tances an addition to its general prosperity,
even from the undertakings which had proved destructive to the private
fortune of the projectors.

Not only did the Banks dispersed throughout Scotland afford the means
of bringing the country to an unexpected and almost marvellous degree
of prosperity, but in no considerable instance, save one, have their
own over-speculating undertakings been the means of interrupting that
prosperity. The solitary exception was the undertaking called the Ayr
Bank, rashly entered into by a large body of country gentlemen and
others, unacquainted with commercial affairs, and who had moreover the
misfortune not only to set out on false principles, but to get false
rogues for their principal agents and managers. The fall of this Bank
brought much calamity on the country; but two things are remarkable in
its history: First, that under its too prodigal, yet beneficial
influence, a fine county (that of Ayr) was converted from a desert
into a fertile land. Secondly, that, though at a distant interval, the
Ayr Bank paid all its engagements, and the loss only fell on the
original stockholders. The warning was, however, a terrible one, and
has been so well attended to in Scotland, that very few attempts seem
to have been afterwards made to establish Banks prematurely--that is,
where the particular district was not in such an advanced state as to
require the support of additional credit; for in every such case, it
was judiciously foreseen, the forcing a capital on the district could
only lead to wild speculation, instead of supporting solid and
promising undertakings.

The character and condition of the persons pursuing the profession
ought to be noticed, however slightly. The Bankers of Scotland have
been, generally speaking, _good_ men, in the mercantile phrase,
showing, by the wealth of which they have died possessed, that their
credit was sound; and _good_ men also, many of them eminently so, in
the more extensive and better sense of the word, manifesting, by the
excellence of their character, the fairness of the means by which
their riches were acquired. There may have been, among so numerous a
body, men of a different character, fishers in troubled waters,
capitalists who sought gain not by the encouragement of fair trade
and honest industry, but by affording temporary fuel to rashness or
avarice. But the number of upright traders in the profession has
narrowed the means of mischief which such