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272 again immediately enables them to turn their capital very frequently, and on a few thousand pounds of capital to discount hundreds of thousands of bills; as the transactions are so many, they can be content with a smaller profit on each. In other cases, these non-guaranteeing brokers are only agents who are seeking money for bills which they have undertaken to get discounted. But in either case, as far as the banker or other ultimate capitalist is concerned, the transaction is essentially that which Mr. Richardson describes. The loan by such banker is a re-discount of the bill; that banker cannot obtain repayment of that loan, except by the payment of the bill at maturity. He has no claim upon the agent who brought him the bill. Bill broking, in this which we may call its archaic form, is simply one of the modes in which bankers obtain bills which are acceptable to them and which they re-discount. No reference is made in it to the credit of the bill broker; the bills being discounted "without recourse" to him are as good if taken from a pauper as if taken from a millionaire. The lender exercises his own judgment on the goodness of the bill.

But in modern bill broking the credit of the bill broker is a vital element. The lender considers that the bill broker—no matter whether an individual, a company, or a firm—has considerable wealth, and he takes the "bills," relying that the