o receive goods on loans,
to purchase lands, to sell also or alienate them, and to deal in
bills of exchange; when these powers are no other than have been
trusted for many years with the bank of England, although in truth
but a private bank?

272. Qu. Whether the objection from monopolies and an overgrowth of
power, which are made against private banks, can possibly hold
against a national one?

273. Qu. Whether banks raised by private subscription would be as
advantageous to the public as to the subscribers? and whether risks
and frauds might not be more justly apprehended from them?

274. Qu. Whether the evil effects which of late years have attended
paper-money and credit in Europe did not spring from subscriptions,
shares, dividends, and stock-jobbing?

275. Qu. Whether the great evils attending paper-money in the
British Plantations of America have not sprung from the overrating
their lands, and issuing paper without discretion, and from the
legislators breaking their own rules in favour of themselves, thus
sacrificing the public to their private benefit? And whether a
little sense and honesty might not easily prevent all such
inconveniences?

276. Qu. Whether an argument from the abuse of things, against the
use of them, be conclusive?

277. Qu. Whether he who is bred to a part be fitted to judge of the
whole?

278. Qu. Whether interest be not apt to bias judgment? and whether
traders only are to be consulted about trade, or bankers about
money?

279. Qu. Whether the subject of Freethinking in religion be not
exhausted? And whether it be not high time for our freethinkers to
turn their thoughts to the improvement of their country?

280. Qu. Whether any man hath a right to judge, that will not be at
the pains to distinguish?

281. Qu. Whether there be not a wide difference between the profits
going to augment the national stock, and being divided among private
sharers? And whether, in the former case, there can possibly be any
gaming or stock-jobbing?

282. Qu. Whether it must not be ruinous for a nation to sit down to
game, be it with silver or with paper?

283. Qu. Whether, therefore, the circulating paper, in the late
ruinous schemes of France and England, was the true evil, and not
rather the circulating thereof without industry? And whether the
bank of Amsterdam, where industry had been for so many years
subsisted and circulated by transfers on paper, doth not clearly
decide this point?