Proposals for a Government Insurance Office, like those for National Savings Banks, are not, as many have been led to think, the product of the thought of the last few years. In 1807, for example, Mr. Whitbread, in bringing forward his Bill for Poor Law Reform, earnestly advocated, that, together with his plan for the investing of their savings, some means should be provided for the poorer classes by which they might insure their lives under the responsibility of Government. Both as regards his plan of Savings Banks and his plan for Government Insurance, Mr. Whitbread was fully half a century before his age. The different schemes for the purchase of Government Annuities and the Acts under which they were carried out are already familiar to the reader. The Act of 1834 we may repeat, however, was the beginning of legislation on the subject. The principal emendation[195] in the Act 16 and 17 Victoria, c. 45, passed in 1853, was supposed to be in the introduction of a clause providing that a person buying a Government Annuity could also insure the payment of a sum of money at death. Notwithstanding this amendment, the Act was not nearly so productive of good as might have been expected. In the matter of Insurances effected under the arrangements of 1853, the Act has been for all practical purposes quite inoperative; and from 1834 to 1864 the whole of the annual payments in respect to Annuities did not reach 200,000_l._ In the latter year 6,500 annuities were in force, the amount represented by this number being 140,000_l._ This is, in brief, an account of how matters stood in 1864; and it is little wonder that it should now begin to be felt that some fresh steps were required; that there should be an entirely new organization for the work; and the abolition of all unnecessary restrictions, especially that which required that a person must deal perforce both in insurances and annuities. The institution of Post Office Banks, which had been rendered possible by the superior organization consequent on the introduction of postage reform, had already demonstrated how the Post Office machinery could reach every part of the country, and how well it could bear the additional weight put upon it. Nor was this all. From the experience of two or three years, those who were best able to judge of the burden this machinery could bear without difficulty were those who now proposed to add fresh wheels and contrivances to be worked by the already existing motive power.