A statement was made before the Committee of 1858, that twenty-five out of every hundred persons properly designated as of the industrial classes were debarred from saving their money, even if inclined to do so, from the want of convenient places of deposit; and the reader may, we think, with the help of the above statistics, judge whether that statement was at all an exaggerated one. "Is nothing to be said of the inherent disposition of so many of the poorer classes to spend their money, and the utter repugnance they feel to habits of frugality?" says a doubting reader. Certainly. But how do the facts bear on this matter? Let us take the returns of the four different counties already alluded to as containing relatively the largest and the smallest number of Savings Banks. In Berkshire, for every thousand persons an amount equal to 2,479_l._ was accumulated in 1856; in Dorsetshire the amount was 2,550_l._: on the other hand, in Lancashire, which we described as most insufficiently served with banks, the amount per thousand persons was only 1,562_l._, and in the West Riding of Yorkshire but 1,266_l._ But we will take the case of a single bank to show that the want of facilities was a most important element in the want of progress; and to make the fact still plainer, we will go to Lancashire itself. The Manchester Savings Bank has for long been one of the best managed institutions in the kingdom, whilst elsewhere there had been, as we have seen, the slowest growth, if not complete stagnation in Savings Banks generally. The depositors in the Manchester bank were nearly quadrupled in the twenty years now under consideration, and no better test is required that these depositors were of the right sort than the fact that, in 1860, 200,000_l._ lodged at Manchester belonged to persons who could not even sign their names.[140] These facts did not fail to strike the members of the Committee of 1858, and Mr. J. Hope Nield, the eminent actuary of the Manchester Savings Bank, was asked how he accounted for the fact of this bank advancing so much more rapidly than any other. Mr. Nield succinctly replied, "Only from the constantly increasing facilities which it has been our constant endeavour to give." Mr. Nield afterwards explained the facilities to which he referred. In many banks, depositors had only a very short time for business, and then perhaps they were restricted to one kind of business for one day, another kind of business for another day. In the Manchester bank depositors could go and do any kind of business whenever it was open. There lay the distinction between "free" banks, and what were known as banks on the "restrictive principle." In a restrictive principle bank, of which there were an enormous number, withdrawals were made on one day, deposits on another; new accounts could only be opened on a certain day, additions could only be made to accounts on another certain day. Then there was the notice to be given for withdrawing money.