which, except under
the pressure of extreme pecuniary difficulties, he might not easily
have induced the Commons to assent, but which, to his large and vigorous
mind, appeared to have advantages, both commercial and political, more
important than the immediate relief to the finances. He succeeded,
not only in supplying the wants of the State for twelve months, but
in creating a great institution, which, after the lapse of more than a
century and a half, continues to flourish, and which he lived to see
the stronghold, through all vicissitudes, of the Whig party, and the
bulwark, in dangerous times, of the Protestant succession.

In the reign of William old men were still living who could remember the
days when there was not a single banking house in the city of London. So
late as the time of the Restoration every trader had his own strong box
in his own house, and, when an acceptance was presented to him, told
down the crowns and Caroluses on his own counter. But the increase
of wealth had produced its natural effect, the subdivision of labour.
Before the end of the reign of Charles the Second, a new mode of paying
and receiving money had come into fashion among the merchants of the
capital. A class of agents arose, whose office was to keep the cash of
the commercial houses. This new branch of business naturally fell into
the hands of the goldsmiths, who were accustomed to traffic largely in
the precious metals, and who had vaults in which great masses of bullion
could lie secure from fire and from robbers. It was at the shops of the
goldsmiths of Lombard Street that all the payments in coin were made.
Other traders gave and received nothing but paper.

This great change did not take place without much opposition and
clamour. Oldfashioned merchants complained bitterly that a class of
men who, thirty years before, had confined themselves to their proper
functions, and had made a fair profit by embossing silver bowls and
chargers, by setting jewels for fine ladies, and by selling pistoles
and dollars to gentlemen setting out for the Continent, had become the
treasurers, and were fast becoming the masters, of the whole City. These
usurers, it was said, played at hazard with what had been earned by the
industry and hoarded by the thrift of other men. If the dice turned up
well, the knave who kept the cash became an alderman; if they turned
up ill, the dupe who furnished the cash became a bankrupt. On the other
side the conv