Exchange. This statute has either been of no avail whatever, as has been lately asserted, or has given an undue value to bank shares. On looking at the published list of the City of Glasgow Bank shareholders and at certain other lists which can be procured by those who are curious on the subject, it is astonishing to find who the shareholders in banks are, and how very small a percentage of revenue induces them to run the risk of unlimited liability.

So far from the processes of the Stock Exchange having unduly depreciated joint-stock banking property, either they or Leeman's foolish Act have raised it so high that no prudent man will invest in it. We find in the Glasgow City Bank one-fourth of the whole body of shareholders were women, and a third were professional men and small capitalists; while the stocks of the Scotch banks generally were at so high a price in the market as to yield only four or five per cent. to the investor. In the Western and South Wales Bank there were no less than seven hundred women on the register. It is impossible to legislate so as to cure evils arising from unreasoning panic or from over-sanguine expectations, but laws may be placed on some intelligible basis. It cannot be good that one bank on one side of the street may issue notes, and its competitor on the other side te forbidden to do so; nor can it be in accordance with common sense. that no shareholder in a joint-stock bank can tell, without perusing. dozens of statutes, some repealed and some unrepealed, the precise. nature of his liabilities. Perpetual alterations have been made in. the laws under which joint-stock companies could be founded from 1825 to the present time. The tendency of all legislation has been in the direction of limited liability.

The only exception to the power of adoption of that principle now existing is in respect to banks which are permitted to issue notes, and to a few others which, under a certain act, have been permitted to alter the period of their liability entailed upon them by another act. With these exceptions, any bank now existing on the principle of unlimited liability may turn itself into a limited bank by giving. certain notices and going into certain formalities.

It appears to me to be advisable that this change of liability should be made general and uniform; it should be the same in all cases not only in England, but also in Scotland and Ireland. The large and well-managed joint-stock banks in the metropolis, the meetings of which have already taken place, have been addressed by their chairmen in similar language. These gentlemen have, very naturally each as regards his own bank, abstained from advising their shareholders to take a singular position which might bring discredit on the bank; but each has expressed his willingness to adopt limited liability if other banks would do the same. It is clear that the anomalous and uncertain state of the law calls for a general legislative measure on the subject, and it is to be hoped that the Government VOL. V.-No. 25.

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will see the necessity of enlarging that which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has given notice of his intention to introduce.

Some people are of opinion that the success of the British Constitution is due to its anomalies, that the domestic happiness of Englishmen may be attributed to the absurdities of the marriage laws, and that our commercial prosperity may be ascribed to our unsystematic commercial legislation. I do not share these views on the contrary, I freely confess to the belief that whenever abuses or inconveniences call aloud for reforms, the more complete the change is made the better.

Since the days of Peel, no government has had so fair an oppor tunity for passing a large and comprehensive measure of consolidation as that possessed by the present Cabinet. Lord Beaconsfield himself would perhaps laugh if he were asked to devise a scheme for paper currency in England or metallic currency in India. But Sir Stafford Northcote, brought up in the best school of economic thought and surrounded by men of unrivalled experience, could surely spare a few moments from contention with Irishmen or Jingo triumphs to bring to a fair conclusion the results of sixty years of inquiry and labour.

From a preference for systematic legislation, I should like to see prepared a Bill for assimilating the currency and legal tender throughout the whole of the United Kingdom, including a total abolition of the right of private coining, together with the calling in of the one-pound notes in Ireland and Scotland. Every joint-stock bank in the kingdom should be permitted to declare its liability limited on condition of publication of accounts and independent audit. All private bankers and joint-stock banks with unlimited liability should only be obliged to publish lists of their shareholders and partners. All provisions affecting localities would cease; the boundaries of Scotland or the sixty-five miles' radius would be unknown.

If such a measure were found impracticable from the abiding strength of the Sons of Zeruiah, then a general Act should be passed, placing all banks in the three kingdoms on some such footing as those of the United States. Besides their being subject to the Comptroller of the Currency, as I have already described, these banks are obliged to deposit stock in proportion to their capital, and to hold gold or lawful money in certain proportions to their liabilities.

Whatever course is ultimately determined on, it is improbable that any time could be more fitting than the present for action to be taken, owing to the public interest now excited on the subject, to the peculiar fitness of Sir Stafford Northcote for the discussion, and to the obedient majority which would enable him to enforce his views on both Houses of Parliament.

HENRY R. GRENFELL.

In this age of progress and march of science, a ruthless stampede of some obscure and extremely selfish forces is making sad havoc with many good old guiding faiths, and obliterating many time-honoured duties once considered incumbent upon Christians, or members of a society calling itself humane.

Some scientific men, like Dr. Büchner, under a new inspiration of the spirit-the vivisection of the flesh-have proved, apparently to their own satisfaction, that there is, just now at least, no such thing as a soul in man; and many are quite ready to believe them. Hence it is, perhaps, that in the present day we find all appeals to the soul of man, his superior judgment, his divine sense of right and wrong, discarded by practical men, the leaders, guides, and protectors of ever-patient and ever-plodding labour, in favour of an appeal to the stomach; leading to a further development of scepticism-viz., a doubt whether mankind any longer possesses any bowels of compassion.

That man is possessed of a stomach we have, happily and unhappily, too many proofs. It is a part of our being that is ever making claims upon our attention which cannot be ignored, and demanding, like the faithful and willing servant it ever is, more work to do in our behalf; in some cases getting so much work to do, that it sinks dyspeptically under the wicked and soul-benumbing infliction: in other cases, alas! with so little to do, that its possessor may well wonder why an infinite and kind Heavenly Father provided such an organ at all, to be a source of anxiety chiefly, by continually making demands which can seldom be sufficiently or properly supplied; and he may think that it would be an improvement, were it practicable, to give up the possession of the stomach to obtain repossession of the soul.

Be all this as it may, there is no gainsaying the fact that the employers of labour are almost universally appealing to the stomachs of their labourers for the settlement of all disputes; and they should ask themselves if there is no nobler or better way, and if their present mode of procedure is one that common sense, not to invoke higher standards, can much longer tolerate. The degenerate son of a wise

king once menaced his subjects thus: 'My father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions;' and in this age of progress and universal spread of so-called Christianity, have we to see the analogue of the whip of scorpions, the lock-out system, become the order of the day, without any protest from Press, Pulpit, or Parliament?-to see (because a few men, rightly or wrongly, refuse to work, unless certain alleged unsatisfactory conditions are improved) a body of employers, who should know better, determine to reduce thousands of people to want and destitution, who have done them no wrong, and who are perfectly innocent of any act bearing upon the subject in dispute?

Now what is the root of the whole matter, and the cause, for example, of the recent complaint of the cotton-spinners? They alleged that with a list of prices, arranged when cotton with fair staple was in general consumption, they could not make the same wages when cotton with inferior staple was substituted, or when machinery got worn and was not in good working order; and, instead of meeting this apparently reasonable complaint with an appeal to the soul, and a Come now, and let us reason together,' the employers drove right at the stomachs of their labourers, and decided to lock them all out till starvation, invoked thus as the employers' grim ally, should settle the dispute for them, irrespective of the right or wrong, justice or injustice, that might lie at the bottom of the appeal.

And is this the only way in which questions vital to the interests of the nation can be settled in England at the present time? All sensible men would think the preliminary inquiries should be, Why are these labourers dissatisfied? Is there any just ground for their complaint? Are they correct when they say their wages have fallen through their having to work an inferior cotton at the price fixed for one of superior staple? It is beside the mark to say that they are earning more wages in the aggregate, because longer mules, involving closer application, will account for this, and the increased cost of living is constantly necessitating higher remuneration for labour. But the simple question is this, Are they who have proposed to strike working an inferior cotton for the wages arranged for a superior? In other words, Are they required to make bricks without straw? to spin yarn from cotton with less staple in it? This is the question which demanded a faithfully correct answer.

We all know how a people long ago was subjected, among other hardships, to what it considered the injustice of making bricks without straw, and how it struck against the alleged injustice, and how the dispute finally terminated. Of course we can make bricks nowa-days without straw, and with little or no clay; but whether this is an improvement or the contrary, ask the owners and occupiers of the houses that Jerry built, and consider further how long these houses will last, and how soon they will cease to be national wealth and become national

rubbish-heaps merely. We do know, however, how these ancient brickmakers grumbled at the withdrawal of the straw, and how they got the then recognised principles of political economy scourged into them, but all to no purpose. Their complaints, reasonable or unreasonable, raised up demagogues also, who espoused their cause, and who forced themselves into the presence of the ruler of the land, to plead the cause of their dissatisfied brethren, these unreasonable brickmakers; and we know how it all ended with this blind ruler and his people.

Were the spinners in Lancashire just now requested to fulfil their daily tasks as when there was a good stapled cotton, when there was but an inferior one, or to go with a smaller remuneration? This is a point which only faithful investigation could clear up, and which a lock-out could only bury in deeper obscurity.

Then how very unequal and unfair is the arbitrement of a lockout! In what we call the dark ages, in the time when a duel was regarded as an honourable mode of settling a dispute, the challenger would, in a fair and honourable way, give his opponent the length of his rapier, or one of the same brace of pistols, to secure perfectly equal conditions, and to prevent the one from having any advantage over the other. But in a lock-out, the capitalists, with a full larder, and a balance at their bankers', actually force their labourers to an arbitrement, which practically consists of the test as to which party will the sooner be brought to starvation. What would a Bayard of the dark ages say of the equality and fairness of such a chivalry as this, which permits men who have supplies of food to serve them for years, to insist upon a trial of their power of endurance against that of others whose store, they know, will be exhausted in as many days? Can they do this without feeling shame or consciousness of inequality; or can they regard it as a test that is perfectly fair, and, consequently, defensible? And can any question of the right or wrong, justice or injustice, of any great subject, be ascertained by any hunger test of this description?

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Now if there really be a doubt that a lock-out in any case is justifiable, should not the employers be invited to reconsider the whole subject? If the spinners could prove that they were working cotton of inferior quality to what was contemplated when the list was arranged, would it be anything more than fair, honourable, and gentlemanly, to meet them and say, 'We shall make you some compensation for the inferior cotton, for the absence of the equivalent of the straw in the bricks.'

Might not a price-list be arranged which would solve the difficulty, if Middling Orleans cotton were considered the standard staple, to which list a variable percentage might be added, increasing as the staple diminished, for all cotton under Middling Orleans, and diminishing, by another variable percentage, as the staple was superior to