The banking system is in our control and we can make laws to modify it as we please, and as our wisdom dictates, or counsels. In gold there is nothing marvellous. The world has given it certain powers through its laws. One nation has largely imitated another in this respect, until all the leading nations have adopted it as the basis of their systems. They have imitated each other in the same way in evolving their naval and military systems. The day may come when they will look upon gold as something barbaric, in the same light as we regard the iron currency of primitive nations. A thousand years hence ours may be spoken of as a primitive age. In this work, then, I have endeavoured not only to be analytical and critical, but to be constructive. Many of the theories that are still held tenaciously I cannot accept. I cannot accept the theory that banks are creators of credit and build up an unsubstantial and dangerous structure. When we talk of banking credit and national credit we talk of two distinct conceptions. Yet both kinds of credit are based fundamentally on national wealth and national character. It is said that banking credit is based on gold and national credit on national wealth. Why is not national credit also based on gold? We glory in a towering national credit, because it is something to be proud of, a monument to our greatness. Why, then, should banking credit raise strong apprehensions? Before we talk glibly of banking credit it would be more profitable, first of all, to get a clear conception of what credit is, and having got that clear conception to define it clearly. Joint stock companies talk of other credits. They describe revenue as credit, profits as credit, debts owing to them as credit, their financial standing as credit. Ideas of credit, therefore, are greatly complicated, and no wonder they lead to confusion. We even talk of Germany’s credit weakening, notwithstanding the great mass of gold she possesses. It is when we talk of credit and confidence as one and the same thing that the confusion becomes greater. We talk of the superstructure of credit raised by banks, and grow dizzy as we strain our gaze towards its apex; yet we speak in the same breath of the profound confidence we have in banks. We cannot at the same moment have profound confidence in them and yet gaze apprehensively upon the system. The repose and the fear cannot both be rational states of consciousness. Our confidence in banks reposes in our trust in the wealth they possess and in the wealth they transform into money. Without that confidence they could not exist, despite their credit. But without confidence the nation itself could not exist. It is national confidence that supports the State. It is national confidence that brings national prosperity. Destroy confidence and you destroy wealth and prosperity.