Edward Douglass White

“ It has long been settled that one of the public policies embodied in the national-bank act was to secure the public credit and encourage the issue of notes to circulate as currency, founded upon the security of the bonds of the United States,-a purpose which would be directly discouraged by exempting a national banking association which reduced its circulation below 5 per centum of its capital from the payment of a duty thereon, and yet enforcing the payment of such duty against a national bank which had not reduced its outstanding circulation to the limit stated. ”

“ It is indeed true that the effect of the construction in an extremely narrow and technical sense might be considered as operating a redundancy. But the asserted redundancy is more seeming than real, as § 3416 was plainly not enacted in order to reiterate what was expressly or impliedly embodied in 3411, but was to declare the obligation of a national bank in a stated contingency to make return and payment on the outstanding circulation of a state bank which was subject to taxation. ”

“ Whenever the outstanding circulation of any bank, association, corporation, company, or person is reduced to an amount not exceeding five per centum of the chartered or declared capital existing at the time the same was issued, said circulation shall be free from taxation ”