a direct and personal refusal; though truly the kindest act a banker can perform, next to granting a loan, is to promptly inform an applicant that he cannot succeed, when the banker knows the loan will not be granted.

SUPERVISION IN RELATION TO BUSINESS PRINCIPLES.

The supervision of the Board must be as comprehensive as the powers of the Manager. The revision of loans will enable the Board to ascertain, not merely the solvency of the bank's assets, but whether its business is conducted without partiality, or unwholesome bias of any kind. Nearly every undue partiality possesses concomitants that may lead to its detection-for instance, an unusual laxity of security, or length of credit; with unusual frequency of renewals in a direct form, or an indirect, so as to screen the operations. A manager, properly sensitive of his reputation, and properly diffident of his natural infirmities, will be reluctant to grant loans to his relatives or special' friends, and never to himself, or any person with whose business operations he is connected. To enable directors to judge of these particulars, a regular attendance at the stated meetings is necessary; but memory alone must not be relied on, except to suggest queries, which should always be capable of solution by proper books and indexes, that must be within reach of the directors, who should habitually inspect the books, that the practice may, in no case, seem an invidious peculiarity. In all scrutinies, however, the directors should remember that in mere judgment and expediency they may differ from the Manager, and he may still be right; for banking constitutes his business, while to them it is an incidental occupation. Lenity is proper even to his undoubted errors, when they are of a nature which experience may correct; but time will only inveter

ate bad intentions, and their first unequivocal appearance should produce an unrelenting forfeiture of his office.

SUPERVISION OVER LIABILITIES AND RESOURCES.

The Board must understand the liabilities of the bank to its depositors, bank-note holders, and other creditors; also the funds of the bank, and its available resources; so as to judge how far the honor of the bank is safe in the care of its Manager. The characters of depositors and borrowers are also proper subjects of general scrutiny in the Board, by reason that the reputation of a bank is inferrable from the reputation of its dealers;-not that disreputable people should be rejected as depositors, but a bank is not an exception to the proverb which speaks of "birds of a feather;" and when the customers of a bank are generally respectable in their character and business, we may be sure that the management of the bank is at least ostensibly moral and mercantile.

SUPERVISION FOUNDED ON RESULTS.

The "ticklers" of a bank are books which show in detail the debts due prospectively to a bank, and the days of payment. The aggregate footing of the ticklers will accordingly exhibit the amount of loans not yet matured, and inductively the amount that is past due. The information which relates to the amount past due is often given reluctantly, but a knowledge of it is vastly important in the proper supervision of the bank; and when tested by the ticklers, the information cannot well be deceptious, or evaded. In knowing the amount of past-due loans, the Board can pretty accurately conjecture the character of the bank's customers. Such loans should be satisfactorily explained by the Manager, and the means he is taking in

their collection. The like may be said of over-drafts, which are rarely permitted by American bankers, though in England they seem to constitute one of the regular modes of advancing money to customers. Whether they shall be permitted is within the proper discretion of the Board; and should they occur inadvertently, the occurrence ought to be manifested to the Board. An exemption from losses is impracticable in long-continued operations; yet all grades of intellect are procurable; hence the retention of an officer is unwise when his results are unsatisfactory. Every man can adduce excuses which no persons may be able to controvert; but when miscarriages are frequent or important, the Board should assume that something wrong exists and eludes detection, rather than that nature deviates from her accustomed processes, making vigilance unsafe, and skill unprofitable. The recent "Rochester Knockings," which some people endeavor to unravel, by reason that they deem the noises supernatural, if they cannot be otherwise explained, saner intellects pass without scrutiny, being confident that the inexplicability of the knockings can prove only that the shrewdness of observers is baffled by the artifice of the exhibiters.

SUPERVISION AGAINST FRAUDS.

The examination of vaults, and counting of money, rarely reveal defalcations, till the defaulter no longer endeavors to conceal his delinquencies. The counting is not pernicious, if the Board choose to amuse their vigilance therewith; but we have not attempted to designate modes in which frauds are detectable, the ingenuity of concealment being naturally as great as the ingenuity of detection. Besides, the detection of intestine frauds requires a greater famili

* A list of all the credits due to individual depositors will, by its aggregate amount, show inductively the amount of over-drafts.

arity with banking accounts, and a more laborious inspection of bank-books, than can ordinarily be expected of bank directors. For the detection of frauds, therefore, the best practical reliance is a supervision, in the way we have indicated, of the bank's business, and a familiar observation of the general conduct, habits, and expenses of the Manager, as well as of all the subordinate officers; the latter, however, are more especially within the duties of the Manager. The ruin of a bank by fraud commences usually in the personal embarrassment of the delinquent, contracted by improper self-indulgencies, or the assumption of secret hazards. Men rarely plunder till their conduct is otherwise disorganized, external symptoms of which observant directors may discover. A bank officer, therefore (and the higher his official position the more urgent the rule), who will not keep disengaged from all suretyship, and business that may render him pecuniarily necessitous, is as unfit to be entrusted with a bank, as a nurse who frequents small-pox hospitals is unfit to be trusted with unvaccinated children. In menageries, animals are kept peaceful by preventing the cravings of hunger; bank executives require a similar assuasive; not by being glutted with great salaries, but by preserving themselves from expenditures unsuited to their income, and from pecuniary liabilities. A bank Manager of undoubted wealth, presents therein the best attainable guarantee against misconduct, and is entitled to greater freedom of action in his personal transactions, than officers of ordinary circumstances; still, we will venture the advice, that when a man wants to be much more than a bank Manager, especially when he wants to employ much more than his own funds, he had better cease from occupying a station which he is too ambitious, or too avaricious, to fill, under the restraints which experience show are alone safe.

CHAPTER III.

OF SUMPTUAR Y LEGISLATION.

THE EXCISE LICENSE QUESTION.*

OUR criminal jurisprudence has long verified the proverb that the law is like a cobweb, which catches small flies but permits large ones to escape, When, however, great rogues elude justice, the defect heretofore has been an evasion of law, but the statute which prohibits licenses, legalizes the principle; for, while five gallons of rum may be sold with impunity, the sale of a gill is an indictable offence. The practical operation of the law is as discriminative as its letter, in favor of conspicuous offenders; for, at all public places of fashionable regalement, where a coarse dram is refused to a laboring man, his luxurious neighbor is unstinted in champaigne. And lest such inequalities should not be sufficient, all the inhabitants of New-York City may sin with drink as their appetites shall dictate.

But these defects are to be corrected. The public stomach, like the natural, must be familiarized by degrees to what it naturally abhors; and nothing can better elucidate the extent to which it may thus be familiarized, than the gradual advance of our Temperance reformers from the blandest moral suasion, as their only authorized corrective

* Published in 1846.