In 1873 M. de Malarce was officially commissioned by the Minister of Public Instruction to go to Vienna during the International Exhibition for the special purpose of studying questions of popular economy. In the course of his examination of the large collection of documents on the Savings Bank institutions of various countries brought together on the occasion of the Exhibition, the attention of M. de Malarce was arrested by frequent allusions to school banksthe defects of the several systems adopted, the means employed to remedy them, and the general results, all were there treated at considerable length; and his official mission having brought him into relations with Francis Deak, whose interest in social questions had led him to devote special attention to the whole question of Savings Banks, M. de Malarce took occasion to discuss the particular branch of school banks with him. During one of these discussions the great patriot, in memorable words often since quoted, told the distinguished economist, that after having given much thought to the matter, he was convinced that Savings Banks were a most powerful instrument of civilisation, and above all school banks, which transformed the habits of a people through the moral and economical education they afforded the children.

These words did not fall by the wayside, or upon stony ground whence they could receive no life; they fell upon good soil all ready to receive them, and they grew up into the mighty tree that, with its twenty-three thousand branches, now covers the whole of France.

I am unable to say exactly when school banks were first started in England; but certainly there were several, though for the most part of inadequate efficiency, in operation in 1873. School banks also existed in Buda-Pesth in 1860, in Belgium in 1866, in Wurtemberg in 1846 and in France so long ago as 1834. These, however, except in the case of Belgium, were isolated cases of the institution; and in Belgium, whither economists from many lands have gone to learn their first lesson in the practical working of scholastic thrift, school banks, even at the present day, have nothing of the character of a national system.

M. Laurent, with strenuous and constant effort, has done wonders in establishing them in the communal schools of Ghent, in the face of many difficulties and much official, political, and parental opposition. But the success of school banks in Belgium is simply a local success: it has nothing of a national character. To France, and to France alone, belongs the distinction-a distinction of which she is justly proudof having attained a national system of school banks.

Immediately on his return home in 1873 M. de Malarce determined to do his utmost without delay to establish Savings Banks on a thoroughly sound basis throughout the schools of France. For this purpose he visited England and Belgium in order to study and see in operation the systems pursued there. And it was not until he had

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learned all he could about them in both countries that he drew the code of rules and formulated the system now known as the French system. Carefully guarding against the causes of failure that he had observed in the methods adopted in other countries, he framed his rules with a view to insure what he deemed the essential conditions of a sound plan: 1, the utmost ease and safety of mechanism; 2, the minimum of labour and responsibility for the teacher; 3, an educational exercise.

Having well ventilated the subject through the press-which faithfully seconded his efforts and the monthly reviews, and by means also of lectures, M. de Malarce published his well-known Manuel des Caisses d'Epargne scolaire. This was at once addressed by the Minister of Public Instruction to all the inspectors of colleges and schools, and by the Minister of Commerce and Agriculture to the Savings Banks, Chambers of Commerce, and other public bodies under the control of his department; whilst the author himself gave them freely to all who asked for them: in this way he distributed gratuitously 22,000 copies.

In August 1876 the Société des Institutions de Prévoyance, which M. de Malarce had meantime founded, issued an appeal to the Conseils-Généraux for a small grant to cover the cost of printing, account-books, pass-books, and medals of encouragement to the teachers for their voluntary labours. In many instances this support was given; but from the first the principle laid down that everything was to be accomplished by free local effort and initiative was carefully adhered to.

The Central Administration of Education, as witnessed, for example, by the act of the Minister of Public Instruction in issuing the Manuel, showed warm interest in the scheme, and it carefully took note of its progress. In 1879 the Minister of Public Instruction went so far as to inscribe school banks amongst the institutions auxiliaires facultatives d'instruction et d'éducation; but, in the words of the official report of 1880, the department had been careful not to interfere by the issue of any direct orders, for fear of altering the character of an institution requiring very delicate treatment, like all institutions that have moral education for their object. It was necessary as a first condition of efficiency that the schoolmaster should open the Savings Bank and that the children should deposit their money in it entirely of their own accord.'

But before either master or child could act at all it was of course necessary that they should be made familiar with the subject. And once M. de Malarce's scheme and system were launched, nothing could have supplemented his efforts more effectually than the loyal and enthusiastic assistance he received from local authorities in all directions. Advice and encouragement met the teachers on every side: mayors, inspectors of both the higher and elementary schools,

members of the General and Municipal Councils, all came forward with their voluntary services to aid in the establishment of school banks. Nor were the school masters and mistresses backward to avail themselves of such assistance by corresponding to it with their own intelligent and gratuitous labours. The first ten years' experience of M. de Malarce's method has certainly proved that it was for lack of a sound system that during the preceding forty years school banks were but failing tentatives; but it has also proved equally the generous devotion and wisdom of the French teaching staff.

In his report for 1884 the Minister of Public Instruction, whilst further expressing the satisfaction of the Central Administration at the progress the school banks were making, again emphasised the fact that it left the establishment of these banks wholly to the free option and voluntary efforts of the teachers, who act solely from professional devotion, without any selfish object.' But for the first time the statistics of the school banks had their place amongst the other statistics of the official report; and they showed that in the course of ten years-viz. from 1874, when M. de Malarce's method was first brought into operation, down to 1884-over twenty-one thousand school banks had been established: that is, 21,481, with 442,020 depositors, whose weekly average deposits of fifteen centimes amounted in January 1884 to over ten million francs-10,248,226. Which means that more than twenty-one thousand teachers in France, inspired by the voluntary counsels of a still greater number of economists and public-spirited men, were freely devoting themselves to the delicate and laborious task of training the children of the poor in practical habits of thrift; thereby spreading a spirit of foresight and economy throughout the labouring classes-amongst parents and grown-up brothers and sisters-through the contagion of good example.'

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Nothing succeeds like success. The example of France was quickly followed in far-distant countries: in the United States, in Canada, Australia and Brazil, as well as in Europe, school banks were inaugurated. The International Congress of Provident Institutions, held in Paris in 1878, gave evidence of their wide spreading quite as remarkable as the ever-increasing evidence of the deep root they had struck in France, which was to be found alike in the annual reports of the school inspectors and of the Minister of Public Instruction. In fact, in 1876, just two years after M. de Malarce's method came into operation, one of the school inspectors in his report to the Conseil-Général of the department stated that, in l'Ouest, so thoroughly did the parents realise the advantages and importance of school banks, that they considered a school defective that was without one.

The annual report of the Minister of Public Instruction for 1885 showed a still greater progress than the preceding. There were then 23,222 school banks, 488,624 depositors, and a gross sum of deposits amounting at the date of the report to 11,285,046 francs.

The following table, compiled from returns prepared at different times for M. de Malarce and the Minister of Instruction, shows at a glance the progressive success of school banks under the French method.

It would take me beyond the limits of a review article were I to attempt to show in detail the effects of the example and system of France in other countries, either by giving new life to waning or exhausted efforts, or by introducing school banks for the first time. But there is just one country in which they have operated under such exceptional circumstances, and under circumstances that exhibit in so striking a manner the educational value of school banks, that it could neither be passed over nor included in a general statement without sacrificing a powerful argument that appeals directly to the reason and imagination of all classes: I allude to the adoption of savings banks in Brazil for the orderly and speedy abolition of slavery.

Viscount Rio Branco, when he framed his celebrated law of September 1871 for the enfranchisement of the slaves of Brazil, had learned from the terrible precedent furnished by the United States the dangers that attend the sudden liberation of masses of men who, incapable of distinguishing between liberty and license, confound the rights of a free man with false claims to an idle life and evil courses. By this law of 1871, based on a plan suggested by Hippolyte Passy, in 1834, for the gradual enfranchisement of the slaves of the French colonies, all children born of slave mothers, after the passing of the law, were declared free; and provision was made for an education that should render them capable of using their liberty.

By the continued watchfulness of Viscount Rio Branco, the educational safeguards that he had provided from the first for the welfare of his country in the great transition from slavery to freedom have been strengthened in these later years by the adoption of the practical training afforded by school banks, which was judged to be one of the best means to cope with the dangerous instincts of the offspring of slave parents against a well-ordered and thrifty life.

Equally careful provision was made for the emancipation of adult slaves. And in their case, even more than in that of their children, the training and educational value of the Savings Bank, as well as its influence in effecting their emancipation, is manifest.

By the Rio Branco law the slaves for a stated number of hours in

the week may work for themselves; and the wages so earned are put in Savings Banks, which, like the school banks, have been developed and improved in recent years under the influence of Viscount Rio Branco and other eminent Brazilians who studied the whole subject in France under the guidance of M. de Malarce. When the wages so saved amount to a certain sum, the state or province completes the sum necessary for ransom out of a public emancipation fund.

On the 14th of last August the Brazilian Legislature passed a new law to hasten the accomplishment of the object of the famous law of 1871.

According to this new law, the slaves employed in agriculture can at once obtain their freedom by the grant of a loan from the emancipation fund, on the condition that they continue in the service of their master for five years: during this period they will receive from their master, in addition to food and lodging, wages regulated by the amount of their work, half of which will be deposited in a Savings Bank to repay the loan for their ransom.

Under this law it is calculated that the emancipation of all existing slaves, reckoned at about one million two hundred thousand, will be effected in less than seven years. That is to say (I am quoting freely from the Manuel Général de l'Instruction Primaire) in twenty years Brazil, which, from the agricultural nature of its industry and from the vast extent of its territory, had apparently the greatest reason to dread the crisis of the transition from slave labour to free labour, will have solved the problem of the abolition of slavery; and it will have accomplished this great work, not only without civil war, massacre, ruin, or any economic disturbance, but it will have accomplished it in peace and order and with increased strength to its productive forces, through the improved moral and material condition of its population.

I have entered into detail on this point even at the risk of being charged with digressing from my subject, because I believe that a moment's reflection will convince anyone that the system of Savings Banks, as applied to the case of the adult slaves of Brazil, is truly, if not literally, quite as much a branch of thrift among the children as the school banks of their free-born children; and from its educational value in such a momentous affair as enabling the slave-that is a child in the civilised scale-not simply to gain his personal liberty, but in gaining it to become a free man in the full sense of the word, through persevering and sustained habits of industry, order, sobriety, and economy, it brings out in the strongest light the enormous educational importance of such a system with respect to the future preservation of the masses from the slavery that disgraces the civilisation of free countries-the slavery of outcast London:' improvidence, vice, and intemperance.

In turning from France to England to consider the progress of