any good at all; there was often a deal of expence at the monthly meetings; and then, besides that, they were somehow, or other, made upon such a bad plan, that, when a man was old and sickly, and could not work, there was no money for him-the box was empty.

R. Yes, but this is not likely to be so with our old Club; I call it the old Club because it has been established here these fifteen years; there is plenty of money in the box, so much that there is more than is wanted by the sick members, and the healthy members are able to take a share of the money for themselves every year.

W. Aye, there lies the mischief,-and their box will soon be empty enough, I can tell you.

R. But how is that? They would not divide this money if there was not plenty.

W. Why here lies the matter. The members were all young when they first entered; and they are none of them very old now; and so there is a good deal of putting in, and not much taking out. Now, in a few more years, many of the members will be old, and sickly, and unable to work, and they will draw hard upon the box, and there will be nothing left; and that is the way so many clubs have become bankrupt.

R. I see.

And so you think they should never allow any of the money to be divided among the members that are well, but that all should be kept on purpose for the sick.

W. To be sure I do. The money is to be put in by the young members, by little and little, till it comes to a great sum; and then, when there are many sick members, and a deal of money is wanted, there it will be ready.

R. I understand you :-it's all right. When there are a great many old and sick members, there must be a great deal of money wanted,-aye, so much, that it must be a hard matter to manage the

affair so as to always have enough for them. This must require a great deal of calculation.

W. Certainly it does a great deal of calculation; and the truth of the matter is, that most of the old Clubs were made without any calculation at all.

R. Aye, and so that's another plain reason why so many of them broke.

W. To be sure it is; and now you see the reason why I did not like to have my name down in any of these old Clubs.

R. I see it. But then why should not the members pay more money, that there might be sure to be always enough in the box,

W. Why that's bad, again, Ralph. The matter is to make the members pay in as little as you can, and to give them out, in time of sickness, as much

as you can.

R. Yes to be sure;-but that's soon said; I look upon it, however, that it is not quite so soon done; it must require a good deal of close calculation to manage this in the best way a little more than our head man, John Jones the blacksmith is up to, or you or me either,-eh, Will!

W. To be sure; and that makes me see why the new Benefit Clubs are all right, for they are exactly made upon such calculations.

R. But how is that? It can be no easy matter to make such calculations; I should guess that few people are equal to it.

W. Not many perhaps ;-but there are some people who have given their minds very much to those sort of calculations.

R. Well those are just the sort of people to consult, before any Benefit Club is set up.

W. Well, and it is exactly upon the plan of these calculations that the new Clubs are formed.

R. I wonder how they do it. For sometimes there is a deal of sickness in a place, and sometimes but little-many deaths at one time, and few at

another; and you know, in all Clubs, there must be money paid, at every death, for the funeral and so

on.

W. Yes, but if you take the average of one year with another, for a good many years, it comes to pretty nearly the same thing.

R. Well, I suppose it does;-and so by looking into parish registers, and such sort of things, it may be judged how many people die between such and such ages;-and so a kind of table might be made of births and deaths and sicknesses, and accidents, and so on; and, if this was pretty well known, it would not be so very hard to make the payments and receipts of the Clubs accordingly.

W. You are right; and it is upon the consideration of such tables that the plan of the new Clubs is calculated.

R. Well, but some of the old Clubs were properly calculated to be sure; they have not all been bankrupts.

W. No, some were good:-but the plan now is, to make them all good.

R. Well, I sometimes think a Savings Bank best, for I can have my money out when I want it; but I can have nothing out of the Benefit Club till I am sick. Many members have put into a Benefit Club for years, and have never had any thing out: they have never been sick.

W. Well, they ought to be very thankful for that. If they had been sick, they would have been sure of an allowance, and having been well, their money has gone to help others.

R. Yes; but I think it would be a good plan, for every body that puts in, to receive an allowance, when they grow old and weak and cannot do a hard day's work, although they may perhaps be able to do a little.

W.

Why this is one of the plans that the new clubs are going upon; they give a weekly allowance

for life, to every member after he is about 65 years

of age.

R. Well, that's good. But then there's another thing in the old Clubs that I don't like. A man cannot receive any thing till he is so bad as not to be able to do a single stroke of work. Joe Jenkins was took off the box last year because he just raked over a place in his garden where the hens had been scratching; and Tom Simons for putting in six brocoli plants that a neighbour gave him, and Will Brown for going out and putting up his own windowshutters.

W. Yes this was because they seemed well enough to go about, and so the other members did. not like that they should come upon the box.

R. Yes, but a man may be well enough to go about, and still not be able to do a hard day's work.

W. That's very true, and we manage this very well in the new Clubs. If a man is quite confined, he has full pay;-but if he can do a little, then he may earn his little, and he may then have half pay.

R. Well that is good; for a man need not quite shut up, for a trifling illness; and yet by keeping from very hard work, he may have a good chance of getting round again.-But is any thing given to the relatives of a member, when he dies?

W. Yes.

R. And how much a week do you allow for full pay?

W. Why this depends upon how much a man puts in; we don't put in all alike, as in most of the old Clubs, a man puts in more or less according to what he can afford, and he takes out accordingly; some receive as much as twenty shillings a week full pay, and ten shillings half pay; and some receive less, just according to what they put in; people may begin to put in at ten years old, or till they are fifty; those who pay the least, I think, receive two shillings a week full-pay, and one shilling half-pay.

R. But do they make any difference between the young and the old when they first enter? The young, I think, should pay less, because they will have to pay longest.

W. To be sure. This is all done upon proper calculation; and a proper difference is made.

R. Then your business is all done without the expense of club meetings and so on.

W. Yes, we have no expense in that way.

R. Then why may not women belong to the club too?

W. Oh, we take women too, there is no reason to the contrary: an industrious young woman, by putting in a trifle, may secure a great help in time of sickness, and a comfortable allowance in her old age.

R. Why, you seem to me to have provided for all that can happen. It seems to me that, by this plan, a young man, when he first gets into work, may, by putting into this club, feel quite at his ease in knowing that he can neither be distressed for money in the time of sickness or of old age; and it is a very good thing that there is the same provision for women too.

W. I think every young man who is in any thing like work should be a member;-and, if he gets a trifle in a Savings Bank besides, for any thing particular that may occur, he may really, as far as we can see, keep himself from that fear of distress which is so very bitter to a man's mind, and from that state of actual poverty which leads to so many crimes.

R. Yes, I agree with you. To be sure, no man need quite starve in England, for there is always the parish to go to.

W. Yes, but I think this is the worst thing of all to trust to. I believe the dependence on parish help has been the ruin of many a man: it has starved more than it has assisted.

R. How so?

W. Why, if a man once gets to think that he