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 and the exigencies of financial respectability make a holding of them essential; and when a security or any other article is one that has to be bought by a certain number of people, the consequence is that the price is to a certain extent artificial, and that it should, as a general rule, be avoided for that reason by those who are not obliged to have it. This principle also applies to all the other stocks that are known as "trustee securities," as to which more will have to be said later.

Nevertheless, there are certain British Government securities with special privileges attached to them, which outweigh the objection above noted. Apart from safety of income, the pleasantest feature about a security is the power of its holder to demand his money back in full and at once, and the National Savings Certificates that are on continuous sale at our banks and post offices confer this privilege on the holder, and the still more important one—to those whose incomes are large enough to be taxed and supertaxed—that the interest from them, which is not paid but accumulates to the holder's credit, need not be included in any statement of income made for purposes of taxation. The interest on these certificates has been drastically reduced, and to those who buy the Third Series and hold them for ten