That Mr Barnett should suffer from such a prejudice was in his case a peculiar hardship. His mother, the daughter of an Englishman settled in Lisbon, was related in some way to Admiral Sir J. Cowen. His father, though technically a German, was one to whom our fullest sympathy should extend. A patriot and idealist of the noblest type, he saw in the occupation of Frankfort in 1866, the advent at once of militarism and of foreign rule. He determined to abandon a town still dear to him, but intolerable since it supported an oppressor. Too just, however, to enforce this decision upon his two sons, he gave them the choice: he that remained should continue the business subject to a half-charge upon all discount and advances, the other might accompany him to freedom and to England. David elected, with reluctance, to accept the Prussian domination; Mr I. Z. Barnett, the younger son, departed with his father to this country, to the no small delight of his mother, who intended, if possible upon their arrival to renew the family ties with Admiral Sir J. Cowen. This legitimate purpose she did not live to fulfil. She died soon after her establishment in London, and her husband did not long survive her. Mr Barnett has often pointed out to me the little room in the Albany where he began his long and difficult struggle with fortune. He spent little, he lived laboriously; within ten years he had accumulated a sufficient capital to devise and launch the Haymarket Bank. The scheme of this speculation, risked by a comparatively poor man, yet in the early thirties, should be enough to stamp the genius of its creator. The Bank depended upon a principle which, had it but proved successful, would have revolutionised the financial world. All depositors were paid interest yearly upon the average of their current accounts at the rate of eight per cent. At first it was difficult to persuade a public wedded, wherever money was concerned, to formal routine; but when, at the end of the first year, the eight per cent. was duly paid (for Mr Barnett would accept no more than his original capital could meet), timidity gave place to enthusiasm, for eighteen months the institution increased as though by magic. If ever the ordinary operations of the bank failed, on occasion, to earn the stipulated interest, fresh depositors could always be depended on: their accounts furnished the funds necessary for the satisfaction of the yearly dividend. These in turn received at the end of twelve months, the eight per cent., which yet another band of new investors had delightedly furnished.