It began in Australia last year, it was postponed, and it may, probably will, come back in full force in 1898. It was post poned >by the locking up of the deposits till 1898, and the promise to call up sundry millions on the share capital. The deposi tors agreed, and the shareholders have for the most part paid up so far, and are con sidered likely to have paid up by 1898 all but half a million of their liabilities. That will not be the trouble. The trouble will be. the repayment of the deposits, to the extent of .£60,000,000; repayable in equal instalments extending over four years. Some of the banks will not want assist ance, and a proportion of the invest ments is liquid. These, it is com puted by banking experts, will re duce the amount to be financed to .£35,000,000 —or nearly nine millions a year. If the depositors will not renew, it requires no ghost to tell us that the reconstructed banks will have to liquidate. They will in that case have to call up advances in all directions, ruin guarantors, call up every available shilling of emergency capital; in fact, do a heap of things which cannot fail to produce widespread ruin and destruc tion. The great question everywhere is whether the depositors will renew. In other words it is whether prices of produce will improve. If prices improve things will improve with them to such an extent that the depositors will be glad •to renew at rates of interest which are fifty per cent, above normal. The depositors, we may remark in passing, get very much the best of the reconstruction bar gain by comparison with the ; share holders. If under improved circumstances they decline to rene sv, the financing ought not to be insuperably difficult. But if, on the other hand, prices remain as they are, the depositors may not renew, and there will be trouble. We do not see, however, how they can be deaf in 1898 to the same eloquent non possumus with which the in solvent banks made them consent to wait in 1893. But if they are deaf to that voice, then there will be a crisis unlike anything the colonies have ever imagined in their most dreary moments. It is not a position for prudent men to face with folded hands. 