; the Cabot Tower; Centennial of the First
Savings Bank, 1899.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gladstone, the great Liberal leader, died, full of
years and honors, at his residence, Hawarden Castle, in North Wales
(1898). The "Grand Old Man"--as his friends delighted to call him--
was buried in that Abbey at Westminster which holds so much of
England's most precious dust. His grave is not far from the memorial
to Lord Beaconsfield, the eminent Conservative leader, who was his
lifelong rival and political opponent.

In the autumn (1898) the Cabot monument was opened at Bristol. It is
a commanding tower, overlooking the ancient city and port from which
John Cabot (S335) sailed in the spring of 1497. The monument
commemorates that explorer's discovery of the mainland of the New
World. An inscription on the face of the tower expresses "the earnest
hope that Peace and Friendship may ever continue between the kindred
peoples" of England and America.

In May of the next year, 1899, the one hundredth anniversary of the
establishment of savings banks in Great Britain was celebrated. Near
the closing year of the eighteenth century, 1799, Reverend Joseph
Smith, Vicar of Wendover in Buckinghamshire, invited the laborers of
his parish to deposit their savings with him on interest. "Upon the
first day of the week," said he, quoting St. Paul's injuction, "let
every one of you lay by him in store."[1] He offered to receive sums
as small as twopence. Before the end of the year he had sixty
depositors. Eventually the government took up the scheme and
established the present system of national postal savings banks.

[1] The quotation is from I Corinthians xvi, 2.

They have done and are doing incalculable good. At present there are
over eleven million depositors in the United Kingdom. Most of them
belong to the wage-earning class, and they hold more than 212,000,000
pounds. In this case certainly the grain of mustard seed, sown a few
generations ago, has produced a mighty harvest.

622. England in Egypt; Progress in Africa.

While busy at home, the English had been busy outside of their
island. Five years after the opening of the Suez Canal (1869), Lord
Beaconsfield, then the Conservative Prime Minister, bought nearly half
of the canal property from the Governor of Egypt. Since then England
has kept her hand on the country of the Pharaohs and the pyramids, and
kept it there greatly to the advantage of the laboring class.

Abo