In the reign of William old men were still living who could remember the days when there was not a single banking house in the city of London.  So late as the time of the Restoration every trader had his own strong box in his own house, and, when an acceptance was presented to him, told down the crowns and Caroluses on his own counter.  But the increase of wealth had produced its natural effect, the subdivision of labour.  Before the end of the reign of Charles the Second, a new mode of paying and receiving money had come into fashion among the merchants of the capital.  A class of agents arose, whose office was to keep the cash of the commercial houses.  This new branch of business naturally fell into the hands of the goldsmiths, who were accustomed to traffic largely in the precious metals, and who had vaults in which great masses of bullion could lie secure from fire and from robbers.  It was at the shops of the goldsmiths of Lombard Street that all the payments in coin were made.  Other traders gave and received nothing but paper.

This great change did not take place without much opposition and clamour.  Oldfashioned merchants complained bitterly that a class of men who, thirty years before, had confined themselves to their proper functions, and had made a fair profit by embossing silver bowls and chargers, by setting jewels for fine ladies, and by selling pistoles and dollars to gentlemen setting out for the Continent, had become the treasurers, and were fast becoming the masters, of the whole City.  These usurers, it was said, played at hazard with what had been earned by the industry and hoarded by the thrift of other men.  If the dice turned up well, the knave who kept the cash became an alderman; if they turned up ill, the dupe who furnished the cash became a bankrupt.  On the other side the conveniences of the modern practice were set forth in animated language.  The new system, it was said, saved both labour and money.  Two clerks, seated in one counting house, did what, under the old system, must have been done by twenty clerks in twenty different establishments.  A goldsmith’s note might be transferred ten times in a morning; and thus a hundred guineas, locked in his safe close to the Exchange, did what would formerly have required a thousand guineas, dispersed through many tills, some on Ludgate Hill, some in Austin Friars, and some in Tower Street.514

Gradually even those who had been loudest in murmuring against the innovation gave way and conformed to the prevailing usage.  The last person who held out, strange to say, was Sir Dudley North.  When, in 1680, after residing many years abroad, he returned to London, nothing astonished or displeased him more than the practice of making payments by drawing bills on bankers.  He found that he could not go on Change without being followed round the piazza by goldsmiths, who, with low bows, begged to have the honour of serving him.  He lost his temper when his friends asked where he kept his cash.  “Where