This review is, primarily, a collection from official sources of the main facts concerning the origin and practical working of the National Banking System. These facts appear to establish the following propositions :

1. The bank act was not an empirical measure, but a compilation of the best results of a series of legislative experiments carried on by the States for three-quarters of a century.

2. The law conferred some new privileges upon the banks, but so restricted their exercise of these, and of all privileges previously enjoyed by them, as to excite their almost unanimous opposition.

3. These restrictions, intended to protect the community at large, have proved so wholesome that the banks, with few exceptions, have become reconciled to them, perceiving that their own interest, in the long-run, is identified with the interest of the community.

4. Under this law bill-holders are absolutely secured ; the losses to all other creditors have been less than one-tenth of one per cent. of their claims annually; and this inconsiderable loss has been incurred by neglect or violation of the requirements of the statute.

5. The large profits of the banks prior to 1873 were not secured to them by the law, but were the consequence of the general inflation of prices, including the price of money, or rate of interest. Since 1873, the law remaining substantially unchanged, the net earnings of the banks have declined from 11 per cent. per annum to 5 per cent.

6. The banks have been and are of great service in the management of the public debt. By their assistance the burden of interest DM been reduced from $150,000,000 to $83,000,000 a year, and specie payments have been resumed. Without their aid the treasury would be obliged to employ other and more expensive agencies for the reception and disbursement of a revenue of $23,000,000 a month.

7. The plan to substitute treasury notes for bank-notes is a plan to withdraw the chief consideration which the banks have received in return for their services to the government. It is a plan, therefore, to break up the National Banking System, and to make Congress permanently responsible for the issue of a credit currency, and the maintenance of proper reserves. No economist or statesman of repute has ever favored such a scheme, and no country committing itself to such a policy has kept its currency at par.