Night after night they pursued their foes with clamour, and day by day they reiterated their assertions in the clubs. The reports and rumours which were spreading in the financial world, and the assertions which were everywhere made, were, indeed, somewhat alarming. It was said that, according to Mr. Finlaison’s report, 400,000_l._ a-year was being lost; many, determined not to be outdone, asserted 100,000_l._ a-week was the lowest estimate; others, that an insurance office had realised 60 per cent. by dealing in them. Statements like these were so injurious to the financial character of the Government, that it was found necessary to stop them; and the chancellor said that, as only 640,000_l._ had been granted in the shape of life annuities, it was not very likely we were losing 100,000_l._ weekly; that Mr. Finlaison was employed in constructing tables; and that, though this gentleman had certainly stated the terms were too favourable, yet the true amount of loss would be difficult to attain, Mr. Finlaison’s estimate being an abstruse calculation as to the amount of the National Debt which would be redeemed in sixty years, compared with the amount which would have been redeemed had no annuities been granted. This he estimated at 3,200,000_l._ less than would have been attained by the Sinking Fund. At last, in 1829, Mr. Finlaison reported to the House, and the tables in connexion were certainly the most valuable of the kind then published. Access had been given to every document bearing on the subject. The registries of the tontines, the ages attained by the lives on which annuities had been granted a century previous--the experience of the offices--procured a mass of information which was turned to great advantage. The tables fill fifty folio pages, and show the rates of mortality, the value of annuities on single lives at all ages, among many classes of annuitants, separate and combined; the sexes being distinguished, both in exhibiting the law of mortality and the value of annuities. These tables were satisfactory in the evidence they gave of a material improvement in the average duration of life. In forty years so great a change had taken place in the condition of the people, that the decrease of mortality was from 1 in 40 to 1 in 56. They proved, also, to demonstration, the extraordinary difference between the longevity of men and women, a circumstance not hitherto known to a certainty, but one which was most important to the granters of annuities. The result of all these calculations was comprised in the fact mentioned,--that the public, at the end of thirty-five years, will be burthened with a perpetual annuity of 96,000_l._, owing to the error so tardily rectified. We shall now see the mode in which these errors were amended.