Banking also exercises a powerful influence upon the morals of society. It tends to produce honesty and punctuality in pecuniary engagements. Bankers, for their own interest, always have a regard to the moral character of the party with whom they deal;they inquire whether he be honest or tricky, industrious or idle, prudent or speculative, thrifty or extravagant, and they will more readily make advances to a man of moderate property and good morals than to a man of large property but of inferior reputation.

Thus the establishment of a bank in any place immediately advances the pecuniary value of a good moral character. There are numerous instances of persons having risen from obscurity to wealth only by means of their moral character, and the confidence which that character produced in the mind of their banker. It is not merely by way of loan or discount that a banker serves such a person. He also speaks well of him to those persons who may make inquiries respecting him and the banker's good opinion will be the means of procuring him a higher degree of credit with the parties with whom he trades.

These effects are easily perceivable in country towns; and even in great cities, if a house be known to have engaged in speculative transactions, or in any other way to have acted questionably, their paper will be taken by the bankers less readily than that of a strictly reputable house of inferior property.

It is thus that bankers perform the functions of public conservators of the commercial virtues. From motives of private interest they encourage the industrious, the prudent, the punctual, and the honest - while they discountenance the spendthrift and the gambler, the liar and the knave. They hold out inducements to uprightness, which are not disregarded by even the most abandoned. There is many a man, says Gilbart, truly, who would be deterred from dishonesty by the frown of a banker, though he might care but little for the admonitions of a bishop.

"Whether it is your form of organization and total of bills receivable, or the time you arrive at the office and the church you attend - every fact counts with the bank. The answer to what it wants to know is - everything."