Up to the year 1808 there was no mode of investing money in life annuities at once safe and profitable. Although the assurance were also annuity offices, yet, at this period, only three of any standing were in existence, and the public had seen and suffered so much from the failure of various joint stock companies, that they regarded all new societies with a proper degree of jealousy. At the time above named there had been a speculative excitement in the money market, followed by a disastrous panic. Many companies had been compelled to wind up their business, and others, having no business to wind up, had been left to their fate. And of annuities granted by private persons, the public had a well-founded horror; for the persons who had chiefly granted them were bankers, stock-jobbers, and mock millionnaires, who had often been swept away by panics on the Stock Exchange. In 1809 complaints were instituted that persons wishing to make provision for themselves or their families had no certain fund on which such annuities could be secured, and the ministers were made aware of many infamous practices which often plunged whole families into ruin. The Government, therefore, determined to become dealers in life annuities, and in the very outset made a considerable and almost fatal mistake. The tables of mortality known as the Northampton were the chief basis on which the various life assurance companies founded their premiums; and, by a singular error, the state adopted the same basis on which to grant annuities for life; but as the most intelligent men of the day were employed in calculating and constructing tables, the Government was scarcely to blame, particularly as they sought no profit, entering into the undertaking solely from a consideration of its advantages to the community.