There can be little doubt from the above extract, that if Bentham did not make a very practical proposal, he had an excellent idea of the description of agency required. Another proposal which shared the same fate as did those of Bentham and Whitbread was ventilated in the _Quarterly Review_ for 1827, in an article on "The Substitution of Savings Banks for Poor Laws." This was no new scheme, though the agency by which the scheme was sought to be carried out certainly was original. During the eighteenth century the plan of masters compulsorily deducting payments from the wages they were expected to pay to their servants, in order that the money might form a fund for a time of need, was frequently recommended, and even proposed to Parliament. De Foe, in his "Giving Alms no Charity," tells us how at his own period attempts were made to effect a legislative substitution of savings for poors' rates, and to pass Acts of Parliament which "shall make drunkards take care of wife and children; spendthrifts lay up for a wet day; lazy fellows diligent; and thoughtless, sottish men careful and provident." But all the plans, as might be expected, came to nothing. In 1827, however, the Savings Bank principle having become recognised, and the Post Office machinery tolerably efficient it was said that the scheme might be made to work. The writer advocated the establishment of a National Savings Bank, to which the Savings Banks in the country might contribute; "and perhaps," said the _Quarterly Reviewer_, as if recognising the fact of the insufficient distribution of banks, "the remittances to be made might, especially in rural districts, be allowed to be paid into the nearest Post Office, and remitted with its own money to the General Post Office, by whom it might be paid over to the Commissioners of the National Debt." This scheme attracted little or no attention at the time, and nothing came of it. In more than one respect, however, it contained the germ of a plan subsequently carried out, and it is not impossible that some of the numerous claimants for the honour of having originally proposed Savings Banks in connexion with the Post Office may have carefully studied the details.