$ 5.—Thrift.

If India and several British colonies offer but little scope for saving to British emigrants, Australia, Canada, and the Cape leave abundant margin for thrift and accumulation. A comparison of banking deposits in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom gives the following results. In 1881 the amount of deposits at the banks in the Australian colonies was £61,741,000, and at the savings banks page 9 £8,786,000, giving an aggregate of £70,527,000 in a population of 2,700,000, or a proportion of £26 per head. In Canada, the amount of deposits at the banks acting under charter in 1886 amounted to §101,182,000, equal to 20,236,000; and at the savings banks $44,672,000, or £8,934,000, making in all 28,970,000 in a population of 4,535,000, giving a proportion of £6 7s. 9d. per head. In the United Kingdom the deposits at banks may be taken at about £120,000,000, and those at the savings banks were in 1884 £87,000,000, making a total of £207,000,000 in a population of 35,000,000, giving a proportion of £5 18s. per head. Nowhere the amount of deposits represents the full amount of saving, many being the forms of investments. Nevertheless, we have in these figures gratifying evidence that some portion, at any rate, of the gains in the colonies is neither wasted nor hoarded but preserved and economised. In all localities where fortunes are suddenly made without the sobering influences of time and disappointments the chances are that money easily got may as easily be wasted. It is all important, therefore, to extend as much as possible the means of thrift. A savings bank ought to be planted wherever an emigrant sets his tent.

No better evidence can, moreover, be given of the appreciation of emigration by the emigrants themselves, and of the scope afforded for accumulation, than the facts that those who have emigrated are constantly sending money home to pay for the passage of their relatives and friends. Within the six months from January to June 1886, money was sent from New South Wales to pay for the passage of 3,942 souls. The amount of money remitted by settlers in the United States and British North America to their friends in the United Kingdom, from 1848 to 1885 is given by the Board of Trade at not less than £31,018,557. And the amount of money remitted by settlers in Australia and other places from 1876 to 1885, amounted to £269,260.