Suspension for ninety days constitutes insolvency and operates as a forfeiture of charter. Regulations exist for the enforcement and collection of the double liability of shareholders. Transferers of shares within sixty days of suspension are held liable if actual shareholders fail to meet calls. And

"as a condition of the rights and privileges conferred by this act, or by any act in amendment thereof, the following provision shall have effect: The liability of the bank under any law, custom, or agreement to repay moneys deposited with it and interest (if any), and to pay dividends declared and payable on its capital stock, shall continue, notwithstanding any statute of limitations or any enactment or law relating to prescription. This section applies to moneys heretofore or hereafter deposited and the dividends heretofore or hereafter declared."

Although no instance is on record in Canada of any statute of limitations having been pleaded by a bank in defence to an action brought by a depositor, the above enactment was intended to cover the case of banks insolvent or in liquidation, and to prevent the confiscation by creditors or shareholders thereof of unclaimed credit balances. Another clause provides for the payment of such amounts in case of insolvency or liquidation to the government of the Dominion after a reasonable period subsequent thereto.

I have attempted in the foregoing to give a succinct account of the act and of the system under which banking is carried on in Canada, making little or no reference to matters of no moment to the outside world, but dwelling upon the provisions in the act which make the system unique and peculiarly adapted to the requirements of the country. I doubt if the system will be permanent, although confident that with fair play it will last far into the twentieth century. With any very sudden growth in population or commercial development, the dangers of an abuse of the privileges conferred by the act will be intensified. Advantage may be taken of the existence of the bank circulation redemption fund; one institution may fatally exceed its authorized issue; another may, through the very size of its authorized issue, involve its smaller rivals in heavy responsibilities; rank dishonesty on the part of directors and officers might destroy the confi dence of one bank in another to an extent fatal to the continuance of the mutual guaranty. The suggestion of any change will, however, come from the banks themselves, and not from the public, whose interests are now more than amply protected. If the note-issue system fails or is abandoned by consent, no doubt an attempt will be made to introduce a system involving the deposit of securities with the gov

ernment to cover authorized issues. If the range of such securities is extended so as to include provincial, municipal, railway, and other first-class securities, and if the time limit for the deposit of such securities is extended over a term of years, the straining effect of a change from an absolutely elastic system of currency to one more fixed would probably be carried out without serious consequences. But any such change would necessitate the withdrawal from use of upwards of at least $50,000,000 (bank circulation and "till money "). Many years will elapse before Canada can afford to make any such sacrifice.

Let me in conclusion make the following suggestions, which, though not bearing on the Canadian bank system, would, I believe, if adopted, confer upon the United States the greatest measure of permanent financial relief and be a satisfactory solution of the currency question, which must be faced soon, and the sooner the better. Let the bank-note circulation of the United States be limited to the paidup capital of the banks, and in case of insolvency bear interest at five per cent per annum until date of redemption, and in the mean time be a first charge upon the assets of the bank and upon the double liability of shareholders, and be further secured: (a) by a bank-note circulation fund deposited with the government of, say, five per cent in gold of the total issues, to be contributed by each bank in proportion to its authorized issue, and held to redeem promptly the notes of any insolvent bank, the fund to be replenished as occasion requires by calls upon the contributing banks in proportion to their average circulation; (b) by the deposit with the Treasury, of Government, State, municipal, railroad, or other marketable securities to the extent of ninetyfive per cent of the authorized issues, said securities and their value as security to be approved of by the Treasury and by a board representing the contributing banks; (c) all notes to be issued to the banks. from the Treasury and to be countersigned by an officer thereof.

Under such a system the bank-note circulation of the United States should meet all the requirements of the people. Its soundness would be unimpeachable, it would contain sufficient elasticity to provide currency at all seasons of the year at a minimum cost to the borrower, it would kill the agitation for the free coinage of silver, and would give a national-bank note a world-wide circulation.

D. R. WILKIE.

IDLENESS AND IMMORALITY.

ONE of the most curious and interesting political and economical changes of the last hundred years, although it has attracted comparatively little notice, is the transfer of the legislative and administrative branches of government from the rich to the poor. We hear a great deal about the recent transfer of power to the people in certain countries, such as France, England, the United States, Germany, Italy, meaning thereby the power of determining at the polls who shall compose the government and what its policy on certain questions shall be. But we hear little about the change in the character of the governing class, which is also a very marked feature of the democratic

movement.

Now, the governing class all over Europe was from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Revolution in France and down to the passage of the Reform Bill in England, and, we may say, down to Andrew Jackson's time in America, the wealthy class; and the wealthy class until the present century were the owners of the soil. Modern Europe was in fact settled, if I may use the expression, on the theory that the landowners were "the country," the "legal country" as the French call it, and that everybody else was in a certain sense a sojourner or interloper. Before the Reform Bill in England, all extension of the suffrage beyond the freeholders and all admission to Parliament of men who had no property in land, was denounced as committing the public affairs to people who had "no stake in the country." The property qualification for the suffrage which existed in most States of the Union at the Revolution, and confined it to "freeholders," was based on the same assumption, the assumption, that is, that the nation was made up of those who owned the land in fee simple, and that all others might betray it, or run away from it, or had but a faint interest in its fame or prosperity.

That this notion had good traditional authority there is no denying, for it was the great landed proprietors who evoked some sort of order out of the chaos which followed the invasion of the Barbarians. The man who by force of character and military talent was able to

gather a sufficient body of armed followers to protect a certain bit of territory against pillage by marauders, to build a fortified house on it in which his dependents might find temporary shelter for their fami lies and cattle, and guarantee to the cultivators of the soil a fair amount of security while working in the fields, became outwardly the governor of his protégés. Far from wishing to share his authority, the great dread of their lives was that he would lay it down or fail to exercise it with sufficient vigor. For similar reasons they were only too glad to have his oldest son assume the same rights and duties on his father's death, and in two or three generations a hereditary landed aristocracy was established, and the reorganized society found it in full possession of all the government there was, and kept it there for a thousand years.

The men who owned the land, too, were during all this period the only wealthy class except the Jews. Land was the only investment which furnished anything that could be called an income. Everybody was more or less afraid to let his property out of his sight, or own property which could be carried away. The name given to land in the nomenclature of the English common law-" real property" or "real estate"-expressed not only the popular notion about it, but described the greatest political and economical fact of the day. The man of property " was the landed man. He and his followers owned the country, and it seemed for ages perfectly natural and right that they should govern the country.

Now, the peculiarity of landed property which draws its income from rents is that it needs the personal attention of the owner. It used to make him a great man among his tenants, over whose future he exercised much power; and this power was increased in many countries by attaching to it the administration of local justice and the management of the financial affairs of the district or county. The country gentleman for fully twelve hundred years exercised jurisdiction over local affairs and small controversies, besides levying and spending the local taxes. He was, as a rule, consequently an extremely busy man, and became in popular estimation the only real statesman. Even in Burke's day a man of his great political genius was held by the Whigs to be unworthy of a seat in the Cabinet, because he was not connected with the landed gentry. So late as the Peninsular war, that most practical of commanders, Wellington, sent home earnest appeals for officers of "good family," meaning the sons of country gentlemen, as having some special and mysterious superiority

in the work of fighting, although he was opposed to an enemy who had overrun Europe with an army led by the sons of butchers, bakers, and tavern-keepers. The necessity for keeping the property together in the hands of the eldest son to enable him to maintain the position of the family in society or politics, compelled the youngest sons to shift for themselves, and in every modern European country they were enabled to shift for themselves by having the public service reserved for them. They officered the army and navy and the diplomacy service, and got all the best places in the civil administration. In fact, John Bright did not exaggerate greatly when, speaking of the period before the introduction of the method of filling subordinate places by competitive examination, he called the public service a "huge system of out-door relief for the younger members of the aristocracy." The French Revolution made the first break in this system in France; but it has lasted in England almost down to our own day, and is still in existence, in a modified degree, in Germany and Austria.

It will be easily seen that this is a description of a state of things. in which, as a rule, the owners of the wealth of the country were both its legislators and administrators, and that both the fathers and the sons were kept busy. They all had their duties and responsibilities, either as managers of their own estates, or as local magistrates, or as legislators, or as officers of the army and navy, or of the civil service, or as ministers of the established Church-an organization which in all countries in which it existed possessed an enormous mass of property. The economical or political revolutions which have occurred within the present century have greatly changed all this. Power has passed from the owners of the land to people of every kind of occupation. The work of legislation has been largely given over to poor men, or the sons of poor men, who in all parliamentary countries except England draw pay for it. The administrative offices have been thrown open to the same class. The great landowner has been converted almost everywhere into an annuitant, drawing a certain income from his estates, but exerting comparatively little influence in the lives or fortunes of the tenants. In a word, the aristocracy of all countries except Germany has become our idle class. It is literally true of the aristocrats now that they toil not, neither do they spin. They no longer render the state the service which the old feudal tenures exacted of them, and their enjoyment of large incomes drawn from the industry expended on the soil by others becomes increasingly difficult to defend in the forum of abstract justice. The great