under the arrangements of the measure, he would answer for it that the Post Office machinery should be applied carefully and gradually--the most neglected districts to be supplied first. Mr. Gladstone then went into the object and details of the measure. His proposal was that the Post Office should receive and return deposits, with interest, in the same way as Money Orders were dealt with, charging merely a fair remunerative price for the work performed. In one respect the principle upon which the new banks would be founded would be essentially different from that of the old ones. The latter had been established with the notion that the State might very fairly offer to the labouring classes a certain premium by way of inducing them to make deposits; but while he was far from desiring to cast any censure upon the principle, he did not deem it right in the present case to hold out to depositors the expectation of obtaining any high rate of interest. He proposed to give a rate of interest 10_s._ less than that given by the ordinary banks, with a proviso that it might be increased to that rate, if found necessary, "and within certain limits." Mr. Gladstone provided an ample set-off against a less remunerative return for the money, in the security which he now proposed to give for its safe custody. The responsibility of the State, on account of Savings Bank money had always been a subject of the greatest difficulty; he argued on this occasion with perfect reasonableness, as many of his predecessors in office had argued before, that the State could only be responsible for the acts of its own officers; and as up to this time no plan had been devised by which the State could participate in all the proceedings of Savings Banks, it was impossible to carry out the principle of a perfect Government guarantee. What, however, could not be done with the old banks, might and should be done with the new. In his proposals there was something so essentially different from anything they had been accustomed to, that a Government guarantee was an easy and a possible thing. The money would be received by Government officials: it would be invested by these servants in Government securities; and it would be inexcusable to refuse a Government guarantee for the full amount. Hence the motion which he had made. The only effective form which this guarantee could take was the technical one, to pass a resolution providing that if any difficulty arose in the means of meeting the lawful demands of lawful depositors, that difficulty might be met by a charge on the Consolidated Fund. Mr. Gladstone, in concluding, hoped honourable gentlemen would not be alarmed at his resolution, as he would expressly state then that the great basis of this new arrangement was that it should be self-supporting.[169]