" For a view of the powers of the institutions, to se cure independence, let Mr Rose's table be compared with the Benefit Society long established in this pa rish. By the table the amount of one shilling per week after one year is L.2, 12s. If the contributor should be ill at the beginning of this year, there is nothing for him: if quite at the end of the year, he should be ill four weeks, and should draw equal to the allowance of the Bushey Benefit Society, his ca pital is gone ; and he must begin again. A member of the society pays two shillings per kalendar month, and, if he has paid one ppund to be free, supposing him under twenty-five years of age (and other ages in•proportion), he will receive 12s. a-week during ill ness in any part of the whole of the year; and will find his right to the same payment for future years undi minished. There is no occasion to go through the intermediate years. Let us take the twentieth. Af ter twenty years, the contributor to the bank (if he has had no illness, which would quickly have ex hausted his stock, especially in the earlier years) will have paid L.52, and will be worth L. 77, 8s. 6d. We will suppose that he is come to old age, or some lasting infirmity. He can afford 6s. a-week for five years, and then comes to the parish, with the aggra vation of disappointed hopes of independence. In the society the payments in twenty years will amount to L. 24 ; the receipt 6s. a-week in old age, if his life should be protracted to the (I hope incalculable) date of a national bankruptcy.
" You will perceive, that the great defect of Savings Banks is the want of benefit of survivorship. But (say their advocates) there are the advantages of bequeathing their stock, and of taking their money, whenever they want it ; the advantage of bequeathing I will leave to be estimated by the most sanguine admirers of Savings Banks, only desiring them to take into their account, the high probabi lity that his little stock will be hardly worth be queathing, even if not exhausted by the illness of the testator, in the case of his dying in youth ; and the certainty of his being his own heir, if he should die in his old age. The power of taking out the money at any time is the very circumstance which fills me with alarm. There is danger lest the sub scriber should leave his club, and become a contri butor to a bank, from the fallacious hope of enjoy ing this advantage in addition to all the others. No doubt this may be an advantage to prudent persons in certain situations. But is there no danger of' cases, which I might have mentioned before, in which the stock will be sunk in unfounded projects, in wanton expenses, in a childish impatience of pos sessing money ? All this imprudence would be of comparatively little consequence, if the parties were by any means protected from absolute want; that is to say, if they were, at the same time, members of Benefit Societies.
" The truth is, Savings Banks are not calculat ed for the lowest and most numerous rank of the community. This is evident from Mr Rose's table, beginning with ls. per week. Many mem bers of Benefit Clubs cannot make good their pay ments of less than half that sum without the best charity that can be bestowed by the rich—assistance towards the payment of their subscriptions to mem bers of Benefit Clubs, with large and helpless fami lies. Men in elevated stations imagine that they see the lowest order, when they see but the lower. The " Corinthian capital" looks down, and mistakes the cornice of the pediment for its base. While the great are providing for their immediate dependants, they seem to be providing for the poor. I do not
wish to retort upon some of the defenders of Savings Banks, and by exaggerating their possible ill effects to exalt the merit of Benefit• Societies. Savings Banks have done, and I hope will continue to do, much service to many. They often lift a little high er them who are not already very low. But a man should be secured from sinking into absolute wretch edness, before he is encouraged to mount into a higher sphere. By a Savings Bank, a butler may lay up money enough to keep a public-house. But there must . be a Benefit Society to keep a ploughman and his family from the workhouse. Now, 1 hope I may be allowed to say, that it is better that one ploughman should be preserved from a receptacle of misery, than that ten butlers should be exalted into publicans." Even Mr Duncan says, " There is one point of view in which the Friendly Society scheme can claim a decided advantage. An individual be longing to the labouring part of the community cannot expect, by making the most assiduous use of the provisions of the Parish Bank, to arrive at sudden independence;—on the contrary, it is only by many years of industry and economy that the flat tering prospects held out by that system can be realized. But health is precarious, and an accident or disease may in a. moment put an end to all the efforts of the most active and It is under such circumstances that a very striking difference appears in favour of the scheme we are considering. He who should trust to the progressive accumula tion of his funds in a Parish Bank, might now find himself fatally disappointed. If he had not been fortunate enough to realize a considerable capital before the sources of his subsistence were dried up, the illness of a few weeks or months might re duce him to a state of want and dependence, and cause him to experience the unhappiness of mourning over impotent efforts and abortive hopes. On the other hand, the man who has used the precaution to be come a member of a Friendly Society, has made a comfortable and permanent provision against the sudden attack of disease and accident. The mo ment that he comes to acquire the privileges of a member, which, by the rules of most of these institutions, is at the end of the third year after he began to contribute, he is safe from absolute want, and the regular manner in which his weekly allow ance is paid him enhances its value. Nor is this pro vision liable to any of those objections, which have been so strongly and so justly urged against the well-intended but mistaken system of poor rates. Instead of degrading and vitiating the mind, its ten dency is directly the reverse. The poor man feels that he is reaping the fruit of his own industry and forethought. He has purchased by his own prudent care an honourable resource against the most com mon misfortunes of life, and even when deprived of the power to labour for a livelihood, the honest pride of independence remains to elevate and en noble his character." It is objected, that Benefit Societies have been established on improper calculations, and thus have come to ruin. But this is an evil which has a tendency to correct itself. Experience, if there were nothing else, discovers what rate of benefit the payments can afford, and the thing is now so well understood, that mistakes, it is probable, are very seldom incurred. At any rate, this is a chance of evil which may always be precluded by communi cating information.