help themselves—­relying upon their own resources—­upon their own savings; for it is a true saying that “a penny in the purse is better than a friend at court.”  The first penny saved is a step in the world.  The fact of its being saved and laid by, indicates self-denial, forethought, prudence, wisdom.  It may be the germ of future happiness.  It may be the beginning of independence.

Cobbett was accustomed to scoff at the “bubble” of Savings Banks, alleging that it was an insult to people to tell them that they had anything to save.  Yet the extent to which savings banks have been used, even by the humblest classes, proves that he was as much mistaken in this as he was in many of the views which he maintained.  There are thousands of persons who would probably never have thought of laying by a penny, but for the facility of the savings bank:  it would have seemed so useless to try.  The small hoard in the cupboard was too ready at hand, and would have become dissipated before it accumulated to any amount; but no sooner was a place of deposit provided, where sums as small as a shilling could be put away, than people hastened to take advantage of it.

The first savings bank was started by Miss Priscilla Wakefield, in the parish of Tottenham, Middlesex, towards the close of last century,—­her object being mainly to stimulate the frugality of poor children.  The experiment proved so successful that in 1799 the Rev. Joseph Smith, of Wendon, commenced a plan of receiving small sums from his parishioners during summer, and returning them at Christmas, with the addition of one-third as a stimulus to prudence and forethought.  Miss Wakefield, in her turn, followed Mr. Smith’s example, and in 1804 extended the plan of her charitable bank, so as to include adult labourers, female servants, and others.  A similar institution was formed at Bath, in 1808, by several ladies of that city; and about the same time Mr. Whitbread proposed to Parliament the formation of a national institution, “in the nature of a bank, for the use and advantage of the labouring classes alone;” but nothing came of his proposal.

It was not until the Rev. Henry Duncan, the minister of Ruthwell, a poor parish in Dumfriesshire, took up the subject, that the savings-bank system may be said to have become fairly inaugurated.  The inhabitants of that parish were mostly poor cottagers, whose average wages did not amount to more than eight shillings a week.  There were no manufactures in the district, nor any means of subsistence for the population, except what was derived from the land under cultivation; and the landowners were for the most part non-resident.  It seemed a very unlikely place in which to establish a bank for savings, where the poor people were already obliged to strain every nerve to earn a bare living, to provide the means of educating their children (for, however small his income, the Scottish peasant almost invariably contrives to save something wherewith to send his children to school), and to pay their little contributions to the friendly society of the parish.  Nevertheless, the minister resolved, as a help to his spiritual instructions, to try the experiment.