An old-established country bank has almost always one or more such confidential advisers.

Their assistance is invaluable.
Since agriculture became in this way, through the adoption of banking, so intimately connected with commerce, it has responded, like other businesses, to the fluctuations of trade.

The value of money in Threadneedle Street affects the farmer in an obscure hamlet a hundred miles away, whose fathers knew nothing of money except as a coin, a token of value, and understood nothing of the export or import of gold.

The farmer's business is conducted through the bank, but, on the other hand, the bank cannot restrict its operations to the mere countryside.

It is bound up in every possible manner with the vast institutions of the metropolis.