A History of Banks for Savings in Great Britain and Ireland

CHAPTER I.. Introductory Chapter.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

"Archimedes was wont to say that he would remove the world out of its place, if he had elsewhere to set his foot, and truly I believe so far that otherwise he could not do it. I am sure that so much is evident in the architecture of fortunes, in the raising of which the best art or endeavour is able to do nothing, if it have not where to lay the first stone."--SIR HENRY WOTTON.

The habit of laying something by in a prosperous season for the wants of an adverse one is one of the very oldest customs in the world. All our laws, Divine and human, enjoin the exercise of providence and frugality as a social, and as a personal duty. These habits which are inculcated in Scripture as positive duties, and which find ample illustrations in many of the arrangements of nature and Providence, have been common in one form or other to all people in every country and in every age. In England, in almost everything relating to the social advancement of the industrial population, there has been a great and manifest improvement since the commencement of the present century. In nothing is this more true than in the incentives and appliances provided for the growth of provident habits amongst them. An old stocking, a hole in the floor, or a crevice in the wall, was formerly a sufficient bank for such of the poor as cared to save anything; but were that mode of investment unsatisfactory to some few, it was not possible to obtain better. The change which fifty years have wrought in the means for saving and investing small sums of money is remarkable. Not only have these savings assumed in consequence a variety of different forms, but they represent a sum which in the aggregate must be well calculated to astonish anyone who can remember anything of the last century. Before dealing, however, with this as our special subject, a few words may not be spent in vain in endeavouring to trace the gradual advancement made among the poorer classes, the causes that have led to the improvement in their condition, and the means by which the difficulties in their position have been encountered. After this it will not be inappropriate to refer to what still remains to be done.

"The nineteenth century," as Mr. Gladstone, in addressing the working men of Glasgow, has just said, "whatever else it is, is undoubtedly in a new and peculiar sense the century of the working man." "It is the century which has seen his position raised, his circumstances improved, new means organised for his benefit, new prospects opened for the future, and he has before him--I mean not the individual but the class--a prospect which, I trust, nothing can mar--of increased weight, increased consideration, increased usefulness, increased happiness in the generations to come." The Chancellor of the Exchequer might with justice have said that the second quarter of the present century has seen this great improvement inaugurated and carried on. Beginning with 1830, and letting the period of the removal of political and fiscal burdens mark the commencement of the better order of things, the progress of political economy, of social knowledge, and the favouring circumstances of the times achieved the rest. In the first quarter of the century the working population, left pretty much to themselves, or given over to the tender mercies of political demagogues, were either stolidly indifferent to any improvement, or were kept in a constant turmoil of excitement and confusion. The Reform Bill bringing political power to the better class of artisans, gave a decided stimulus to the intelligence of the people, and an impulse to the then existing means of education. This political power brought its responsibilities, and it may be fairly assumed that increased political knowledge was the result. Whether so much will be granted or no, it is certain that schools and educational establishments now began to multiply in a manner unknown to any previous decade. It was now that there came demands for knowledge, and that the demand brought forth supplies of the most practical kind. The story of the popular literary ventures of 1832--the very first of their kind--need not be repeated here, though a volume might well be written on the subject, and showing the influence which they, and other ventures to which they gave rise, have had on the intellectual progress of the people. On the demand for knowledge there followed in quick succession the removal of many barriers that stood in the way; and more important still, the remissions of, to the poor man, enormous fiscal burdens which pressed with great weight upon his energies. It would scarcely be too much to say that every year for the last thirty years the working man has found himself better able to cope with the disadvantages of his position, and, if he should so choose, to place himself to a very great extent beyond the reach of absolute want.

We have alluded to the necessity which began to be felt for the mental improvement of the adult population; still more important were the steps taken from time to time to educate the children who are the old people and the adults of the present day. The present century, among many wonderful changes which it has witnessed, has seen a complete revolution in the means of education for the masses. Many generations since, Milton, with that clear mental vision which was in him like a kind of second sight, foretold that a time would come when the bulk of the people would get a better education "in extent and comprehension far more large, and yet of time far shorter, and of attainment far more certain, than hath yet been in practice;" and although we may not have exactly reached the point prefigured by the poet-seer, some marvellous strides have been taken during the present century. A dramatist of Milton's own period makes a man of substance reply, in answer to the query, "Can you read and write then?" "As most of you gentlemen do, my bond has been taken with my mark at it." At the beginning of the present century little had been done for the education of the masses. Grammar schools for the children of the middle classes, and Free schools, as they were called, for an infinitesimal fraction of the poor of our towns had been long established, and, so far as they went, with certain enough results; but, if we except the establishment of Sunday schools by Mr. Raikes of Gloucester in 1783, nothing had been done for the educational wants of the general poor. Malthus in his "Essay on Population," published twenty years after this date, says, "It is surely a great national disgrace that the education of the lower classes should be left merely to a few Sunday schools supported by subscriptions from individuals," adding at the same time, that the country "lavished immense sums on the poor which we have every reason to think have constantly tended to aggravate their misery." "In their education," he goes on to say, "and in the circulation of those important political truths that most nearly concern them, which are perhaps the only means in our power of really raising their condition, and of making them happier men and more peaceable subjects, we have been miserably deficient." What the state neglected, private enterprise took up; earnest men like Raikes and Pounds, the working shoemaker, not only set an admirable example in their own spheres of labour, but roused to action other men who applied to the work greater powers of mind and the benefits of greater system. Dr. Bell and Mr. Lancaster were two of these, who nearly at the same time expounded their views of a general scheme for educating the people; and who were strengthened in their opinion, as one of them tells us, of its necessity, by the clamour of many who held that the stability of our institutions was only sure so long as the people were kept in ignorance. Mr. Whitbread, a statesman whose name was very prominent about this time for efforts to promote the interests of the bulk of the people, tried to induce Parliament at this stage to take the subject into its consideration, by proposing a plan for the establishment of parochial schools "for the exaltation of the character of the labourer," and it would have been well if he had met with more success. As it was, the sage legislators of the day, led on by Mr. Windham, considered that such a plan would be very liable to give an education to these classes much above their condition, and Mr. Whitbread's scheme, like many other of his wise proposals to which we shall have subsequently to allude, was set aside. The work, however, had begun and could not be stopped by the attitude of the government. Dr. Bell commenced his system by the establishment of National schools; Mr. Lancaster, supported by Nonconformists principally, set up Lancasterian schools. Although there was for some time much hostility displayed between the rival factions, both organizations struck deep into the dense masses of ignorance in our towns and villages. Then came Government assistance, and gradually that system of Government education and supervision which, in spite of many objections to it, has been an untold blessing to the land.

Continue reading A History of Banks for Savings in Great Britain and Ireland free in the Wunder reader →