The natural corollary of the centralisation at Vienna of the accounts of all those who adhered to the cheque-service was the organisation of the service of clearing accounts, for the more the number of its adherents increased, the more frequently it happened that one depositor drew a cheque in favour of another depositor. The cheque, up till then payable in specie, became a clearing cheque realisable by a simple transfer in writing. This complimentary service which is destined to become the principal one, was instituted Sept. 1 1884. The Austrian institution is only at present an element in the vast modern system of credit and the balancing of accounts and no one is ignorant that the system entirely rests on metallic money, as Stanley Jevons, Francis A. Walker and Macleod have elsewhere clearly shown. Macleod makes the striking comparison of modern circulation to the movement of a peg top which spins round on a very fine metallic point. The Postal Savings Bank, as it is organised and works, has not yet any kind of purpose of freeing circulation from its metallic basis, but like all other credit institutions, it contributes to this end by economising more and more the use of money; with extraordinary powers of expansion, it enables an ever increasing number of respectable persons, associations or bodies, to effect all their payments without the least risk, almost without loss of time and without having to keep any metallic money in their possession. And if one tries to conceive the future ideal evolution of an instrument so flexible as the Savings Bank, one may expect as I shall attempt to show in subsequent papers, that in combining its circulatory function with its function of investment it will be led into concurrence with the radical transformation sought by M. Solvay in the definitive elimination of the metallic instrument.