They carry from home the idea and the habit of banking, and they take to it as soon as they can in their new world.

Conjectural history would be inclined to say that all banking began thus: but such history is rarely of any value.

The basis of it is false.

It assumes that what works most easily when established is that which it would be the most easy to establish, and that what seems simplest when familiar would be most easily appreciated by the mind though unfamiliar.

But exactly the contrary is true.