PRINCIPLES OF NOTE ISSUE 161 embodying his viewpoint. His Credit System in France, Great Britain, and the United States (1838) is a unique argument for a policy of complete laissez faire with respect to banking. Not the least remarkable feature of it is Carey’s confident assertion (one year after the panic of 1837) that our own banking system was easily the best in the world, by an arithmetic law based upon relative freedom from restriction. Like Hildreth, Carey thought that “there is no more propriety or necessity for regulating who shall or who shall not issue his note, to be exchanged with those who are willing to take it, than there is for regulating who shall or who shall not grow potatoes or make shoes.” ! With the de- velopment of the idea of a bond-secured note issue, free banking upon the condition that security be offered for circulation became generally popular. Restriction of banking privileges to corporations with exclusive charters was defended by relatively few writers. Gallatin thought that the power of note issue should be so restricted, but that the other operations of banks should be left free to all.2 Tucker re- futed the absurdities of Hildreth and Carey by observing that the interest of the community is not served when the banker manu- factures his product in as large quantities as possible? And the holders of bank notes are unable to exercise much choice as to the notes they will receive. H. F. Baker objected to the free banking system as adopted in New York and elsewhere on the score that it “invites the inexperienced, as well as others, to enter upon a business which requires skill, experience, and talents.” The defenders of free banking had to contend, in order to be logical, that multiplying the number of banks within the limits to which private capital found it profitable to do so would be ad- vantageous to the community. At the very beginning of our national history some seem to have believed that the Bank of the * Carey, The Credit System, etc. (1838), p. 118. * Gallatin, Considerations (1831), p. 95; ““ Suggestions” (1841), Writings, iii, 446. * Tucker, Theory of Money and Banks (1839), p. 244. \ Ibid., p. 245. ’ H.F. Baker, “Banking in the United States,” Bankers’ M agazine (July, 1854), Xs. 14.