“Yet no class of corporations since the organization of the government have contributed so largely toward the support of the State and the nation, and no class of corporations have ever been so unmercifully taxed as the banking institutions of this country. Not only have Congress and the different State Legislatures imposed high rates of taxation, but the courts of the country, including the Supreme Court of the United States, composed as it is of able jurists who should be devoid of all prejudice, have construed the questions which have been brought before them with rigor worthy of the bitterest enemy of the system. While other corporations engaged in precisely the same line of business are authorized to do business almost without legislative restrictions and without taxation, the very highest rates that can be imposed are placed upon these institutions, whose only source of profit is the loaning of money at the rates of interest fixed by the same high authority which imposes the taxation. Yet, notwithstanding the opposition of Congress and the unfriendly decisions of the courts and the bitter enmity of individuals, the system has steadily and rapidly grown in favor, until the institutions organized under it from the beginning number nearly four thousand, some of which are located in every State and Territory as well as in every considerable village in the land.” As the steady reduction of the national debt proceeds, students of financial questions are casting about for some substitute for the present outstanding circulation, which has now dwindled to about $150,000,000. Mr. Edward Atkinson, of Boston, the well-known statistician and economist, presents this novel suggestion: “Will any Congress dare to reduce the revenue to such an extent as to leave any considerable amount of debt unpaid at the end of the present century, whether it be bonded debt or demand debt represented by legal tender notes? I submit these as the possible conditions which may make it an absolute necessity for the people of this country _to invent a new instrument of exchange_, to take the place of the legal tender notes and of the bank notes secured by United States bonds, unless the whole circulating medium is to consist either of bullion, or of certificates of the government backed by bullion, dollar for dollar. The tendency of events is to cause the withdrawal from circulation of uncovered paper, to wit: National Bank notes and legal tender notes, leaving only in circulation certificates of deposits of gold or silver, backed dollar for dollar by actual coin, and also gold and silver coin in specie.