4 Dollars = 20 Shillings

The Agricultural Bank of Toronto was a short-lived private institution that failed in 1837 — the same year this note was issued — caught in the financial panic that swept across North America following Andrew Jackson's Specie Circular and the subsequent collapse of credit. The bank's demise was swift enough that many of its notes never completed a full cycle of circulation, which makes surviving examples genuinely uncommon rather than artificially scarce.

The dual denomination — dollars and shillings expressed simultaneously — reflects the monetary confusion of Upper Canada in the 1830s, where British sterling, American dollars, and local currencies competed in daily transactions. No central authority had yet imposed a single standard.