It may be conceded that to take away the business of a private banker, who has for many years carried on a lucrative and honorable business, seems a wholly unwarranted proceeding. Everything that can be urged in favor of the citizen's right to enjoy property can be urged in his favor. But many other kinds of business have been treated in this way, and the step justified by an appeal to the right of the public as against the individual. It is claimed with some reason that the history of private banking shows no more failures than corporate banking; that the worst of bank failures have been those of corporations. But it seems plain that if the right be conceded to the legislature to prohibit private banks of issue, the right to prohibit private banks of deposit necessarily follows. We have shown that both businesses are at common law the rights of the citizen. The issuance of a note payable on demand in the place of a sum of money deposited or borrowed does not differ in the least from a book account payable on demand for a sum deposited. In fact the issuing of the note is the older banking transaction. It is true that the note can circulate as money, and the book account cannot. But certificates of deposit and savings books can so circulate in theory, although the form of the latter is too cumbrous for practical use, and the courts deny to them negotiability. Yet the currency does not become demoralized as long as the banker's credit is perfect. If a bank of issue fails, the notes become, of course, practically worthless, ancestors have from time immemorial possessed?" This is a somewhat clumsy sentence, but if it is meant to assert that we and our ancestors from time immemorial have enjoyed the right to have a bank, the learned justice is only making a phrase. It cannot be asserted that from time immemorial our ancestors have reveled in the unrestrained right of private note issues. That is a comparatively recent thing. See Anderson v. Alexander, 7 Am. Law Reg. 173. The question is one to be considered calmly and without the aid of buncombe, which never shows in a worse light than in the permanence of a judicial opinion. The opinion seems to think that the federal constitution made note-issuing a franchise, but that is a mistake. It merely prohibited state bills of credit unless secured. The same result follows upon a bank failure as to the deposit accounts. Just as much will be paid on the notes as on the deposits. Rather fewer people are affected by the depreciation of the notes than by the depreciation in the value of the deposits, for the deposit account will generally be much larger than the note issue. The direct and indirect effects of a bank failure on its depositors would perhaps be as large as the same effects upon the note holders. So, therefore, no reason can be urged in favor of the legislative right to suppress private banks of issue that cannot also be urged in favor of the right to suppress private banks of deposit. This consideration does not apply to private banks solely of discount. But such a bank cannot in any proper sense of the term be called a bank, as the word is understood either from a business or a politico-economical standpoint. We do not call a note-shaver or a pawn-broker a banker, but both may be discounters of paper. Yet, even pawn-broking, it is conceivable, might be reduced to a franchise for public convenience. But every one must concede as to banks of deposit that people in general know little of a private banker's responsibility, and are prone to accept the fact that a man is a banker as a guaranty of his perfect financial responsibility. That may be their own fault, but it is none the less a fact. Much could be said, however, against the possibility of any man finding out anything from published bank statements. The loans and discounts may be good or bad; the fact can only be ascertained with much trouble. It is found that bank supervisions and examinations do not insure good banking, and that the ultimate guaranty against loss is the double responsibility of stockholders, which can be secured from private bankers only on terms that would lead to the discontinuance of the business. So that the weight of reason is decidedly in favor of the legislative right to suppress private banking.