It was in this manner that the prodigious progress in agriculture was made in Scotland. There were immense quantities of reclaimable land, and abundance of unemployed people, but no Capital, or Money, to set their industry in motion. Seeing this state of matters the Banks opened branches in numerous parts of the country and sent down boxes of £l notes, and granted Cash Credits to the farmers. These notes were universally received as readily as Coin. The farmers made their purchases and paid wages with them: and immense tracts of barren land were changed into fertile corn fields. Now these £1 notes were not a substitute for any specie, they did not supersede or displace any previously existing money, they were a pure addition to the existing money; they were in fact exactly equivalent to the creation of so much gold.

Commerce and agriculture, therefore, received their prodigious stimulus from these Cash Credits. But they were of equal use in a public point of view. Almost all the great public works of every description were created by means of these Cash Credits. One witness stated that the Forth and Clyde Canal was executed by means of a Cash Credit of £40,000 granted by the Royal Bank. And in exactly a similar way whenever any other great public works are to be done, such as roads, bridges, canals, railways, docks, etc. the invariable course is to obtain a large Cash Credit at one of the Banks.

The advantage to the person who has the Cash Credit is that he only pays interest from day to day on the sum he actually has at his Debit, whereas in discounting a Bill of Exchange, he pays interest on the whole amount of his Credit, whether he uses it or not, and discount is a trifle more expensive than interest. The Bank would therefore naturally prefer to employ its resources by way of discount if it could, rather than Cash Credits. There is also a further disadvantage attending them, that they cannot be called up on a sudden emergency: and if there should be a run upon the bank the security cannot be negotiated like a Bill of Exchange. It is, therefore, only where a Bank has a superfluity of Credit which it cannot employ profitably, that it would resort to Cash Credits, and also when there is but a slight chance of a run upon it.

For these reasons Cash Credits have always been looked upon with very unfavourable eyes by London bankers, and for very good reasons. In the first place their Credit, until recently, was not so solid and well established as that of the principal Scotch Banks. These originated Cash Credits in consequence of their power of issuing £1 notes; and London bankers do not issue circulating Credit in the form of notes - they can always find employment for their cash - and they are more liable to runs.

All these marvellous results, which have raised Scotland from the lowest state of barbarism up to her present proud position in the space of 150 years, are the children of pure Credit. It is no exaggeration whatever, but a melancholy truth, that at the period of the Revolution of 1688 and the establishment of the Bank of Scotland, that country, partly owing to such a series of disasters as cannot be paralleled in the history of any other independent nation, and partly owing to its position in the very outskirts of the civilised world, and far removed from the humanising influence of Commerce, divided in fact into two nations, aliens in blood and language, was the most utterly barbarous, savage, and lawless kingdom in Europe. And it is equally undeniable that the two great causes of her rapid rise in civilisation and wealth have been her systems of national education and banking. Her system of banking has been of infinitely greater service to her than mines of gold and silver.

Mines of the precious metals would probably have demoralised her people. But her banking system has tended immensely to call forth every manly virtue. In the character of her own people, in their steadiness, their integrity, their honour, Scotland has found wealth infinitely more beneficial to her than the mines of Mexico and Peru.

Now we observe that these Cash Credits which have produced such marvellous results are purely of the nature of Accommodation Paper in England. They are not based upon any previous operations, nor upon the transfer of commodities already in existence. They are created for the express purpose of creating or forming future products, which would either have had no existence at all but for them, or, at all events, it would have been deferred for a very long period, until solid money could have been obtained to produce them. Thus we have an enormous mass of exchangeable property, created by the mere will of the bank and its customers, which produces all the effects of solid gold and silver, and when it has done its work it vanishes again into nothing, at the will of the same persons who called it into existence.

Hence we see that the mere will of man has created vast masses of wealth out of Nothing, and then Decreated them into Nothing, which having served their purpose after a time were "Melted into air, into thin air."

But their solid results have by no means faded like the baseless fabric of a vision, leaving not a rack behind. On the contrary their solid results have been her far famed agriculture; the manufactures of Glasgow and Paisley; the unrivalled steam ships of the Clyde; great public works of all sorts, canals, railroads, roads, bridges; and poor young men converted into princely merchants.