Lord Colchester, an ex-Postmaster-General, admitted the merits of the plan, but doubted the ability of the Post Office officials to carry on the work in every town. Among the Lords, however, the strongest and bitterest opponent of the measure was Lord Monteagle of Brandon (once Chancellor of the Exchequer as Mr. Spring Rice).[175] He made a long speech on this occasion. He thought it was wrong to establish new banks, or to make them rest on the deficiencies of the old ones, inasmuch as it was easy to improve the latter. He went into the history of Savings Banks, and endeavoured to show that their progress up to 1850, (a fact which no one disputed,) had been far from slow. As, however, it was the period principally between 1850 and 1860 when they were most stationary, this was the time with which he should have dealt. He expressed an opinion that the Post Office would not be equal to the work. He strongly urged the inexpediency of giving increased funds to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with which to speculate. And this measure would tend to destroy the healthy feeling which was growing up between the higher and the lower classes, through the medium of Savings Banks. Not only did the higher classes give their time and energy to the work of Savings Banks, but they gave their money too; and Lord Monteagle was unlucky enough to cite the case of several noble lords who paid a thousand pounds each to atone for their neglect in connexion with a Hertfordshire Savings Bank, and the fraud there, which we have previously described at length. "Such was the spirit," triumphantly exclaimed the noble lord, "which this bill proposed to crush." Not less unfortunate was Lord Monteagle, as the result has proved, in his endeavour to be amusing and prophetic. "The only comfort," said he, "which I have derived from the speech of the noble lord who moved the second reading, was his assurance that the measure was to be of an _experimental_ character." Under such circumstances he would not trouble the House with a division, as he would await without much anxiety the result of the "experiment!" Next year, they would see whether the working of the new system would compare with that "which for nearly half a century had been the glory of England, and had served as a model for all Europe." Lord Redesdale also strongly opposed the bill, but he did not bring to its consideration much of the practical knowledge of the preceding speaker. He "frankly owned" that, from what he understood "would be the manner of keeping the accounts, they would soon get into a state of confusion, out of which extrication would be almost impossible." From the confusion of the above sentence, it is not impossible that the attempt to understand the mode of keeping the accounts had confused the speaker. Curiously, too, the same speaker objected to one of the most convenient clauses of the bill. He called the proposed mode of transfer of deposits from one bank to another, an unnecessary