In view of such facts, and before we attempt to describe the different plans which were produced in order to make these useful institutions once more progressive ones, let us try to ascertain why more of the money thus gained did not reach the Savings Bank. A careful examination of the Returns of Savings Banks will show beyond the possibility of doubt that the first and greatest check received by these institutions was when it became apparent that they did not possess within themselves that absolute security which they were thought almost universally to offer. We could not well exaggerate the result; this is the fountain from which all the ills have proceeded. The evil did not confine itself to the banks where the depredations had been carried on; it was not confined to the banks already established; but it extended to quarters where before there had been a manifest disposition to increase the facilities and to meet the wants of an advancing population, and this feeling was destroyed. The first effect of the frauds was, of course, to stop the deposit of money; in a smaller degree and among less educated people they even tended, as we have seen, to destroy the habit of laying by any money at all; but among all they produced a decided conviction that the financial arrangements of the system, especially with reference to the anomalous connexion between Savings Banks and the Government, were unsound. We have several times referred to the state of the law as to the exact nature of this connexion, but it is necessary to return to it again as entering very largely into the consideration of the slow progress of Savings Banks. There can be no question that the great bulk of the British people, and not simply the lower and middle classes, imagined--up at least to the time of the great frauds of 1845-48--that Government was fully responsible for all the money placed in Savings Banks. In 1851 we find Mr. Bright saying in Parliament: "Nine out of every ten depositors believed that they had the security of Government for whatever money they invested, and that in placing that money in the local Savings Bank they were securing it better than if they lodged it in the hands of the wealthiest private banks in the country."[136] Mr. Hume said the same on several occasions. Mr. H. A. Herbert, an Irish member, whose name deserves to be associated very intimately with legislative attempts to put Savings Banks on a proper footing, testified over and over again to this impression being the prevailing and universal belief. General Thompson told the House in 1848 that he "was struck with profound astonishment to learn that Savings Banks were not what in common parlance was called 'as good as the bank.'" He had advised servants on numerous occasions to put their money into such banks in the belief that they had complete Government security for their money. Such expressions of opinion from men who, though they had never penetrated into the mysteries of official life,