230 ADAM SMITH. 



coin in both, by the arrangements made for defray- 

 ing the expense of coinage, and by the practice of 

 paying sometimes in bank money and sometimes 

 in specie currency. The course of exchange will 

 frequently appear to be in favour of nations which 

 pay in bank money, and against those which pay 

 in currency, though the real exchange may be the 

 other way in each case. This leads to a long but very 

 valuable digression concerning Banks of Deposit, espe- 

 cially that of Amsterdam, on which the author tell us, 

 in the last edition, that he received his information 

 from Mr. Hope; and it was the first time that any 

 intelligible account of that celebrated establishment 

 had ever been given to the world. Mr. Hope esti- 

 mated the amount of the deposits in 1750, at about 

 three and a quarter millions sterling ; and Dr. Smith, 

 like the rest of mankind, believed that the oath annu- 

 ally taken by the burgomasters was sacred " among 

 that sober and religious people," and that not a florin 

 was ever issued except to the depositors, the whole 

 profit of the bank being the commission of a quarter 

 per cent, on deposits of silver, and a half per cent, on 

 those of gold. But about the very time that Mr. Hope 

 spoke or, or immediately after, the faith which had 

 remained inviolate from 1609, the date of the Bank's 

 foundation, was broken by that body, large loans 

 were secretly made to the Government and the East 

 India Company ; the annual oath continued to be taken 

 by that " sober and religious people," and to be annu- 

 ally broken ; in 1790, the bank announced that no 

 deposits under 250 would be returned, and that ten 

 per cent, would be returned on all others ; and all this 

 was submitted to without impairing the bank's credit 

 so sturdy a plant is confidence, grounded on long 

 habit and long-sustained good faith! At length, in 

 1796, it was discovered that above a million sterling, 

 lent covertly, could not now be recovered from the 

 State by the Company, whose claims on the public 



