are so misconducting themselves, they withdraw the security.

"Sometimes cash credits are recalled from the interference of the securities. They have the power of knowing from the bank at any time the state of the account, and the operations upon it; and if from that, or from other circumstances, they have been led to think less favorably of the person for whom they gave the security, they can immediately cease to allow that account to be farther operated upon."

The Report of the Committee of the House of Lords contains the following observations upon the effects of cash credits:

"There is also one part of their system which is stated by all the witnesses, (and in the opinion of the Committee very justly stated) to have had the best effects upon the people of Scotland, and particularly upon the middling and poorer classes of society, in producing and encouraging habits of frugality and industry. The practice referred to is that of cash credits. Any person who applies to a bank for a cash credit, is called upon to produce two or more competent securities, who are jointly bound; and after a full inquiry into the character of the applicant, the nature of his business, and the sufficiency of his securities, he is allowed to open a credit, and to draw the bank for the whole of its amount, or for such part as his daily transactions may require. To the credit of this account

upon

he pays in such sums as he may not have occasion to use, and interest is charged or credited upon the daily balance as the case may be. From the facility which these cash credits give to all the small transactions of the country, and from the opportunities which they afford to persons who begin business with little or no capital but their character, to employ profitably the minuted products of their industry, it cannot be doubted that the most important advantages are derived from the whole community."

It

As by cash credits the banks render themselves liable to be called upon at a moment's notice for the amount of the credit granted, it is natural to suppose that they contemplate some advantage in return. The advantage contemplated is the circulation of their notes. is not intended that the cash credit shall be a dead loan of capital. It is expected that there shall be a perpetual paying in and drawing out of money, and the smaller the denomination of the notes drawn out, the more advantageous is the account to the bank. Manufacturers who pay away large sums every week in wages, linen-buyers, and cattle-dealers, millers, and provision-merchants, who make their purchases in small sums, and generally all those who have quick returns of money passing through their hands, have the means of making a cash credit profitable to the bank. On this subject I again quote the evidence :

"To secure to the bank the advantages of circulation, which is to make it worth while to afford these facilities at so little expense to their customers, he on his part is to lose no opportunity of bringing to the bank, and thus withdrawing from circulation, the notes of every rival bank which comes into his hands in the course of his transactions: or, of paying away, and thus introducing into circulation as many of the notes of the bank as his transactions admit of, always £1 notes if possible. The payments and receipts must be frequent, for in this consists the banker's profit, inasmuch as the payments are uniformly made by him in his own notes, and the receipts are generally, in a very great degree, in the notes of other banks. Thus, supposing a shopkeeper to have a credit for £50 or £100, if his receipts and payments average £5 per day, he may, in six months, or 150 days, have placed 750 of his banker's £1 notes in circulation.

"It is quite necessary, in order to render a cash account beneficial, that there should be repeated and continued operations upon it;

that the transactions should be numerous: that there should be a continual drawing out and paying in of money; and that, by these means, a circulation of the bank notes may be promoted; otherwise the account is withdrawn, and the great reason of this is, that these accounts are not intended to form dead-loans, but to be productive of circulation to the bank.

"The explanation of the cash credit system is this:-The bank, who first opened a cash credit, opened it with an individual shopkeeper. He received payment of his goods in the currency of the country. Previous to that system he used to put his currency into his drawer, eight or ten pounds, or whatever it was. If people brought him larger money to pay for his goods, he returned those people change, or if he did not he kept it until he wanted to purchase for himself. But, after the banker had explained to him what he wished him to do, when the shopkeeper received the currency of the country, instead of putting it into his till, he looked to the banker's shop as his till, and handed it over to the banker, and left his own till with only the change which he could not do without. Then when he required sums to pay away, instead of taking them from his till, he sent to the bank and took from it what he required, the banker giving him his own notes. So much of the previous currency was thus removed, and the banker's notes taken in its place. That was the effect of the first operation, when the thing was only in so simple a state that there was only the notes of one bank and a metallic circulation. If you apply the same principle where there are thirty banks, the result would be the same.-The amount of the circulation of the country continues the same, but the proportion between its parts vary.”

SECTION VIII.

DEPOSITS.

A sum of money deposited or placed in a bank is called a deposit. Some banks grant interest on these deposits, others do not. The London bankers allow no interest on deposits, but the English country bankers usually do. The Scotch banks have carried this practice to the greatest extent; and the deposit system forms a very important branch of the banking system in Scotland.

Those regulations which the banks have established