It is, as I have said, a trivial point, but it suffices. Vastly more important is the whole banking practice in America. This is no place to go into the details at the controversy which has raged around the merits and demerits of the American banking system. In the financial panic of 1893 something over 700 banks suspended payment in the United States. At such seasons, especially, but more or less at all times, a great proportion of the best authorities in the United States believe that it would be better for the country if the Scotch--or the Canadian adaptation of the Scotch--system were to take the place of that now in vogue. Possibly they are right. The gain of having the small local banks in out-of-the-way places possess all the stability of branches of a great central house is obvious, both in the increase of security to depositors in time of financial stress and also in the ability of such a house to lend money at lower rates of interest than is possible to the poorer institution with its smaller capital which has no connections and no resources beyond what are locally in evidence. It may be questioned, however, whether the country as a whole would not lose much more than it would gain by the less complete identification of the bank with local interests. It would be inevitable that in many cases the local manager would be restrained by the greater conservatism of the authorities of the central house from lending support to local enterprises, which he would extend if acting only by and for himself as an independent member of the local business community. It is difficult to see how the country as a whole could have developed in the measure that it has under any system differing much from that which it has had.