The Post Office Banks, further, seem not only to have attracted a public of their own, but to have created, as it were, a fresh race of provident people. All kinds of Savings Banks have been established to give, in some form or other, facilities for the deposit of _small_ savings. When the new banks commenced, the average amount of a single deposit in the existing banks was, and had been for some time, 4_l._ 6_s._ 5_d._; during the first year of the existence of the Post Office Banks, the average amount was only 3_l._ 1_s._ 9_d._ But this average has been still further reduced. The Post Office authorities, describing more recent operations,[181] state, that as the nature and advantages of these banks became known to the poorer classes, and as new banks were opened from time to time in rural districts, and densely populated portions of our large towns inhabited by those classes, a gradual reduction in the average amount of each deposit has taken place, and that that amount has for some time ranged between 2_l._ and 3_l._, whilst the average amount of each sum deposited in the old Savings Banks has not undergone any marked alteration. The conclusion which has been arrived at is the only one possible, viz., either that the Post Office Banks have reached a poorer class of depositors than the old banks have been able to attract, or that in increasing so many fold, as we shall have to describe, the facilities for the more frequent deposit of small sums, they have at the same time, and proportionately, increased the inducements to frugality, and removed the temptations to wastefulness. Still dealing with the peculiar nature of the new business, it is very important that one fact should not be lost sight of. In our opinion, it completes the evidence as to further accommodation being urgently required by the poorer classes. In those towns and districts which before 1861 were considered to be well supplied with sufficient and well-managed institutions, the success of the Post Office Banks has been most marked. Thus in Edinburgh, the rate of increase in the number of depositors rose in one year from 3-1/2 to 5-3/4 per cent.; in Dublin, from 4-1/2 to 7 per cent.; whilst in the county of Middlesex, where, before the Post Office Banks were established, there were "forty-one prosperous and excellently managed banks, which seemed to hold out all needful inducements to prudence and frugality," no less than 30,000 persons were added to the roll of Savings Bank depositors in the year following the introduction of the new banks into that county. The rate of increase before 1861 was 2-1/2 per cent.; in 1861 and 1862, it was at the rate of 10 per cent.