Thus we have, we hope, succeeded in showing that at the stage to which we have arrived (and, indeed, much later,) the existing Savings Bank system, as a system, laboured under three or four essential and almost incurable and irremoveable defects: 1, They professed and were expected to give a Government guarantee for all the money deposited with them, and yet they did not. The real distinction in the matter, to which we need only allude, was and is well enough understood by educated people; but it was not, we may almost say cannot, be mastered by the poor who were depositors. A depositor paying in his money to the Savings Bank had no means of knowing what was done with it. 2, The country was most inadequately and most disproportionately supplied with banks, and the facilities given by existing banks were also most inadequate and disproportionate. Farther, and most important, the number could not be increased on the same footing, and no attempt was made to increase the number. Such increase presupposed a certain amount of local philanthropy and even assuming that this sort of philanthropy is an unmixed good, an adequate provision of Savings Banks presupposes an equal amount of philanthropic zeal in every quarter of the country. And 3, Savings Banks were a serious loss to the country. "Taking the average price," said Sir A. Spearman, "of Government Securities for each year since 1817, the only years in which prices appear to have been such as to produce a rate of interest equal to that paid were 1847 and 1848." Government, in relation to Savings Bank money, had necessarily to invest when money was most plentiful, and therefore when securities were dear, and to sell out when they were cheap. To make up for such loss, it is true, Government took to using Savings Bank money to aid it in its own financial operations, to save borrowing or to postpone borrowing; but though care was always had to keep a sufficient banking reserve in an available shape, this set-off was not allowed, as we have already seen, without many complaints on the part of the managers of Savings Banks. RETURN relating to the Ten principal Savings Banks of the Country. (1861.)