In the ensuing year, William Marshall, William Gray, John Kirkmyre, and William Donaldson, merchants in Glasgow, projected the setting up of a work there for making of ‘pins and needles,[[151]] boxes, shears, syshes, knives, and other hardware,’ whereby they expected to keep much money within the country, and give employment to ‘many poor and young boys, who are and have been in these hard and dear times a burden to the kingdom.’ To them likewise, on petition, were extended the privileges of a manufactory.

February, 1701.—Matthew and Daniel Campbell, merchants in Glasgow, designed to set up an additional sugar-work, and, in connection with it, a work ‘for distilling brandy and other spirits from all manner of grain of the growth of this kingdom.’ With this view, they had ‘conduced and engaged several foreigners and other persons eminently skilled in making of sugar and distilling of brandy, &c., whom, with great travel, charges, and expense, they had prevailed with to come to Glasgow.’ All this was in order that ‘the nation may be the more plentifully and easily provided with the said commodities, as good as any that have been in use to be imported from abroad,’ and because ‘the distillery will both be profitable for consumption of the product of the kingdom, and for trade for the coast of Guinea and America, seeing that no trade can be managed to the places foresaid, or the East Indies, without great quantities of the foresaid liquors.’

1695.

On their petition, the privileges of a manufactory were granted to them.

In the progress of manufacturing enterprise in the west, an additional soap-work connected with a glass-work came to be thought of (February 1701). James Montgomery, younger, merchant in Glasgow, took into consideration ‘how that city and all the country in its neighbourhood, and further west, is furnished with glass bottles.’ The products of the works at Leith and Morison’s Haven ‘cannot be transported but with a vast charge and great hazard.’ He found, moreover, ‘ferns, a most useful material for that work, to be very plenty in that country.’ There was also, in the West Highlands, great abundance of wood-ashes, ‘which serve for little or no other use, and may be manufactured first into good white soap, which is nowhere made in the kingdom to perfection; and the remains of these wood-ashes, after the soap is made, is a most excellent material for making glass.’ He had, therefore, ‘since March last, been with great application and vast charge seeking out the best workmen in England,’ and making all other needful preparations for setting up such a work.

On his petition, the Council endowed his work with the privileges of a manufactory, ‘so as the petitioner and his partners may make soap and glass of all kinds not secluded by the Laird of Prestongrange and his act of parliament.’[[152]]

July 7.

The Bank of England, projected by the noted William Paterson, amidst and by favour of the difficulties of the public exchequer during King William’s expensive continental wars, may be said to have commenced its actual banking operations on the first day of this year. Considerable attention was drawn to the subject in London, and the establishment of a similar public bank in both Ireland and Scotland became matter of speculation. There was in London an almost retired merchant named John Holland, who thought hereafter of spending his time chiefly in rural retirement. To him came one day a friend, a native of Scotland, who was inspired with a strong desire to see a bank established in his country. He desired that Mr Holland would think of it. ‘Why,’ said the latter, ‘I have nearly withdrawn from all such projects, and think only of how I may spend the remainder of my days in peace.’ ‘Think of it,’ said his Scottish friend, ‘and if you will |1695.| enter into the scheme, I can assure you of having an act of our parliament for it on your own conditions.’

Mr Holland accordingly drew out a sketch of a plan for a bank in Scotland, which his friend, in a very few days thereafter, had transfused into a parliamentary bill of the Scottish form. He had also spoken, he said, to most of his countrymen of any mercantile importance in London to engage their favour for the scheme. Mr Holland was readily induced to lend his aid in further operations, and the project appears to have quickly come to a bearing, for, little more than six months from the opening of the Bank of England, the act for the Bank of Scotland had passed the native parliament.

In our country, as in England, exchanges and other monetary transactions, such as are now left to banking companies, had hitherto been solely in the hands of a few leading merchants; some such place as the back-shop of a draper in the High Street of Edinburgh, or an obscure counting-room in the Saltmarket of Glasgow, was all that we could shew as a bank before this period; and the business transacted, being proportioned to the narrow resources and puny industry of the country, was upon a scale miserably small. Yet there was now, as we have seen, an expansive tendency in Scotland, and the time seems to have arrived when at least a central establishment for the entire country might properly be tried in the capital.