A History of Banks for Savings in Great Britain and IrelandLewins, William
History
A History of Banks for Savings in Great Britain and Ireland
Lewins, William
Postal savings banks -- Great Britain; Savings banks -- Great Britain
[139] Much to the same purpose a well-known writer in the _London
Review_ says: "As long as Savings Banks are Savings Banks, based,
on the one hand, on the confidence of the poor, and, on the other,
on the benevolence of the local clergy and gentry, acting as
trustees and managers without fee and reward, and therefore
without such bounden obligations as men can be called to account
upon, so long will frauds periodically arise, opening up great
gulfs of deficits, strewing thorns upon the pillows of the poor,
and driving sharp pangs of despair into their hearts." Dr.
Hancock, in one of his admirable pamphlets, alluding to the system
of checks relied on by the managers of many banks, says: "It is
impossible, in the nature of things, to devise a perfect system of
checks. So long as the work has to be done by human agency there
must always be some risk. To secure the performance of actions by
human agents, three forces commonly operate: 1, A morel sense of
duty; 2, A fear of large pecuniary loss from liability, in case of
the non-performance of duty; and 3, A fear of judicial punishment,
if non-performance be made a penal offence. The limit placed on
the liability of the managers effectually took away or reduced to
a minimum the fear of loss and of punishment, and the divided
responsibility there has always been between Government and the
trustees, by weakening the sense of duty, did the rest."
[140] The case of the Edinburgh Savings Bank, another excellently
managed institution, is still more to the point, where unusual
facilities produced an unusual amount of depositors and deposits.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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