For reasons which we have adduced at great length in the last chapter, the feeling grew that a sweeping change would require to be made in the institution of Savings Banks. Supplementary banks of different kinds were established, and they met in great part the object for which they were designed; meanwhile, the great majority of Savings Banks took no steps to provide more conveniences for the public, or they were powerless to effect them.[152] When reasonable changes were resisted between 1850 and 1860, it occurred to several that agencies might be contrived to do the same work after a different fashion, and that this project should be carried out, even were the ultimate result to diminish the usefulness of most of the older banks, or gradually to set them aside. It is to proposals having the former object in view that we must now turn. It is not a little curious that long before Savings Banks were legalized by Act of Parliament, and even before Dr. Duncan began his earnest and self-denying efforts to establish them on a safe footing, at least two different efforts were made to promote the growth of provident habits by a system of Savings Banks which should extend throughout the entire country. We refer to Jeremy Bentham's scheme of "Frugality Banks," and Mr. Whitbread's "Poor Fund and Assurance Office." The plan of the former is detailed in Bentham's works; the latter scheme, partly described in an earlier portion of this volume (pages 23-4) was submitted to Parliament in 1807, and a bill,--a full Abstract of which will be found in the _Appendix_,--founded upon it, actually passed the House in some of its earlier stages. Some of the provisions of this bill were admirable; and some, owing to the state of the Post Office of that time, would not have been so easily worked through that department as was intended. As it was, the country preferred the class of banks just then rising into notice; and in 1817 the Legislature forgetting Mr. Whitbread's scheme, gave its sanction and countenance to the banks which had been established on purely benevolent principles, and which were totally independent of each other. In the course of years, that system having been tried in every possible way without producing the safety and convenience so much desired in institutions of this sort, the principle of a uniform plan of banks in connexion with the Post Office advocated by Mr. Whitbread again came up, the story of the proposals for and the introduction of which we are about to tell.