OF BANKS AND BANKING THE CLEARING HOUSE, CURRENCY, DOMINION NOTES, BILLS, NOTES, CHEQUES AND OTHER NEGOTIABLE INSTRUMENTS BY JOHN DELATRE FALCONBRIDGE, M.A., LL.B. OF OSGOODE HALL, BARRISTER-AT-LAW TORONTO: CANADA LAW BOOK COMPANY, LIMITED 1907 Entered according to Act of the Parliament o Canada, in the year LIBRARY OF THE LELAND STANFORB, JR., UNIVERSITY LAW BEPARTMENT. PREFACE. The book which I am venturing to commit to the kindly consideration of the bankers and the members of my own profession in the Dominion consists primarily of an exposition of the Bank Act and the Bills of Exchange Act, recently re-enacted as Chapters 29 and 119 of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1906. The former Act has established a system of banking which differs in many respects from that prevailing either in England or in the United States. The Act contains provisions in regard to the incorporation, organization and existence of chartered banks with important but carefully limited lending powers and other privileges, and in regard to the security afforded by the banks to the public. Since 1901 no commentary on the Bank Act has been published and the cases on the subject which have been reported during the last six years are both numerous and important. In connection with the Bank Act, I have not neglected to discuss the general relation of banker and customer and the body of law merchant which governs that relation, but the limits of time and space have restricted my discussion of them to a moderate length. The Act affects such relation to a comparatively small extent, and the standard English text books contain an exposition of the law more in detail than it has been possible to include in a book of the somewhat wide range of this one. In the course of the second part of the book, I have had frequent occasion to acknowledge my indebtedness to Chalmers on Bills of Exchange. The fact that the English Act was Idrafted by the author of that work and that the provisions of the Act were for the most part his deductions from the cases which he cites as illustrations gives his work a peculiar importance. I have, therefore, made a free use of Chalmers' illustrations. In doing so I am following the example of previous commentators on the Canadian Act. Both the Bank Act and the Bills of Exchange Act are also illustrated by the leading Canadian cases. Inasmuch, however, as the Bills of Exchange Act is a codifying Act and has made 76813 plain many matters which before were obscure, or has given statutory sanction to many propositions which formerly required to be supported by the citation of reported cases, I have not hesitated to omit a reference to cases where I considered that their citation would increase the size of the book without adding materially to its usefulness. Both the statutes above mentioned have undergone great changes in form in the revision of 1906. Whenever an alteration in wording or arrangement is not obviously immaterial, I have in the notes drawn attention to the change. By virtue of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1906, Act, if upon any point the provisions of the Revised Statutes are not in effect the same as those of the Acts for which they are substituted, the provisions of the Revised Statutes prevail as respects all transactions, matters and things subsequent to the time when the Revised Statutes take effect, that is, on, from and after the 31st of January, 1907. One result of the revision of the Bills of Exchange Act is that, while before the revision its sections corresponded almost exactly with those of the English Act and only a important differences had to be borne in mind, now the arrangement and section-numbering of the Canadian and the English Acts are so different that an English text book no longer affords a convenient guide to the Canadian Act. It gives me pleasure to acknowledge my obligation to Mr. Arthur Whyte Anglin, Barrister-at-law, who was so kind as to read the manuscript of the first half of the book and who made numerous valuable suggestions which I was glad to adopt. The responsibility for the final form of the text is, however, mine alone. I am indebted to my father for the affectionate care with which he read the whole book in proof form. The proof was also read, and the table of cases prepared, by Mr. R. B. Lowndes. TORONTO, April, 1907. J. D. F. |