The debt of the municipalities, consisting of loans, amounted
to:
At the end of Towns Rural districts Total -
kr. kr. -kr.
1884 ....................................................... 28,300,177 8,139,675 36,439,852
1892 ......................... ............................. 11,269,677 47,986,305
1895 . .................................................. 49,867,681 14,578,033 65,445,714
To this debt must be added the sums which the municipalities
owe for the construction of railways, which in 1884 amounted to
hr. 3,740,257, but at the end of 1895 had gone down to kr. 744,787.
The aggregate debt of the municipalities thus in 1895 amounted
to not quite half the amount of the total assets.
BANKING
Th e right to issue paper money is reserved to the Bank of
Norway (Norges bank). This .bank belongs to a private corporation,
based on shares; its management and operations however,
are fixed by special acts given by the state for that purpose,
and its managers are publicly appointed. This bank, as mentioned
p. 231, was established in the year 1816, as a step towards
placing the currency of the country on a stable basis, and it
commenced its operations in the year 1818, but could not under
the economic conditions then existing fulfil its duty of redeeming
its notes at their face-value in silver, for which reason this
obligation was immediately suspended. The consequence was a
considerable fall in the value of the notes, which in 1821 was
reduced to almost one half of their face-value, but thereafter again
gradually rose, until the notes, beginning with the year 1842, were
again redeemed in full, and have since then continued to be so
without any exception.
The right of the bank to issue paper money was based,
until the year 1892, upon a mixture of the proportional and the
differential systems, as the bank, on its original capital of
kr. 10,009,910, could issue notes at a ratio of 5:2, and, on that
part of the capital which was afterwards formed, amounting tot
kr: 2,500,000, and on its reserve fund, which since the end of
1892 has amounted to kr. 5,416,244, at a ratio of 3:2, while
for the rest of the coin reserve (the so called extra-fund) notes
could only be issued for an amount corresponding to the value
of the metal. Thus it will be seen that as long as there was
an extra fund in existence the differential system obtained; as