"6. Mode of transacting business accommodating: suited to the circumstances of the customer in respect of times of receipt and payment, and quantam of receipt and payment at each time.
"7. Mode of operation, prompt, consuming as little of the customer's time in attendance as may be.
"8. Mode of book-keeping, clear and satisfactory."
There can be little doubt from the above extract, that if Bentham did not make a very practical proposal, he had an excellent idea of the description of agency required.
Another proposal which shared the same fate as did those of Bentham and Whitbread was ventilated in the Quarterly Review for 1827, in an article on “The Substitution of Savings Banks for Poor Laws.” This was no new scheme, though the agency by which the scheme was sought to be carried out certainly was original. During the eighteenth century the plan of masters compulsorily deducting payments from the wages they were expected to pay to their servants, in order that the money might form a fund for a time of need, was frequently recommended, and even proposed to Parliament. De Foe, in his “Giving Alms no Charity,” tells us how at his own period attempts were made to effect a legislative substitution of savings for poors' rates, and to pass Acts of Parliament which “shall make drunkards take care of wife and children; spendthrifts lay up for a wet day; lazy fellows diligent; and thoughtless, sottish men careful and provident.” But all the plans, as might be expected, came to nothing. In 1827, however, the Savings Bank principle having become recognised, and the Post Office machinery tolerably efficient it was said that the scheme might be made to work. The writer advocated the establishment of a National Savings Bank, to which the Savings Banks in the country might contribute; “and perhaps,” said the Quarterly Reviewer, as if recognising the fact of the insufficient distribution of banks, “the remittances to be made might, especially in rural districts, be allowed to be paid into the nearest Post Office, and remitted with its own money to the General Post Office, by whom it might be paid over to the Commissioners of the National Debt.” This scheme attracted little or no attention at the time, and nothing came of it. In more than one respect, however, it contained the germ of a plan subsequently carried out, and it is not impossible that some of the numerous claimants for the honour of having originally proposed Savings Banks in connexion with the Post Office may have carefully studied the details.
And this brings us to the early history of Post Office Savings Banks, and to the numerous suggestions which at one time or another seem to have been made with regard to them. No less in respect to the place which these banks are designed to occupy as important public institutions—the people's principal purse—(and that their position in the country will at no distant period be a commanding one there cannot be a reasonable doubt) than for their present attained position and intrinsic value, the question of their early history is a matter for most careful investigation, and one which must not be lightly passed over. The matter of the authorship of the scheme was the subject of considerable discussion at an early stage in its history; and that discussion was not without its value in elucidating some points of considerable importance, and as affording materials for more deliberately investigating many claims which have been put forward. It naturally forms part of our plan, not only to offer a description of the working of the new class of banks—as will be done in a subsequent chapter—but to show, as we propose to do here, in a strictly impartial manner, to whom the country is indebted for the agency now in operation.[154]
Confining ourselves at present to the origination of the principle of Post Office Banks, without reference to the wonderfully simple and efficacious scheme afterwards organized, we find that several different gentlemen had between the years 1850 and 1860, and acting entirely unknown to each other, matured plans, and in one way or another actually proposed them, to remedy the deficiencies of the existing banks, on some such principle as that eventually adopted. To Mr. Sikes, of Huddersfield, however,—of whose previous labours in the cause of Savings Bank reform we have already spoken,—belongs the undoubted merit and honour of having independently originated and matured a plan of operation more or less equal to the object in view; of having persevered in the object of bringing the matter prominently before the public; and of being so fortunate as to have proposed his scheme at a period when the country possessed in Mr. Gladstone a statesman of extraordinary versatility and power at the head of its financial operations, and who has given abundant evidence of his willingness to grapple with uncommon difficulties where a need is proved and the principles of a measure are shown to be sound. As we shall show presently, the same propositions, only differing as to details, were submitted once, if not twice, to Sir Charles Wood when Chancellor of the Exchequer, and once more, by a totally different individual, to Sir George C. Lewis when he held that office. How much, therefore, the measures subsequently carried are primarily due to Mr. Gladstone's sharp-sightedness and energy the reader may judge.
Returning to an account of those who have been represented as suggesting the principle of Postal Banks, we think the number may be fairly reduced by several names. And in that number we would class Dr. W. Neilson Hancock, of Dublin. Of Dr. Hancock's exertions in connexion with the frauds in Savings Banks, and his description of the feeling of insecurity which they engendered, we have already spoken; those exertions related exclusively, so far as we can gather from his pamphlets, to a remedy for this grievance. In a paper[155] read by Dr. Hancock before the Dublin Statistical Society in 1852, and republished in a pamphlet form four years afterwards, we find him saying, that private enterprise had not had a fair trial,—if it had, and failed, then Government should undertake the work, as it did Money Order business:—
“That part of the natural business of bankers which consists in receiving deposits from the poor might be undertaken by some public officers appointed for the purpose, just as the granting of Money Orders, another part of the same business, is carried on by the officers of the Post Office. Such an institution would be called a Savings Bank; and in it the Government would be responsible to the depositors for the acts of the clerks. So that the entire responsibility of management would rest with the members of Government in charge of that department, and the depositors would have perfect security for any money actually paid to a clerk.... My own impression is, that if our laws were framed with a view to allow of small deposits and small investments, private enterprise is quite adequate to supply a complete system of safe investments for the poor. But whether that opinion be sound or not, a Government institution like the Money Order Office, with Government officers and Government security for those officers, would be infinitely better than the present system of divided responsibility and absence of security.”
In a further paper, read and published in a pamphlet form in 1855,[156] Dr. Hancock made no further proposal towards the object immediately in our view, although he said—