To still further increase the joint responsibility of the members of the clearing house, it was agreed that a committee should be charged with receiving as collateral bills and securities in exchange for which certificates of deposit bearing 3 per cent. were issued at the rate of 75 per cent. of the amounts deposited. This agreement being adopted, a way to re-open the National Metropolitan Bank was sought. A selection made from its collection of bills showed the securities it could pledge for clearing-house certificates; and, its circulation being thus re-established, it was enabled on May 15th to take part in settlements. Upon the announcement of a syndicate composed of the banks and the clearing house, things settled down; the general distrust diminished; there was the necessity and wish to realize, but funds were lacking. The rise in the discount rate attracted foreign capital little by little, and exchange grew easier. With the help of the syndicate the credit circulation became re-established, and the rate of discount declined to 5 per cent. For commercial needs money was always to be had at 4-1/2 per cent. and at 5 per cent. when at the Stock Exchange it was necessary to pay 4 per cent. per day! The panic was terrible from the 3d to the 10th of May; for two days no one wished to part with his money; it was impossible to borrow on any collateral, at any price whatever. Hence came a decline in the public securities, which fell below the low prices of 1873. The public complained that it could not have foreseen the panic, because the loss of gold had been concealed by the oft-repeated assurance that there was a reserve of $600,000,000 in Washington. Similar situations in 1857 and in 1873 were recalled, and it was remarked that like troubles had not occurred until after a long period of high prices, when capital was scarce and the rate of interest high, whereas this was far from being the case at this period. It was nevertheless notorious that the decline in prices began two years back, that the advance in prices had been stopped by the breaking out of the panic of 1882 in Europe, at Paris, and that since that moment prices had begun to decline, less rapidly, however, than in Europe, because the shock had then merely disturbed a market which had not yet recovered from the panic of 1873, from which, in consequence of the Franco-Prussian war, France had escaped. The mine not being sufficiently charged in the United States the explosion had not recurred. Speculation, unable to restore a new impulse to the rise in prices, was nevertheless able to hold its own, until May, 1884, when the delayed explosion finally occurred, covering the market with ruins and bringing about a liquidation with its accustomed train, a great and lengthy decline of prices.