Thus, while it doubtless admits of question more than the other details, no serious fault need be found with that clause which provides the rate of interest to be given. Equalization in the rate of interest of all Savings Banks connected with the Government is far more necessary than that the standard of the one should be raised to the standard of the other. The days have gone by when any dole of charity should be held out to working men as an inducement to save: it is more than questionable whether those days should ever have arrived. The working classes do not want charity at the hands of the public; they long wanted security and reasonable facilities: and when these were provided, as they have been, they were willing that the rest should be left to themselves. All interest given more than the money actually produces or may fairly earn, is repugnant to them; or if it is not, it ought to be _made_ repugnant to them. The deficiencies, if we may so call them, of the Post Office Savings Bank system, to which we promised to allude in closing this chapter, are those features which have been inherited from the parent system, and consist, of restrictions which, we think, are now as unnecessary and undesirable as they are hampering and vexatious. By section 14 of the Post Office Savings Bank bill it was ordered that "All the provisions of the Acts now in force relating to Savings Banks as to matters for which no other provision is made by this Act, shall be deemed applicable to this Act so far as the same are not repugnant thereto." Under this legislation all the restrictions which were thought--especially during the earlier history of Savings Banks--to be necessary to confine these institutions to the poorer classes, have been continued down to the present time. The principal regulations to which we refer are, the _Declaration_ which is required from any one opening an account, and the _limitation of deposits_ to 30_l._ in any one year, and 150_l._ in all; and that when deposit and interest together reach 200_l._ all further interest shall cease. The reader who may have followed us through our account will be aware of the reasons which actuated the Legislature in making these arrangements.[194] These reasons do not now obtain. No steps are taken (and we have never heard that it is intended ever to take such steps) to confine the benefits of the Post Office Banks to the labouring classes. Why, therefore, these classes, or any other class allowed to deposit in these banks, should be restricted to any amount--or, at any rate, such a small one--it is difficult to understand. To the poor this restriction forms a barrier to saving habits; with regard to any other class, the amount might be as unlimited as it is in the Funds. As a set-off against the unremunerative character, to say the least, of small deposits, no limit should be placed on large ones. It is obvious, that the larger the sums invested the greater will be the