are, of course, primarily, to seek to get hold of the surplusage of money in the hands of the poorer classes, to rescue it from vicious or unnecessary expenditure at the best seasons, in order to its forming a reserve for needful subsistence or additional comfort at another period. "A domestic servant," says another article of the _Times_,[60] "at the age of fifty-five or sixty, finds she is incapable of further employment. She has saved 80_l._ Very creditable to her, of course, and very stingy she must have been to her nephews and nieces to have done so much. But what is she to do with her 80_l._?... Across the Channel such a sum would be a mine of agricultural wealth. On this side the Channel it would be a snowball in the sun." This is, by the way, an extreme and unfortunate case, and one we would hope not often, in all the particulars, occurring. But were it frequent, surely 80_l._ in hand is better than nothing and an immediate resort to the parish. To say that the 80_l._ would always remain 80_l._ and would not melt away like snow before the sun, would be ridiculous; but if there be any virtue in self-reliance, and in self-dependence, it surely would _not_ be ridiculous to say that that which enabled a woman to minister to her own wants in a greater or less degree, and in the same degree to rescue herself from becoming a burden upon other people, was, so far as it went, a solace and a blessing to her. Once, and only once more, the _Times_ declared that "investing money in Savings Banks was mere hoarding," nothing more than the creating of misers. "It is most melancholy to notice the few helps and encouragements to thrift and husbandry which our present condition allows the labourer. We tell him to save. We put it as the most indispensable moral duty; the great commandment of our law. We build prisons (sic) for those whom age or calamity have proved transgressors against it; yet, having laid this heavy burden upon the labourer, where is the 'little finger' of help contributed by society. We refer him to the Savings Banks and to Friendly Societies, _i.e._ we tell him to hoard his money, or to secure an annuity, on the chance of old age. There cannot be two modes of investment less interesting, less social, less suited to the condition of the mind of a labourer. Where it is practised, we can only say that it is an act of faith and prudence so dry, so pure, so transcendental, as to be above humanity, especially that very form of humanity found in the English agricultural labourer."