hem of the holders at the
current price; and sometimes it agrees with the ministers to pay an
interest upon them to the holders, and keep them in circulation. In
every one of these cases an additional quantity of bank notes gets into
circulation, and are sported, as I have said, upon the public, without
there being property in the bank, as banker for the government, to pay
them; and besides this, the bank has now no money of its own; for the
money that was originally subscribed to begin the credit of the bank
with, at its first establishment, has been lent to government and wasted
long ago.

"The bank" (says Smith, book ii. chap. 2.) "acts not only as an ordinary
bank, but as a great engine of State; it receives and pays a greater
part of the annuities which are due to the creditors of the _public_."
(It is worth observing, that the _public_, or the _nation_, is always
put for the government, in speaking of debts.) "It circulates" (says
Smith) "exchequer bills, and it advances to government the annual amount
of the land and malt taxes, which are frequently not paid till several
years afterwards." (This advancement is also done in bank notes,
for which there is not property in the bank.) "In those different
operations" (says Smith) "_its duty to the public_ may sometimes have
obliged it, without any fault of its directors, _to overstock the
circulation with paper money_."--bank notes. How its _duty_ to _the
public_ can induce it _to overstock that public_ with promissory bank
notes which it _cannot pay_, and thereby expose the individuals of that
public to ruin, is too paradoxical to be explained; for it is on
the credit which individuals _give to the bank_, by receiving and
circulating its notes, and not upon its _own_ credit or its _own_
property, for it has none, that the bank sports. If, however, it be the
duty of the bank to expose the public to this hazard, it is at least
equally the duty of the individuals of that public to get their money
and take care of themselves; and leave it to placemen, pensioners,
government contractors, Reeves' association, and the members of both
houses of Parliament, who have voted away the money at the nod of
the minister, to continue the credit if they can, and for which their
estates individually and collectively ought to answer, as far as they
will go.

There has always existed, and still exists, a mysterious, suspicious
connection, between the minister and the directors of the ba