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COPYRIGHT, 1900,

BY

JOHN M. ZANE

255557

STATE JOURNAL PRINTING COMPANY,

PRINTERS AND STEREOTYPERS,

MADISON, WIS.

PREFATORY NOTE.

It is the aim of this treatise to present all the law that can be properly considered as applicable to the business of banking. The work is expected to be of use not only to lawyers, but also to bankers; and on this account not only the law as to the right of banking, the methods of carrying on a bank, the rights of stockholders in banking corporations, the liabilities of bank officers and their powers, as well as the law as to deposits, collections, securities, savings banks and clearing-houses, but also the law governing the duty of the holder of commercial paper as to demand for acceptance and for payment and notice of dishonor, has been included. The cases have all been consulted, it is thought, and their results have been included. No opportunity for compression has been omitted, but this result has not been sought at the expense of fullness of detail. Upon principles about which there has been no dispute it has not been considered desirable to multiply citations. There has been no hesitation in condemning cases not properly decided, but the case itself has not been passed by on that account.

The law as to national banks will be found fully treated in the course of the work. But it was not considered proper i to divide the work arbitrarily into two parts, since the great mass of banking transactions, whether made by state or private banks, or by national banks, is governed by the same rules. For example, the law governing deposits or

collections, or the liabilities of bank officers, or their powers in binding the bank, does not differ, except in small details, whether the bank be a national or a state bank. The labor of the lawyer in consulting the work is merely doubled by such a division. But in order to save the practitioner or the banker the necessity of consulting the Federal statutes, the various sections of the Revised Statutes of the United States and the acts amendatory thereof, which have any bearing upon national banks, will be found in the appendix.

The reasons that require a treatise of this description, the principles which render this particular department of the law distinctive, will be dwelt upon in the Introduction, which precedes the body of the work. In that connection the author will explain and refer to the considerations which indicate that there is something new to be said upon the topics treated. And while not desirous of impugning the truth of the wise man's statement that there is nothing new under the sun, yet the author has found that there may be a new reason given for an old doctrine a reason, too, which solves properly many a troublesome case likely to arise.

CHICAGO, January 1, 1900.

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