This policy is resorted to because an idea exists amongst bankers that, instead of going to theatres and other places of amusement, the public, as a body, spends its leisure time during the closing days of each month working out the proportion of the reserves to the total deposits. This is a fantastic dream. The public does nothing of the kind. It is fallacious to imagine the public working out the proportions minutely and then deciding in strictly mathematical fashion whether a bank is safe or not, and whether there is likely to be an immediate run upon it or not. If bankers and theoretical financiers were only gifted with the power to understand human psychology there would be less contention amongst them on questions of pure theory. They would not magnify the unimportant at the expense of the important functions of banking, and magnify the superficial at the expense of the deep traits of British character. We see the same policy adopted at the end of each half-year, or year, when the banks make up their half-yearly or yearly balance sheets. Such a great deal has been made of this high reserve need--as though it were possible for any mortal being to draw up an absolute line of safety--that at these periods trade is penalized because bankers imagine that the millions of this nation are auditing their accounts. They see them poring over these accounts in the great castles of the realm, and in the cottages of the poor. It is a pure delusion, and if the millions engaged themselves voluntarily in these uncongenial tasks, the result would only be national confusion, and not national agreement. There can be national agreement on one thing connected with the banking system, and one thing only, alike in the mansion and in the cottage, and that is agreement upon the honesty and soundness of that system. And honesty and soundness are not to be tested solely by the bulk of the legal tender reserves. The only members of the community who, perhaps, might be more concerned than others about these reserves are the very members who share the responsibility equally with the banks. They are those who borrow from the banks, who get their liquid capital there. All they have to do is to cease borrowing, cease converting their wealth into currency, and the thing is done. The remedy is in their hands. Do they do this? No. Do they show this feverish concern? No. What do they do? These men, who have more at stake than the other millions, actually growl when the banks refuse to liquefy their wealth. They make it a grievance, and a sore grievance. To imagine, therefore, that these growlers are watching minutely the movements in the reserve is a delusion verging near to absurdity.