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with strict rectitude. Their concurrent opinion, independ ently given by each, is, that the scrupulously honest man must go the wall.

But that it has been during the past year frequently treated by the daily press, we might here enter at some length on the topic of banking-delinquencies. As it is, we may presume all to be familiar with the facts; and shall limit ourselves to making a few comments.

In the opinion of one whose means of judging have been second to those of few, the directors of joint-stock banks have rarely been guilty of direct dishonesty. Admitting notorious exceptions, the general fact appears to be, that directors have had no immediate interests in furthering these speculations which have proved so ruinous to depositors and shareholders; but have usually been among the greatest sufferers. Their fault has rather been the less flagitious, though still grave fault, of indifference to their responsibilities. Often with very inadequate knowledge, they have undertaken to trade with a vast amount of property belonging in great part to needy people. Instead of using as much care in the investment of this property as though it were their own, many of them have shown culpable recklessness: either themselves loaning capital without adequate guarantee, or else passively allowing their colleagues to do this. Sundry excuses may doubtless be made for them. The well-known defects of a corporate conscience, caused by divided responsibility, must be remembered in mitigation. And it may also be pleaded for such delinquents, that if shareholders, swayed by reverence for mere wealth and position, choose as directors, not the most intelligent, the most experienced, and those of longest-tried probity, but those of largest capital or highest rank, the blame must not be cast solely ɔn the men so chosen; but must be shared by the men

who choose them: and further, must fall on the public as well as on shareholders; seeing that this unwise selection of directors is in part determined by the known bias of depositors.

But after all allowances have been made, it must be admitted that these bank-administrators who risk the property of their clients by loaning it to speculators, are near akin in morality to the speculators themselves. As these speculators risk other men's money in undertakings which they hope will be profitable; so do the directors who lend them the money. If these last plead that the money thus lent, is lent with the belief that it will be repaid with good interest; the first may similarly plead that they expected their investment to return the borrowed capital along with a handsome profit. In each case the transaction is one of which the evil consequences, if they come, fall more largely on others than on the actors. And though it may be contended, on behalf of the director, that what he does is done chiefly for the benefit of his constituents, whereas the speculator has in view only his own benefit; it may be replied that the director's blameworthiness is not the less because he took a rash step with a comparatively weak motive. The truth is, that when a bank-director lends the capital of shareholders to those to whom he would not lend his own capital, he is guilty of a breach of trust. In tracing the gradations of crime, we pass from direct robbery to robbery one, two, three, or more degrees removed. Though a man who speculates with other people's money, is not chargeable with direct robbery, he is chargeable with robbery one degree removed he deliberately stakes his neighbour's property, intending to appropriate the gain, if any, and to let his neighbour suffer the loss, if any: his crime is that of con tingent robbery. And hence any one who, standing like a bank-director in the position of trustee, puts the money

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with which he is entrusted into a speculator's hands, must be called an accessory to contingent robbery.

If so grave a condemnation is to be passed on those who lend trust-money to speculators, as well as on the speculators who borrow it, what shall we say of the still more delinquent class who obtain loans by fraud—who not only pawn other men's property when obtained, but obtain it under false pretences? For how else than thus must we describe the doings of those who raise money by accommodation-bills? When A and B agree, the one to draw and the other to accept a bill of £1,000 for “value received;" while in truth there has been no sale of goods between them, or no value received; the transaction is not simply an embodied lie, but it becomes thereafter a living and active lie. Whoever discounts the bill, does so in the belief that B, having become possessed of £1,000 worth of goods, will, when the bill falls due, have either the £1,000 worth of goods or some equivalent, with which to meet it. Did he know that there were no such goods in the hands of either A or B, and no other property available for liquidating the bill, he would not discount it-he would not lend money to a man of straw without security.

The case is intrinsically the same as though A had taken to the bank a forged mortgage-deed, and obtained a loan upon it. Practically an accommodation-bill is a forgery. It is an error to suppose that forgery is limited to the production of documents that are physically falsethat contain signatures or other symbols which are not what they appear to be: forgery, properly understood, equally includes the production of documents that are morally false. What constitutes the crime committed in forging a bank-note? Not the mere mechanical imitation. This is but a means to the end; and, taken alone, is no crime at all. The crime consists in deluding others into the acceptance of what seems to be a representative of so

much money, but which actually represents nothing. It matters not whether the delusion is effected by copying the forms of the letters and figures, as in a forged bank note, or by copying the form of expression, as in an accommodation-bill. In either case a semblance of value is given to that which has no value; and it is in giving this false appearance of value that the crime consists. It is true that generally, the acceptor of an accommodationbill hopes to be able to meet it when due. But if those who think this exonerates him, will remember the many cases in which, by the use of forged documents, men have obtained possession of moneys which they hoped presently to replace, and were nevertheless judged guilty of forgery; they will see that the plea is insufficient.

We contend, then, that the manufacturers of accommodation-bills should be classed as forgers. Whether, if the law so classed them, much good would result, we are not prepared to say. Several questions present themselves:— Whether such a change would cause inconvenience, by negativing the many harmless transactions carried on under this fictitious form by solvent men? Whether making it penal to use the words "value received," unless there had been valued received, would not simply originate an additional class of bills in which these words were omitted? Whether it would be an advantage if bills bore on their faces, proofs that they did or did not repre sent actual sales? Whether a restraint on undue credit would not result, when bankers and discounters saw that certain bills coming to them in the names of speculative or unsubstantial traders, were avowed accommodationbills? But these are questions we need not go out of our way to discuss. We are here concerned only with the morality of the question.

Duly to estimate the greatness of the evils indicated, however, we must bear in mind both that the fraudulent

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transactions thus entered into are numerous, and that each! generally becomes the cause of many others. The origi nal lie is commonly the parent of further lies, which again give rise to an increasing progeny; and so on for successive generations, multiplying as they descend. When A and B find their £1,000 bill about to fall due, and the expected proceeds of their speculation not forthcomingwhen they find, as they often do, either that the investment has resulted in a loss instead of a gain; or that the time for realizing their hoped-for profits, has not yet come; or that the profits, if there are any, do not cover the extravagances of living which, in the mean time, they have sanguinely indulged in-when, in short, they find that the bill cannot be taken up; they resort to the expedient of manufacturing other bills with which to liquidate the first. And while they are about it, they usually think it will be as well to raise a somewhat larger sum than is required to meet their out-standing engagements. Unless it happens that great success enables them to redeem themselves, this proceeding is repeated, and again repeated. So long as there is no momentary crisis, it continues easy thus to keep afloat; and, indeed, the appearance of prosperity which is given by an extended circulation of bills in their names, bearing respectable indorsements, creates a confidence in them which renders the obtainment of credit easier than at first.

And where, as in some cases, this process is carried to the extent of employing men in different towns throughout the kingdom, and even in distant parts of the world, to accept bills, the appearances are still better kept up, and the bubble reaches a still greater development. As, however, all these transactions are carried on with borrowed capital, on which interest has to be paid; as, further, the maintenance of this organized fraud entails constant expenses, as well as occasional sacrifices; and