The strong apartments which formerly contained the vast treasures of the bank, and the offices attached to that wealthy concern, are on the ground-floor, where several clerks are employed to transact the business of that celebrated establishment. From the wise measures adopted by the king, who made, as I have before observed, the recognition of the national debt one of the first measures of his government, the national creditor has no apprehensions. Before the war, this institution, which was a bank of deposit, was supposed to contain the greatest quantity of bullion in the world, and popular credulity dwelt with ostentatious fondness upon the extent of its accumulated treasures, which they resembled to a Peruvian mine; its pile of precious metals was valued at the enormous sum of forty millions. The regulations which governed deposits made in this bank were as follow: the person depositing cash or bullion received a credit in the books for the amount, and a receipt for the same, which expired at the end of six months, was given, renewable upon paying a small per centage for warehouse rent: if such receipt expired before the money or bullion was redeemed, neither the one nor the other could be afterwards removed, but for it an equivalent in bank credit was given, which receipt could afterwards be converted into cash in the market. Another regulation was, that not a florin of the cash or bullion invested should ever be removed by way of loan. This compact between the bank and the creditor was always considered inviolable. A rumour was circulated, with equal celerity and anxiety, soon after the arrival of the French in Holland, highly injurious to the responsibility of the institution, and a deputation of merchants waited respectfully on the directors of the bank, to solicit satisfaction as to its solvency; to which an answer, couched in general terms, but favourable to its responsibility, was given. Owing to the unshaken stability which it had displayed, from 1672, when Louis the Fourteenth, at the head of a victorious army, was expected every hour to have made his triumphal entry into Amsterdam, to 1795, when the French fixed the destiny of the country, this answer was received with perfect confidence and security in the bank, and any doubt upon the subject was considered to be the result of party malignity. Upon the French taking possession of Amsterdam, a complete investigation of the business followed, and the official report of the provisional representatives of the city announced, that “No deficiency whatever will exist in the said bank, and the debits and credits will precisely balance, with this exception, that instead of species, there have been received into the said bank, from time to time, as securities for large sums advanced by it within the last fifty years, a very considerable number of bonds, viz.