gentlemen would not be a wretched
nation?

21. Qu. Whether all things would not bear a high price? And whether
men would not increase their fortunes without being the better for
it?

22. Qu. Whether the same evils would be apprehended from paper-money
under an honest and thrifty regulation?

23. Qu. Whether, therefore, a national bank would not be more
beneficial than even a mine of gold?

24. Qu. Whether private ends are not prosecuted with more attention
and vigour than the public? And yet, whether all private ends are
not included in the pubic?

25. Qu. Whether banking be not absolutely necessary to the pubic
weal?

26. Qu. Whether even our private banks, though attended with such
hazards as we all know them to be, are not of singular use in defect
of a national bank?

27. Qu. Whether without them what little business and industry there
is would not stagnate? But whether it be not a mighty privilege for
a private person to be able to create a hundred pounds with a dash
of his pen?

28. Qu. Whether the mystery of banking did not derive its original
from the Italians? Whether this acute people were not, upon a time,
bankers over all Europe? Whether that business was not practised by
some of their noblest families who made immense profits by it, and
whether to that the house of Medici did not originally owe its
greatness?

29. Qu. Whether the wise state of Venice was not the first that
conceived the advantage of a national bank?

30. Qu. Whether at Venice all payments of bills of exchange and
merchants' contracts are not made in the national or pubic bank, the
greatest affairs being transacted only by writing the names of the
parties, one as debtor the other as creditor in the bank-book?

31. Qu. Whether nevertheless it was not found expedient to provide a
chest of ready cash for answering all demands that should happen to
be made on account of payments in detail?

32. Qu. Whether this offer of ready cash, instead of transfers in
the bank, hath not been found to augment rather than diminish the
stock thereof?

33. Qu. Whether at Venice, the difference in the value of bank money
above other money be not fixed at twenty per cent?

34. Qu. Whether the bank of Venice be not shut up four times in the
year twenty days each time?

35. Qu. Whether by means of this bank the public be not mistress of
a million and a half sterling?

36. Qu. Whether the great exactness and integrity with which this
bank is