heir banking credit
enables them to command, and deluge the country with notes, which, on
some unhappy morning, are found not worth a penny--as those to whom
the foul fiend has given apparent treasures are said in due time to
discover they are only pieces of slate.

I am aware it may be urged that the restrictions imposed on those
English provincial Banks are necessary to secure the supremacy of the
Bank of England; on the same principle on which dogs, kept near the
purlieus of a royal forest, were anciently lamed by the cutting off of
one of the claws, to prevent their interfering with the royal sport.
This is a very good regulation for England, for what I know; but why
should the Scottish institutions, which do not, and cannot interfere
with the influence of the Bank of England, be put on a level with
those of which such jealousy is, justly or unjustly, entertained? We
receive no benefit from that immense establishment, which, like a
great oak, overshadows England from Tweed to Cornwall. Why should our
national plantations be cut down or cramped for the sake of what
affords us neither shade nor shelter, and which, besides, can take no
advantage by the injury done to us? Why should we be subjected to a
monopoly from which we derive no national benefit?

I have only to add that Scotland has not felt the slightest
inconvenience from the want of specie, nay, that it has never been in
request among them. A tradesman will take a guinea more unwillingly
than a note of the same value--to the peasant the coin is unknown. No
one ever wishes for specie save when upon a journey to England. In
occasional runs upon particular houses, the notes of other Banking
Companies have always been the value asked for--no holder of these
notes ever demanded specie. The credit of one establishment might be
doubted for the time--that of the general system was never brought
into question. Even avarice, the most suspicious of passions, has in
no instance I ever heard of, desired to compose her hoards by an
accumulation of the precious metals. The confidence in the credit of
our ordinary medium has not been doubted even in the dreams of the
most irritable and jealous of human passions.

All these considerations are so obvious that a statesman so acute as
Mr. Robinson must have taken them in at the first glance, and must at
the same time have deemed them of no weight, compared with the
necessary conformity between the laws of the two kingdoms. I