discussion, and which a committee of the House of Commons treated at great length some years subsequently. This was the power which was supposed to rest with the National Debt Commissioners, of using Savings Bank money for the exigencies of the State; "the dangerous power," as Mr. Hume characterized it, "to change the money they had in charge from funded to unfunded debt." He said the Commissioners had paid thirty-five millions sterling from 1817 to 1838, for the purchase of Stock and Exchequer bills, and had received from the sale of Stock and Exchequer bills seventeen millions, leaving more than a similar amount then standing in their names. He urged, "that as the whole of the deposits were by law payable in cash, and that as sums under 10,000_l._ could be demanded in five days, and even larger sums at fourteen days' notice, the public might in a time of panic, such as they had recently passed through, legally make demands of cash, and so produce a heavy loss to the Government, and greatly inconvenience, if not endanger, public credit." He gave a recent example, taking five months of the year 1832, when the country was at its greatest height of political ferment. The money transactions of the English Savings Banks in Deposits. Withdrawals. £ £ March 1832 were 46,841 93,947 April " 33,447 107,534 May " 28,345 114,677 June " 25,515 368,976 July " 47,574 140,682[43]