different banks and bankers issued promissory notes payable to the bearer,
to the extent of one million, reserving in their different coffers two
hundred thousand pounds for answering occasional demands ; there would
remain, therefore, in circulation, eight hundred thousand pounds in gold and
silver, and a million of bank notes, or eighteen hundred thousand pounds of
paper and money together. But the annual produce of the land and labour of
the country had before required only one million to circulate and distribute
it to its proper consumers, and that annual produce cannot be immediately
augmented by those operations of banking. One million, therefore, will be
sufficient to circulate it after them. The goods to be bought and sold being
precisely the same as before, the same quantity of money will be sufficient
for buying and selling them. The channel of circulation, if I may be allowed
such an expression, will remain precisely the same as before. One million we
have supposed sufficient to fill that channel. Whatever, therefore, is
poured into it beyond this sum, cannot run into it, but must overflow. One
million eight hundred thousand pounds are poured into it. Eight hundred
thousand pounds, therefore, must overflow, that sum being over and above
what can be employed in the circulation of the country. But though this sum
cannot be employed at home, it is too valuable to be allowed to lie idle. It
will, therefore, be sent abroad, in order to seek that profitable employment
which it cannot find at home. But the paper cannot go abroad; because at a
distance from the banks which issue it, and from the country in which
payment of it can be exacted by law, it will not be received in common
payments. Gold and silver, therefore, to the amount of eight hundred
thousand pounds, will be sent abroad, and the channel of home circulation
will remain filled with a million of paper instead of a million of those
metals which filled it before.

But though so great a quantity of gold and silver is thus sent abroad, we
must not imagine that it is sent abroad for nothing, or that its proprietors