The requirement that all the directors of a bank should be residents. of the State in which it is located, may, in some instances, prevent stockholders from availing themselves of the services of men whom it may be desirable to have in the direction. Many persons carrying on business in our large cities reside in neighboring States. Should they, therefore, be disqualified from being directors of the city banks? The object for which this resolution was inserted in the act will doubtless be secured by requiring two-thirds of the board to be residents of the State in which an association is organized.

Instead of the liability of the stockholders, many of whom have little voice in the management of their banks, I would suggest that section 12 be so amended that the failure of a national bank be declared prima facie fraudulent, and that the officers and directors, under whose administration each insolvency shall occur, be made personally liable for the debts of the bank, and be punished criminally, unless it shall appear, upon investigation, that its affairs were honestly administered. The individual liability provision, if continued, will prevent, as it is now doing, many prudent men and men of wealth from becoming shareholders in national banks, and consequently hinder a proper and desirable distribution of their stock, and will not protect creditors to the same extent as would be done by the proposed liability of the managers.

I also suggest that section 24 be so amended that the publication by an association of its quarterly reports, where there is no newspaper in the place where the association is located, be made in the nearest paper thereto, instead of a paper published at the capital of the State.

I suggest, also, that section 39 be so amended that stockholders of banks of large capital be eligible to the direction thereof, who may be the owners of less than one-half per cent. of the capital. As the law now stands, no stockholder can be a director in a bank of $10,000,000 of capital, without owning at least $50,000 of its stock. Such a provision is obviously unwise. The best brains and the highest integrity might thus be excluded from the management of banks. There is another objection to this section. According to its provisions, a stockholder who owns but $1,500 of stock can be a director of a bank with $300,000 capital, while one must own $2,000 of stock to be a director of a bank with $200,000 capital.

I suggest, also, that section 31 be repealed. Aside from the consideration that a depreciation of government securities should not be contemplated by Congress, it is hardly just to the banks to compel them to furnish these securities as a pledge for their circulation, at the rate of ninety per cent. on the dollar, and then subject them to the caprices of the New York stock exchange.

The act authorizes the organization of banks with a capital of $50,000 each, and requires the payment of only thirty per cent. thereof on the commencement of business, so that a bank may commence the business of banking with a paid in capital of only fifteen thousand dollars.

I suggest that the act be so amended that no bank shall commence business with a less capital, actually paid in, than fifty thousand dollars. To say nothing of the facilities which the law affords to the banks, for building up a fictitious capital by the use of its circulating notes, when the stock is paid up by instalments, fifteen thousand dollars is altogether too insignificant a sum, even at the commencement,

for the capital of a bank. It is very questionable whether a bank should be organized with a capital less than one hundred thousand dollars; fifty thousand to be paid in at the commencement of business, and the balance in instalments of ten per cent. every sixty days thereafter.

There is, at present, no provision for the voluntary closing of the national banks. I suggest, therefore, that a provision be inserted in the act, requiring banks that may desire to close up their affairs to give notice of their intention to do so, to the Comptroller of the currency, and such notice to the public as he may prescribe, and authorizing the banks, at any time after two years from the publication of such notice, to withdraw from the Treasurer the bonds deposited with him for the security of their circulation, upon paying into the Treasury of the United States the amount of their outstanding notes in lawful money, which notes shall thenceforth be redeemable at the treasury, and the banks respectively, and the stockholders thereof be discharged from all liability therefor.

It would thus appear that the benefits resulting from the lost circulation are to inure to the government, and not to the banks; but it will be remembered, that the notes are furnished to the banks at the expense of the government, which will probably be no more than covered by what may be lost or destroyed; especially as the banks, being at no expense therefor, will be likely to keep their circulation clean and unmutilated, by frequent exchanges of old notes for new ones.

I suggest, also, that the act be so amended that the rate of interest to be charged by the national banks be uniform in all the States; that the penalty for usury be a forfeiture of the interest, instead of a forfeiture of the debt, on which more than the legal rate is taken, and that the banks in the large commercial cities of the seaboard States be relieved in certain contingencies, from all penalties for usury, in order that they may prevent, as far as practicable, by raising the rate of interest, excessive importations of foreign merchandise and heavy exportations of the precious metals.

The expediency of making the rate of interest uniform throughout the country is manifest. The objection to national legislation upon this subject is, that the States are supposed to have the exclusive right to regulate the interest upon loans of money.

It is true that the power to regulate the rates of interest at which money shall be loaned has always been exercised (except in the case of the United States Bank) by the States, and it is also true that the laws upon this subject in the different States have been various and changeable. There are scarcely two States in the Union whose interest laws are exactly alike. Few things have been more embarrassing to the trade between the different sections of the country, and none have been more prolific of litigation and conflicting judicial decisions, than the different and frequently changing legislation of the States in fixing the value of the use of money.

Whatever opinions may have heretofore obtained upon the subject, there are now very few intelligent business men of the country, who have watched the effect upon trade and exchanges of the efforts of the States to establish by law the rates of interest, who are not agreed in the opinion, that the regulation of commerce between the States cannot be perfectly accomplished without the establishment of a uniform rate

of interest throughout the Union. The commerce of the country ignores State boundaries, and Congress has the exclusive right of regulating it. Congress ought, therefore, to have the incidental power of preventing the States from embarrassing commercial intercourse between the people of the States, which is done to no little extent, by their fixing different rates of interest upon money. If such power exists in Congress it ought to be exercised. In my judgment, it is demanded both by considerations of public policy and public con

venience.

But whatever opinions may be entertained in regard to the general authority of Congress to regulate the rate of interest upon loans of money, there can be but little question of its power to regulate the rate which shall be charged by the banks through which a national circulation is to be issued, and which are organized under a national law. Unless it possesses this power, the national government must divide with the States the control of the affairs of banks created to carry out its rightful, acknowledged, and necessary functions.

As the law now stands, banks in New York and Michigan can charge seven per cent. on their loans, while those of New England and most other States are restricted to six; and State laws can be so framed as to attract capital to be invested in national banks too largely into particular States, or to prevent such an investment of it in such States altogether.

It is recommended, therefore, that the rate of interest to be charged by national banks be made uniform throughout the States, and that this rate be seven per cent. per annum.

The authority of Congress to so change the act has been settled, I think, by the Supreme Court. The Bank of the United States was authorized by its charter to loan money at the rate of six per cent. per annum. Suppose, that in a State in which a branch of that bank was located the legal rate of interest had been five per cent., would a contract made with the branch for six per cent. have been void as contravening a State law? The right to assess and collect taxes for the support of the State is a right indispensable to the existence of the State government. Nevertheless, the State of Maryland was prohibited from taxing the stock of the branch of the United States Bank in the city of Baltimore, and on the ground that States had no power by taxation or otherwise to impede, or in any manner control, laws enacted by Congress in the exercise of its legitimate powers. If, instead of attempting to tax the Baltimore branch bank, the State of Maryland had passed a law reducing the rate of interest to be charged by all corporations within its limits, not authorized by the State, to four per cent., (as it would have had an undoubted right to do if the power to regulate the rate of interest upon moneys loaned belongs absolutely and exclusively to the States,) would not the Supreme Court have declared such a law, in its application to a branch of the United States Bank, unauthorized and void? Is the power to regulate the rate of interest upon money any more clearly a power reserved by the States than the power to tax? If Congress had the constitutional authority to pass the national currency act, it has unquestionably the incidental right to regulate, irrespective of State legislation, the rate of interest which shall be charged by the banks organized under it, for, without this right, State laws might so control or impede the business of the banks as to render the act itself practically inoperative.

Few questions have been more frequently and thoroughly discussed, or in relation to which there has been a greater difference of opinion among intelligent men, than the question of usury. Much of this difference of opinion has arisen from the fact that men have viewed it from different stand-points. The opinion of one who has lived in Germany or England, where capital is abundant, and no usury laws have existed for years, will, of course, be very different from that of one who has lived in Minnesota or California, and noticed the evils which have resulted from the high rates which money has commanded in those States. Notwithstanding the fact that money is the standard of value, it is not free from the operations of the great regulating law of supply and demand. Where money is abundant it is cheap, where scarce it is dear; and no legislation has been able to control the effect of this general law. There is no necessity for usury laws in most of the States at the present time, because money is abundant and lenders are plenty, and borrowers are scarce. When the war is over, and business goes back again to its accustomed channels, and the disbursements of the government are largely curtailed, borrowers will be plenty and lenders scarce. Because usury laws are not needed now, it does not follow that they will not be required at no very distant day, nor does it follow, because legislation has not been able absolutely to regulate the value of the use of money, and because all usury laws are frequently evaded, that, therefore, these laws are inefficacious and unwise. Usury laws, no matter how much they have been evaded, have had the effect of preventing, to some extent, excessive charges on loans of money. There is scarcely a banker or money-lender in the country who has not often been restrained in his charges, for the money he has loaned, by the usury laws which have been in force. In all countries, in which there is not a superabundance of capital, usury laws have been found necessary to protect those whose interest it is to borrow money, against excessive charges for it by those who have it to lend, and the experience of the nations is not to be disregarded. Money, whether it be in the form of the precious metals or of bank notes, is created by law. Gold and silver are not money until coined and made such by the authority of the government. It is not like merchandise or other personal property, the result of man's industry, but a creation of the government, and government, which fixes the value that shall be placed upon it, has the right to say, and it is the duty to say, what shall be charged for the use of it. Of course solvent bank notes, whether issued by national or State authority, depend for their value as money upon the value of the coin of the United States. The only question, then, which it is necessary to consider in this connexion is, what penalty shall be attached to violations of usury laws. On this point, I am of the opinion that while the penalty should be such as will protect the borrower from oppression, it should not be of such a character as to tempt too strongly his honor, or to compel both the lender and borrower to resort to shifts for its evasion, which make money dearer to the latter than it otherwise would be. The laws of those States that make void all usurious contracts, even in the hands of innocent parties, and punish usury as a crime, are impolitic and unwise; those laws that make valid, contracts for any rates of interest which may be agreed upon are scarcely less so. I think it will be found that those laws which make the penalty for usury the forfeiture of

interest, leaving the lender the right to collect only the principal of the loan, are more equitable in their operations, and more effective in inducing fair dealing between man and man, than the more stringent laws of some States and the less stringent ones of others. I feel it to be my duty, therefore, to recommend that the 46th section of the national currency act be further amended, so that the penalty for taking or reserving by the national banks of a greater rate of interest than seven per cent. be a forfeiture of the interest, instead of the forfeiture of the debt on which more than the legal rate shall have been taken or reserved. And inasmuch as the history of all commercial nations has shown it to be occasionally necessary, for the regulation of trade between them and other nations, that the rate of interest should be under the control of an authority less arbitrary than statutes, I further recommend that the Secretary of the Treasury, or a commission to be created by Congress, be authorized temporarily to relieve the national banks in the cities of Philadelphia, New York, Boston, &c., from all penalties for usury, whenever it shall be thought that the public interests will be promoted thereby.

The judicious use of the power possessed by the Bank of England of checking, by an advance of the rate of interest, excessive speculation, and the creation of a foreign debt, to be liquidated by shipments of coin, has frequently prevented financial crises in Great Britain. The same power, prudently and resolutely wielded by the banks of New York as a unit, would, in years past, have saved millions to the United States. It may be many years before the national banks will possess the power now held by the State banks in that city, but they may have it in due time; and when this is the fact, no statutory restrictions should prevent them from using it for the benefit of the country.

If it should be thought inadvisable, as I trust will not be the case, to make the suggested amendments in regard to interest and usury, I would, in that event, recommend, as the national banks are to be subject to State laws in regard to the interest that shall be charged upon discounts, that they be also subject to the penalties for usury which the State laws may impose. If the exclusive right to regulate the rate of interest is to be left to the States, they should also fix the penalty for usury. The power to regulate, by law, the charge that shall be made for the use of money, and the power to punish for the violation of the law, should be in the same hands. Under the present provisions of the act, Congress must adopt State legislation, whatever it may be, upon the subject of interest, whether it be three per cent. or twenty, while it inflicts a penalty for a violation of State laws which the State laws do not themselves impose.

I suggest also that section 45 be repealed, and that instead thereof a section be inserted authorizing the banks to make semi-annual dividends of profits, but requiring them, before dividends are declared, to carry to the "surplus" one-sixth part of their net profits, until their surplus funds shall amount to thirty per cent. of their respective capitals. The advantages of the creation, by a bank, of a large surplus fund to cover losses that no prudence can prevent, and, as a preparation for commercial crises, are so well understood as to need no illustration. The rest of this section refers to semi-annual reports. By section 24 the banks are required to make full quarterly reports of the condition of