Page:A Tour Through the Batavian Republic.djvu/307

Rh use of its treasures; and, therefore, though some suspicions were entertained and propagated that the bank occasionally accommodated the government with specie, these suspicions, being discountenanced by the persons possessed of the best information on the subject, were disregarded as the effects of party malice. It was also a kind of commercial heresy to doubt the stability of the bank of Amsterdam; and therefore all rumours to its disadvantage were not only received by the mercantile world with coldness, but repressed with acrimony.

The arrival of the French in Amsterdam, and the establishment of the patriotic party in power, at length produced a complete investigation of the affairs of the bank. It appeared from the official report, published by order of the provisional representatives of Amsterdam, on this subject, that for the last fifty years the bank had occasionally advanced on bond to the India company,