American origin circulated. The government used the Halifax standard, where one pound Halifax equalled four Spanish dollars. One pound sterling equalled £1 2s 2¾d (until 1820), and £1 2s 6½d Halifax pounds after 1820. Paper currency was issued primarily by the Bank of Upper Canada, although with the diversification of the banking system, each bank would issue its own distinctive notes. Bank of Upper Canada The Bank of Upper Canada was "captured" from Kingston merchants by the York elite at the instigation of John Strachan in 1821, with the assistance of William Allan, a Toronto merchant and Executive Councillor. York was too small to warrant such an institution as indicated by the inability of its promoters to raise even the minimal 10% of the £200,000 authorised capital required for start-up. It succeeded where the Bank of Kingston had failed only because it had the political influence to have this minimum reduced by half, and because the provincial government subscribed for two thousand of its eight thousand shares. The administration appointed four of the bank's fifteen directors that, as with the Clergy Corporation, made for a tight bond between the nominally private company and the state. Forty-four men served as bank directors during the 1830s; eleven of them were executive councillors, fifteen of them were legislative councillors, and thirteen were magistrates in Toronto. More importantly, all 11 men who had ever sat on the Executive Council also sat on the board of the Bank at one time or another. 10 of these men also sat on the Legislative Council. The overlapping membership on the boards of the Bank of Upper Canada and on the Executive and Legislative Councils served to integrate the economic and political activities of church, state, and the "financial sector." These overlapping memberships reinforced the oligarchic nature of power in the colony and allowed the administration to operate without any effective elective check. The Bank of Upper Canada was a political sore point for the Reformers throughout the 1830s. Bank wars: the Scottish joint-stock banks The difference between the chartered banks and the joint-stock banks lay almost entirely on the issue of liability and its implications for the issuance of bank notes. The joint-stock banks lacked limited liability, hence every partner in the bank was responsible for the bank's debts to the full extent of their personal property. The formation of new joint-stock banks blossomed in 1835 in