And this brings us to the early history of Post Office Savings Banks, and to the numerous suggestions which at one time or another seem to have been made with regard to them. No less in respect to the place which these banks are designed to occupy as important public institutions--the people's principal purse--(and that their position in the country will at no distant period be a commanding one there cannot be a reasonable doubt) than for their present attained position and intrinsic value, the question of their early history is a matter for most careful investigation, and one which must not be lightly passed over. The matter of the authorship of the scheme was the subject of considerable discussion at an early stage in its history; and that discussion was not without its value in elucidating some points of considerable importance, and as affording materials for more deliberately investigating many claims which have been put forward. It naturally forms part of our plan, not only to offer a description of the working of the new class of banks--as will be done in a subsequent chapter--but to show, as we propose to do here, in a strictly impartial manner, to whom the country is indebted for the agency now in operation.[154] Confining ourselves at present to the origination of the _principle_ of Post Office Banks, without reference to the wonderfully simple and efficacious scheme afterwards organized, we find that several different gentlemen had between the years 1850 and 1860, and acting entirely unknown to each other, matured plans, and in one way or another actually proposed them, to remedy the deficiencies of the existing banks, on some such principle as that eventually adopted. To Mr. Sikes, of Huddersfield, however,--of whose previous labours in the cause of Savings Bank reform we have already spoken,--belongs the undoubted merit and honour of having independently originated and matured a plan of operation more or less equal to the object in view; of having persevered in the object of bringing the matter prominently before the public; and of being so fortunate as to have proposed his scheme at a period when the country possessed in Mr. Gladstone a statesman of extraordinary versatility and power at the head of its financial operations, and who has given abundant evidence of his willingness to grapple with uncommon difficulties where a need is proved and the principles of a measure are shown to be sound. As we shall show presently, the same propositions, only differing as to details, were submitted once, if not twice, to Sir Charles Wood when Chancellor of the Exchequer, and once more, by a totally different individual, to Sir George C. Lewis when he held that office. How much, therefore, the measures subsequently carried are primarily due to Mr. Gladstone's sharp-sightedness and energy the reader may judge.