We are a very long way from the chaos to which many of our Continental neighbours have already reduced their monetary systems; but there is fortunately a very general feeling that we are a country with a reputation and a prestige on this point; and the business world is growing restive concerning the delay on the part of those responsible in putting an end to a state of things which may have been justified by the war's exigencies (though there is much to be said for the view that in fact it only added to the war's difficulties) but is now clearly as out of date as the censorship, which, like it, nevertheless, continues to flourish. This state of things arises from the arrangement tinder which an unlimited supply of legal tender currency can be manufactured by the Government, which encouraged to continue the system by the fact that each note issued is in effect a loan to itself without interest. At the meeting of Barclays Bank on January 27th, Mr. Goodenough demanded that the issue of currency notes by the Government should be stopped forthwith, and that if it were necessary to provide more currency it would be better for the banks to be allowed to issue notes themselves. This suggestion involves, of course, a complete reversal of the principles on which our monetary system has grown up, since it has long been based on a note-issuing monopoly in the hands of the Bank of England. But these are topsy-turvy days, in which greyheaded precedent is very justly at a heavy discount; and Mr Goodenough's suggestion very practically gets over a big difficulty that stands in the way of stopping the stream of Bradburys. This difficulty lies in the fact that if the banks were pulled at by their customers for currency and could not supply them with Bradbury notes, they would be forced to take notes from the Bank of England, with a bad effect on the appearance of its reserve. If the business of issuing notes were put into the hands of the clearing banks, their power to do so would be limited by the extent of their assets, or of such of their assets as were thought fit to rank as backing for their notes. In other words, the note-issuing business would once more have to be regulated on banking principles and controlled by the price asked, for advances, instead of expressing the helplessness and improvidence of an impecunious and invertebrate Government. In this manner the new departure might be a convenient halfway-house on the way from chaos back to sanity. But probably it is too revolutionary and goes too straight in the teeth of the Bank of England's privilege to receive much practical consideration; and there is the question whether the public would take the new paper readily and whether it could be made legal tender.