8 BANKING THEORIES IN UNITED STATES te gross ignorance all too frequently took their place. Niles and Gouge and Raguet complained vehemently and often of these evils. But there was also a growing perception of faults in the system itself — faults which, quite apart from the delinquencies of the individual banker, were certain to work mischief. There was a better analysis of the nature of banking. The new doc- trines stressed the fluctuations in the value of the monetary standard and bore fruit in discussions of the business cycle. On the one hand, they assumed the form of opposition to all banks of issue; on the other, they took a more promising turn — a grop- ing toward sounder principles of banking. 1 The president and directors of the People’s Bank of Roxbury, Massachusetts, which was accused within three years of its founding in 1833 of practices inviting forfeiture of charter, pleaded in attenuation of their blame that they were “not themselves capitalists, nor men of previous experience in banking; and acquired their first knowledge of its rules and principles in this comparatively humble insti- tution.”