population in full, the Perth institution came forward with--nothing better than advice![121] It surely cannot be a matter of surprise that the bank was "never re-opened," and that "no private gentlemen could be found to undertake the trouble _or risk for the future._" We have hitherto been concerned almost entirely with Irish Bank frauds; henceforth we shall have to deal exclusively with English ones. Not only on account of the date of its occurrence, but from its magnitude and enormity, the fraud on the Rochdale Savings Bank deserves the first place. It is not too much to say that no Savings Bank defalcation equalled this one in the depth of its iniquity and cunning, and in the disastrous effects which followed, affecting as they did the growth of provident habits not merely in that particular locality, but throughout the entire kingdom. The Rochdale Savings Bank was commenced in 1818, or immediately after those institutions were recognised by the State. It seems to have been started in the usual way, and to have progressed with great rapidity,--the community about Rochdale forming a very favourable specimen of the Lancashire people. In 1822, George Haworth, a young man of twenty-one, succeeded his father, John Haworth, who had been actuary of the bank since its commencement. As the son remained with the bank almost till its affairs were wound up in 1849, he may be said to have been associated with it through its whole course of thirty years. When very young, this man appears to have shown extraordinary energy and talent for business, and each year he not only added to his engagements, but seemed to accomplish all he undertook with equal readiness. In addition to his duties at the bank, he first took an agency for the sale of wool, then, as now, the staple trade of the town; then he obtained an agency for the sale of porter, both from a Dublin and a London house. Latterly, however, he had advanced himself to the dignity of cotton spinner, and was occupier of a large factory; was at the same time a land agent, estate agent for several gentlemen who possessed large properties in the neighbourhood, an insurance agent, and valuer and receiver of rents for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company. Not less on account of his more private character than from those multifarious matters with which he was connected, Mr. Haworth was a man of mark in the place. He was a member of the Society of Friends, and this of itself was a password to the trust and confidence of many men.[122] Whenever anybody wanted a chairman, or sought a little patronage for anything literary, scientific, or charitable, resort was had to "Friend Haworth;" "he always patronised such things as far as he could;" and who could do more, especially one who was "not himself a particularly talented man?"[123] "Talented" he might not be in the ordinary acceptation of the term, nor indeed need he have been, to do this much; but never was