ON THE LAW OF BANKS AND BANKING. BY JOHN T. MORSE, JR. THIRD EDITION. REVISED AND RE-ARRANGED, AND GREATLY ENLARGED, BY FRANK PARSONS. VOL. I. BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 1888. PREFACE. THE work of Mr. Morse upon Banks and Banking has met with great and ever increasing favor since its issue in 1870. It has been quoted with approval, and often with very high commendation, by the judges in nearly every supreme court and court of last resort in the country, and is uniformly referred to by counsel and court as the highest authority upon questions of banking law. the The points of difference between this edition and the last are briefly these: the text has been broken up into sections, with head lines in black; new matter has been added, exceeding in mass the whole of the last edition, necessitating the appearance of the book in two volumes; the original text has been carefully revised, rearranged, and in part rewritten, in process of moulding all the matter, old and new, into consistent sections; the whole has been carefully re-indexed; the text of the National Banking Act of 1864 has been replaced by the corresponding text of the United States Revised Statutes of the edition of 1878, retaining, however, the order of the law of 1864, so that cases which refer to the sections of that law may be easily handled; the laws of Congress relating to banking that have been enacted since 1878 will also be found in Part Second, together with notes of many cases construing the national banking laws; and in connection with the text, throughout the book, a system of analyses has been adopted at the heads of the chapters which secures the advantages of rapidity and grasp incident to condensed statement, together with the accuracy and vividness that can only be attained by the concrete statement of cases found in the text, and which is so essential in the making of a book that shall be useful to lawyers not having access to the riches of a law library; and being written from a different standpoint from that of the text itself, the latter aiming at concrete divisions while the analyses seek the abstract, they afford much additional light. Section 310 is a good example of the value of these analyses. That section is a composite photograph of all the cases on the "Payment of Deposit." Earnest efforts have been made to secure an especially exhaustive treatment of all subjects of importance in banking law that are unsettled or in dispute; such, for example, as the effect of certification, a bank's responsibility for its correspondent or notary, and the right of a check-holder to sue the drawee. The changes and additions are so many and great, that the present volumes constitute more nearly a new work than a new edition. In the edition of 1870 the cases cited numbered about 1,200; the second edition, in 1879, added 417 cases; in this book the authorities cited number nearly 3,400, or more than double the number contained in the second edition. The decisions now added do not all bear date after 1879, nor are they all strictly banking cases; some are quoted because they clear up our subject by analogy. But making all due allowances, the figures above mentioned indicate extraordinary activity and uncertainty in this branch of law. There is probably no department of law that is growing more rapidly, or in which there are a greater number of important questions that are the subject of conflict. The common law decisions in the various States are at war all along the line of banking law. In view of this fact, and of the great importance of a uniform system of commercial law in these United States, forming, as they practically do, a single business community, we respectfully suggest the feasibility of calling a convention of delegates from each State to subject the points of difference to thorough discussion, and recommend such legislation as will bring the law into harmony upon these matters, which have no relation to the boundaries of States, but are of continental or world-wide interest. BOSTON, September, 1888. FRANK PARSONS. |