A Bank of Deposite Is an Institution Established Solely for the Safe Keeping of the Coin and Bullion of Individuals and for Facilitating Mercantile Payments

A bank of deposite is an institution established solely for the safe keeping of the coin and bullion of individuals, which would otherwise have to be kept in iron chests or less secure receptacles, and for facilitating mercantile payments by the transfer upon its books by checks or drafts of the various amounts standing to the credit of the depositors, thus saving the labor of repeated countings, and the expense of repeated transportations of the precious metals from house to house, accompanied at the same time by a diminished risk from fire or pillage, and a diminished wear and tear of the coins by friction.

As regards the operations of this particular species of banks, the reader will perceive that they add nothing to the existing amount of the currency, and that they take nothing from it. The credits on their books represent certain quantities of bullion ascertained by weight, placed there for safe keeping, without any authority on the part of the administrators of the bank to lend it, or to apply it to any purpose whatever, until called for by its owners, or transferred by them to other persons; and hence it is clear, that such banks exercise no influence whatever over the currency, by contracting or expanding its amount.

--Condy Raguet, A Treatise on Currency and Banking (1840; repr., New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1967), 68-69.