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Henry Duncan and the Savings Bank Movement in the UK

Michael MOSS

March 2011

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Michael Moss, Professor Archival Studies, University of Glasgow

Michael Moss is a professor of archival studies in the School ofHumanities at the University of Glasgow. He was responsible forsurveying and rescuing the records of the savings bank movementin Scotland and England before flotation. In collaboration withIain Russell, he was commissioned by Sir Nicholas Goodison,Chairman of the TSB, to write a history of the movement, whichwas published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 1994 as AnInvaluable Treasure: A History of the TSB. In 2000 he published ahistory of Standard Life, the Edinburgh life assurance company,which had similar values to those of the savings bank movement.He is a member of the board of the National Archives of Scotlandand of the Advisory Council on Records and Archives.

Reverend Henry Duncan was born at Lochrutton,Kirkcudbrightshire, on 8 October 1774, the thirdson of the minister Reverend George Duncan.Lochrutton is about six miles south-west ofDumfries in south-west Scotland. In the late18th century it had a population of some550 people, who were engaged mostly infarming. Reverend George Duncan complainedthat the landowners showed no enthusiasm forimproving the agriculture of the parish, eventhough there was a flourishing export trade with

the west coast of England. Henry Duncan was educated at DumfriesAcademy before attending St Andrews University for two sessions from1788 to 1790. At the time it was common for children as young as 14 togo to university, and for young men in general to spend a year or two atuniversity before entering a trade.

HENRY DUNCAN ANDTHE SAVINGS BANKMOVEMENT IN THE UK

Reverend Henry Duncan.

He left St Andrews in 1790 to take up a position as a junior clerk in theLiverpool banking house of Arthur Heywood Sons & Co. The attraction ofLiverpool for Henry Duncan was that his two brothers were alreadyworking there. However, unlike his brothers, he did not find the world ofcommerce to his liking. His employers complained he devoted too muchtime to literary pursuits and theological study. Deciding to follow hisfather into the church, he returned to Scotland to take classes atEdinburgh and Glasgow Universities where he was influenced by thejurist John Miller and the moral philosopher Dugald Stewart. He wentback to Lochrutton in 1798 and the following year he was appointedminister of Ruthwell where he was to remain for the rest of his life.

The weather in 1799 and 1800 in much of Scotland was cold and wetand the harvest poor. Henry Duncan responded to the plight of hiscongregation by arranging with his brothers to send supplies of Indiancorn from Liverpool, which he sold to the needy at cost price. In a spiritof self-help, he encouraged women to take up spinning woollen yarn tosupplement their family income and employed destitute labourers on hisown land.

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The church in Ruthwell, where Henry Duncan was minister.

Recognising that such measures offered only partial solutions to theproblems of poverty, he revived the local friendly society that had beenfounded in 1795 and had quickly become moribund. He rewrote therules and regulations and improved its management. So successful wasthis initiative that he formed another society specifically for women.Soon over a quarter of the parish, some 300 people, were members ofthe two societies. Opposed to compulsory taxation, to provide relief tothe poor and destitute, he was a passionate supporter of “self-help”.Such attitudes begged the serious question as to whether the very poorhad sufficient marginal income to save, even in good times – a debatethat still continues between those who are committed to state-sponsoredsocial welfare and those who oppose it or at least wish to curtail the levelof spending. After the resumption of the war with France in 1803, theprice of food climbed and hardship, particularly in rural areas, becamemore acute.

From 1808 Henry Duncan tried to inculcate ideals of thrift in the localcommunity by publishing a series of tracts and articles in the Dumfriesand Galloway Courier, which he had created with financial support fromhis brothers. These had a strong moral message – the provident and well-behaved could look forward to a secure independent future, while theimprovident and dissolute, especially the intemperate, could anticipateruin and destitution. Such moralising has continued to this day.

Despite the success of the friendly societies, Duncan was not convincedthat their rules and regulations, which required regular subscriptions,were appropriate, for they entailed collecting the uncertain savings ofthe poor. This led him to propose that savings banks with verysimple regulations should be opened in every parish in Scotland.Although Scotland’s banking system, with interest bearing accounts, wasmore advanced than those of other countries, it did not provide servicesto individuals with only small amounts to deposit, and who were thusoften obliged to keep their savings in cash or lend them in the localmoney market, which could be very risky. In May 1810 Henry Duncanopened the Ruthwell Savings Bank in the Friendly Society’s rooms.

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Deposits were invested incommercial bank interest-bearingaccounts. In a practice thatbecame familiar in Scotland, theKirk Session (the church elders)

and the minister were trustees,while prominent locals wereextraordinary members of the courtof directors. Ordinary members

had to make an initial deposit of GBP 1, while extraordinary membershad to pay GBP 2 and honorary members GBP 5. This was very prescientof Henry Duncan, as the better-off depositors made only occasionaladditional deposits and almost no withdrawals, while ordinary memberscould be expected to make a large number of small deposits. The subsidyof small depositors by those with large balances persisted and waseventually a factor in the erosion of the savings bank ideal that ledinexorably to privatisation.

In deciding to open the RuthwellSavings Bank, Henry Duncan drewon the experience of other savingsschemes and friendly societies.In 1797 the utilitarian philosopherJeremy Bentham proposed theestablishment of what he called“Frugality Banks” or savings banksthat would pay interest ondeposits and that would be builtand managed by a proposedNational Charity Company.The following year Mrs PriscillaWakefield established a FemaleBenefits Club incorporating a Children’s Bank in the parish of Tottenhamto the north of London.

Anybody could open an account for a child by making regular monthlycontributions of a penny or more. At the turn of the century sheconverted her Female Benefit Club into a Benefit Bank, recognised at thetime “as the first distinct Bank for Savings publicly set on foot for thebenefit of the lower classes”. The Wakefields were a remarkable family.Her son Edward Gibbon Wakefield pioneered emigration to theAntipodes as a way of reducing the cost of poor relief.

Deposit box of the Ruthwell Parish Bank.

The Wakefield family, with Mrs Priscilla

Wakefield who created the ‘first distinct

Bank for Savings publicly set on foot for

the benefit of the lower classes’.

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The political economist Thomas Malthus, in the second edition of hiscelebrated 1803 Essay on the Principles of Population, writes, “To facilitatethe saving of small sums of money for this purpose [he is referring to thepurchase of a cow] and to encourage young labourers to economise theirearnings with a view to a provision for marriage, it might be extremelyuseful to have County Banks, where the smallest sums would be receivedand a fair interest granted for them”. He elaborated on these ideas in the1817 fifth edition, going so far as to suggest that by postponing marriageuntil sufficient capital had been accumulated there would be less needfor the state to support needy families, as there would be fewer of them.Although he admitted that such a transition could not be effectedquickly, his concept of “saving a portion of present earnings for futurecontingencies” has remained the bedrock of much of the rhetoric ofthrift and providence ever since. Nevertheless, he later recognised that“the principle of saving taken to excess would destroy the motive toproduction”. While he extolled saving “as a most sacred private duty”,he had doubts about its public application, which a century latereconomist J. M. Keynes crystallised into his well known paradox of thrift:“a private virtue and a public vice”.

In 1804 George Rose, a member of Parliament for Christchurch and vice-president of the board of trade, called for imaginative ideas to help solvethe intractable problem of poverty. He was later to play a crucial role inpromoting the savings bank ideal. Within a year John Bone responded tothis challenge by advocating the abolition of poor relief and, along withwhat amounted to sheltered accommodation for old people, suggestedthat “a Bank should be opened to receive the small savings of the youthof both sexes, who have no dependence but their labour and economy,and to return them on the day of their marriage with the interest andpremiums proportional to the amount”. With wartime inflation runninghigh, Patrick Colquhoun, a stipendiary magistrate in London, expandedon these ideas by outlining a scheme for a National Deposit Bank forParochial Savings managed and guaranteed by the government. The bankwould be a powerful force for social change and “unquestionably give anew and more provident character to menial servants and thereby rescuefemales from the walks of prostitution”. Samuel Whitbread, the reformingmember of Parliament for Bedford, attempted to introduce legislation toestablish a national savings bank based on post offices. There were otherlocal initiatives, such as the West Calder Friendly Bank outside Edinburghestablished by Reverend John Mackersy in 1807, and at Bath, in south-westEngland, a society was formed in 1808 to attract the savings of servants.

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Such concepts and developments were critical in shaping Henry Duncan’sideas for the parish bank in Ruthwell. What set him apart from the otherswho could lay claim to be the founder of the savings bank movement,such as Priscilla Wakefield, was his unstinting effort to publicise hisachievement and promote the formation of savings banks in every parishin Scotland. Because the concept of thrift and self-help had been soheavily promoted and followed, additional banks were formedspontaneously both in Scotland and England. John Henry Forbes, the sonof the Edinburgh banker Sir William Forbes, promoted a savings bank asa branch of the City’s Society for the Suppression of Beggars, in 1813.When GBP 10 had been deposited it was to be transferred to Sir WilliamForbes & Co. Within less than two years the bank had almost 750subscribers. In England the Liverpool Mechanics, Servants & LabourersFund was founded in 1812 and the Bristol Savings Bank the followingyear. By the time these banks were beginning to make an impact, the warwith France was over.

The sudden cessation of government wartime expenditure after thevictory at the Battle of the Nations in 1814 triggered a catastrophiceconomic recession that was compounded by appalling weather due toexceptional volcanic activity. Confronted by unprecedented demand forpoor relief, parishes throughout the United Kingdom looked for ways toreduce the burden, especially by encouraging saving. During 1815 severalsavings banks were formed in Scotland and England, which weremodelled on the ideas of Henry Duncan and other commentators.In England, where there was no tradition of commercial bank interest-bearing accounts, deposits were invested in government stock, whichbecame common practice. As the savings movement in England gatheredpace during the remainder of the decade, its principal advocate wasGeorge Rose, who was still a member of Parliament for Christchurch andan effective publicist with strong links to the national press. Unlike Duncan,Rose was a Tory who believed savings banks “would gradually do awaywith the evils of the system of poor laws”. His Observations on Banks forSavings, published in 1816, relied heavily on the example of Forbes’sEdinburgh bank and ignored Henry Duncan’s Ruthwell venture.

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Rose was vehemently attacked by William Cobbett, the social reformerand political thinker, who again warned that the poor lacked themarginal propensity to save. Nevertheless, in 1817 Rose successfullyintroduced legislation “to encourage the Establishment of Banks forSavings in England”. All deposits in England and Wales were to be placedon account with the Commissioners of the National Debt which wouldpay interest at the rate of just over 4.5% per annum.

The purpose of this substantial premium on the prevailing rate ongovernment stock was to attract savers. The principals of this legislationwere to remain in force until privatisation, and in some senses GeorgeRose can lay claim to being the founder of the savings bank movement.Although Henry Duncan came to London to advise Rose, the legislationdid not apply to Scotland, as Duncan and his fellow Scots wished toretain the ability to place deposits with commercial banks.

Government protection stimulated a wave of publications supporting thesavings ideal. By the close of 1817, 101 savings banks had opened inEngland and Wales with more than GBP 250,000 in deposits, with anadditional 125 banks established in the following year. In his 1818 Annalsof Banks for Savings the political reformer and radical Sir Francis Burdettsaluted Henry Duncan as having founded the first successful savings bankand fully supported his vision of a future Utopia, with savings banks atthe centre ensuring an absence of poverty. The experience of the banksdid not support the naivety of this rhetoric. The majority of saverswere drawn from the ranks of shopkeepers, skilled craftsmen, domesticservants, school teachers, farmers, and their wives and children,confirming that there was a genuine gap in the financial market for thesurplus income of wage earners. However, this initial experiencecorroborated the opinion of commentators, such as William Cobbett,that savings banks would do nothing to reduce expenditure on poorrelief, which indeed proved to be the case. Ironically, the governmentcould be encouraged in a period of heightened political tension, as it wasargued that depositors were unlikely to be radicalised or to rebel if theirsavings were invested in guaranteed public funds, as many savers wereartisans, who were most prominent in the radical causes supported bySir Francis Burdett.

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As the concept of saving amongst those who had benefitted from therapid industrialisation of the late 18th century took hold, so the rhetoricshifted towards self-improvement and self-help for the “respectableclasses”. Inextricably linked to “self help” was the emerging temperancemovement. Temperance literature contrasted the ruin that accompaniedoverindulgence in drink and riotous living with the prosperity thataccompanied saving and temperate behaviour.

Much of this literature was directed at women and children, who wereportrayed as the victims of male dissolution. Henry Duncan shared suchconcepts and they came increasingly to colour his later writings, in whichthe dissolute drunkard could anticipate the direst consequences, evenpublic execution. Scotland was also home to the first Sunday school inthe United Kingdom, in Glasgow, in 1815-16, and the first temperancesociety, in Greenock, in 1829. Just like the savings banks, Sunday schoolsand temperance societies were quickly established throughout the UnitedKingdom, attracting large numbers of supporters. As enthusiasm for thetwin gospels of “self-help” and temperance grew, so did concern thatthe government was subsidising the savings movement by paying interestat an above-market rate, particularly as the anticipated decrease in poorrelief had not materialised. In 1829 interest rates were cut and the ceilingon annual and total deposits reduced, leading to a decline in savings.This was followed in 1834 by a root and branch reform of the Poor Lawin England and Wales, largely designed to save money. The ability todeposit funds with the Commissioners of the National Debt wasextended to Scotland the following year in an effort to revitalise amovement that was in danger of becoming moribund.

Although the new Poor Law paid lip service to the savings movements,the connection between poor relief and savings was now broken andwhen in 1844 interest rates were cut again there was almost no mentionof the social benefits of the savings banks. There was suspicion ingovernment circles that those better off were taking advantage of thegenerous rates paid on deposits in savings banks. This was a contradictionimplicit in the savings banks from the outset. To finance their servicesthey needed major depositors who exercised few transactions.

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Henry Duncan died in 1846 at age of 72. A true son of the ScottishEnlightenment, his interests were wide ranging, encompassingantiquarian pursuits, drawing, modelling, sculpture, gardening andarchitecture. In his later years, he could take satisfaction that he had beenin some sense the progenitor of a movement that now covered the wholeof the United Kingdom, even though its customer base and purpose wasfundamentally different from his original concept, with the one exceptionthat “saving for a rainy day” was to remain a core value until the comingof the welfare state in the early 20th century.

After his death the savings movement and friendly societies were hit bya succession of frauds that damaged their standing and restrictedprogress. By 1861 there were 645 individual banks with total deposits ofGBP 41 million. Two years earlier, the concepts of thrift and improvementhad received a ringing endorsement in Samuel Smiles’s best-selling book

Self Help, which has never been out of printsince. To a modern reader the text may seemoverburdened with Victorian platitudes from theopening sentence (“Heaven helps those whohelp themselves”). Like Henry Duncan, SamuelSmiles was a Scot who chose medicine ratherthan the church as a career, but abandoned hiscalling in favour of the insurance industry.In his view the struggle to live prudently was anachievement because man’s natural state wasprodigality. Saving was for him a matter ofinvestment that provided the opportunity towork, which for all its tedium was honourable.The notion that there was a moral duty to save

was novel: “A penny is a very small matter, yet the comfort of thousandsdepend upon the proper spending and saving of pennies”. Smiles hasbeen criticised by left-wing historians, who condemn him as a championof an unbridled selfish capitalism. Such attacks overlook his efforts toillustrate the rhetoric of “self-help” with well chosen examples from allwalks of life that tempered hedonistic self-interest with a mutual respectfor others.

Samuel Smiles, author

of the best-selling book

Self Help.

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Smiles had much in common with Henry Duncan, believing that the roleof government was to be a benevolent spectator of its hard-working,industrious and thrifty citizens. His rhetoric struck a chord with many butwas not entirely shared by the Liberal government of William Gladstone,which in 1861 established the Post Office Savings Bank to complementthe savings banks and achieve nationwide coverage through the networkof sub-post offices. Many in the savings bank movement distrusted thegovernment’s motives, perceiving the Post Office Savings Bank as acompetitor, which indeed proved to be the case. By the close of 1862 thePost Office Savings Banks had attracted over 178,000 customers andtotal deposits of almost GBP 1.7 million at the expense of savings banks,which experienced a sharp decline in the number of depositorsthroughout the country. There was an urgent need for the movement tospeak with a common voice. A national extension committee was formedin London in 1862 and led in 1886 to the formation of the TrusteeSavings Banks Association. Savings banks were facing competition notonly for small deposits from the Post Office, but also for their greater,customary role from commercial banks that were seeking additional retaildeposits through evolving branch networks to shore up their balancesheets. Savings banks were unable to offer competitive rates of intereston their current accounts.

With competition from commercial banks and an increasing volume oftransactions, savings banks had to find ways of offering higher interestrates to their major depositors, on whom they depended to meet theiroverheads. A legislative provision enabled them to do this by openingspecial investment accounts that were invested in local governmentstocks, which paid higher returns than the National Debt Commissioner.During the 1870s the savings banks and thrift movement in generalgained ground in the north of Britain, particularly Scotland, while it lostground to the Post Office Savings Bank in the south. This was to haveimportant consequences in Scotland and northern counties, which weresynonymous with provident institutions. Several savings banks closed.One victim was the bank at Ruthwell which in 1875, faced with adwindling number of depositors, amalgamated with the Annan SavingsBank that eventually was acquired by the Royal Bank of Scotland.

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By the mid-1880s attitudes were beginning to change, with socialcommentators and philosophers, such as T. H. Green, arguing that personalfreedom could only be achieved through a degree of state direction andcontrol and by finally laying to rest the notion that the poor had amarginal propensity to save. This was very different from Samuel Smiles’sconviction that hardship and struggle allowed an individual to escapefrom a natural state of prodigality into one of self-determination.Such ideas were confirmed by the first systematic social surveysconducted in the 1890s, and led in turn to the beginnings of the welfarestate by the Liberal government just before the outbreak of the FirstWorld War and to the emergence of the Labour Party. With the rhetoricof thrift off the political agenda, the government could afford to allowthe Post Office Savings Bank, aimed directly at the poorest in society, andthe savings banks, whose customer base was better-off, to coexist. In thesouthern half of Britain the result was that more savings banks closed andhanded over their funds to the Post Office, while in the north theyprospered, helped by rising real wages and increases in both the annuallimit on deposits and the ceiling on total deposits. Once again, craftsmenand artisans fuelled an increase in business, particularly in the economy’sservice and tertiary sectors. Saving by and for children also grew. By 1899the savings banks had achieved a 7% market penetration. Much of thisgrowth seems to have been driven more by saving for a short-termpurpose – for example, holidays and entertainment – than for the longterm. In the century’s prosperous final decade a rise in savings occurredthroughout the thrift movement, accompanied by a huge increase in themembership of friendly societies and a sharp rise in the sale of lifeinsurance products. In the face of criticism of their rhetoric by socialcommentators, the movement questioned its purpose but wasencouraged to persist when analysis showed that the majority ofcustomers held small deposits of about GDP 10.

The long recession that began at the turn of the century and lasted foralmost a decade confirmed Keynes’s observation that the propensity tosave correlates with disposable income. By 1905 total withdrawals ofsavings exceeded deposits but turnover did not decline, suggesting thatsavings accounts were being used effectively as a form of currentaccount. There were those who rejected a Keynesian explanation for adecline in savings ratios during periods of austerity and preferred toblame Edwardian Britain’s extravagant spending on luxuries andamusements.

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Many in the savings bank movement clung to the old rhetoric that formost families thrift was an essential virtue that safeguarded health andhappiness. Such ideas were finally debunked by evidence presented in1906 to the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress byCharles Booth, who from his detailed investigations of householdincomes showed that a large part of the population “ha[s] not theambition or the ability to establish out of their wages a fund to whichthey may turn in times of stress”. In keeping with these findings manysavings banks ceased to promote thrift as a way out of poverty, butinstead attacked extravagance, amusements, gambling and particularlyoverindulgence in alcohol. The National Insurance Act of 1911 provided,for the first time, health insurance and unemployment benefits to thoseengaged in certain cyclical industries, and paved the way for theintroduction of old age pensions. Although the state might haveappeared to be taking over the original role of the savings movement,the Liberal government went out of its way to emphasise that thrift wasno less the handmaid of the new welfare state, as “a new and verygeneral desire will arise among men to augment the State allowances,which is theirs in certain emergencies, by some effort of their own, forthey will have the State’s assurance that sickness and unemployment,the grim spectres which have hitherto confronted working men, will notrob them of a penny of their savings”.

The progress of welfare reform, including the introduction of old agepensions, was interrupted by the First World War. Extensive campaignsorganised by the National War Savings Committee reached a crescendoin 1918 and were designed in part to cool the economy by deferringspending until the war was over.

With the coming of peace Thomas Henderson of the Savings Bank ofGlasgow articulated a widely accepted view when he wrote: “To manythoughtful minds in the savings bank movement it has been apparent forsome time that, if savings banks are to maintain their hold upon thecommunity, then they must adapt their methods to the changing needsof the day, they realise that the old conceptions of their functions whichwas limited very largely to making provision for a rainy day, must giveplace to a wider conception and meet, more adequately, present dayrequirements”. The managers of the Coventry Savings Bank were struckby the number of depositors who withdrew savings in 1925 to buyhouses: “The purchase of a house is an excellent use to make of savings, andthe most satisfactory way of doing so is to save the money to pay for it”.

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As enthusiasm for house ownership swept Britain, particularly the southof England, savings banks could not match the growth of buildingsocieties in attracting depositors, usually with much higher rates ofinterest. They were not, however, eclipsed and the number of depositorsand total deposits continued to grow, while those of the Post OfficeSavings Bank fell. During the economic slump of the early 1930s savingsbanks went to great lengths to counter Keynes’s claim that depositorswere saving when they should have been spending. They could beforgiven, as advice from economists was conflicting and thrift remainedvery much part of the government agenda, through the National SavingsCampaign. However, a debate emerged over what might be theappropriate level of savings at various points of the economic cycle.

Before this argument was resolved, Hitler had come to power and Britainonce more found itself at war and desperate for savings to support thewar effort. The saving campaign continued after the war, during the longperiod of austerity that lasted into the early 1950s and witnessed a fall insaving ratios from 10% in 1945 to less than 3% in 1950. Under the post-war Labour government the welfare state was extended with the creationin 1948 of the National Health Service and a costly programme ofnationalisation of essential services and industries. Against thisbackground the whole savings movement had no alternative but toreturn to the interwar rhetoric of saving for future consumption – for apurpose, particularly the purchase of household goods and for holidaysand recreation. The Oxford Savings Bank was typical in telling depositors:

In many cases saving through the Bank is for short periods only, butthe Committee believes that the type of savings, for example, to meetcommitments for household expenditure, or for holidays orChristmas, is a form of Thrift no less valuable than the old establishedconception of saving as being the accumulation of small sums over alonger period of years, often with no particular end in view.Experience has shown that the short-term saver, having learnt thevalues of his short-term saving, becomes a long-term saver.

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This did not mean that the old rhetoric was completely abandoned, as itcould be applied to both long- and short-term savers. Advertisements stillcontrasted the contented provident saver with the dismal improvident.The predominance of short-term saving aligned savings banks muchmore closely with commercial retail banks that by now had greatlyextended their branch network and were competing directly for deposits,particularly those of larger better-off customers, which made it difficultfor savings banks to service smaller accounts.

The 20 years from 1950 to 1970 can best be characterised as an unequalstruggle between the whole of the thrift movement in the UnitedKingdom and commercial banks that were rapidly extending theirservices to retail customers who were themselves coming to expect arange of financial services that savings institutions lacked the power toprovide. Savings banks responded by amalgamations that werestimulated by the need to automate processes to reduce the cost ofmanaging thousands of small accounts and the need to introducemovement-wide services, such as cheque payment, which often requiredeither legislation or government approval.

As is well known, this led inexorably to the amalgamation of nearly all thebanks into regional groupings and finally into a single, broader UKorganisation – the TSB, which was floated on the stock exchange in1986. Although the decision to float rather than leave the TSB as amutual organisation was taken by the Conservative government, whichwas opposed to any involvement by the state in the market for financialservices, with hindsight it would probably have happened in any event.The problem for the TSB and its managers was that they lacked anyexperience of commercial banking and most of the capital raised atflotation, which was much in excess of capital requirements, was lost invery risky ventures into merchant banking and insurance. After a periodof reorganisation and restructuring around its core business of retailfinancial services, Lloyds Bank, an established UK commercial bank,acquired TSB in 1995 and traded under the name Lloyds TSB until 2009,when it was renamed Lloyds Banking Group. This transition from anetwork of savings banks of various sizes with deep local roots into a fullyfledged commercial bank was painful and not without its critics. A recentreport from the Lloyds Banking Group suggests that far from being deadthe old rhetoric of thrift is alive and well: in the current downturn,household saving is at its highest ever level and pension and welfarepayments much reduced. In other words, people are saving for a rainyday, which Henry Duncan would have approved.

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