of officers in banking establishments for mutual assurance, but difficulties occurred which at the time prevented the plan being carried out. We believe that it might now be adopted successfully.-ED. B.M.] ON THE CHARGES MADE BY IRISH AND SCOTCH BANKS, ON RETIRED NOTES, DISHONORED BILLS, &c. SIR,-Concurring in the remarks made by your correspondent, "A Manager," under the head of "Proposed Banking Convention," in your Magazine of this month, I would beg to suggest one or two other matters for the consideration of such a convention, should one take place-viz., the charges made by Scotch and Irish banks, in accounting for any of their own notes or cheques remitted them by English banks for payment. The latter always either remit Bank of England paper, or make a payment in London for such remittance, without deduction; and why the former do not do so, I should be glad to learn, there being no longer any ground or warrant for making a charge for "Exchange," a pound sterling being the same throughout the United Kingdom, and the expense, and nearly the time required for corresponding betwixt its different parts being also the same. The commission charged by Scotch banks on English dishonored bills being three or four times as much as an English bank's charge, I should be glad to see an explanation thereon, from some of your Scotch correspondents, and should also like to know whether they charge more on English dishonored bills than on Scotch ones? The charge of 14 and 21 days' interest, made by most English banks of issue, on their neighbour's notes, has always appeared to me as unjustifiable as the above charges of the Scotch and Irish banks, and which I should be glad to see abolished. Those banks which disapprove of having a local circulation, and issue Bank of England notes, may with some propriety make such a charge; but banks issuing notes themselves, and deriving a profit therefrom, are by no means entitled to do the same. When the currency question next comes to be discussed in Parliament, this practice may be urged by the Bank of England and their partisans in favour of having only one bank of issue. 22nd May, 1851. L. Y. OF RETIRING BILLS NOT MADE PAYABLE AT BANKERS' AGENTS. SIR. A short time since, you called the attention of your readers to the subject of bills made payable with London bankers not being retired by the banker with whom they were domiciled, but referred to other bankers for payment. The remedy proposed by you, in my humble opinion, was, without being effective, much too cumbersome, and does not appear to have excited so much attention as the importance of the subject demands; for, notwithstanding the trouble this practice causes to London bankers, and the facilities it affords to the fraudulent, by enabling them to retire forged acceptances and accommodation bills, the evil, so far from being checked, appears to be increasing. It appears to me, that an effectual plan for preventing such irregularities might easily be found; and I beg to suggest, that if the London bankers would agree to advise their country friends, that on a particular day, say the 1st July, the practice of referring bills from one banker to another would cease (except, perhaps, in special cases, such as the removal of an account, &c., &c.), and requesting the country bankers to assist in carrying out such regulations, by ceasing to advise the payment of bills not payable at their London agents, the practice, with all its evils, would at once vanish, and that, too, without being attended with any loss or inconvenience to any one, except, perhaps, to the forger of, or dealer in, bills-a class with which bankers cannot have much sympathy. I am, Sir, your most obedient servant, A BANKER'S CLERK. PROFITS OF ENGLISH JOINT STOCK BANKS. SIR,—Attention having been aroused respecting the position of the Scotch Banks, I think it may be also a lesson to some of our English banks; amongst the reports in your last, is one of the National Provincial Bank of England, in which no idea is given of its position, and only a small dividend (6 per cent.) declared. I believe the paid capital of that establishment is £420,000, and its authorised circulation £442,300, say together, leaving a margin for fluctuation in its circulation, £840,000; now if that amount were laid out in consols, it would produce as large a dividend as now paid to the proprietors, and that without the risk there must necessarily be in conducting ninety-five banks and agencies. It also seems to me they unnecessarily increase the liabilities of the shareholders, by trying to extend their operations so far as to the carrying on ninetyfive branches and sub-branches. The profits for the year 1850, averaging something less than £330 for each branch, and as Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, Gloucester, and some other considerable towns, have branches, many of the branches must be quite, or very nearly, unproductive, and therefore a large burthen, in the shape of responsibility, thrown without any profit on the shareholders. I am not advocating the payment of high dividends, and running great risks, but looking at it in the following way, I think a dividend of 6 per cent. is much less than such an establishment ought to pay, as it possesses many advantages which a more circumscribed sphere does not, such as taking up money in one part, and employing it in another, &c. Take its capital, £420,000, at 4 per cent. (which I suppose the proprietors would be able to obtain on undoubted security), would produce £16,800, and as the amount paid for dividend was £24,650 it leaves £7,750 as the divided banking profits of the last year, for which the proprietors had to bear the responsibility of many millions of money; thus the divided banking profits for the year averaged the amount of about £82 for each branch. I cannot give any guess at the per centage of profit on the employed capital, viz., proprietors' capital, circulation, and deposits, but I think it must be as small as any of the Scotch banks. In your same number you give a report of the Birmingham Banking Company, bearing a striking contrast with the above, the divided profits there amount to 15 per cent. on a capital of £200,000, of which the proprietors have paid one half, £5, the remaining £5 having been added to capital from profits, making them now £10 shares, the dividend being to the criginal proprietors 30 per cent., and for which their responsibility is much less than in the former case for 6 per cent. Perhaps the foregoing are extreme cases; but I do think trading companies should pay considerably more to their proprietors than mortgage interest. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 10th June, 1851. A SUBSCRIBER. [A Subscriber seems to overlook the fact that banking profits have been unusually low during the past year or two, and that a sound business, with a 6 per cent. dividend, is infinitely to be preferred to a 10 per cent, dividend on the discount of doubtful bills.-ED, B.M.] RULE FOR CALCULATING INTEREST AT ANY RATE PER CENT. A Correspondent favours us with the following: "AN EASY RULE AND TABLE for calculating Interest and Discount at any rate per cent., for any number of Years, Months, or Days, by WM. KG. FARNELL, of Norwich, Schoolmaster." When interest is allowed at five per cent. per annum, it is evidently 1-20th of the principal, or one shilling per pound for a year, and one penny per pound for a month. At the same rate per cent. to find for any number of days, the exact way is to multiply by the days, and divide by 7300, the reciprocal of 1-20th of 1-365th; but, the following short method is near enough for all purposes. Multiply one-third of the days into the principal, or one-third of the principal into the days, whichever may be the more easy of operation. Strike off the right hand figure from the product, and call the remainder pence, and for every seventy-two pence, or six shillings, in the same, take off a penny; the remainder is the interest sought to within a small fractional part. The following table for reducing principal at any rate per cent. (to be wrought by the above standard of five per cent.) will answer any possible necessity in the calculating of simple interest and discount. At 5 per cent. the interest of £100, as explained above, is for a year £5; for a month 8s. 4d.; for any number of days (say seventy-two), it is 100 x 24-3: - 240, equals 240 pence-34d. = 236 d. equals 19s. 8d.; which is within a fraction of a farthing of the exact answer. At 4 per cent. deduct 1-20th from the given principal, and it produces an equivalent principal at 5 per cent. At 4 per cent deduct 1-10th. At 44 per cent. find for 4, and take off 1-18th. At 4 per cent. deduct 1-5th. At 3 per cent. deduct 1-4th. At 3 per cent. find for 33, and deduct 1-15th. At 34 per cent. deduct 1-4th, and 1-10th, thus 100-100-4-100-10=£65. At 3 per cent. deduct 1-5th twice. At 24 per cent. take half 5 per cent. and add 1-10th. At 2 per cent. half 5 per cent. At 24 per cent. half 5 per cent. minus 1-10th. At 2 per cent half 5 per cent. minus 1-5th. At 1 per cent. find for 34 and take half of it, or for 54 and take 1-3rd of it. At 14 per cent. take 1-4th of 5 per cent. At per cent, take 1-10th of 5 per cent. FINANCIAL CONDITION OF THE SCOTCH BANKS. SIR,-On the 4th current I sent you a copy of one of the Glasgow daily newspapers of that date, containing a letter I felt it my duty to address, through that and our other daily papers, to the Directors of the Clydesdale Bank, touching their official denial, in your last number, of certain "statements as regards that bank," which appeared in my Hints to Investors.' VOL. XI. 2 L By note, under date Eth current, addressed to their manager, I at same time requested the attention of the Directors of that bank to the call thus publicly made on them, in order that they might offer to the public, either through the medium of the Glas row paper, or of your next number (if not of both), the detailed exp! nati,ns which their general denial rendered alike due, as an act of justice to themselves, to the public, and to me. But although that call was afterwards repeated in one of those daily papers, and again inserted in a third Glasgow journal of the same week, they have hitherto attempted no proof of their assertion, either by figures or otherwise. If, then, no reply has been forwarded by them for your next number, I respectfully submit that, while their attempt, by such vague assertions, only leads to suspicions that there may be something to conceal, my statements must be held unimpeached: that an off-hand general negative, such as that hazarded by these Directors, can neither put aside facts founded on their own figures, nor affect the question of necessity, which has now arisen, that full reports of all Scotch Joint-Stock Banking Companies' affairs should be periodically published. Having admitted into your columns the Clydesdale Bank's assertion, unsupported by a single figure or solitary fact, to disprove, on any point, the truth of my statements, I feel sure you will with equal justice give place, in your next number, to my letter, as well as to the present short reference to the subject. I am, respectfully, Sir, your obliged, humble servant, 107, Buchanan-street, Glasgow, 21st June, 1851. DANL. PAUL. Reports of Joint-Stock Banks, THE NATIONAL BANK OF IRELAND. THE sixteenth Annual General Meeting of the proprietors of the National Bank of Ireland, was held on the 28th May last, at the office of the society, No. 13. Old Broad street. The chair was taken by J. C. Ruding, Esq. Mr. King, the Secretary of the Company, read the report of the Directors, which was as follows; "The Directors have the honour to present to the proprietors their annual report. It does not on the face of it show the same favourable results as have attended the operations of the bank in former years; but this may, in a great measure, be explained from the new and altered form in which the various accounts are now furnished. The bank never stood in higher credit with the public, nor possessed within itself greater elements of prosperity. The Directors need not remind the proprietary that this bank has always been considered a national establishment. Its declared aim and object have been from the first, to aid the hard-working and industrious agriculturalist, as well as the more wealthy trader; and to afford accommodation alike to the poor and the rich, when such could be done without unreasonable risk. The Directors may point with pride and satisfaction to the important assistance this bank has rendered, in developing the trade and aiding the agricultural resources of Ireland. At the same time they have deeply to regret that, owing to a combination of uncontrolable events, which have caused com merce to languish so long, and every kind of property to undergo so great a depression, losses have occurred beyond what could h: ve been expected in the ordinary course of business, and which no caution a id prudence could have averted. Amidst the famine and disease with which Irelan has been visited, fo!lowed by the commercial panic of 1847, the revolutic a which has taken place in all landed property, and the emigration of so many mall farmers and industrious shopkeepers, it could not be expected that this bank could escape from loss, and it is well that in former years there had beer laid aside a reserve fund to meet contingencies of such a nature. Of this find, the Directors have necessarily, but most unwillingly, availed themselves to write off debts which have become irretrievably bad, and to provide for a further loss which they have estimated as likely to arise on others of a doubtful character. Upon some outstanding transactions the bank holds life policies as collateral securities, the premiums on which are paid by the bank. To meet this charge the Board has thought it prudent to make provision by laying aside the sum of £8,000 as an insurance fund. The accounts, For the future more favourable prospects are in view. generally, show a gradual improvement in the condition of Ireland; the fairs are better attended; all kinds of stock bring higher prices; and it is hoped that from other important changes taking place, combined with the introduction of more capital, and greater skill and enterprise bestowed on agriculture, results will arise greatly beneficial to the country at large. With these remarks the Directors beg to present to the proprietors the following accounts, which, taken together, will show the actual position of the affairs of the bank. The first statement is the profit and loss account usually exhibited, viz.-- Deduct half-year's divi dend to Midsummer, 1850 Do. do. to Christmas £50,105 4 4 25,161 11 5 22,710 18 10 20,000 0 0 Insurance fund 8,000 0 0 73,210 18 10 ber, 1850 Leaving amount at credit of reserve fund at Decem The second is an account of the Assets and Liabilities of the Bank, viz.-- ASSETS. |