Mr. Gladstone made an interesting speech this day week in
opening the new Literary Institute at Saltney, a suburb of Chester. He dwelt chiefly on the extraordinary change for the better in the general condition of the working class during the last fifty years, touching on the great advantage which machinery has rendered to them in doing for them a great deal of the most toilsome work which our labourers had formerly to do by their own muscular energy. He also touched on the great reduction in the price of necessaries, and the con- siderable increase in the rate of wages during the same period, and the vast multiplication of agencies of thrift. Speaking of he Post Office Savings-Banks, he remarked on the low rate of interest which the poor get in them for their savings, but said that it could hardly be otherwise without loss to the State :—" If a man goes to the Post Office Savings-Bank and deposits a shilling, and two or three days after he goes again to the Bank and takes out the shilling,—I hope he will not do so,—that operation costs the public exactly 11d., besides paying back the shilling,"—so that it is clear that with a rate of interest at all close upon the Bank rate, the public would be a great loser by these Savings-Banks. Hence the necessity for a clear margin. These Savings-Banks, which have only been established twenty-six or twenty-seven years, now contain sixty millions of the people's savings. Mr. Gladstone especially pressed history on the working classes as a useful study. Perhaps he is right. But we have our doubts whether history, unless it can be pursued pretty closely for a considerable time, is one of the most effective studies for the cultivation of the mind.
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