Review. It commented upon Mr. Whitbread's strange project of uniting the savings banks throughout the kingdom in one national establishment, and his minor proposals under that head, and very warmly ridiculed all. Neither from theory nor from experience, it concludes an article, are we able to discover any kind or degree of good as likely to result from so vast a project; though it is easy to see that it might be productive of infinite confusion, trouble, and expense. In fact, every savings bank is perfectly competent in itself to transact the whole of its affairs, and can have no great difficulty to provide the requisite facilities or securities without either disturbing its neighbours, or withdrawing the attention of Government or the Legislature from their proper concerns.

Before we come to the plans and exertions of Mr., afterwards Dr. Henry Duncan, of Ruthwell, we ought to speak of the original foundation of the savings bank at Bath. The idea of establishing a bank for taking the wages of industrious domestic servants only, and granting them interest for their money, originated with Lady Isabella Douglas in 1808. The managers consisted of four ladies and four gentlemen. No servant could deposit more than 50l., and the entire amount of the funds in the bank could never exceed 2,000l. A servant might deposit up to 50l., withdraw the money and place it in safety, and deposit again in the servants' bank. Interest was allowed at four per cent., and the money could be withdrawn at will. This scheme, so far as it proceeded, was very successful; so much so, that an endeavour was made in 1813 to convert it into a general savings bank, which should know no limit, either in the amount of the deposits or in the class of people from whom the deposits could be taken. For this purpose a committee, highly respectable for their rank, ability, and benevolence, met frequently at Bath; but only to find, after much deliberation, that these conditions were utterly impracticable.[16] In 1815, the Provident Institution of Bath was projected, on very different conditions; and this time, through the exertions of Dr. Haygarth and the Marquis of Lansdowne, who was president, the bank was successfully floated. This bank was essentially the first of its kind in this country, and upon its basis have been formed almost all subsequent banks of any note. The sums deposited were invested in the public Funds, and each man's interest at this early period varied according to the price of the Funds on the day when the investment was made for him.

In November, 1815, the Provident Institution of Southampton was established, principally through the exertions of the Right Hon. George Rose, who was appointed president, and who soon afterwards wrote an account of the undertaking.[17] The exertions of Mr. Rose on behalf of savings banks will frequently require to be spoken of in subsequent pages. The Southampton Bank was an improvement on the Bath institution, having copied several of the details of the bank at Edinburgh. The average rate of interest given was four per cent. Notice had to be given for withdrawing deposits. One regulation, new at that period, which was a suggestion of Mr. Rose, empowered the officiating clergyman or other responsible person, in adjacent parishes, to receive sums on account of the institution, and remit them to the treasurer at Southampton. It was stipulated, however—and this had an ill effect upon the public, though the proviso was by no means unreasonable in itself—that the institution should not be answerable for the money until it absolutely reached the office. We will here refer to two other original English savings banks, quite equal in importance to those of Bath or Southampton. The Exeter Savings Bank, since better known as the Exeter and Devon Bank, was established in 1816, principally through the exertions of Sir John Acland, one of the county members. The rules of this bank limited the amount which could be deposited to 50l. in the first and second years, and 25l. in any succeeding year. The distinguishing feature about the Exeter bank was the application, attended with much greater success, of the Southampton plan of rural or branch banks. In 1817, there were sixty of these branch banks, all contributing sums to the parent bank through village clergymen, who acted as the agents. The plan only entailed a trifling expense for printing, postage, &c., and even these expenses were paid out of a fund raised by voluntary contributions. At the date of the first enactment relating to savings banks, this bank had 946 depositors, who had paid in 14,525l. in 1,380 deposits. The interest given was at the rate of four per cent. Within the two years of which we have spoken, only 984l., or about a fifteenth-part of the deposits, were paid as withdrawals.

The original Hertford Savings Bank was a charitable concern, after the fashion of Mr. Smith's at Wendover. The Sunday Bank, as it was called, was established about the year 1808, by the vicar of the place, the Rev. Thomas Lloyd. Sums of from sixpence to two shillings were received by the benevolent pastor from his poorer parishioners after morning service on Sundays, and in this way about 300l. a year was invested between 1808 and 1816. The money did not accumulate from year to year, but was repaid on New Year's day, with the addition of ten per cent. interest, which the vicar was able to give by the help of some charitable funds at his disposal.

We must now, without referring to other early banks, such as the important institution in St. Martin's Place, London, and other societies, turn to Dr. Duncan, whose exertions on behalf of savings banks were much greater than those of any other person, and which exertions, more than any original suggestions which he may have made with regard to them, entitle him to the foremost place in any history of savings banks. Dr. Duncan's claim to be considered the founder of savings banks rests on the ground of his having originated and organized the first self-sustaining bank, and in having succeeded in so arranging his scheme as to make it applicable not to one locality only, but to the country generally.[18] It remains to be seen whether the bank established by Dr. Duncan in his own village answers the description here given of the distinctive character attaching to the banks of his proposing. It is very true that all the banks established up to 1810 partook very much of the character of eleemosynary institutions, supported in great part by the benevolence of the rich, and therefore very unsuitable to some localities, where the benevolent rich did not preponderate. Dr. Duncan's great merit—merit for which he has received neither enough credit nor praise, but which should entitle him to a high place in the ranks of those who have sought to do their fellow-men good service—seems to us to lie in having deeply studied the nature and wants of the industrial classes; in having modified existing proposals in order to make them suitable to the general requirements; and, finally, in having laboured with unremitting energy to make his plans known around him, and to secure their general adoption. A writer in the Quarterly Review of October, 1816, incidentally referring to Dr. Duncan and his proposals for parish banks, says, It is our belief, founded on no slight investigation, that but for this Scotch clergyman, there would at this time have been found only a few insulated establishments for the savings of industry, of which the intelligent and wealthy would have had little knowledge, and from which the lower classes in general would have derived no advantage.

Henry Duncan, who was the son of a Dumfriesshire clergyman, was born at Lochrutton manse, in that county, in the year 1774. At the age of twenty-five he too was ordained a clergyman, and appointed to the charge of the parish of Ruthwell, a remote locality in the same county. When very young, it is said, he showed remarkable powers of mind; and it appears he early exercised them in writing for the young, with whom he was an especial favourite. Before he was thirty he had made great progress in geology, and a book he published on the subject when he was about that age gained him the friendship of Dr. Buckland and Mr. Sedgwick. Perhaps, however, he showed most zeal during all the periods of his life in the prosecution of schemes for the benefit of the poor and distressed around him; and his manse in this way, lonely as it was, and far from the busy haunts of men, soon became a place of resort to much of the young and remarkable talent to be found in that part of Scotland. David Brewster, and James Grahame, the Sabbath bard, Dr. Chalmers, and Dr. Andrew Johnson, were frequent visitors beneath his roof; Robert Owen, then an amiable enthusiast in the walks of philanthropy; Thomas Carlyle, a young man who had not then emerged to fame; Robert McCheyne, and many others who subsequently rose to eminence, were friends of the village pastor, and frequently met to talk over with him different schemes of practical benevolence. Few, indeed, says his biographer, whose lot has been cast in a retired spot like that of Ruthwell, have been more fortunate in attaching the affection and good-will of so many of the best class of their fellow men, and the boast is neither an idle nor a vain one. Mr. Duncan must have been no ordinary man to have brought round him such a circle of friends. His literary abilities were of no mean order, but gave a charm to all he wrote. Delighting in humble usefulness, he edited, in 1809 and 1810, a number of Tracts for the instruction and moral improvement of the lower orders, to use the vulgar term then in constant use. The greater part of the work seems to have been the production of his own pen. One series of these Tracts, called The Cottage Fireside; or, The Parish Schoolmaster, was afterwards published separately with Duncan's name attached, and had a very large sale at the time. In point of genuine humour and pathos, says a high authority of that period,[19] we are inclined to think it fairly merits a place by the side of 'The Cottagers of Glenburnie;' while the knowledge it displays of Scottish manners and character is more correct and more profound. Whether the plans which he laid for the benefit of the poor, and which occupied so much of his after life, came up at any of the réunions at his house, we have no means of knowing. However it was, we have Mr. Duncan's own statements to show that they were originated in his mind by the frequent discussion at that time of the question of poor-rates, and the endeavours on the part of many of his friends to prevent their introduction into Scotland. It is also clear, that though Mr. Whitbread's name is never mentioned, the parish minister had heard of his scheme, and had been much struck with it. The result of Mr. Duncan's reflections on the subject were given in the Dumfries Courier, with which paper he seems to have had some literary connexion. A discussion ensued in the columns of this paper, in the course of which some books and pamphlets on cognate subjects were forwarded to Mr. Duncan by Mr. Erskine, afterwards Earl of Mar. Among the pamphlets he found a very curious and ingenious paper by John Bone, the originator of a charitable institution in London, the plan of which was there sketched. The Society was called by the whimsical title of Tranquillity, or an institution for encouraging and enabling industrious and prudent individuals to provide for themselves, and thus effecting the gradual abolition of the Poor's Rate. This pamphlet, which we have carefully examined, contains, among much matter of a visionary and impractical kind, many proposals for the safe keeping of the savings of the poor similar to those acted upon in the case of the charitable bank at Tottenham. These subordinate provisions attracted the notice of Mr. Duncan, as he himself admits, and he thought that if he could in any way reduce them to a regular scheme, the result would be beneficial to the working classes, wherever they might be adopted. He resolved to form some such scheme and give it a fair trial in his own parish, when, if successful, he would endeavour to get it introduced elsewhere. With this object he published a paper, as a sequel to the discussion he had commenced in its pages, in the Dumfries Courier, in which paper he directly proposed to the gentlemen of the county the establishment of a Bank for Savings in all the different parishes of the district. The only way, said Mr. Duncan in making these proposals, it appears to me, by which the higher ranks can give aid to the lower in their temporal concerns, without running the risk of aiding them to their ruin, is by affording every possible encouragement to industry and virtue; by inducing them to provide for their own support and comfort; by cherishing in them that spirit of independence which is the parent of so many virtues; and by judiciously rewarding extraordinary efforts of economy, and extraordinary instances of good conduct. Friendly Societies, excellent as they are in their way, do not in every respect appear to be calculated for this intended effect; advantages are held out which cannot always be realized, but in simple Parish Banks there can be no objection of this sort. Mr. Duncan met with little response to his appeals from the gentlemen of the neighbourhood, but he resolved to make the attempt single-handed. The fact that an institution of the kind contemplated could possibly be carried out by a single individual, however benevolently disposed, is evidence enough of that person's sagacity and perseverance; but the ordinary difficulties were greatly increased by the circumstances in which this particular parish where Mr. Duncan was located was placed. Few parishes, we are told, presented so many and such unusual obstacles to the progress of a scheme of this kind. Almost every adult member of the parish belonged to some Friendly society, and many of these found it extremely difficult to fulfil their engagements to the established societies. Again, there were few, if any, resident heritors or proprietors of the land to whom Mr. Duncan could look in any difficulty that might arise, or to whom he could look for any assistance of a pecuniary kind. Nevertheless, he resolved to commence. He had