A few words will suffice to show how the further proposals which we have to describe in this chapter were originated. Government Annuities at this time were, under the authority of an Act spoken of in a previous chapter, allowed to be granted either directly through the National Debt Office or through the medium of the ordinary Savings Banks. To a certain extent many of the Savings Banks had availed themselves of this Act, and granted both Immediate and Deferred Annuities. Among the banks which, as we have already shown, transferred their business to the Post Office Savings Banks soon after the establishment of the latter, were some which had done a little of this business; the question thereupon arose whether the Post Office Banks should not take up the duty which devolved on the old banks, and receive the payments for the Annuities as they fell due. The result of this was, that the gentlemen who in the Post Office had organized and so far directed the machinery of the Postal Banks not only proposed to carry on the business which others had in this way begun, but they advised that the operations themselves should be extended, and that this extension would be a legitimate offshoot of their original scheme. Mr. Scudamore and Mr. Chetwynd, the gentlemen in question, held that if the Post Office Banks were to become agencies for the purchase and payment of Annuities, there would be a considerable increase in the number purchased. They then proceeded to sketch the outline of a plan on which it would be possible to undertake the work, and showed how the course of the business in respect to the Annuities would be easy, simple, and comparatively inexpensive. The most important feature of the plan was, that the purchase and payment on account of Government Annuities should have no immediate connexion with the Post Office Savings Banks; and that the purchasers of the former should not necessarily be depositors in the latter. With regard to Insurances, the following sentence occurs in a report which, referring to Mr. Whitbread's proposals, the same gentlemen presented. "We believe that the time may come when the propriety of attaching to the Post Office Savings Banks a scheme of Life Assurance will again be seriously considered by the Legislature. The frequent appearance and disappearance of bubble insurance companies, which have been productive of very disastrous consequences during the last few years, may probably induce a serious consideration of the subject at no very distant date."