FINANCIAL STATISTICS

TABLE IX. RATIO OF BULLION VALUE OF SILVER TO GOLD (1790-1911)

TABLE X. BANKING INSTITUTIONS AND THEIR CAPITAL (1870-1910)

1 Figures are given for the date nearest October 1.

FINANCIAL STATISTICS

TABLE XII. TRANSACTIONS OF THE NEW YORK CLEARING HOUSE (1855-1912)

TABLE XIII. AVAILABLE FUNDS IN THE TREASURY OF THE UNITED STATES (1865-1912)

1 By act of March 14, 1900, a reserve fund of $150,000,000 was set aside for the redemption of U. S. notes, and not included henceforth in "available" balance.

1Includes premiums both on receipts and disbursements.

FINANCIAL STATISTICS

TABLE XVII. UNITED STATES BONDS OUTSTANDING, AND AMOUNT DEPOSITED FOR BANK CIRCULATION (1880-1912)

1 Ordinary receipts include receipts from customs, internal revenue, sale of public lands and miscellaneous; ordinary expenditures include disbursements for war, navy, Indians, pensions, interest on debt, and miscellaneous. Neither includes loans, premiums, or postal accounts.

16

FINES AND FORFEITURES-FINES AS SOURCES OF REVENUE

TABLE XIX. VALUE OF ALL PROPERTY IN THE UNITED STATES (1850-1904) 1

1 For methods of estimating national wealth at different dates, see United States Census Bureau, Special Report, Wealth, Debt and Taxation (1907), 27.

Taxable property only.

See ASSESSED VALUATIONS, COMPARATIVE; | imposition of excessive fines by way of criminal BANKS AND BANKING ACTS, NATIONAL; COIN- punishment, such a prohibition being found in AGE AND SPECIE CURRENCY; COST OF GOVERN- the English Bill of Rights (1689). As a conMENT IN THE UNITED STATES; DEBT, PUBLIC, stitutional guaranty this provision is of slight ADMINISTRATION OF; DUTY ON IMPORTS, AVER- significance, as the discretion of the legislaage Rate of; EXPENDITURES, FEDERAL; PUBLIC | tive and judicial departments in providing the ACCOUNTS; STATISTICS, OFFICIAL COLLECTION amount of the fine which may be imposed for OF; TARIFF STATISTICS. any particular class of crimes and the amount to be paid in any particular case within the limit provided by law can not very well be inquired into (see CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENTS).

References: Financial statistics must be sought for in current public documents, especially Statistical Abstract of the U. S., in which (annual), use tables on "Progress of the U. S.," and index; U. S. Secy. of the Treasury, U. S. Comptroller of the Currency, U. S. Director of Mint, and U. S. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Annual Reports in Finance Report; A. Piatt Andrew, Statistics for the U. S. 1867-1909 (issued by National Monetary Commission, 1910), with supplement, Financial Diagrams (1910); U. S. Census Bureau, Special Report on Wealth, Debt and Taxation (1909); Statistics of Cities (annual); D. R. Dewey, Financial Hist. of the U. S., tables and charts.

DAVIS R. DEWEY.

FINES AND FORFEITURES. As a punishment for a crime committed of which the accused has been duly convicted he may be required to pay a penalty in money into the public treasury (or into some specified public fund such as the school fund); or property which he has acquired as the result of his crime or which has been used by him in the perpetration of the crime may become forfeited to the government. In this sense fines and forfeitures are simply forms of criminal punishment. In a more general sense a fine is a penalty for failing to perform an act which it is one's duty to perform and for the nonperformance of which he has undertaken to pay such penalty, as where the members of an association are by its articles or by-laws obligated to pay an additional sum of money on account of delinquency in the payment of specified dues. The term forfeiture is also used in a quite general sense to signify a surrender of property or property rights on fail- | ure to comply with some agreed condition. In either case the obligation is enforceable by legal proceedings.

In many of the constitutions (see U. S. Const., Amend. VIII) are prohibitions against

The forfeitures which resulted in England from conviction for a felony or might be imposed by bills of attainder are not recognized under our constitutional system. There is a specific provision in the Federal Constitution (Art. III, Sec. iii, ¶ 2) that no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted, the object being to prevent the sins of the father in this respect being visited on the son. In accordance with this constitutional declaration the Confiscation Acts of 1861 provided that forfeiture of real estate thus confiscated should not extend beyond the natural life of the offender.

See ATTAINDER, BILL OF; CONFISCATION
ACTS.

References: Cooper vs. Telfair, 4 Dallas 14;
Ex parte Garland, 4 Wallace 333; Cummings
vs. Missouri, 4 Wallace 277.
E. McC.

FINES AS SOURCES OF REVENUE. Fines and pecuniary penalties are revenues collected under the penal rather than the fiscal power of a government. In modern practice they are the inheritance of the crude financial systems of the middle ages; not only were governments often at a loss to secure revenue by orderly methods of taxation, but there were few penal institutions in which offenders against the law could be imprisoned. For punishment for which capital punishment or physical pain appeared too severe, it was common to provide elaborate schedules of monetary payments or penalties.

Such practices have been retained in certain branches of legal and judicial procedure; they are applied, for example, in case of infraction of the customs laws, as for smuggling, buying goods known to have been smuggled, making