productive of great national good, and could not be too numerous. _Mr. Pease_, the Quaker member for South Durham, hoped that nothing would be done to induce the working classes to try country banks in preference to Savings Banks. In his own county 700,000_l._ or 800,000_l._ had been lost in country banks, and therefore it would be highly dangerous to advise the poor to lodge their money there. Mr. Pease's position, as a large employer of labour, gave his remarks weight, when he trusted that the clause in the bill of 1828, which provided that Accounts of Savings Banks should annually be laid before the Government, would be carried out in its entirety; "there was little hope of Savings Banks turning out uniformly profitable to the industrious classes, except Government maintained a strict superintending control over them." The Chancellor of the Exchequer said this was done, and in two or three instances since he took office, where the Trustees had neglected to furnish proper returns, the Commissioners had exercised the power which the law gave them, _and had closed the banks_ till the Accounts were sent up.[40] In May the bill was carried through Parliament unaltered, but, as usual, opposed by two or three fractious members. Mr. Thomas Attwood again expressed his disapprobation of Savings Banks; and we allude to his speech with a view solely of enlivening our pages, which may over this ground of legislative enactments be dull to some readers. This gentleman stated his belief on the third reading of the Savings Bank Annuities Bill, that Savings Banks "were instituted by the late Lord Liverpool and his Government, not for the good of the people, but for three different purposes." The first was to draw capital to London, in order to bolster up the Funds; the second was to give the Government the power of putting their hands into the pockets of the people; and the third, to enable them to scourge the people.[41] On the House showing manifest signs of disapprobation, Mr. Attwood said, "Hon. members might express disapprobation as much as they pleased, and the noble lord (Althorp) might laugh, but he firmly believed that Lord Liverpool's great object in getting up these banks was to get his claw in the people." _Lord Althorp_ replied with the straightforward understanding, and quiet, manly good sense which always characterized this eminent statesman. He wondered that Mr. Attwood had not imputed to Government another motive, that being, to realize _profit_ by Savings Banks, which he need not say they had scarcely yet done. He might have smiled, but it was entirely on account of the originality of the hon. member's ideas on the subject: seriously, it was astonishing that such arguments should be used by reasoning men. "So far from being an injury to the people, he believed these banks conferred on them the greatest advantages; and so far from affording the Government the means of trampling upon them, they would have an