There is now reason to think that in pursuit of this object our Scottish neighbours have got considerably ahead of us here in England. The subject, indeed, seems congenial to the shrewd faculties of our northern fellow-countrymen. The founder of the Bank of England was a Scotchman: a native of the same country originated the idea of the Savings' Bank: and for a long period of time the facilities and accommodations of banking have been known and practised beyond the Tweed to an extent very much above what has been attained in this country. Here banks may be said to exist solely or chiefly for the wealthier classes of society; in Scotland the advantages which they afford are widely diffused among the middle ranks, and are shared in a large measure by the petty capitalists and retail traders of the towns and villages. As a proof of the great extension of the system, we find that throughout Scotland there is a bank for every 7500 of the population—in some districts for every 5000. In London, the proportion is stated to be only 1 for every 32,894; in some parts of England 1 for every 16,000. The rapid progress in wealth and civilisation which has been made by a country naturally so poor and sterile, has been attributed by many sagacious observers to the multiplication of its banks, and to the facilities afforded by them. Capital has been made to stimulate industry in a double ratio, by the increased activity and quickened speed with which it circulates through the channels of commerce. Above all, this great desideratum has been attained without any sacrifice of the other prime requisite of sound banking—stability. Within the last century and a-half it is computed that the loss to the community in Scotland by the failure of the four or five public banks which have stopped payment has not exceeded L.26,000. In England, during a much shorter period, the loss occasioned by those fearful catastrophes, both in London and in the country, with which experience has made us familiar, has certainly exceeded as many millions. It is also a fact of much significance, that in 1793, in 1825, and in the late crisis of 1847, the Scottish banks rode out the storm which proved fatal to so many English establishments. It seems, therefore, no undue claim which is set up on the part of our northern neighbours, to a better knowledge and more mature development of the principles of banking than have been attained in this country.—Morning Chronicle.—[There is no more than justice done, as we believe, to Scotch banking in this paragraph. During the last twenty years and upwards, there have been many banks set up in England on the Scotch principle, as it is called; but there have been many noted failures among them. The fact is, that in England they introduce every feature of Scottish banking except the Scotch brains by which banking has been so successfully conducted. It is true Scotchmen have been got to act as managers, secretaries, and cashiers; but what were all these in the hands of a set of English directors, who necessarily hold the chief sway? In an English joint-stock bank, the bulk of the funds of the company will be found ventured out in the hands of a few grand speculators, on whose good or bad fortune the fate of the establishment depends. No such thing was ever done in a Scotch bank, from the beginning down to this day. On the contrary, the life of the institution lies in a quick circulation and frequent turning over of a moderate capital amongst a multitude of traders of good credit. The capital of an English joint-stock bank too often is an African river losing itself in sands: that of a Scotch bank is a river dispersed in a thousand channels of irrigation, to reappear in its entire form, and with increased volume, after it has done its work. We do not believe, after all, that there is any great witchcraft about banking in Scotland. The prudence shown there is no more than what might be expected of rational men. The failures in England are to be accounted for not by their want of some extraordinary gift which chances to have been vouchsafed to their northern neighbours, but by the fact, that England is full of people hastening over-much to be rich, and in whose circumstances there are of course great vicissitudes. If ever England shall cool a little in Mammon-worship, and pursue business objects with the moderation of the Scottish mind, it may succeed in joint-stock banking to as great an extent as Scotland has done.]