ings, or in family bibles-a bank of deposit on which there was never a run, because the book was never read, as Mr. Rogers wittily said, in his "Dream of the Blank Bible." There is still a vast amount of hoarding arising from ignorance, which this measure will tend to do away with. Only the other day, we read of a poor woman who had saved six pounds, which she hid away in bank notes behind the chimneypiece. Her husband heard of the store, and induced her to part with one of the pound notes, which soon melted away in drink. Returning home in his cups, he lighted his pipe with the remaining five-pound note, and so the thrift of years was gulped down in a fiery draught, or went up the chimney in smoke. The case is too common; and if these little hoards could be kept out of harm's way, there would be much less pauperism, less desertion of children, less wife-beating, and other crimes attendant on drink. Thrifty wives want that protection from their husband which we give to pheasants and peacocks. While the hen is hatching, we shut off the male bird by himself. The Chancellor of the Exchequer may open a hen-coop at every village postoffice, where the little nest-eggs of industry may lie out of harm's way. The bird and the man are both such irrational creatures, that neither count their chickens before they are hatched, or reason, as the good hen and the housewife do, that every egg is a chicken, or that a penny saved is a penny gained. The respect of savings' banks is great among the poor, and their faith in them almost unlimited. It is a real act of kindness to provide them a refuge for their savings, a place where they may lay their earnings in safety. Once in the bank, they are out of harm's way. Money burns in a poor man's pocket-not even the metal tea-pot on the top shelf can contain it long. It is too hot there, as the children say at hide-andseek; and those who are in the habit of visiting the poor, and have watched their habits and ways of thinking, know well that they have the greatest reluctance to draw money out once it is deposited. "Ma'am," we have often heard them say to the lady superintendent of a penny bank, we hope you won't mind our drawing a few shillings to day. My husband wants a new flannel jacket, or a new set of 66 bibs and tuckers for Bill, Tom, and Harry." They have lost the idea that it is their money-theirs, that is to make ducks and drakes of: or to use more scientific phrase, it is withdrawn from the class of capital spent in articles of immediate consumption, into the class of reproductive capital. The capital of a country, all economists know, is in direct proportion to the amount withdrawn from the former class into the latter. A rich country would soon become poor if its indulgence kept pace with its industry; if what was made with one hand was spent with the other. It is the selfdenial which puts off expenditure, which lays by for a rainy day, and which does not eat at even all that it has earned during the day which enriches a country. Magnum vectigal est parsimonia is as true as ever, and so the legislature which encourages economy and facilitates saving, is creating a sinking fund better than any devised by Pitt. The government lottery and post office savings' banks thus represent the two extremes of bad and good government. A bad government encourages unthriftiness and the habit of living from hand to mouth, which is the mark of the savage or half-reclaimed man. By raising a revenue out of the lottery, a state adopts the principle of improvidence, and is responsible for the Mandeville doctrine, that private vices are public virtues. They are accomplices in the demoralization of their people, and the contradiction between profession and practice becomes most offensive when, as in the case of the Papal Government, the Pope proclaims himself the great spiritual papa of his people, carrying the censorship into the recesses of private life, and treating, in all other cases, private vices as public crimes. One vice only in this theocracy is permitted, because it is a state monopoly; and that the vice which is put down in every other state, or only indulged in secret, and that in flash houses called by a very diabolical name. Our post-office savings' banks will distinguish ours in the other extreme as a government parental not so much in name as in reality. It will, moreover, help, if anything can, to allay the long feud between capital and wages. When, by laying up some of his wages, the working man enters, in however small a scale, into the class of capitalists, his views of that class will insen sibly alter. He will begin to view the class with less suspicion; according as he becomes one of themselves: he will see that they are not the greedy grasping monopolists that he supposed, and will find that there are laws which bind down capital to a certain line of conduct as much as wages. The great want of our modern society is a class intermediate between capital and labour, mixing with both and understanding the difficulties of both. As it now is, our highly paid artizans-men earning their two and three pounds weeklyseldom die possessed of more property than they began life with. The reason is, that the habit of laying by has not been formed in them. Mr. Smiles has proved that savings' banks have more depositors among the underpaid ill-fed Dorsetshire labourers, than among the well-paid, well-fed workers in the manufacturing districts. The man who can earn five shillings a-day will often lie a-bed on Sunday, and drink all Monday and Tuesday, only bringing home four days wages at the end of the week to support his family with. High wages here do not represent increased comfort at home, or a better position in life; but only a better credit at the public-house, and a two days' carouse on the work of four. This demoralization, which lies at the root of all strikes, will never be got rid of until the working man becomes a capitalist on his own account. Let the beginning be ever so small, still the habit will be formed, and once the sweets of independence are tasted, no man will submit again to the slavery of living from hand to mouth. No one can foresee at present to what dimensions these post-office banks may grow. It may surpass the post-office itself in importance, and become a department of state, as the post-office itself grew from small beginnings in the reign of Charles II. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is, therefore, right to try it on a small scale at first, and to feel his way step by step. It need not supplant any existing savings banks, but extend the principle by bringing to every man's door a place of safe deposit, with government security and a small return of interest. Thus concludes our Month's Chronicle of Home Affairs. We have no thing more important on hand, than to open penny banks for the people, while almost every other nation of Europe is opening a fresh national loan, and laying on more charges on the already over encumbered estate of public credit. The contrast is that between Hogarth's industrious and the idle apprentice-the one is getting richer and the other getting poorer every day. But we must not congratulate ourselves too fast, for it is impossible to say when we may be drawn into the vortex of our neighbours' troubles. For the moment the horizon is a little more bright and reassuring than it has been for some months past. The transports are on their way to Beyrout, to carry back the French expedition; so the Eastern difficulty is got over for the present. Austria has too much on her hands in Hungary to dream of breaking the peace on the Mincio, and Prussia has given over all thought of bullying Denmark on the Eyder. Russia has enough on her hands in Poland to insure her not marching on the Pruth. So we can draw a long breath, and, turning our back on Europe, fix our attention on America, where we have even greater interests at stake than on the Continent. We can only hope that the same good Providence which has preserved Europe from the horrors of actual war, may yet spare America, and that the winter of discontent may pass into glorious summer there as here. May, as every farmer knows, is a critical month; the poets sing of it as the "Merry Month of May." Spring, like a laughing child, making mirth of the frosty beard of its grandsire Winter. But the poet's May is not the May of plain prose. In life, May is a month of frosts and sunshine alternating upon each other day, as if day and night, summer and winter, were contending which was to have the mastery. So it is in politics just now; peace and war have come to dispute on the borders of May, which is to rule for the rest of the year. Let us take Edwin Arnold's exquisite thought on spring, as an omen for good at this critical season. "Lo! comes she with her pleasant wont, When April chases winter old, Couching against his frozen front Her tiny spears of green and gold." INDEX TO VOL. LVII. Alexander, Lt. Col., The Command of Direct Trade between France and Ire- the Channel, by, reviewed, 259. Anon, Anon, Sir! 284. Antiquities of Ireland, The, 339. Antrim Castle, Part II., 163; Part III. Artillery, Past, Present, and to Come, Dark Hour, A. K. H. B, 373. land, 208. Dismal Dobbs, or, A Night at Crow- Dixon, William Hepworth, Personal England, History of, Vols. V. and VI., "Essays and Reviews," Remorseless "Essays and Reviews," Indications of Euphrates, A Legend of the, 488. 446. Faithful for Ever, by Coventry Patmore, Foreign and Home Affairs, 374. France and England, Naval Warfare Letter from le Capitaine de France, Politics and Society in, 721. French Navy in 1861, The, 490. History of the Knights of Malta, by Major Whitworth Porter, Royal En- Hunyadi, by Professor de Vericour, 39. Income-tax Grievances, 460. Indications of Antagonism in "Essays Defence. A Great Country's Cheapest, 3. In Memoriam-Tennyson's Philosophy, Devil, Ministers of the, 696. 183. Ireland, Legend Lays of, No. I., A Italy, Ultramontane Amenities for, 742. Jamaica, Scenes and Customs in the West Indies, 675. Kentucky, The Mammoth Cave of, 313. Lavinia, by the author of "Doctor An- Lough Rea, A Legend of, 502. 405. Mabel. C.F.A., 347. Marsh, Sir Henry, Bart., M.D., T.C.D., Mediæval Patriot, A, Scanderbeg, 365. 405. Notes on New Books (see also Reviews) Sketches of a Holiday Scamper in One o'clock, a sonnet. Advena, 268. and Craftsman," Chap. i., 142; Chap. Paris Industries and the Commercial Patmore, Coventry, "Faithful for Ever," Poetry, Recent, 405. Poetry: The Swallow and the Poet, Poor Laws, The Irish, 709. Recent Popular Novels, 192. tistique de l'Industrie d' Paris, resultant Salmon Fisheries, Irish and Scots, 86. Ships in Armour. 131. Slingsby, Jonathan Freke, The Eve of Summer Song, A. M.C. 686. Tennyson's Philosophy, In Memoriam, 183. Thermæ Antiquæ Redivivæ or the Ultramontane Amenities for Italy, 742. Vericour, Professor de, Hunyadi, by, 39. Warfare between France and England, Letter from le Capitaine de Wellington, Field-Marshal Arthur, Duke Wellington Papers, The, 435. Zealand, The Case of the War in New, |