In all other trades competition brings the traders to a rough approximate equality.

In cotton spinning, no single firm far and permanently outstrips the others.

There is no tendency to a monarchy in the cotton world; nor, where banking has been left free, is there any tendency to a monarchy in banking either.

In Manchester, in Liverpool, and all through England, we have a great number of banks, each with a business more or less good, but we have no single bank with any sort of predominance; nor is there any such bank in Scotland.

In the new world of Joint Stock Banks outside the Bank of England, we see much the same phenomenon.
One or more get for a time a better business than the others, but no single bank permanently obtains an unquestioned predominance.