The Chancellor of the Exchequer, who at the time of which we are speaking was Mr. Spring Rice (the late Lord Monteagle), was quite unwilling to take the course recommended by Mr. Hume. He was sure it would tend to shake the security of the deposits, to which the loss which Mr. Hume had spoken of was a mere trifle. He admitted, however, that if Parliament could have foreseen the extent to which Savings Banks would so soon have arrived, wiser arrangements would undoubtedly have been made. People certainly did not want all the inducements to save their money which it was once thought they did require. Still, he was not for changing the rate; Government paid more than they received as interest, but he declined to argue the matter as a mere money question. Mr. Hume might say that depositors cared more for security than interest, but he (the Chancellor) said, that if they reduced that interest, the depositors would rush to take out their money. Nor did Mr. Rice speak without the book. He produced a paper in which was described the effect of the various commercial and political panics on Savings Banks, and in distinction to this the result of the reduction of the rate of interest in 1828. So far as it went, the Return is conclusive and instructing.[44] In the commercial panic of 1825, the total amount withdrawn was 361,000l.; in the political panic of 1832, 550,000l.; in 1828, when the interest was reduced by 14s. per cent., no less a sum than 1,500,000l. was withdrawn. The Chancellor would not say that under no possible circumstances should a reduction take place; a time might come when it might be done wisely and discreetly, though he believed it would never take place without creating some degree of uncertainty and risk. The depositors in Savings Banks were not the class to be experimented upon, and he would not have it said of him by persons out of doors that he had commenced reductions in the public expenditure by cutting down the interest payable to the poorer classes, who, after all, he believed, were the principal investors in Savings Banks. One other little item of statistics Mr. Rice gave before he sat down, which is very interesting, and much more convincing than his other arguments. He gave, from a Return which we have not been able to find, the amount of interest which had been paid in money since the establishment of Savings Banks and, on the other hand, the interest which had been credited to depositors and made into principal. In the former case it was 286,000l.; in the latter, or interest made principal, it was 9,271,000l. Finally, the Chancellor believed, that to pay depositors interest at the rate of the value of money in the market would be a death-blow to Savings Banks altogether! If Mr. Hume, in his pursuit of economy, tried to enforce it by dividing the House on the subject, his duty would be to resist. Mr. Goulburn, as the spokesman of the Opposition on financial subjects, condemned the proposition as likely to cause distrust amongst all classes connected with Savings Banks. So far from thinking that the interest ought to be reduced, or could be reduced, with safety—and this remark is curious, viewed in the light of subsequent events—“it was only by great care and good management on the part of those who superintended such banks” that expenses could be paid. Time, however, works wonders, and among other things, brings its revenges. The financial reformer, who from the first had the best of the argument, had not long to live to see a change, and to find that change brought about under the direct auspices of one who only six years before, in the words just quoted, had strenuously opposed his motion. We must leave Mr. Goulburn's bill of 1844 to be described in a subsequent chapter.
[28] Mr. Rose's exertions in this respect were only ended by his death, which took place in January, 1818, at the age of seventy-four. “His whole life,” says a contemporary, “was the continued and strenuous effort of a powerful mind to promote the welfare of the state and the happiness of his fellow creatures.” In contrast to this testimony, which cannot be called exaggerated, we might refer to William Cobbett's bitter tirades against Mr. Rose, which, indeed, may with some readers form the most convincing evidence of the merits of the statesman. In Cobbett's “New Year's Gift to Old George Rose,” published in the Register of 1817, and to which choice production we shall again refer, there is an elaborate and embittered attack upon the latter, in the course of which Cobbett stated that the amount of the sinecures which Mr. Rose and his sons held would furnish ample funds for all the Savings Banks then in existence.
[29] From a bare record of the debate in question to be found in Hansard. Third Series. 1816.
[30] Act 57 George III. c. 130.
[31] Hansard's Debates, vol. xli. page 1392.
[32] This cognomen was given to Mr. Duncan more than once in the House of Commons about this period.
[33] A Letter to W. R. K. Douglas, Esq. M.P. on the Expediency of the Bill brought by him into Parliament, occasioned by a Report of the Edinburgh Society for the Suppression of Beggars. By the Rev. Henry Duncan, of Ruthwell. 1819.
[34] 1 George IV. c. 83.
[35] 5 George IV. c. 62.
[36] We shall see subsequently that this loss was more than made up in other ways.