thrift among the children, the prospect is certainly disappointing with regard to the present, though not without hope for the future.

Notwithstanding the signal lead that England has taken in the spread of thrift directly, through the marvellous facilities afforded by the Post-Office Savings Bank, as a nation she is far behind the vanguard of school banks.

I say as a nation advisedly; for Liverpool and Birmingham are such splendid exceptions to the country at large as to show that in a year or two England need be second to no other country in the number and success of her school banks.

In 1875, through the zeal and great practical judgment of Mr. Banner Newton and Mr. Oulton, school banks, on a sound basis, were started in the elementary schools of Liverpool in connection with the Liverpool Penny Savings-Banks Association. The annual report of the Association for the year ending the 20th of November, 1885, shows a total of fifty-eight schools with banks attached to them, numbering 17,386 depositors, who, during the year, in the course of 305,670 transactions, have deposited 7,023l., withdrawn 5,004/., and transferred 1,919. to the Liverpool Penny Bank. On the 20th November, 1885, the school children of the elementary schools had an aggregate sum in the Liverpool Penny Bank of 2,5591. 68. due to them.

No less than half this sum belonged to the children of the schools of the Liverpool School Board.

The following table shows the progress of the Liverpool Board School Banks, and gives an insight into their working during the last eight years ending the 20th of November, 1885.

The number of banks would be much larger if, as in cases where the school banks are in connection with the Post-Office Savings Bank, each department had its separate bank. For instance, the report of the Liverpool Board School banks for the year ending the 20th of November, 1885, shows that there were seventy-four departments connected with the eighteen Board School banks. In Birmingham these seventy-four departments would count as seventy-four school banks. And this brings me to Birmingham.

I owe it to the kindness of Mr. Chamberlain and the courtesy of

Mr. Davis, clerk to the Birmingham School Board, that I am able to give the subjoined very interesting and hitherto unpublished return of the Birmingham School Board banks. The return of the last year is up to the 14th of October only.

Apropos of this return, Mr. Davis writes: "You will see that, like all our other departments of work, it grows. I believe we shall soon have a bank in every boys', girls', and infants' school, notwithstanding that we still make it quite a voluntary undertaking on the part of the teachers.'

All the Birmingham Board School banks are in connection with the Post-Office Savings Bank; and they are managed solely by the teachers, though the account clerk of the Board has a general supervision of them. A member of the Board is treasurer, and personally signs all withdrawals.

Mr. Davis further tells me that the teachers have never complained of any inconvenience in managing the banks; that the increase in their number has been solely through the teachers' own applications; that in most of the schools where they exist the teachers show a great deal of interest in them;' and, finally, that he is sure that by working them the teachers improve the attendance and increase the interest of the children and their parents in the school.'

From returns procured for me by the secretary of the National Thrift Society, I find that out of the fifty denominational schools of Birmingham, thirty-one have not any banks, ten have banks connected with the Post Office, and eight have independent banks.

As regards the school banks of the metropolis, I will only say that, from information and returns kindly furnished me by a member of the London School Board and Mr. Bartley, M.P., they, on the whole, leave much to be desired.

And, apart from the examples of Liverpool and the Board School banks of Birmingham, the number of school banks in the United Kingdom is even more disappointing. According to the last reports of the Education Department, out of the 18,761 elementary schools in England and Wales, with their over four million children, only 1,979

have Savings Banks. What a contrast to the 23,222 school banks of France! In Scotland, out of 3,435 elementary schools, only 123 have banks. And in the National Schools of Ireland Sir Patrick Keenan tells me there is not a school bank to be found.

Now this extraordinary difference and disproportion between the United Kingdom and France exists ten years after France began her successful course in the matter of school banks; eight years after the subject was so far agitated in England that a Parliamentary return of schools in receipt of annual grants with school banks attached to them was called for and made; and four years after the issue of a Circular of the Education Department urging the establishment of school banks.

In this Circular My Lords' pointed out the educational importance of these banks as a remedy to meet the serious evils of improvidence and want that weigh heavily on the industrial classes in this country' by the early training they afford children in the practical knowledge of how to economise slender resources, how to resist temptation to needless expense, and to make reasonable provision for future contingencies . . . . Such knowledge is calculated to protect its possessor from much trouble and humiliation, and to help him greatly in leading an honourable and independent life.'

These are weighty words, but the Circular goes even further when it proceeds to show that 'the value of the lesson of economy, so acquired, is not to be measured solely by its effect on the child's own character and welfare;' and traces its effects, through the close relation between thrift and temperance, in coming years in very greatly increasing the home trade and profitable employment of our people therein, now gravely injured by the enormous national waste caused by intemperance.' Then, having drawn attention to statistics proving the success of school banks wherever the experiment has been made on right principles, notably in Ghent and France, the Circular dwells on the facilities for establishing and working such banks in England; and though unwilling to cast upon the teachers of schools an additional labour and responsibility which might interfere with the proper discharge of their daily duties,' My Lords nevertheless believe that they may rely with some confidence on the good-will of school managers and teachers for help in devising and carrying out the needful arrangements,' and conclude by inviting' to the whole subject the consideration of members of school committees and Boards, and those persons of leisure and influence interested in elementary schools and the future well-being of the scholars.'

Moreover the Circular of Instructions of the Education Department of the 9th of August, 1882, alike in this point to the Revised Instructions of 1885 addressed to Her Majesty's School Inspectors, expressly states that for the aid grant of Excellent,' a school, where circumstances permit it, must have its Savings Bank.

And in the annual return form required by the new Code to be filled up by the manager, ready for the inspector on the day of his visit, the following specific questions occur :-

1. Is there a Savings Bank connected with the School?

2. If so, what is the number of scholars who are depositors?
3. What is the amount deposited by scholars during the year?
4. What is the total amount standing to their credit at this date?
5. Is the bank confined to the scholars ?

With so many incentives to the establishment of school banks the question inevitably arises, What can be the cause of the great disproportion between the number of school banks in England and France?

The disproportion will, I believe, be found to be due to one, or more, or all, of the following causes :

1. The teacher's ignorance of the whole matter of the facility with which school banks can be managed; of the new interest that the working of the banks can give to their hard lives; of the close bond that the banks are the means of creating between teachers and children; of the positive material advantage the banks are to teachers. 2. To the indifference or prejudice of those who could enlighten and support teachers in the matter.

3. To the non-provision in the Code for the working of school banks in school hours.

4. To the discouragement arising from failure where bad systems have been adopted through an imperfect comprehension of the necessary conditions for the permanent success of school banks.

As regards the two first causes of failure, the teachers of our elementary schools would not have remained in ignorance of the importance of school banks-and I know for a fact that some have never given so much as a thought to the question, do not seem to have even known of the instructions, admonitions, and questions of the Education Department-had there been in England one-tenth part of the public spirit on the matter that was created by the wise policy and indomitable energy of M. de Malarce in France. And prejudice and indifference have probably had, if not a greater share than ignorance, at least an equal share with it in handicapping the progress of England in the matter.

Not that England is alone in having to meet objections and prejudices against school banks. In Belgium and Italy, for example, they have been opposed by parents and teachers, and even sharply attacked by politicians and the press. And very curious some of the grounds of resistance were. Again and again on the continent it has been held that to inculcate thrift upon children, to teach them to save and spend wisely, is to breed selfishness, to destroy the trusting disposition, the generous, uncalculating impulses of childhood; to rob children of their greatest grace, to replace their light-hearted, VOL. XIX.-No. 110.

PP

careless gaiety with avarice; to turn them into little sordid, narrowminded, cold-hearted economists; to form a race of screws and misers; and then, with a flood of sentimental pity, heart-rending pictures have been drawn of the poor little things with their cheerless lives stripped of their one solace, the delights of the sweet-shop.

It has, however, yet to be shown that self-restraint, prudence, foresight, are synonymous with selfishness, avarice, meanness; that extravagance and recklessness are the same things as generosity and the spirit of honourable independence; that prudence, i.e. the virtue of thrift, grows of itself; or that the great lessons of self-restraint and self-reliance inculcated by the denial of a present factitious want or trifling to say nothing of a pernicious-gratification in order to obtain a solid future good, cannot be taught at so early an age as, for instance, truthfulness and obedience, without imperilling the generous instincts of children.

Madame Carina Schròtér of Hungary, once an opponent but now from observation and experience a strong practical advocate of school banks, met these kinds of objections with singular force in an admirable paper read by her at the International Congress of Provident Institutions of 1878.

After having laid down, with a point and grace of her own, that thrift is a virtue, and that as such it cannot be commanded at pleasure, but must be cultivated from childhood, she turned to those opponents who would not have childhood spoiled of its illusions and shorn of its ideal;' and reminding them that they were wrong because happiness is not incompatible with a knowledge of economy, she went on to say that nevertheless she would not press this argument were perpetual ignorance of the matter possible; but that, as it is impossible, she preferred to awaken the child from its dream with a gentle hand and a soft voice, rather than leave it to be awakened in after years by the rough experience of life, often very rough for those who have lived only in their illusions. And then, with an equally light but effectual touch, demolishing the objection that avarice is the sister of thrift, she carried the whole Congress with her by asking whether, because every good is liable to abuse, the good on that account is to be renounced: Shall we prevent the child from praying to God for fear of his becoming a bigot? Must we prevent the little girl from wishing to be loved for fear of her becoming a coquette ? ' As to what I must call the lollypop and goodies' argument, this at first sight scarcely seems to merit serious consideration. Nevertheless it has been one of the greatest difficulties that M. Laurent has had to contend with in Ghent. But he has conquered it to such a degree that the burgomaster told him one day that the school banks had ruined the sweet-shops of the town, for the children no longer went to them. Not that M. Laurent has set his face against the childish love of sugar-plums. He has repeatedly asserted that he would have