credit has become strained. But what would happen supposing a crisis arose through the failure of one or two important Banks? Would it be possible for frightened shareholders to escape their liability and sell out before the crisis became acute? No, it would not. The shares would simply be unsaleable on any terms; there would be no market for them at all, and each individual holder would be compelled to face his loss without chance of escape. From a moral point of view this may be all right—I am not objecting—but undoubtedly the acuteness of the disaster would be concentrated to a cruel and most ruinous extent upon the then existing groups of Bank shareholders. Recently, when a panic threatened in Russian securities upon the Paris Bourse, the official brokers there notified to the outside market that they would not record sales of the bonds unless the numbers thereof were handed in with the order. This at once stopped speculative selling, but I doubt whether the consequence was not to weaken the market and to render the credit of Russia suspect amongst the multitude who, speculatively or otherwise, held this particular national debt. At any rate, the rule was very soon abandoned, and dealings resumed on the old footing. In Germany a number of restrictions and vexatious taxes have been placed upon Bourse transactions, especially those of a speculative kind, without increasing the health of the market or really diminishing the amount of gambling done. The business is transferred to other markets, very largely to London—that is all.