“‘Well, it grew and grew. Hundreds and hundreds I paid and received every week, (and we found that among the poorest little shops it worked the best for us). At last it took such hold of me that I became a regular bloodsucker—a bloodsucker of poor folk, and nothing else. I was always reckoning up, night and day, how to get more and more, till I got so thin and ill I had to go to the doctor. It was old Dr. Sike, and he said, “Young man, you must give up your present way of work and life, or I can do nothing for you. You’ll get worse and worse.” “‘So I thought and thought, and at last I made up my mind to give it all up, though I was then getting rich. But there was no blessing on what I’d got, and I lost it every farthing, and had to begin again as poor as I was when I first left the workhouse to learn a trade. And now, I’ve prospered and prospered in my little way till I’ve no cause to worry anyways about money, and I’ve a few men at work with me in my shop. “‘Still, for all that, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have interest on the little capital I’ve saved up honestly; or how am I to live in my old age?’ “Another workman suggested, ‘Wouldn’t he be able to live on his capital?’ ‘Aye, but I want to leave that to somebody else,’ was the answer. [Yes, good friend, and the same excuse might be made for any form of theft.—J. R.] “I will merely add, that if there were enforced and public account of the amount of monies advanced on loan, and if the true conditions and workings of those loans could be shown, there would be revealed such an amount of cruel stress upon the foolish, weak, and poor of the small tradesmen (a class far more numerous than are needed) as would render it very intelligible why so many faces are seamed with lines of suffering and anxiety. I think it possible that the fungus growth and increasing mischief of these loan establishments may reach such a pitch as to necessitate legislative interference, as has been the case with gambling. But there will never fail modes of evading the law, and the sufficient cure will be found only when men shall consider it a dishonour to have it imputed to them that any portion of their income is derived from usury.” THE UNION BANK OF LONDON (CHANCERY LANE BRANCH) IN ACCOUNT WITH THE ST. GEORGE’S FUND. 1876. Dr. £ s. d. Aug. 16. To Balance. 94 3 4 Oct. 12. ” Draft at Bridgwater (per Mr. Ruskin) 50 0 0 24. ” (J. P. Stilwell) 25 0 0 ---------- £169 3 4 ==========