But let us suppose that instead of this, it should have recourse to temporary credits upon which the capital is constantly demandable, or to other expedients still less effectual for answering the call which is to come upon it for the second year’s balance: what will be the consequence? To this I answer, that those merchants, or others who owe the balance, will apply to exchangers for bills, for which they must pay a high exchange: these bills will be bought from the exchangers with notes, (taken out of circulation) and will reduce this to 600,000_l._ the exchangers will carry these to the bank and demand coin. If the bank should make use of an optional clause, to pay in six months, with interest at 5 _per cent._ the exchangers will obtain six months credit at London, and in consequence of that, their bills will be honoured and paid. This credit costs them money, which is added to the exchange: the bank, at the end of six months, pays in coin, which in the interval it must provide from London. It pays also six months interest upon the paper formerly presented by the exchanger: add to the account, that bringing down the coin must cost the bank at least 12 shillings _per_ hundred pounds, and as much more to the exchanger who receives it in order to send it back again; and after all these intricate operations which have cost so much trouble, ill blood, stagnation and diminution of circulation, expence in exchange to the debtors of the balance, stress of credit upon exchangers for procuring so large advances with commission, &c. expence to the bank in providing coin, expence to the exchangers in returning it; after all, I say, the operation lands in this: that 200,000_l._ of notes, taken out of the circulation of Scotland, returns to the bank who must have provided, at last, either coin, or credit at London for them. This return of 200,000_l._ of notes does not diminish the mass of those obligations lodged in the bank, in virtue of which they are creditors upon the proprietors of Scotland: consequently, the bank has constituted itself debtor to England for those funds which have been _torn from it_ in the manner above described: consequently, had it, by a permanent loan, constituted itself voluntarily debtor to England from the beginning, it would have paid no more, nay less than it has been obliged to pay; circulation would not have lost 200,000_l._ and the bank would have had the interest of 200,000_l._ added to its former securities, which would compensate (_pro tanto_ at least) the expence of borrowing that sum in England upon a permanent fund. Instead of which it compensates the interest of a temporary loan, with the same sum of interest taken out of the securities in its hand. If, therefore, from an ill grounded fear of issuing as much paper as is demanded, it shall withhold it, there results to itself a loss equal to the interest of what it refuses to lend; that is to say, there is a _lucrum cessans_ to the bank of the