AGRICULTURAL CREDIT.—DAVIDSON. AT1 
in their own localities. All of them have large deposits with 
other banks in Canada and elsewhere; and it is the Farmers’ 
Congress of New Brunswick, the home of the small bank in the 
Canadian system, that calls for this report on Agricultural Credit. 
The proposals to establish land banks are generally charac- 
terized by an entire absence of knowledge of banking conditions 
and of the history of credit institutions. If any principle has 
been established by bitter experience it is that land is not a 
satisfactory basis for a bank. One agitator declared in the 
House of Commons (Hansard, 1884, p. 213,) that money based 
on the landed property of a country is perfectly safe, whereas 
experience has shown again and again that money might as well 
be issued based on the rings of Saturn. To attempt to modify our 
banking system in this way would destroy all its present value, 
which is, however, commercial rather than agricultural. And 
the problem before us is not how to destroy the credit which 
the merchant and the manufacturer enjoy, but how to make 
that credit, or some credit, available for the farmer. In my 
opinion, the Canadian banking system is doing all it can do, and 
one might even venture the assertion that it is sometimes doing, 
by “liberal banking” in this province and elsewhere, and by 
undue concession of purely personal accommodation, more than 
it is safe for banks to do. For the farmer, as a seller of 
produce, it does and can do much; for the farmer, as a member 
of the general public, it does and can do much ; for the farmer, 
as a farmer, it can do but little; and it is strictly forbidden by 
law to attempt more than it does do. The banks are forbidden 
to lend on mortgage or the security of land. They may, and do, 
to a large extent, | believe, evade this prohibition by making 
land the basis on which personal accommodation is given. But 
the prohibition stands. Further, the wording of the act was 
amended so as to stand in the way of the bank making advances 
to a farmer as a “producer.” This was done professedly to 
protect the interests of the farmer. It was pointed out that the 
general credit of the farmer “with merchants and others rests 
on the visible possession of certain personal property, such 
