In the opinion of one whose means of judging have been second to those of few, the directors of joint-stock-banks have rarely been guilty of direct dishonesty. Admitting {132} notorious exceptions, the general fact appears to be that directors have had no immediate interests in furthering these speculations which have proved so ruinous to depositors and shareholders; but have usually been among the greatest sufferers. Their fault has rather been the less flagitious, though still grave fault, of indifference to their responsibilities. Often with very inadequate knowledge they have undertaken to trade with property belonging in great part to needy people. Instead of using as much care in the investment of this property as though it were their own, many of them have shown culpable recklessness: either themselves loaning the entrusted capital without adequate guarantee, or else passively allowing their colleagues to do this. Sundry excuses may doubtless be made for them. The well-known defects of a corporate conscience, caused by divided responsibility, must be remembered in mitigation. And it may also be pleaded for such delinquents that if shareholders, swayed by reverence for mere wealth and position, choose as directors, not the most intelligent, the most experienced, and those of longest-tried probity, but those of largest capital or highest rank, the blame must not be cast solely on the men so chosen, but must be shared by the men who choose them. Nay, further, it must fall on the public as well as on shareholders; seeing that this unwise selection of directors is in part determined by the known bias of depositors. But after all allowances have been made, it must be admitted that these bank-administrators who risk the property of their clients by lending it to speculators, are near akin in morality to the speculators themselves. As these speculators risk other men’s money in undertakings which they hope will be profitable; so do the directors who lend them the money. If these last plead that the money thus lent is lent with the belief that it will be repaid with good interest, the first may similarly plead that they expect their investment to return the borrowed capital along with a {133} handsome profit. In each case the transaction is one of which the evil consequences, if they come, fall more largely on others than on the actors. And though it may be contended, on behalf of the director, that what he does is done chiefly for the benefit of his constituents, whereas the speculator has in view only his own benefit; it may be replied that the director’s blameworthiness is not the less because he took a rash step with a comparatively weak motive. The truth is that when a bank-director lends the capital of shareholders to those to whom he would not lend his own capital, he is guilty of a breach of trust. In tracing the gradations of crime, we pass from direct robbery to robbery one, two, three, or more degrees removed.