There is something very provocative of mirth in the economical movements of Government. They had just been obliged to annul tables which had been in operation for twenty years; they had been compelled to acknowledge to the House that they had been wasting the public money; they had employed an actuary for ten years in procuring information on which new tables could be constructed, and scarcely had these been brought into operation than they found they were again in error. While the new act was preparing which was to enable the Government to sell life annuities and annuities for certain terms of years, the tables were shown to a gentleman in the Bank of England, who at once declared that those which were framed for lives above a certain age were too low in price. It was replied that they were taken from the experience of the assurance offices, and that they represented the average value of life at that period. “Yes!” was the reply, “but if select lives are brought, what becomes of your average?” The act was passed; and by the tables which it authorized a man of ninety by paying 100_l._ would receive for life an annuity of 62_l._ The first payment commenced three months after the purchase, and if the nominee lived one year and a quarter, the nominator received back all the purchase money, so that every half year the annuitant lived after this was pure gain.[18] The shrewd gentlemen of the Stock Exchange immediately saw and seized the advantage. Agents were employed to seek out in Scotland and elsewhere robust men of ninety years of age, to select none but those who were free from the hard labour which tells on advanced life, and to forward a list of their names. The Marquis of Hertford, of unenviable notoriety, added to his vast wealth by choosing as nominees those who were remarkable for high health; on two only, taking annuities of 2,600_l._ Wherever a person was found at the age of ninety, touched gently by the hand of time, he was sure to be discovered by the agents of the money market, the members of which speculated with, but scarcely perilled their wealth on the lives of these men, on such terms.