sengers move forward from left to right of the clerks, handing in to those clerks the packages addressed to their respective banks, and taking receipts for them on their statements. When the circuit is completed all the packages have been delivered and received, and the amounts and the aggregates, both debtor and creditor, noted by the clerks. When the clerks find all correct the messengers take the packages received, and return to bank. The several clerks then pass round a memorandum of the debits, credits, and balance, each of his respective bank. When these memoranda have made the circuit, each clerk has on his statement the debits, credits, and balance, whether debtor or creditor, of each bank. If these debits and credits and debtor and creditor balances are found to balance, the clerks now leave the clearing house. If not, they remain until the error or errors are discovered. The balances due by the several banks are paid in to the clearinghouse that day by 11.30 A. M., and are receivable by the creditor banks by 12.30 P. M. A second clearing of drafts, &c., received by the morning's mail, is made at the clearing house by the messengers at 11.30 A. M. Each bank is obliged daily to furnish to the clearing house a statement of its condition at the end of business hours on that day; and tables are daily furnished to the several banks of the condition of all the banks in the clearing house. Complete records of all the transactions, of the state of the banks, &c., are preserved in the books of the clearing house, precisely as are the business transactions of any bank, or other corporation or mercantile firm. From October, 1871, to October, 1872, the operations of the New York clearing house were as follows: exchanges, $33,844,369,568; cash balances, $1,428,582,707; average daily exchanges, $105,964,277; average daily balances, $3,939,265, or less than 3¾ per cent.; so that by the intervention of this institution $3 75 are made to do the work which would require $100 without it, and which in fact does require $100 in the country, where men are isolated. (See also Savings Bank.)
BANK BAN, or Ban Bank, a Hungarian military governor, executed with his whole family by order of King Andrew II. (1205-'35). Bank's wife having been seduced by the queen's brother Eckart, with the queen's connivance, he placed himself at the head of a mob who stormed the palace in the king's absence and cut the queen to pieces, Eckart barely escaping with his life to Styria (1214). Katona's Bank-bán, a celebrated Hungarian drama (Klausenburg, 1827), has been translated into German (Leipsic, 1858). Grillparzer also dramatized the subject in Ein treuer Diener seines Herrn (Vienna, 1830).
BANKRUPT (low Lat. bancus, a bench, and ruptus, broken), an insolvent debtor. In its more ordinary acceptation, bankruptcy expresses inability to pay one's debts, being in that sense the same as insolvency. The theory of bankruptcy in England until recently has been, that it was a criminal offence, and the proceeding was in form hostile to the party charged with being bankrupt. The first bankrupt law was enacted in the reign of Henry VIII., in which act the persons amenable to its provisions are described as “those who obtain other men's goods on credit, and then suddenly flee to parts unknown, or keep house, and there consume their substance without paying their debts.” In subsequent statutes the character of the bankrupt was defined with more precision, and by the term was generally understood a trader who should do certain acts specified in the statutes which were declared to constitute bankruptcy. The English bankrupt laws were wholly remodelled by act 32 and 37 Victoria, c. 71, on more humane principles. Under that act all persons may be adjudged bankrupt, whether they be traders or not. A person becomes a bankrupt when adjudged so by the court, upon the petition of a creditor having a liquidated and unsecured debt of not less than £50, or of several creditors having like debts to that amount. But before such petition can be presented, the debtor must have committed some one of the acts of bankruptcy specified in the statute, which are: 1, making a general assignment of his property for the benefit of creditors; 2, making a fraudulent conveyance, gift, delivery, or transfer of property; 3, doing, with intent to defeat or delay his creditors, any of the following acts: departing from or remaining out of England, or (being a trader) departing from his dwelling house or otherwise absenting himself, or beginning to keep house, or suffering himself to be outlawed; 4, filing in the manner prescribed by the rules of court a declaration that he is unable to pay his debts; 5, having execution for a debt of £50 or upward levied upon his goods; 6, having neglected to pay or secure or compound the prisoner's debt after having had a debtor's summons served upon him, being a trader, within seven days, and being a non-trader, three weeks after service. An adjudication founded upon any of these acts of bankruptcy will not, however, be granted unless the petition be presented within six months after the act was committed. The act upon which the petition is founded, or the earliest act of bankruptcy proved to have been committed within the twelve months next preceding the presentation of the petition, constitutes the commencement of the bankruptcy. No creditor is allowed to commence or prosecute any proceeding against the bankrupt after the adjudication unless by leave of the court, and all the ordinary remedies are taken away except those of the secured creditors in respect to their securities. Creditors must prove their demands under the bankruptcy, and for the purposes of a distribution of the property they are allowed to appoint a trustee, and also from their own number a committee of inspection for the purpose of guiding, and in some measure controlling, the trustee in the discharge of his
