Volume 2 - ElectricCanadian.com

DEVELOPMENT OF CANADIAN BANKING 441checking defective banking must be the very limited volumeof opinion of bankers themselves, or of those who had madea special study of banking experience. The belated recognitionof these essential facts led to the conclusion that toprevent irresponsible and reckless banking would requiremuch more than tabulated returns and throttling restrictions.It would require, in fact, some organization within the professionitself to check effectively careless or fraudulentpractices on the part of individual bankers, but itwas manyyears before steps to provide such an organization were tak-ii.Finally, in 1890, as will be seen hereafter, the benefits derivedfrom frequent consultations among the leading bankers of theday led to the formation of the "Canadian Bankers Association**which, as a result partly of the influence naturally exertedby such a body of trained bankers and partly of the powersconferred upon it by statutory enactment, has been able toplace a great measure of restraint on unsound practices.Before introducing the next measure dealing with currencyand banking, the Government, as it had promised, invited theopinions of the bankers. The questionnaire circulated forthis purpose revealed the bias of the Government towards astate monopoly of note issues, but it elicited a majority ofreplies antagonistic to any interference with the issues of thebanks. Nevertheless, the Government, under the leadershipof the new Finance Minister, the Hon. John Rose, decidedonce more to introduce a measure for assimilating the Canadianbanking system, more particularly as regards the note issue,to that of the United States. Accordingly, early in the sessionof 1869, Mr. Rose brought forward his new banking andcurrency measure, and the contest between the opposing forceswas renewed with increasing vigour, this time extendingthroughout the whole Dominion. The division was not onpolitical but on territorial and commercial lines, and many ofthose who usually supported or opposed the Government foundthemselves in the opposite political camp. Its friends wereof the opinion that the new measure would pass the Commons