Of course the private banker was at liberty to adopt the joint stock system at an earlier date, but he did not at first believe in the new movement, and, consequently, clung to his own system until he was far outdistanced by his competitors, for directly the country was relieved from the incubus in the shape of the Bank of England's monopoly, and the joint stock system was given a free hand, that system, as might have been expected, instantly began to forge ahead, and in a very short space of time the private banker, who to this day cannot admit more than ten persons into partnership, was left hopelessly behind by a system which was unfettered by legal restrictions and allowed fair play. The Bank of England's monopoly reduced the private banker to impotency. It fostered in every county of England dangerously small firms, which disappeared in hundreds as soon as credit became bad and a state of panic caused their notes to be presented for payment in unusually large numbers, and it made really great private banking companies impossible in England; while but for the fact that public opinion wrenched this power from the hands of the directors, the Bank and its monopoly, which encouraged a dangerous form of banking, might both have been swept away in a bad financial crisis. Fortunately, public opinion won the day; and though the private banker could not compete successfully against the joint stock system on account of the smallness of his capital compelling him to concentrate his energies in a particular district, that system, being unrestricted, soon covered the land with its branches. The private bankers were at first held in check by the Bank of England's monopoly. Now they are simply being smothered out of existence by the extension of a system of which, in a manner, though, of course, not in the modern sense, the Bank was the first exponent; for a banker, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was largely dependent upon his note circulation for his profit, our present system of deposit banking being then in its infancy. In fact, the one evolved out of the other.