[PROPOSED LAW]
DEALING WITH THE ORGANISATION OF A
Service of Cheques and Clearing of Accounts
in the General Savings Bank
laid before the Chamber of Representatives of Belgium at the sitting of Nov. 20th 1896

EXPLANATIONS[T]

Gentlemen,

The proposed law laid before the Chamber of Representatives, proposes to attach to our General Savings Bank, a service of which the great importance, the remarkable stability and singular capacity for development, has been proved by a trial conducted with vigilant carefulness during thirteen years in Austria and five in Hungary. In fact the chief part of the unfolding of a project of this kind consists in the setting forth of the results of foreign experience.

(This part of the explanation relating to Austrian experience is a summary of the preceding article, to which we refer our readers.)

Returning now to Belgium we cannot fail to recognise first of all that the institution of the General Savings Bank by the Act of March 16th 1865, is one of the important events of our economic evolution. History will justly connect the name of Frère-Orban with a work so perfectly balanced and bearing the imprint of a real constructive genius.

The solution given to the fundamental problem of the relations of the Savings Bank with the State, and of which the essential characteristics were:—making the Central Bank a distinct legal entity, whilst at the same time surrounding it with the guarantee of the State;—taking measures so that this State guarantee should not be to onerous,—and the constitution of a reserve fund,—the conception of the complex and diversified system of investing the capital in the best way to suit both the exigencies of its productivity and its disposal;—fixing the rates of interest and the periodic distribution of a portion of the reserve;—the accession of all classes of society to the Savings Bank and the admission of unlimited deposits;—the correctives brought to bear on these principles by the fixing of differential rates of interest according to the largeness of the deposits;—all these elements wisely co-ordinated, give to the work of the legislator of 1865, at once an original physiognomy and a true grandeur.