THE BALTIMORE PLAN, which a while ago had the sanction of the Comptroller, Secretary of the Treasury and the President, is, in a word, a scheme for issuing circulating notes by both national and State banks, otherwise than upon the pledge of government bonds as now. The banks are to issue notes upon their own assets, supplemented by a deposit of a certain amount of greenbacks, as a safety and redemption fund. The theory of this plan is that when any special demand for currency arises the banks will make a special issue of notes to supply it; and that as soon as this demand ceases the banks will retire the notes it has called out. Thus the quantity of currency available will, it is assumed, never be either deficient or excessive; and there will never be at any point either a monetary stringency or a monetary plethora. Were the function of currency exclusively that of facilitating exchanges, such a system (like that of 3-65 interconvertible bonds) might be useful. But currency serves the additional purpose of measuring the price of commodities; and since its relation to those commodities is determined by its volume, any change of its volume changes its value also, and consequently impairs its stability as a measure of prices. Again, as to the State bank feature of the Baltimore plan, the idea prevails extensively in the agricultural districts of the West and South that the chief business of a bank is to lend money to borrowers. That is why they clamor for the removal of the ten per cent. tax on State banks. An abundance of greenbacks and silver would do away with most of the need of borrowing from banks. That’s what’s the matter with the banks. No further mention is needed here of the schemes of Carlisle, Springer, Vest and others. They seem all dead at this writing, and they certainly should be damned. Even the New York _Tribune_, a monopolists’ own, says of one of the safety-fund schemes: “The bankers are to have free issue; and when one fails the government is to collect from the other banks and redeem its currency. But in time of panic the government would not and could not do that.” On the other hand, the New York _Sun_, edited by a man who was a radical socialist in his youth, and now a bitter, hardened, cruel cynic, although lately a Greenback paper, is as rabid as the New York _Evening Post_ in advocacy of gold and gold only. It says of the latest safety-fund humbug: