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oasis. Citi. investment. BoA. jobs. WAMU. Trading. net.

If we set aside the barbarity and customs of the Romans as heathens,
and take them as a civil government, we must allow they were the
pattern of the whole world for improvement and increase of arts and
learning, civilising and methodising nations and countries conquered
by their valour; and if this was one of their great cares, that
consideration ought to move something. But to the great example of
that generous people I will add three arguments:-

1. It is useful, and that as it is convenient for carriages, which
in a trading country is a great help to negotiation, and promotes
universal correspondence, without which our inland trade could not
be managed. And under this head I could name a thousand
conveniences of a safe, pleasant, well-repaired highway, both to the
inhabitant and the traveller, but I think it is needless.

2. It is easy. I question not to make it appear it is easy to put
all the highroads, especially in England, in a noble figure; large,
dry, and clean; well drained, and free from floods, unpassable
sloughs, deep cart-ruts, high ridges, and all the inconveniences
they now are full of; and, when once done, much easier still to be
maintained so.

3. It may be cheaper, and the whole assessment for the repairs of
highways for ever be dropped or applied to other uses for the public
benefit.

Here I beg the reader’s favour for a small digression.

I am not proposing this as an undertaker, or setting a price to the
public for which I will perform it, like one of the projectors I
speak of, but laying open a project for the performance, which,
whenever the public affairs will admit our governors to consider of,
will be found so feasible that no question they may find undertakers
enough for the performance; and in this undertaking age I do not
doubt but it would be easy at any time to procure persons at their
own charge to perform it for any single county, as a pattern and
experiment for the whole kingdom.

The proposal is as follows:- First, that an Act of Parliament be
made with liberty for the undertakers to dig and trench, to cut down
hedges and trees, or whatever is needful for ditching, draining and
carrying off water, cleaning, enlarging and levelling the roads,
with power to lay open or enclose lands; to encroach into lands;
dig, raise, and level fences; plant and pull up hedges or trees (for
the enlarging, widening, and draining the highways), with power to
turn either the roads or watercourses, rivers and brooks, as by the
directors of the works shall be found needful, always allowing
satisfaction to be first made to the owners of such lands (either by
assigning to them equivalent lands or payment in money, the value to
be adjusted by two indifferent persons to be named by the Lord
Chancellor or Lord Keeper for the time being), and no watercourse to
be turned from any water-mill without satisfaction first made both
to the landlord and tenant.

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OF THE HIGHWAYS.

It is a prodigious charge the whole nation groans under for the
repair of highways, which, after all, lie in a very ill posture too.
I make no question but if it was taken into consideration by those
who have the power to direct it, the kingdom might be wholly eased
of that burden, and the highways be kept in good condition, which
now lie in a most shameful manner in most parts of the kingdom, and
in many places wholly unpassable, from whence arise tolls and
impositions upon passengers and travellers, and, on the other hand,
trespasses and encroachments upon lands adjacent, to the great
damage of the owners.

The rate for the highways is the most arbitrary and unequal tax in
the kingdom: in some places two or three rates of sixpence per
pound in the year; in others the whole parish cannot raise wherewith
to defray the charge, either by the very bad condition of the road
or distance of materials; in others the surveyors raise what they
never expend; and the abuses, exactions, connivances, frauds, and
embezzlements are innumerable.

The Romans, while they governed this island, made it one of their
principal cares to make and repair the highways of the kingdom, and
the chief roads we now use are of their marking out; the consequence
of maintaining them was such, or at least so esteemed, that they
thought it not below them to employ their legionary troops in the
work; and it was sometimes the business of whole armies, either when
in winter quarters or in the intervals of truce or peace with the
natives. Nor have the Romans left us any greater tokens of their
grandeur and magnificence than the ruins of those causeways and
street-ways which are at this day to be seen in many parts of the
kingdom, some of which have by the visible remains been discovered
to traverse the whole kingdom, and others for more than a hundred
miles are to be traced from colony to colony, as they had particular
occasion. The famous highway or street called Watling Street, which
some will tell you began at London Stone, and passing that very
street in the City which we to this day call by that name, went on
west to that spot where Tyburn now stands, and then turned north-
west in so straight a line to St. Albans that it is now the exactest
road (in one line for twenty miles) in the kingdom; and though
disused now as the chief, yet is as good, and, I believe, the best
road to St. Albans, and is still called the Streetway. From whence
it is traced into Shropshire, above a hundred and sixty miles, with
a multitude of visible antiquities upon it, discovered and described
very accurately by Mr. Cambden. The Fosse, another Roman work, lies
at this day as visible, and as plain a high causeway, of above
thirty feet broad, ditched on either side, and coped and paved where
need is–as exact and every jot as beautiful as the king’s new road
through Hyde Park, in which figure it now lies from near Marshfield
to Cirencester, and again from Cirencester to the Hill, three miles
on this side Gloucester, which is not less than twenty-six miles,
and is made use of as the great road to those towns, and probably
has been so for a thousand years with little repairs.

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I confess, a bank who can lay a fund for the security of their
bills, which shall produce first an annual profit to the owner, and
yet make good the passant bill, may stand, and be advantageous, too,
because there is a real and a suppositious value both, and the real
always ready to make good the suppositious: and this I know no way
to bring to pass but by land, which, at the same time that it lies
transferred to secure the value of every bill given out, brings in a
separate profit to the owner; and this way no question but the whole
kingdom might be a bank to itself, though no ready money were to be
found in it.

I had gone on in some sheets with my notion of land being the best
bottom for public banks, and the easiness of bringing it to answer
all the ends of money deposited with double advantage, but I find
myself happily prevented by a gentleman who has published the very
same, though since this was wrote; and I was always master of so
much wit as to hold my tongue while they spoke who understood the
thing better than myself.

Mr. John Asgill, of Lincoln’s Inn, in a small tract entitled,
“Several Assertions proved, in order to create another Species of
Money than Gold and Silver,” has so distinctly handled this very
case, with such strength of argument, such clearness of reason, such
a judgment, and such a style, as all the ingenious part of the world
must acknowledge themselves extremely obliged to him for that piece.

At the sight of which book I laid by all that had been written by me
on that subject, for I had much rather confess myself incapable of
handling that point like him, than have convinced the world of it by
my impertinence.

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development. mortgage. accounting. Fargo. trading. credit. Failure. finance.

This discourse of banks, the reader is to understand, to have no
relation to the present posture of affairs, with respect to the
scarcity of current money, which seems to have put a stop to that
part of a stock we call credit, which always is, and indeed must be,
the most essential part of a bank, and without which no bank can
pretend to subsist–at least, to advantage.

A bank is only a great stock of money put together, to be employed
by some of the subscribers, in the name of the rest, for the benefit
of the whole. This stock of money subsists not barely on the
profits of its own stock (for that would be inconsiderable), but
upon the contingencies and accidents which multiplicity of business
occasions. As, for instance, a man that comes for money, and knows
he may have it to-morrow; perhaps he is in haste, and won’t take it
to-day: only, that he may be sure of it to-morrow, he takes a
memorandum under the hand of the officer, that he shall have it
whenever he calls for it, and this memorandum we call a bill. To-
morrow, when he intended to fetch his money, comes a man to him for
money, and, to save himself the labour of telling, he gives him the
memorandum or bill aforesaid for his money; this second man does as
the first, and a third does as he did, and so the bill runs about a
mouth, two or three. And this is that we call credit, for by the
circulation of a quantity of these bills, the bank enjoys the full
benefit of as much stock in real value as the suppositious value of
the bills amounts to; and wherever this credit fails, this advantage
fails; for immediately all men come for their money, and the bank
must die of itself: for I am sure no bank, by the simple
improvement of their single stock, can ever make any considerable
advantage.

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capital. the. leveraged. insurance. business. energy. Lehman Bros. continental.

Of these sorts of banks England might very well establish fifteen,
at the several towns hereafter mentioned. Some of which, though
they are not the capital towns of the counties, yet are more the
centre of trade, which in England runs in veins, like mines of metal
in the earth:

Canterbury. Salisbury. Exeter. Bristol. Worcester. Shrewsbury.
Manchester. Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Leeds, or Halifax, or York.
Warwick or Birmingham. Oxford or Reading. Bedford. Norwich.
Colchester.

Every one of these banks to have a cashier in London, unless they
could all have a general correspondence and credit with the bank
royal.

These banks in their respective counties should be a general staple
and factory for the manufactures of the said county, where every man
that had goods made, might have money at a small interest for
advance, the goods in the meantime being sent forward to market, to
a warehouse for that purpose erected in London, where they should be
disposed of to all the advantages the owner could expect, paying
only 1 per cent. commission. Or if the maker wanted credit in
London either for Spanish wool, cotton, oil, or any goods, while his
goods were in the warehouse of the said bank, his bill should be
paid by the bank to the full value of his goods, or at least within
a small matter. These banks, either by correspondence with each
other, or an order to their cashier in London, might with ease so
pass each other’s bills that a man who has cash at Plymouth, and
wants money at Berwick, may transfer his cash at Plymouth to
Newcastle in half-an-hour’s time, without either hazard, or charge,
or time, allowing only 0.5 per cent. exchange; and so of all the
most distant parts of the kingdom. Or if he wants money at
Newcastle, and has goods at Worcester or at any other clothing town,
sending his goods to be sold by the factory of the bank of
Worcester, he may remit by the bank to Newcastle, or anywhere else,
as readily as if his goods were sold and paid for and no exactions
made upon him for the convenience he enjoys.

capital. the. leveraged. insurance. business. energy. Lehman Bros. continental.

master. balance. stock. Mortgages. banks. Investments. sales. private.

Every principal town in England is a corporation, upon which the
fund may be settled, which will sufficiently answer the difficult
and chargeable work of suing for a corporation by patent or Act of
Parliament.

A general subscription of stock being made, and by deeds of
settlement placed in the mayor and aldermen of the city or
corporation for the time being, in trust, to be declared by deeds of
uses, some of the directors being always made members of the said
corporation, and joined in the trust; the bank hereby becomes the
public stock of the town (something like what they call the rentes
of the town-house in France), and is managed in the name of the said
corporation, to whom the directors are accountable, and they back
again to the general court.

For example: suppose the gentlemen or tradesmen of the county of
Norfolk, by a subscription of cash, design to establish a bank. The
subscriptions being made, the stock is paid into the chamber of the
city of Norwich, and managed by a court of directors, as all banks
are, and chosen out of the subscribers, the mayor only of the city
to be always one; to be managed in the name of the corporation of
the city of Norwich, but for the uses in a deed of trust to be made
by the subscribers, and mayor and aldermen, at large mentioned. I
make no question but a bank thus settled would have as firm a
foundation as any bank need to have, and every way answer the ends
of a corporation.

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If it be objected here that it is impossible for one joint-stock to
go through the whole business of the kingdom, I answer, I believe it
is not either impossible or impracticable, particularly on this one
account: that almost all the country business would be managed by
running bills, and those the longest abroad of any, their distance
keeping them out, to the increasing the credit, and consequently the
stock of the bank.

OF THE MULTIPLICITY OF BANKS.

What is touched at in the foregoing part of this chapter refers to
one bank royal to preside, as it were, over the whole cash of the
kingdom: but because some people do suppose this work fitter for
many banks than for one, I must a little consider that head. And
first, allowing those many banks could, without clashing, maintain a
constant correspondence with one another, in passing each other’s
bills as current from one to another, I know not but it might be
better performed by many than by one; for as harmony makes music in
sound, so it produces success in business.

A civil war among merchants is always the rain of trade: I cannot
think a multitude of banks could so consist with one another in
England as to join interests and uphold one another’s credit,
without joining stocks too; I confess, if it could be done, the
convenience to trade would be visible.

If I were to propose which way these banks should be established, I
answer, allowing a due regard to some gentlemen who have had
thoughts of the same (whose methods I shall not so much as touch
upon, much less discover; my thoughts run upon quite different
methods, both for the fund and the establishment).

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international. trading. Choice. geneva. Savings. accounting. new. Failure.

By which such a correspondence with all the trading towns in England
might be maintained, as that the whole kingdom should trade with the
bank. Under the direction of this office a public cashier should be
appointed in every county, to reside in the capital town as to trade
(and in some counties more), through whose hands all the cash of the
revenue of the gentry and of trade should be returned on the bank in
London, and from the bank again on their cashier in every respective
county or town, at the small exchange of 0.5 per cent., by which
means all loss of money carried upon the road, to the encouragement
of robbers and ruining of the country, who are sued for those
robberies, would be more effectually prevented than by all the
statutes against highwaymen that are or can be made.

As to public advancings of money to the Government, they may be left
to the directors in a body, as all other disputes and contingent
cases are; and whoever examines these heads of business apart, and
has any judgment in the particulars, will, I suppose, allow that a
stock of ten millions may find employment in them, though it be
indeed a very great sum.

I could offer some very good reasons why this way of management by
particular offices for every particular sort of business is not only
the easiest, but the safest, way of executing an affair of such
variety and consequence; also I could state a method for the
proceedings of those private offices, their conjunction with and
dependence on the general court of the directors, and how the
various accounts should centre in one general capital account of
stock, with regulations and appeals; but I believe them to be
needless–at least, in this place.

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home. finance. financial. debt. project. international. personal. Pension.

A third office should be appointed for discounting bills, tallies,
and notes, by which all tallies of the Exchequer, and any part of
the revenue, should at stated allowances be ready money to any
person, to the great advantage of the Government, and ease of all
such as are any ways concerned in public undertakings.

A fourth office for lending money upon land securities at 4 per
cent. interest, by which the cruelty and injustice of mortgagees
would be wholly restrained, and a register of mortgages might be
very well kept, to prevent frauds.

A fifth office for exchanges and foreign correspondences.

A sixth for inland exchanges, where a very large field of business
lies before them.

Under this head it will not be improper to consider that this method
will most effectually answer all the notions and proposals of county
banks; for by this office they would be all rendered useless and
unprofitable, since one bank of the magnitude I mention, with a
branch of its office set apart for that business, might with ease
manage all the inland exchange of the kingdom.

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Pounds s. d
The cooper’s bill came to . . . . . . . . . 30 0 0
The cellarage a year and a half to . . . . 18 0 0
Interests on the bond to . . . . . . . . . 63 0 0
The goldsmith’s men for attendance . . . . . 8 0 0
Allowance for advance of the money and
forbearance . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 0 0
======
193 0 0
Principal money borrowed . . . . 700 0 0
=======
893 0 0
Due to the merchant . . . . . . . . . . 29 0 0
=======
922 0 0

By the moderatest computation that can be, these wines cost the
merchant as follows:-

First Cost with Charges on Board. Pounds s. d
In Lisbon 15 mille reis per pipe is
1,500 mille reis; exchange,
at 6s. 4d. per mille rei . . . . . 475 0 0
Freight to London, then at 3 pounds per
ton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 0 0
Assurance on 500 pounds at 2 per cent. . . 10 0 0
Petty charges . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 0 0
=======
640 0 0

So that it is manifest by the extortion of this banker, the poor man
lost the whole capital with freight and charges, and made but 29
pounds produce of a hundred pipes of wine.

One other office of this bank, and which would take up a
considerable branch of the stock, is for lending money upon pledges,
which should have annexed to it a warehouse and factory, where all
sorts of goods might publicly be sold by the consent of the owners,
to the great advantage of the owner, the bank receiving 4 pounds per
cent. interest., and 2 per cent. commission for sale of the goods.

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