52 MUTUAL BANKING. 



partner or director for the sums expressed, with interest. The 

 company was in a maze. At a general meeting, some, it is said, 

 were for running all hazards, although the act subjected them to a 

 pramunire; but the directors had more prudence, and advised them 

 to declare that they considered themselves dissolved, and meet only 

 to consult upon some method of redeeming their bills of the posses- 

 sors, which every man engaged to endeavor in proportion to his in- 

 terest, and to pay in to the directors, or some of them, to burn or 

 destroy. Had the company issued their bills at the value expressed 

 on the face of them, they would have had no reason to complain at 

 being obliged to redeem them at the same rate, but as this was not 

 the case in general, and many of the possessors of the bills had ac- 

 quired them for half their value, as expressed equity could not 

 be done; and, so far as respected the company, perhaps, the Parlia- 

 ment was not very anxious; the loss they sustained being but a just 

 penalty for their unwarrantable undertaking, if it had been proper- 

 ly applied. Had not the Parliament interposed, the Province 

 would have been in the utmost confusion, and the authority of 

 government entirely in the Land-Bank Company."— (p. 353.) 



The "miscliiefs" occasioned by this land-bank seems to have 

 been political, rather than economical, for our author nowhere 

 aflfirms that the bill holders, not members of the company lost any- 

 thing by the institution. We would remark that there are certain 

 "mischiefs" which are regarded not without indulgence by poster- 

 ity. Governor Hutchinson ought to have explained more in detail 

 the nature of the evils he complains of; and also to have told us 

 why he, a declared enemy of popular institutions, opposed the ad- 

 vocates of the bank so uncompromisingly. Mutualism operates, by 

 its very nature, to render political government founded on arbi- 

 trary force, superfluous; that is, it operates to the decentralization 

 of the political power, and to the transformation of the state, by 

 substituting self-government in the stead of government ab extra* 

 The Land-Bank of 1740, which embodied the mutual principle, op- 

 erated vigorously in opposition to the government. Can we wonder 

 that it had to be killed by an arbitrary stretch "of the supreme 

 power of Parliament," and by an ex post facto law bearing 

 outrageously on the individual members of the company? For our 

 part, we admire the energy — the confidence in the princii)lo of mu- 

 tualism—of those memb(!rs who proposed to go on in spite of 

 Parliament, "although the act subjected them to a pro'iuunire." 

 If thi-y had gone on, they would simply have anticipated the Amer- 

 ican Rev(jlution by some thirty years. 



But wliere is tlie warning to future ages? According to Gov- 

 ernor Hutchinson's own statement, the fault of the bank was, that 

 it would have succt^eded too well if it had had a fair trial; nay, 



*Tlils Is also ProiuUion's flioory; wliicli lu^ felicitously c;ill<'(l "t lio 

 dissolution of goveniuiciit in the economic organism." — EDrrOH. 



