Under the United States national banking system the life of a bank is limited to twenty years from the date of the execution of the particular bank's certificate of organization, but at the expiration of the first, or any succeeding period, the bank, if it elects to do so, may have its corporate existence renewed for the same number of years.

Under the Canadian system the charter of every bank expires at the same time, and the renewal period is only ten years.

I do not intend to discuss the length of the period - most of us think it quite too short. It is the effect of all charters expiring at the same time to which I desire to draw attention.

This condition of things doubtless arose merely from the confederation in 1867 of the provinces which had granted the then existing charters, but which thereupon surrendered their authority over banking institutions to the Federal Government. As the charters granted by the old provinces expired, the banks working under them became institutions subject to the new Federal or Dominion Banking Act, and by its conditions every charter expires at the same time. This insures a complete discussion of the principles underlying the Act, and of the details connected with the working of it, once in ten years.

In the interval we are almost free from attempts by-demagogues or ambitious but ill-informed legislators to interfere with the details of our system, but during the session of Parliament preceding the date of the expiry of the charters we have to defend our system from the demagogue, the bank-hater, the honest but inexperienced citizen who writes letters to the press, sometimes the press itself - indeed from all the sources of attack which institutions possessing a franchise granted by the people experience when they come before the public to answer for their stewardship. But while resisting the attacks of ignorance, we are, of course, called upon to answer such just criticism as may arise from the existence of defects in our system developed by the experience of time. Or perhaps, as when the Act was under discussion in 1890, we may see the defects even more clearly than the public, and may ourselves suggest the remedies.

Whatever may be said for or against these decennial battles, the product of the discussion is a Banking Act, improved in many respects by the exchange of opinion between the bankers and the public. The banking system having been subjected to unsparing analysis by an unusually enlightened people - perhaps too democratic in tendency and too jealous of every privilege granted, but anxious to build rather than to destroy - is brought at each period of renewal to a higher degree of perfection.