If it be desirable, as it undoubtedly is, that assurance offices should be perfected for the sake of the public, it is doubly so that some check should be placed on annuity companies. It is from them that most mischief has ensued. In a life office the promoters may have to pay claims before they have received sufficient assets to meet them. But an annuity office, where capital is at once placed down for a future, but postponed benefit, may do irreparable mischief in less than a year. In this way the public, and that portion of the public, too, which is the most deserving of care, have suffered, and are likely to suffer. All the new offices grant annuities, and though it is difficult to say the exact amount, (their returns being so cleverly or so clumsily arrayed), yet it is probable that within the last five years more than 100,000_l._ has been received on the faith of annuities to be paid by them; and it will be no consolation to the annuitant to be told that though his annuity must cease, it is caused by unfortunate calculations and not by fraudulent design. The granting annuities does not necessarily, although it may naturally, enter into the business of a life office. For the first century assurance, and annuities were distinct, and it is somewhat doubtful whether it is quite wise to allow, at any rate it is dangerous to the public to deal in annuities granted by new offices which issue policies of assurance as well as bonds of annuities. The large sums paid down make a show in the assets of a new company, and the fact that hundreds of people for many years rest their entire support on the promises to pay of offices which have been declared by many to be bankrupt, and whose balance-sheets certainly evince an irregularity out of keeping with all propriety, is singularly important. It is a cruel government that will not interfere in an iniquitous system, and the accounts of the annuities, viz. the yearly amounts to be paid, the estimated number of years over which they will extend, and the special capital in hand to meet the demands, should be published separate and distinct from the assurance accounts, as the banking and issue departments of the Bank of England.