From the above table, many important facts may be gathered. Speaking of the yearly proceeds, in 1847, 1848, 1849, and 1850, the withdrawals of money exceeded the deposits by amounts respectively of 2,411,067_l._, 2,790,366_l._, 325,877_l._, and 396,638_l._ This extraordinary state of things is partly accounted for by the panic which set in about this time among Savings Bank depositors, owing to the discovery of numerous frauds, and, as a matter of course, the knowledge of the divided and defective responsibility under which the system was worked; but more especially was it owing to the commercial crisis of 1847-8. In the three following years, 1851-2-3, the crisis quite over, and a general examination of Savings Bank accounts tending to reassure the public mind, the deposits again gained their natural ascendency, when, in 1854-5-6-7, the excess paid was at least equal to the excess received in the three previous years. There can be little doubt but that this result again was owing in some measure to the Crimean war, and the scarcity of money during the period, but principally to the agitation which generally prevailed among depositors at the constant failures in the Legislature when attempts were made to place Savings Banks on a proper footing; these failures leading to repeated petitions for a Select Committee to go over the whole subject. In 1858 there was a slight improvement; in 1859 a considerable increase in the deposits, clearly the result of the investigations of the Select Committee of the previous year, which Committee, though it had done little towards a final settlement, had certainly dispelled a cloud of misapprehensions that had gathered round the concerns of Savings Banks. That improvement continued, though in a less degree, in 1860; when the Returns for 1861 show another large decrease of deposits and an increase of withdrawals, which we would not be wrong were we to attribute to the frequent discussions in Parliament, and in the country, relative to a new system of Government Banks. Having to some extent accounted for the variations observable in the above table, let us proceed to compare the progress made during the period of twenty years now under consideration with that shown during the previous quarter of a century and described in a previous chapter. Between the years 1825 and 1835 the increase in the aggregate amount of deposits in the Savings Banks of the United Kingdom was at the rate of exactly fifty per cent. Between the years 1835 and 1845, the returns show an increase in deposits in this decennial period of ninety-eight per cent. Comparing the returns for 1845 and 1855, the progress made, if indeed progress is the right word to use here, was at the rate of _only five per cent._