The Bank of Scotland set up in a floor in the Parliament Close, with a moderate band of officials, and _ten thousand pounds sterling of paid-up capital_. It had scarcely started, when the African Company added a banking business to its other concerns, meaning thus to overpower the project of Mr Holland. That gentleman was in Edinburgh at the time. He saw that the African Company was in the highest vogue with the public, while few took any notice of his modest establishment. As governor, he prudently counselled that they should make no attempt to enforce the exclusive privilege which the statute had conferred upon them for twenty-one years, but to limit themselves to standing on their guard against ‘that mighty Company,’ lest it should try to injure or ‘affront’ them by a run upon their cash. For this reason, by his advice, twenty thousand pounds of the capital was called up, in addition to the ten thousand lodged at first. The smallness of these sums is amusing to men who know what banking in Scotland now is; yet it appears that from the first the Bank of Scotland had five, ten, twenty, fifty, and hundred pound notes. After a little while, it was found that banking did not succeed with the African Company, chiefly because they lent money in too large sums to their own shareholders, and the Bank of Scotland was then allowed to go on without any competition. The capital lately called up was then paid back, leaving the original sum of £10,000 alone in the hands of the bank. The chief business of the bank at first was the lending of money on heritable bonds and other securities. The giving of bills of exchange—the great business of the private bankers—was, after deliberation at a general meeting of the ‘adventurers,’ tried, with a view to extending the usefulness of the concern as far as [Sidenote: 1695.] possible. In pursuance of the same object, and ‘for carrying the circulation of their notes through the greatest part of the kingdom,’ branch-offices were erected at Glasgow, Dundee, Montrose, and Aberdeen, ‘with cashiers and overseers at each place, for receiving and paying money, in the form of inland exchange, by notes and bills made for that purpose.’ But, after what appeared a fair trial, the directors ‘found that _the exchange trade was not proper for a banking company_.’ A bank they conceived to be ‘chiefly designed as a common repository of the nation’s cash—a ready fund for affording credit and loans, and for making receipts and payments of money easy by the company’s notes.’ To deal in exchange was ‘to interfere with the trade and business of private merchants.’ The Bank of Scotland found it ‘very troublesome, unsafe, and improper.’ One reason cited some years afterwards, by a person connected with the bank, was—‘There is so much to be done in that business without doors, at all hours by day and night, with such variety of circumstances and conditions, as are inconsistent with the precise