Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 001.djvu/26

22 England, where it is not customary for the mercantile banks to allow interest even upon the largest deposites. If associations of this kind, in that country, should therefore comprise a large proportion of men of information, and the number of their members be consequently very limited, they may certainly find their account in managing their own affairs; but the character of such societies has but a very slight affinity with that of Saving Banks.

Having been led to notice the remarkable difference in the conduct of English and Scottish banks, in regard to the advantage they allow to depositors, I cannot avoid observing, that the practice of the latter, in paying interest on deposites of so small an amount as £10, has materially contributed to diffuse among the lower orders of this country, that abstinence and foresight by which they are so favourably distinguished from the same class in England. The desire of accumulating a little capital is never, except among the very worst paid labourers, or such as have large families, repressed in this country, by the difficulty of finding for it a secure and profitable depository. Partly to this circumstance, perhaps, though it has been generally overlooked, it may be owing that so many Scotsmen have been enabled to rise from the class of labourers; and, by habits of application and economy, which are very generally combined, establish themselves in a few years in the learned professions, or arrive at independence through the more lucrative pursuits of commerce. In England, on the contrary, there is no such facility to the secure and profitable investment of small savings: monied men,—at least bankers, the most convenient and accessible of this description,—pay no interest; and landed proprietors cannot always be safe depositories, while the laws of England protect their estates from the just demands of their creditors.

On a future occasion I may probably offer you some remarks on the moral effects to be looked for from the introduction and increase of Saving Banks, when I shall venture to examine what I think is a most injudicious, and by no means impartial, article on this subject, in the Part of the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica recently published. It is written with so much ability, and with such an appearance of precision and of close reasoning, that those who take a deep interest in so promising an institution, cannot fail to be astonished, as well as somewhat alarmed, at the extraordinary opinion of its author, when, after a very imperfect, though an imposing view of their probable utility, he comes to this conclusion, that, "taken by themselves, it is at least a doubt whether Saving Banks may not produce as great a quantity of evil as good."

20th February, 1817.

autumn, while I was staying a few weeks with my friend Mr Grumple, minister of the extensive and celebrated parish of Woolenhorn, an incident occurred which hath afforded me a great deal of amusement; and as I think it may divert some of your readers, I shall, without further preface, begin the relation.

We had just finished a wearisome debate on the rights of teind, and the claims which every clergyman of the established church of Scotland has for