Mr. Gladstone made an admirable speech on Wednesday to the
depositors in the Savings - Banks connected with the South-Eastern and Metropolitan Railway Companies. It is called in the newspapers a speech on "thrift," but it was hardly that. Indeed, as regards thrift, while he warmly recommended it to the earners of wages, he appeared to be very dubious about it in the wealthy, intimating that they might do much better if they spent more and saved less. Well, that is true if they are wise in expenditure; but it is much easier to be wise in saving than wise in expenditure. It is hardly possible for the wealthy really to save without so investing their money as to support a great deal of honest labour; but it is uncommonly easy so to expend it, and so to expend it with the beat intentions, as to effect very little but harm. But the main idea of Mr. Gladstone's speech, and a very striking and vigorous idea, was that railways had organised so methodically the means of locomotion as to submit all the employes to what Mr. Carlyle used to call a genuinely "rhythmical drill," remarkably beneficial to those who are subjected to it, encouraging as it does the formation of punctual habits in the place of those indolent speculations on chance gains and chance employment which so much injured the purveyors of coach and carriage travelling,—the post-boys, for instance,—of the early part of the century. Now railways mean method to all who travel and to all who serve, and method means "rhythmical drill" to both soul and body.
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