It will not be difficult for the reader to understand the position of affairs up to 1850. The law was clearly unsatisfactory; it had been pronounced so by Committees which, though composed of nearly the same members, had sat in three successive years, and patiently examined into the question in its every detail. The only difference of opinion indeed in the Committees was, as to the persons who were liable, and to what extent, for the defective state of the law, and the results to which it had led. Nor is it at all wonderful that legislation should have been needed. Savings Banks, as it was often pointed out about the time, had increased enormously within a short period, and beyond all proportion to the expectations which were originally formed with regard to them. When they were first started, many benevolent individuals entered heartily into the work of managing them, and asked for no return, except the sense that they had assisted in a humane and praiseworthy object, for the labour they underwent. Putting two considerations together--the great increase of business, and the no less certain decrease in the first ardour attending such enterprises--the increase of paid officials became absolutely necessary, and in almost a corresponding ratio did the unpaid machinery decline. Slowly but surely the management of Savings Banks went out of the hands of an unpaid into those of a paid staff of officials, and every year the system of check became more nominal than real.[85] It was apparent, not less from the proceedings of solvent Savings Banks than from the exposures made in the case of unsound ones, that those who had originally taken part in the establishment of these institutions slowly became honorary in place of active members of the board; and of those who still continued to take a share in the work, many had got into the habit of leaving their duties to subordinates, in some cases signing blank forms, and even cheques, to be filled up by the acting-manager at his discretion.