33 entation begins; it is then fit for use, when entirely covered with its own fermented water. Take out a dilh of it; wash it thrice in pure cold water; drain it well and squeeze it; stew it for three hours without any water. Pork with which it is to be eaten may be boiled in it, and also pieces of bacon cut quite small. Some fry onions cut small in butter or hogs lard, and after the sour crout is put in the difh, the onions are poured over it. The dish is then served up and eaten with pickled pork, bacon, or sausages, which are laid over it. It is also eaten with dumplins. For an experiment, the cabbages may be cut with a common knife, and put into a smaller cask, and hard pressed with the hand, or with a piece of wood. Turnips are preserved in the same way; as also a kind of kidney bean with very large pods.

To make fruit trees bear.

It has been found useful to water fruit trees when in blossom, very plentifully if the season be dry, a pailful to each tree; also to cut a little hollow eighteen inches from the root of the tree in winter, and to heep up snow round it, where the snow melting is said to be useful to the trees.

To prepare smatts or melted butter for keeping.

Smatts is butter melted or rinded, and well skimmed, and properly salted in melting *, then put into casks where it will keep two or three years. The Germans think this better. than butter for frying every thing in. It is also used for sour crout, which, when warmed up a second time, is better than at first.

* I have often seen butter prepared so; but I cannot conceive how it can be thus salted; for the fact is, that in rinding butter thus, the salt if any was in it, always drops to the bottom, and may thus be se parated entirely.

Edu.

VOL. XV.

*

Take two ounces gum mastic, six ounces turpentine (spirit,) digested together in a bottle near the fire, and fhaken occasionally till difsolved. Rub the picture with this, and the colours return.

Venice varnish for restoring pictures.

ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS ON BANKS AND BANKING.

SIR,

To Editor of the Bee.

I BEG leave to offer a few supplemetary hints to the well ti. med remarks upon bankers and banking that have lately occurred in your Bee.

I perfectly agree with you in the propriety of preventing the monopoly of the bank of England from being carried to a greater height than it has already attained, and of the utility of even moderating its despotic power by the establishment of another similar bank, which should operate as a rival to check its arbitrary exertions on any future occasion: I cannot, therefore, behold without some degree of anxiety, the attempt that is just now making to extend that influence farther than it has ever yet reached, by the emifsion of notes as low as five pounds value; nor am I without my suspicions that it may have been in some degree, with a view to pave the way for this measure, that the conduct of that bank on a late occasion may have been influenced. Be this as it may, the public cannot be too much on their guard against the encroachments of arbitrary power wherever it is vested, or under whatever form it may appear. For, though power, when under the direction of beneficence, may be a long time exerted for the good of mankind, yet whenever it becomes irresistible what security can we have that it may not be exerted to destroy? Those only are secure who are freed from the pofsibility of danger.

No species of despotism that I know, can prove more ruinous to a country which is in the train of spirited ex

35 ertions of industry, than a banking company of overgrown power, before which no other rival can hold up its head. The popular cry in London at present is against the country bankers; but let us beware how we join heedlessly in that cry. The prosperity of this country is more owing to country bankers than to any circumstance I know; and it becomes the interest of the whole community to stand up in their support. Let every one who shall read this, look back on the time when few banks were in existence in this country, and recollect the difficulty that then prevailed with regard to the transacting of business, compared with that of the present day, (the late calamitous stoppages out of the question.) If he lived in a place where there was no bank, or where only one existed without a rival of any sort, he must be very little versant in business, indeed, if he does not perceive an amazing difference. Where only one bank existed, without a rival, if it has been firmly established and in prosperous circumstances, this bank by granting at one time credits with great facility, and striking off cash accounts without reserve on any trifling emergency, and by discounting bills readily at one time, and causelessly declining to do so at another; must have thrown manufacturers and traders into a state of very disagreeable embarrassments; not to mention the partiality and caprice occasionally exerted in favour of the friends, or to the prejudice of the rivals of some of the directors. I myself have known instances of all the kinds of opprefsion above stated practised by a banking company whilst unrivalled, which, since it obtained rivals, has acted with as much liberality and propriety as any other banking company in Britain. The following case, on the truth of which you may rely, will serve to illustrate my position very clearly.

About ten years ago, a gentleman, possessed of a free landed estate worth about 3,000l. a-year; had occasion

May 8. at a particular time for the temporary use of 300, 1. and tendered to the banking company his bill for that sum, at six months date, indorsed by another gentleman of undoubted credit, who, besides considerable funds in trade, possessed a landed estate of considerable value. But the bank, though in the practice at that time of discounting such bills, refused to discount this one. The money was advanced by an individual. But the conduct of the bank on this, and on other occasions, was so reprehensible, and so distrefsing to many people, that the necessity of a rival to curb its power became apparent. A rival was at length obtained, and the effects have been already stated.

The above case, which will apply to every other monopolising company in the universe, fhows how strongly it is the interest of the trading and manufacturing part of this country to encourage and support country banks, against the alarming attempts of the bank of England to cruth them. For if ever it fhould succeed in this daring attempt, the spirited exertions of this country must be annihilated. Let us guard in time against this great evil!

But while I wish to see country bankers supported against the monopolizing views of one or more of the most powerful banking companies; let it not be supposed I wish to encourage these without due precautions. There is certainly danger in multiplying these heedlessly; and I am by no means satisfied that proper steps have yet been adopted in this country for guarding against this evil. A sensible correspondent in the Bee, vol. vii. p. 199. who seems to have foreseen the storm that has now broke upon our heads, very properly observes that our business should be to regulate, but not to annihilate these private banking companies which ifsue notes; and the regulation he proposes is so natural and so simple

37

that there can be no doubt much good would result to the community, were it enforced universally by a law.

His plan is, that all banking companies which issue notes, should be required by law, to print, upon the back of the notes issued by them, the names and designations of every person who is possessed of any fhare of the bank stock of that campany, at the time the notes bear date. Were this invariably done, it would enable every person who received these notes, to judge of the degree of credit that in his mind, ought to be affixed to the company whose notes are tendered to him. There would be no necessity for specifying the amount of stock held by each person, but simply their names and additions; for as every partner, whatever his share may be, is liable as far as his funds go, for the whole debts of the company, it is the same thing whether he shall have much or little of it vested in that undertaking.

The principle is here quite good, and meets my fullest approbation; but to render the security that would be thus obtained still more unobjectionable, it becomes necefsary to guard against the possibility of these partners secretly withdrawing themselves from these companies without the knowledge of the public; for as all the stock in these companies is transferable, the man, who this day held a share in that company, and who was perhaps worth an hundred thousand pounds, may tomorrow sell his fhare of bank stock to another who is not worth a groat. In these circumstances, the names on the back of the notes might prove extremely delusive, in the same way that the names on the original charter of incorporation may prove of no avail. To guard against this kind of insecurity, let it be further declared by law, that every person whose name stands on the books of