CONCLUSION. 475 



liability is preferable, as under the other. There are excel- 

 lent little societies to testify to this, for instance in Pied- 

 mont. In our own country probably the limited liabihty 

 form will prove more generally acceptable. People are 

 coming round to it at the present time in Ireland — having 

 done very well under unlimited liability, out of which, 

 however, it is thought that now, with more money in their 

 purses and greater familiarity with business, they have 

 " grown." Something more than twenty years ago a 

 similar transformation was adopted before my eyes among 

 some rural credit societies in the Riviera. In India people 

 greatly prefer unHmited liabihty. And I hold that under 

 their circumstances they are right. Only, when limited 

 liabihty is adopted, people will do well to avoid blending 

 ordinary trading business with banking and credit' — except 

 it be, by way of concession, on the very lowest grade. In 

 a little Raiffeisen society, so long as the rather severe rules 

 are loyally respected, there is no danger in the combination 

 of the two forms. But in a share society there is distinct 

 danger. In both the great agricultural Co-operative Unions 

 in Germany, that of Raiffeisen and that of Haas, a dozen 

 years ago or so, such combination in the Central Depart- 

 ments of the two Unions, that is, at headquarters, led to 

 serious embarrassment and loss. It was against that 

 combination that a rather strongly worded warning from 

 myself, in the second edition of " People's Banks "—which 

 passage appears to have been misunderstood in Upper 

 Merrion Street — was pointed — just as I had spoken strongly 

 against it at our International Congress at Budapest in 

 1904. The desirable correction was subsequently effected 

 in both cases and further loss has thereby been guarded 

 against. Please God, before long we shall see the problem 

 upon which the Board of Agriculture and its advisers have 

 quite unnecessarily bestowed so much barren labour and 

 ingenuity, solved, and Credit provided for our farmers. 

 There is one principle, however, which, it may be laid down, 

 cannot be got away from, and which must be scrupulously 

 held fast by, whatever else ingenuitymay suggest, namely, 

 that what under all circumstances must first be provided. 



