distinction, by requiring the banks to loan money _on personal security only_, that is to say, no tangible things whatever, not even real estate, are allowed to be taken as _original_ security for any loan. Banks deal only in true debts,--_mutua_,--and when they keep custody of concrete valuables--_commodata_--for their customers, it is as trustees or bailees and not at all as debtors. Our late Oxford friend was far too well informed in general to contend, that a cheque, for example, is "the right to acquire possession" of any _specific_ property anywhere; the drawer has indeed deposited money with the banker on whom the cheque is drawn, but that money became the banker's money the moment it was deposited and no longer his own; the cheque, accordingly, is a general claim on the banker, and not at all on any special fund in the banker's hands; it follows, therefore, that the excess of the banker's average deposits over his average reserves to secure them, is a new creation of Credit, a new resource of Production, a new Purchasing-power now available to the banker not previously and practically available to anybody, a new Valuable which he proposes to use and does use for the sake of profits accruing, consequently a new Capital. Now let us listen to the objections to this view by a practical banker, J. H. Walker, of Worcester, Mass., in a little book of his on Banking published in 1882: "_A man always borrows something of intrinsic value. What he borrows is not a piece of paper, whatever may be on it, but a farm, a house, a factory, or a part of them; a store, a mine, or goods. No man can borrow or lend anything else. The borrower gets from the lender what puts him in possession of the things he seeks, and it must be some one of these things. So of all money (except coin). It has no value in itself. It adds nothing to the capital of the world. It purports to be and is only a title to property, a convenient device for transferring the ownership of property._"