It will be remembered that in the third chapter we described the course of Parliamentary action with regard to Savings Banks down to the year 1844, and in that chapter left Mr. Hume, after an unsuccessful attempt to reduce still further the rate of interest to be given to depositors. The year 1844 is remarkable in the annals of Savings Banks for the carrying of a measure known as Mr. Goulburn's Act. The bill which was introduced by that gentleman, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in Sir Robert Peel's administration, was meant in great part to provide against the constantly recurring frauds in Savings Banks, and still more especially to allay the consternation among trustees of safe banks, who now loudly complained of the state of the law with respect to their liability. The discussion in the House of Lords to which we alluded at the close of the last chapter may be taken as showing that Savings Bank trustees were by no means satisfied, several years before this, with the uncertain state of the law. The great fraud on the Dublin Bank is described as having come upon many trustees like a thunderbolt, and, aware that they were not spared by the judicial bench[69] in cases of the kind, they now threatened open rebellion. Mr. Goulburn received, as he stated subsequently before a Committee of the House of Commons, a large number of notices from such officers that, if the law were not modified, they would resign their trusts. Moved by such considerations as these, which the Government seem to have felt they could only disregard at the imminent risk of shaking the credit of the entire Savings Bank system, Mr. Goulburn introduced his bill (7 & 8 Victoria, chap. 83,) on the 2d of May, 1844, to amend the laws relating to Savings Banks.[70] The principal matter with which the bill dealt was the liability of trustees, but this was by no means the only one.