The "new-fashioned bankers" were also attacked by Sir Josiah Child, in his "New Discourse of Trade," in the following terms:

"And principally this seeming scarcity of money proceeds from the trade of hankering, which obstructs circulation, advanceth usury, and renders it so easy, that most men, as soon as they can make up a sum of from £50 to £100, send it in to the goldsmith, which doth and will occasion, while it lasts, that fatal pressing necessity for money visible throughout the whole kingdom, both to prince and people.

"A seventh accidental reason why land doth not sell at present at the rate it naturally should in proportion to the legal interest, is that innovated practice of bankers in London, which hath more effects attending it than most I have conversed with have yet observed; but I shall here take notice of that only which is to my present purpose, viz:"The gentlemen that are bankers, having a large interest from his Majesty for what they advance upon his Majesty's revenue, can afford to give the full legal interest to all persons that put money into their hands, though for never so short or long a time, which makes the trade of usury so easy and hitherto safe, that few, after having found the sweetness of this lazy way of improvement (being by continuance and success grown to fancy themselves secure in it), can be led (there being neither ease nor profit to invite them) to lay out their money in land, though at fifteen years' purchase; whereas before this way of private banking came up, men who had money were forced oftentimes to let it he dead by them until they could meet with securities to their minds, and if the like necessity were now of money lying dead, the loss of use for the dead time being deducted from the profit of six per cent (communibus annis) would in effect take off £l per cent per annum of the profit of usury, and consequently incline men more to purchase lands, because the difference between usury and purchasing would not, in point of profit, be so great as now it is, this new invention of cashiering having, in my opinion, clearly bettered the usurer's trade one or two per cent per annum. And that this way of leaving money with goldsmiths hath had the aforesaid effect, seems evident to me from the scarcity it makes of money in the country; for the trade of bankers being only in London, doth very much drain the ready money from all other parts of the kingdom."