CROMPTON’S MULE
(Ibid., p. 199)
“In regard to the mule, the date of its being first completed was in the year 1799: at the end of the following year I was under the necessity of making it public, or destroying it, as it was not in my power to keep it and work it; and to destroy it was too painful a task, having been four and a half years at least, wherein every moment of time and power of mind as well as expense, which my other employment would permit, were devoted to this one end, the having good yarn to weave; so that to destroy it, I could not.”
THE BANKING-HOUSE OF COUTTS & CO.
(Sir W. Forbes, Memoirs of a Banking-House, Ed., Chambers, 1860)
The founder of the Edinburgh house of business ... was Patrick Coutts, the fourth son of Alexander Coutts, provost of Montrose (p. 1) ... he carried on business in Edinburgh as a merchant at least as early as the year 1696. The books are kept in Scots money and very neatly and distinctly written. He appears to have been a general merchant, whose transactions were considerably extended, for in his books there are accounts of mercantile adventures to New York and Pennsylvania, to Amsterdam, to France and to the Canaries.... He left three sons, John, James and Christian ... (John) engaged in mercantile concerns in Edinburgh in the year 1723.... Their business was dealing in corn, buying and selling goods on commissions, and the negotiation of bills of exchange in London, Holland, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal. The negotiation of bills of exchange formed at that period a considerable part of the business of Edinburgh; for there were then no country banks.... I see many notices of the difficulty, at that time, of effecting money transactions of any considerable extent in the country towns of Scotland.... A mercantile business was likewise formed about this time (1750) in London, by the Messrs. Coutts ... as the correspondents of the house in Edinburgh (p. 6).... In England the house had large quantities of corn shipped for them at Yarne and at Stockton in Yorkshire; at Lyme Regis, Fakenham and Yarmouth, all in the rich corn county of Norfolk; at Haverfordwest in South Wales, and by the noted Cooper Thornhill, who at that time kept the Bell inn at Hilton, was one of the most considerable corn factors in England.... Indeed, I have often thought it not a little singular that a banking-house ... should have chosen to embark so largely in the corn-trade, which is, perhaps, that most liable to sudden fluctuation.... Yet in this the Messrs. Coutts were not singular....
The other principal banking-houses in Edinburgh at that time were Messrs. Mansfield & Co., William Cuming, William Hogg and Son, and William Alexander & Sons. The two first confined themselves strictly to the banking-business, in which they rose to great eminence from a very obscure origin. From a slender start in life, as a draper, old Mr. James Mansfield began to deal a little in bills of exchange, and by degrees founded a banking-house of the first celebrity in Scotland. In the same manner William Cuming succeeded to his father, old Patrick Cuming’s cloth-shops in the Parliament Close, which he afterwards converted into a counting-house where he confined himself entirely to the transacting of money business and after a long life left a very large fortune. William Hogg & Son were not in very extensive business and they managed it very confusedly. William Alexander & Sons were very considerable money-dealers, though their chief employment was purchasing tobacco for the Farmers-general of France (p. 9).
“John Coutts, the second son (of the late Lord Provost Coutts) under whose eye chiefly I served my apprenticeship, was one of the most agreeable men I ever knew. Lively and wellbred, and of very engaging manners, he had the happy talent of uniting a love of society and public amusements with a strict attention to business.... Having received his mercantile education in Holland, he had all the accuracy and all the strictness of a Dutchman; and, to his lessons it is that I owe any knowledge I possess of the principles of business, as well as an attachment to form which I shall probably carry with me to the grave....
So strict was he in the discipline of the counting-house, that I slept but one night out of Edinburgh from the commencement of my apprenticeship in May 1754, till the month of September, 1760, when I obtained leave to go to Aberdeenshire with my mother to pay a visit to our relations” (p. 10).