Page:Lombard Street (1917).djvu/114

86 bank notes: for a long period a few do so. But in the end common sense conquers. The circulation of bank notes decreases and the deposit of money with the banker increases. The credit of the banker having been efficiently advertised by the note, and accepted by the public, he lives on the credit so gained years after the note issue itself has ceased to be very important to him.

The efficiency of this introduction is proportional to the diffusion of the right of note issue. A single monopolist issuer, like the Bank of France, works its way with difficulty through a country, and advertises banking very slowly. Even now the Bank of France, which, I believe, by law ought to have a branch in each Department, has only branches in sixty out of eighty-six. On the other hand, the Swiss banks, where there is always one or more to every Canton, diffuse banking rapidly. We have seen that the liabilities of the Bank of France stand thus—

But the aggregate Swiss banks, on the contrary, stand—