408 Conlimmtion of the same Subject. Bk. iv. 



ciety. By giving to each individual the full and 

 entire benefit of his own industry and prudence, 

 they are calculated greatly to strengthen the les- 

 sons of Nature and Providence; and a young 

 man, who had been saving from fourteen or fifteen 

 with a view to marriage at four or five and twenty, 

 or perhaps much earlier, would probably be in- 

 duced to wait tv/o or three years longer if the 

 times were unfavourable; if corn were high; if 

 wages were low ; or if the sum he had saved had 

 been found by experience not to be sufficient to 

 furnish a tolerable security against want. A habit 

 of saving a portion of present earnings for future 

 contingencies can scarcely be supposed to exist 

 without general habits of prudence and foresight; 

 and if the opportunity furnished by provident 

 banks to individuals, of reaping the full benefit of 

 saving, should render the practice general, it might 

 rationally be expected that, under the varying re- 

 sources of the country, the population would be 

 adjusted to the actual demand for labour, at the 

 expense of less pain and less poverty; and the re- 

 medy thus appears, so far as it goes, to apply to 

 the very root of the evil. 



The great object of saving-banks, however, is 

 to prevent want and dependence by enabling the 

 poor to provide against contingencies themselves. 

 And in a natural state of society, such institutions, 

 with the aid of private charity well directed, 

 would probably be all the means necessary to 

 .produce the best practicable effects. In the pre- 



