eniences of the modern practice were set forth in animated
language. The new system, it was said, saved both labour and money. Two
clerks, seated in one counting house, did what, under the old system,
must have been done by twenty clerks in twenty different establishments.
A goldsmith's note might be transferred ten times in a morning; and thus
a hundred guineas, locked in his safe close to the Exchange, did what
would formerly have required a thousand guineas, dispersed through many
tills, some on Ludgate Hill, some in Austin Friars, and some in Tower
Street. [514]

Gradually even those who had been loudest in murmuring against the
innovation gave way and conformed to the prevailing usage. The last
person who held out, strange to say, was Sir Dudley North. When, in
1680, after residing many years abroad, he returned to London, nothing
astonished or displeased him more than the practice of making payments
by drawing bills on bankers. He found that he could not go on Change
without being followed round the piazza by goldsmiths, who, with low
bows, begged to have the honour of serving him. He lost his temper when
his friends asked where he kept his cash. "Where should I keep it," he
asked, "but in my own house?" With difficulty he was induced to put
his money into the hands of one of the Lombard Street men, as they
were called. Unhappily, the Lombard Street man broke, and some of his
customers suffered severely. Dudley North lost only fifty pounds; but
this loss confirmed him in his dislike of the whole mystery of banking.
It was in vain, however, that he exhorted his fellow citizens to return
to the good old practice, and not to expose themselves to utter ruin in
order to spare themselves a little trouble. He stood alone against the
whole community. The advantages of the modern system were felt every
hour of every day in every part of London; and people were no more
disposed to relinquish those advantages for fear of calamities which
occurred at long intervals than to refrain from building houses for fear
of fires, or from building ships for fear of hurricanes. It is a curious
circumstance that a man who, as a theorist, was distinguished from
all the merchants of his time by the largeness of his views and by
his superiority to vulgar prejudices, should, in practice, have been
distinguished from all the merchants of his time by the obstinacy with
which he adhered to an ancient mode of doing business, long after the
dulles