A learned and generally accurate judge,1 attempting a general definition, has defined a banker to be " one who keeps a place for the traffic of money; who there receives it from others and keeps it with his own, using the whole fund as his own, or remits it at request to other places; who repays it at the will and call of his customer; who furnishes money to others on the discount of their obligations, or on securities brought by them; and who buys and sells bills of exchange. To these is sometimes added the issuing of his notes to pass as money, when allowed by law to do so."2 This definition ignores, however, savings banks as that term was originally understood. In a brief of D. B. Ogden, 13 Pet. 530, and in Bank v. Collector, 3 Wall. 495, repeated by the same judge,3 with a historical summary, in Oulton v. Savings Institution, 17 Wall. 118, is the usual definition found in the encyclopedias: "Banks, in the commercial sense, are of three kinds, to wit: 1, of deposit; 2, of discount; 3, of circulation." To this is added by the court the statement: "All or any two of these functions may, and frequently are, exercised by the same association, but there are still banks of deposit without authority to make discounts or issue a circulating medium."4 The court also states that any one of the three functions makes a bank.5 But this latter statement is not accurate, because a discounter of notes, who is often called a "note-shaver," is not ordinarily considered a banker,6 nor is one who loans his own capital. It has been held that merely receiving deposits was not banking;7 but another court has said that, where a couple of attorneys own a private bank, which receives deposits, they are to be considered bankers under the terms of a penal statute.8

1 Foulger, J. Compare with this definition the language of section 3407, Revised Statutes, and the decision in Richmond v. Blake, 132 U. S. 592. The decisions in Bank v. Collector, 3 Wall. 495, and Oulton v. Savings Institution, 17 Wall. 118, proceed upon the same general theory of defining the term by reference to the business functions which the banker performs.

2 People v. Doty, 80 N. Y. 225, 228. This definition is not expressed in terms so general (but which are fully as accurate) as the phrase of Mr. Horn: A bank is "an office for the circulation of capital in the form either of accumulated labor (money of all kinds), or of labor yet to be done (credit)." 1 Encyc. Pol. Science, 228. 3 Clifford, J.

4 Bank v. Collector, supra.

5 Oulton v. Sav. Inst., supra.

6 People v. Brewster, 4 Wend. 498. But this case is perhaps to be better considered as a case of statutory construction. See People v. Bar-