The Theory and Practice of Banking (1875) Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Commerce, and Economics?is expressly included under the title Wealth, Goods, and Merchandise in Roman Law. It is exactly the same in every system of Law. It is one of the elementary principles of Law that a Right Of Action is a species of Property. Thus says Mr. Williamsl ? " Choses-in- action having now become assignable, became an important kind of personal property." Again3?"A legal Chose-in-Action constitutes a valuable personal property."?" In addition to goods and and chattels in possession, which have always been personal property, and to Debts which have long been considered so." So also Mr. Justice Byles, speaking of Bills and Notes, which are Rights of Action recorded on paper, says3?"This species of property is now in aggregate value inferior only to the land or funded debt of the Kingdom." This sentence was written more than forty years ago, and we may safely assert that the mass of Credit in circulation at the present time greatly exceeds the funded debt. So a Right of Action is included under the words " goods and chattels " or " effects " in an Act of Parliament.4 All modern Economists have seen precisely the same thing. Thus Smith expressly includes Money under the title of Circulating Capital; and under the name of Money he includes Paper, such as Bank Notes and Bills of Exchange, which are simply Rights of Action. Among many other passages it will be sufficient to quote one here?" Suppose different banks and bankers issue promissory notes payable to bearer to the extent of one million, reserving in their different coffers £200,000 for answering occasional demands. There would remain, therefore, in circulation £800,000 in gold and silver, and £1,000,000 in Bank Notes, or £1,800,000 of paper and money together." He also observes that Credits in the Bank of Am...Read More