The status of these documents has not been settled. They are issued by a voluntary association and pass between the banks as money. There is no reason why they should not pass among individuals as money, because they are supported by the joint credit of all the banks in the clearing-house. If the veracious daily press may be believed, on one occasion in New York city the banks would pay their depositors nothing but such certificates. They do not seem to differ in any respect, when so used, from the notes of a private banker, since the clearinghouse is simply a voluntary association.1 The only bearing this question has is: Would they be a violation of laws inhibiting a private banker from issuing notes, and therefore void because unlawful, and secondly, would they be taxable as the note issues of a private banker? The further question as to who would be responsible upon the certificates if a crash should come would need to be determined after wise cogitations by courts as to whether or not a bank, national or state, has the implied power to enter a partnership which issues its obligations, when the justification presented is that it is an incalculable facilitation to the transaction of a vast volume of business which could hardly be transacted in any other way. Some zealous official might find occupation for his leisure in attempting to collect the state-bank tax, but he would probably resign upon an urgent request.

1 See Crane v. Fourth St. Bank, 173 Pa. 566. It is not a bank; but if it is a voluntary association that issues paper and performs many of the functions of a bank, what is it ? The case says that it does not violate the currency laws of the United States. That is certainly true, because those laws only prevent private issues by means of the state-bank tax. This case says the certificates are not currency, yet they are negotiable. Dutton v. Merchants' Nat. Bank, 16 Phila. 94. But the whole utterance in the case first above cited is a mass of illy considered dictum.