§ Sir John Newportrose for the purpose of moving for leave to bring in a bill to extend the protection of parliament to the establishment of provident institutions for saving in Ireland. The House had already assented to the general principle of such establishments, by sanctioning, in the last session, a proposition of a right hon. gentleman for their encouragement in Great Britain; it therefore only remained for him to show why a separate bill should be passed for Ireland, to secure the sanction of the House to the present measure. A law of this nature for England must necessarily be encumbered with many provisions and clauses of detail, in consequence of the very complicated system^ of poor-laws existing in this country, all of which would be unnecessary in Ireland, and it would be attended with great confusion, to distinguish in the same bill what parts of it should operate in the one country, and what in the other; he was therefore anxious that such an encumbrance of detail should not endanger the advantages that Ireland was likely to derive from the enactment of such a measure. He stated that there existed a law on the Irish Statute Book, preventing bankers from paying interest for money lodged in their hands. This restriction should be taken off, as far as the money of these saving institutions was concerned. For the purpose also of affording every possible means of security to the depositors in the saving institutions, it was intended to provide in 358 this bill, that in case a banker, in whose hands the deposits may be lodged, should become bankrupt, the trustees of the provident institutions should have a paramount claim before all the other creditors on the property of the bankrupt, to the whole amount of the deposits. There was one point of considerable difficulty in the detail of the measure, created by the fluctuation in the public funds, which might seriously affect those persons whose deposits were lodged in them. In consequence of that, the bankers, to save themselves, allowed interest less by one per cent, than the legal interest; but he suggested to the hon. gentlemen connected with the finance department, the necessity of adopting some new principle of funds, destined solely for the money deposited in the provident institutions, which might be negociable in the way of exchequer bills. The right hon. baronet then stated the result of the establishment of a saving bank in Waterford, where, in the course of six months, the sum of 2,390l. was deposited by about three hundred persons. Out of this sum there had been paid 560l. leaving still a considerable amount in the bank, for which the depositors received interest. He had been in the office of the institution one day, when a man came in with five or six children. He deposited in the names of these, one, two, or three shillings each; and this man stated, that, since the establishment of the bank, he had regularly deposited some trifling sums in the name of each his children, and he felt confident that had such an institution been established earlier in the country, he might by that time have realised a considerable amount which had been dissipated, in consequence of there being no place for securing it. The right hon. baronet concluded by moving, "That leave be given to bring in a bill, for the protection and encouragement of provident institutions, or Banks for Savings in Ireland." —Leave was given.