Colman's Bank

COLMANS BANK. The mystery of banking was now attracting attention the world over. The Land Bank in England about 1685, the Austrian enterprises of 1700, John Law's scheme of 1715, the South 18 HISTORY OF AMERICAN CURRENCY. Sea Company founded in 1711, bear witness to it. The Massachusetts people were not behind the age. In 1715 John Colman and others proposed a bank based on land and issuing notes. They proposed to build a bridge over Charles river, which was scouted as impracticable. The Council (upper house of the General Court, always conservative) forbade them to make public proposals or print notes until the General Assembly could act on their plans. LOAN BANK. There was a great clamor for more paper money of some sort, and those who opposed all paper joined those who opposed the Bank in carrying a scheme for a public issue. This was the first of the loan banks * which were created in nearly if not quite all the colonies before the Revolution. In the process of time certain new de* " Bank," as the word was used before the Revolutionary War, meant only a batch of paper money, issued either by the government or a corporation. The impression seems to have remained popular, that the essential idea of a bank is the issuing of notes. Gouge, accepting this definition, assailed all " banking." The notes issued in banks, or masses as loans, were pure paper money, and may be distinguished from the Treasury notes issued for the current expenses of government.