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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 80

[comments from Lord Rosebery]

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Lord Rosebery said:—

I have great pleasure in moving the adoption of this report, all the more as it marks an unprecedented occurrence in my own life, which is that, reversing a process by which the son is supposed to walk in the footsteps of the father, I am to-day walking in the footsteps of my son, who, I believe, moved this resolution last year. (Laughter.) I hope I may be able to speak as persuasively about thrift as he did on that occasion. (Laughter.) My Lord Provost, I think we must all feel that this is an eminently satisfactory report. The deposits have increased over a million in the last ten years, and we are now, as Mr. Wood has just told us, second only to Glasgow in the amount of the deposits lodged with the Government. Well, there is a traditional jealousy between Edinburgh and Glasgow, which I sometimes think is exaggerated—(hear, hear)—but at any rate we are quite satisfied to be second to Glasgow on this occasion, because we must remember that if Glasgow has saved more than we have, Glasgow has a great deal more to save from than we have. (Hear, hear.) But even if we are satisfied with ourselves, I am not sure that we figure quite favourably in page 4 regard to other nations as regards the proportion of depositors to population, I see from the returns that Sweden, and Norway, and France, and Belgium, and Germany, all exceed us in that proportion, and I think that we ought not to be satisfied as a country until we rank with that little but robust nation of Norway, which stands at the head of the list. (Applause.)