Arrived at the year 1841, when Savings Banks have had a legislative existence for a quarter of a century, it may be well to stop and pass the period in review; to endeavour to show the progress made by these institutions during this time; and to exhibit, so far as we are able, their effect upon the general progress of the country. We have up to this point dealt principally with the legislation on Savings Banks, and have taken little account of what was said or done with respect to them out of Parliament, after the year 1817. At this early period there were frequent and warm discussions out of the House as to their value and utility. When they first began to attract public attention, "the friends of the working classes" were nearly equally divided between their advocacy of them and the Friendly Societies. When Mr. Rose, who had strongly advocated the formation of these societies, saw the benefit that Saving Banks were calculated to render to the poorer classes, he cordially took up their advocacy; and although he urged that there was scope enough for all societies which inculcated the duty and practice of providence and frugality, he was loudly accused of leaving his first love, and advocating the Savings Bank plan for some political purpose. We cannot give the reader a better idea of the way the industrial classes were beguiled, and the kind of influence which was only too often brought to bear upon them at this period, than by giving some extracts from a paper to which we have previously incidentally referred. In his "New Year's Gift to old George Rose," Cobbett reminds Mr. Rose, that after all he had done for them, he had at length "left Friendly Societies in the lurch, and taken to _the bubble of Savings Banks_." Cobbett, however, said that he could see through the change, and he shows the amount of his penetration by such argument as the following:--In "friendly societies Mr. Rose found that 'the members got drunk and _talked_--the naughty rogues.' Yes, and even politics too! And it might have been added," continues the writer and proprietor of the _Register_, "that they very frequently heard one of their number read--the _Register!_" The object of Savings Banks, or at any rate, parliamentary interference with them, was nothing else, Cobbett considered, "than to get the pennies of the poor together, but to keep their owners asunder." "What a bubble!" repeats Cobbett. Then addressing Mr. Rose in the first person, he tells him how, in his opinion, "the company of projectors who, in the reign of George the First, wanted a charter granted to them for the purpose of making deal boards out of sawdust, just saves you from the imputation of having, in the Savings Bank scheme, been the patron of the most ridiculous project _that ever entered into the mind of man_." Another person of Mr. Cobbett's stamp, though one who aspired to greater knowledge of all questions connected with trade and currency, and who really paid