ment of Mr. Neave, a well-known authority, given in evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Bank Acts, which sat in 1858. Mr. Neave states that, a short time before this period, about the year 1856, there were three bill-brokers in London holding deposits to the extent of fifteen millions and a half sterling. He does not give the name of these brokers; but Mr. J. W. Gilbart, in his "Logic of Banking," supplies the deficiency as follows:

Considering that each of the above three firms had grown up within little more than a quarter of a century, and that all of them were founded by men not possessed of wealth, and in the social position of clerks, the figures tell a tale nothing less than marvellous.

In more recent times, joint-stock has invaded the domain of the bill-brokers no less than that of ordinary bankers. The National Discount Company and the London Discount Company

were the first to start in the footsteps of the Gurneys and Alexanders; and other joint-stock companies, within the last few years, have followed in the same direction. It was probably in expectation of this rivalry that Mr. Samuel Gurney expressed himself so severely against the principle of joint-stock association, when cited as a witness before the Parliamentary committee on joint-stock banks, in 1836. It was the opinion of the great bill-broker that "the peculiar distinction" of joint-stock banks consisted in being "neither legitimate nor respectable," and that, moreover, the system was "dangerous and requiring regulation.” And when the Chairman, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, inquired of Mr. Gurney, "Do you conceive it would be an improvement or a disadvantage to the present system if joint-stock banks were permitted to be established with a limited liability?" Mr. Gurney replied, probably with some emphasis, "I think it would be a very serious addition to the evils of the case."

In the twenty years following his examination before the Parliamentary Committee, Mr. Samuel Gurney must have suffered much, not only in seeing joint-stock get the upper hand over pri

vate banking, but accompanied by the greatest of "evils," the "limited liability." Mr. Gurney died in 1856, and was succeeded by Mr. David Barclay Chapman, who retired from the firm on the 21st December, 1857.

XIX.-BANKS OF THE FUTURE.

A SINGULAR fatality fell upon the two greatest and most powerful opponents of joint-stock banking, Mr. Samuel Gurney and Mr. Samuel Jones Loyd, the present Lord Overstone. Instead of stemming the current, which, as they thought, carried destruction in its path, they both were borne along on the top of the wave, and made to assist in the triumph of the new principle. Mr. Gurney, after having invested a considerable part of his fortune in bank shares, died just a month after the Joint Stock Companies' Act of 1856 came into operation; and Lord Overstone had to see, at the beginning of the year 1864, his own bank devoured by the first metropolitan joint-stock bank. The absorption of Jones Loyd and Co. in the London and Westminster, marks an era in the history of jointstock banking. It is an era of the highest prosperity-the ascent of the top of the mountain. Private banking now has ceased to be of any

importance, and the amalgamation of the still existing houses with great joint-stock banks has become a mere question of time. But rivalry being extinct upon this point-even the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street having drawn the nightcap over her ears, and left the pert young upstarts of her own brood to do what they like -the really dangerous part of the career of joint-stock may be taken to have commenced. It is an old saying, and as true as it is old, that all men can bear adversity, yet but few success. The saying applies to joint-stock banks just as much as to men and things in general.

The principles on which joint-stock banks are founded, and chiefly the publicity of their accounts, have made it possible for them to distance all competitors, and to drive private banking completely out of the field. So great has been this success, as to allow dividends of twenty, twenty-five, and even thirty per cent. in the case of the larger undertakings, making them a far more profitable investment for shareholders. than ever the Bank of England has been. But it is in this unusual, and it may almost be said unnatural, prosperity that lurks the greatest danger to the joint-stock banks. The twenty or thirty per cent. dividends are not earned with the