"A labourer sixty years of age has, by hook or crook, saved 500_l._ We know such a case. The 500_l._ is the plague of his life. It would be a mercy to swindle him out of it, except that he would probably feel a good deal at the loss. Could he forget it, he would be both a happier and better man. To begin with, it is a guilty possession. His father is maintained by a distant Union; his sons and daughters are all but forbidden his cottage. He invests it in secret.... When he dies his children will squander it, not in dissipation, but in the mere feebleness and incontinence of ingrained poverty." Another extract striking at the root of all habits of providence and thrift:-- "When a labourer has saved 50_l._ or 100_l._ then the greatest difficulty comes: what is he to do with his money? He has caught a tartar. His usual course is a very natural one, because it is the first course that offers--to open a public house. He does so, and generally and happily loses his money. A labourer with 200_l._ in his pocket has a very fair prospect of the union workhouse before him. He is not commercial enough to open a shop, and small farms are obsolete. He may, to be sure, shut his doors against all his kith and kin, _and buy a selfish annuity with the sum_, which will just keep him while he rots and dies. But will he, and who is to advise him to do so?" Granted that things are very different now to what they were when these remarks were penned, and that investments of any sort may now be made with comparative ease, it seems to us that the argument of the _Times_ was based throughout on false assumptions; that it is a mistake to suppose that the primary or sole object of Savings Banks was to build up capitals for investiture in business or trade, and not for expenditure on the necessaries or comforts of life; nor to make every labourer a capitalist, in the usual acceptation of that term, but to enable him to end his days in some sort of independence, and in some degree of peace and comfort. Savings Banks at their establishment were, always have been, and still are, meant for accumulations, not to be traded with,--though, of course, there is no prohibition,--but always have had and still have a homelier aim. They are meant to inculcate the habit of laying by for an evil day, for old age, the winter of life, or as Dr. Chalmers, we believe, strikingly puts it, "for those mishaps and sicknesses which might be termed its days of foul weather." In such case the money will not be traded with, but in right season spent. The answers to some of the arguments of the _Times_ are indeed so obvious that it seems superfluous even to state them. Money in hand is all the world over better than beggary. That the inculcation of such a principle will tend to fill our towns with paupers is monstrous absurdity. The object and design of Savings Banks