Opposition on financial subjects, condemned the proposition as likely to cause distrust amongst all classes connected with Savings Banks. So far from thinking that the interest ought to be reduced, or could be reduced, with safety--and this remark is curious, viewed in the light of subsequent events--"it was only by great care and good management on the part of those who superintended such banks" that expenses could be paid. Time, however, works wonders, and among other things, brings its revenges. The financial reformer, who from the first had the best of the argument, had not long to live to see a change, and to find that change brought about under the direct auspices of one who only six years before, in the words just quoted, had strenuously opposed his motion. We must leave Mr. Goulburn's bill of 1844 to be described in a subsequent chapter. [28] Mr. Rose's exertions in this respect were only ended by his death, which took place in January, 1818, at the age of seventy-four. "His whole life," says a contemporary, "was the continued and strenuous effort of a powerful mind to promote the welfare of the state and the happiness of his fellow creatures." In contrast to this testimony, which cannot be called exaggerated, we might refer to William Cobbett's bitter tirades against Mr. Rose, which, indeed, may with some readers form the most convincing evidence of the merits of the statesman. In Cobbett's "New Year's Gift to Old George Rose," published in the _Register_ of 1817, and to which choice production we shall again refer, there is an elaborate and embittered attack upon the latter, in the course of which Cobbett stated that the amount of the sinecures which Mr. Rose and his sons held would furnish ample funds for all the Savings Banks then in existence. [29] From a bare record of the debate in question to be found in _Hansard_. Third Series. 1816. [30] Act 57 George III. c. 130. [31] _Hansard's Debates_, vol. xli. page 1392. [32] This cognomen was given to Mr. Duncan more than once in the House of Commons about this period. [33] _A Letter to W. R. K. Douglas, Esq. M.P. on the Expediency of the Bill brought by him into Parliament, occasioned by a Report of the Edinburgh Society for the Suppression of Beggars._ By the Rev. Henry Duncan, of Ruthwell. 1819. [34] 1 George IV. c. 83. [35] 5 George IV. c. 62. [36] We shall see subsequently that this loss was more than made up in other ways. [37] _Times_, March 13, 1828. [38] 9 George IV. c. 92.