a full proportion of what previous labour has gathered together. In 1853 the amount of stock vested to the account of depositors in savings-banks in the United Kingdom was 34,546,434_l._ Since the establishment of savings-banks, 68,885,283_l._ had been so invested; and the gross amount of interest paid to the depositors had been 25,733,771_l._ This large capital, which had so fructified as to produce more than twenty-five millions as interest, was an accumulation, penny by penny, shilling by shilling, and pound by pound, of the savings of that class of persons who, in every country, have the greatest difficulty in accumulating. Habitual efforts of self-denial, and a rigid determination to postpone temporary gratification to permanent good, could alone have enabled these accumulators to retain so much of what they had produced beyond the amount of what they consumed. The capital sum of more than thirty-four millions now belonging to the depositors in 575 savings-banks, represents as many products of industry as could be bought by that sum. It is a capital which remains for the encouragement of _productive_ consumption; that is, it is now applied as a fund for setting others to produce,--to enable them to consume while they produce,--and in like manner to accumulate some part of their productions beyond what they consume. The millions of interest which the depositors have received is the price paid for the use of the capital by others who require its employment. The whole amount of our national riches--the capital of this and of every other country--has been formed by the same slow but certain process of individual savings, and the accumulations of savings, stimulating new industry, and yielding new accumulations. The consumption of any production is the destruction of its value. The production was created by industry to administer to individual wants, to be consumed, to be destroyed. When a thing capable of being consumed is produced, a value is created; when it is consumed, that value is destroyed. The general mass of riches then remains the same as it was before that production took place. If the power to produce, and the disposition to consume, were equal and constant, there could be no saving, no accumulation, no capital. If mankind, by their intelligence, their skill, their division of employments, their union of forces, had not put themselves in a condition to produce more than is consumed while the great body of industrious undertakings is in progress, society would have been stationary,--civilization could never have advanced. It may assist us in making the value of capital more clear, if we take a rapid view of the most obvious features of the accumulation of a highly civilized country.