88 
Sir Massey Lopes. 
study further the distinctive features of sound local credit 
institutions may need to be reminded that co-operation is a 
plant of somewhat tender growth. It behoves all our reformers 
to weigh well the principles on which alone by successful 
appeals to local self-interest, the striking development of agri- 
cultural credit associations has been secured on the Continent 
in the past half century. In this connection a large mass of 
digested experience, already acquired in foreign practice, is 
available in Mr. Wolff’s new work on “ Co-operative Banking,”' 
and those chapters on the local work of the societies to which 
the name of Raiffesein has been applied, and on co-operative 
mortgage credit, deserve close attention. Promoters of the newer 
movements here will of course have to decide for themselves 
how far the methods which have secured unqualified success in 
many other States may be adaptable to our native conditions 
at home, as this does not always follow. But this book offers 
a timelj" review of certain aspects of the question, and notes 
not only the encouragement to be gained but emphatically 
exhibits the dangers which may attend those efforts where too 
much reliance is i^laced on nui’sing new societies from outside 
sources, governmental, municipal or otherwise, and where too 
little reliance is placed on the healthy sentiment of direct local 
interest and local self-help, without which the motive power 
wanted for ultimate success of a genuine credit system, resting 
on the close association of borrowers and depositors, is too often 
lacking. 
SIR MASSEY LOPES. 
By the death, in his ninetieth year, of the Right Honourable 
Sir Massey Lopes, the agriculturists of Great Britain have lost 
a warm friend and an able champion ; and the Royal Agricul- 
tui-al Society will not soon forget the services which in his 
long and active life he rendered to its work. His membership 
of the Society, which began sixtj' years ago, has covered the 
whole period of the changes, developments, and depression which 
have successively characterised the history of British agriculture 
from 1848 to the present time. Sir Massey Lopes first served 
on the Council in 1865, and reached the chair some twenty 
years thereafter, being President of the Society in 1884-5 at 
the Preston meeting. Succeeding in early life to large estates 
in Devon, he effected many notable agricultural improvements, 
expending, as he told a recent Royal Commission, very large 
sums in the course of forty years on the development of his 
land and the improvement of the position of his tenantry. 
‘ Co-opemHve Banltinq, its Principles and Practice. By Henry W. Wolff. 
London : P. S. King & Son. 
