Their petitions made slow progress; but the Royal Exchange, without waiting the issue, commenced business, and, in nine months, had insured property to the amount of 2,000,000_l._ sterling. While these companies were in progress, the great bubble era came. With it, excepting as regards assurance, this volume has nothing to do. But the public found this pressed closely on its attention. When men were willing to receive a company with fair promises in the place of fair prospects,--when persons ran about the Alley exclaiming, “Give us something to subscribe to; we care not what it is,”--a practice so sound as assurance was certain to be applied in every form that the hurried ingenuity of speculators could devise. Besides the proposed assurances on the lives of men, cattle were brought into use, and 2,000,000_l._ were demanded for assuring horses. Of this it was said:-- “You that keep horses to preserve your ease, And pads to please your wives and mistresses, Insure their lives, and if they die we’ll make Full satisfaction, or be bound to break.” Of an office for marine assurance:-- “In vain are all insurances, for still The raging wind must answer heaven or hell; To what wise purpose must we then insure? Since some must lose whate’er the seas devour.” The life and fire-companies were also epigrammatised with as much point as the epigrammatist could confer. Thus, on the former he wrote:-- “Come all ye generous husbands with your wives, Insure round sums on your precarious lives, That, to your comfort, when you’re dead and rotten, Your widows may be rich when you’re forgotten.” With regard to fire-companies:-- “Projecting sure must be a gainful trade, Since all the elements are bubbles made; They’re right that gull us with the dread of fire, For fear makes greater fools than fond desire.” Another company, having at its head “three English peers, two bishops, four Irish peers, with many eminent merchants and gentlemen,” petitioned the king that it might be incorporated for purchasing and improving forfeited and other estates in Great Britain, for granting annuities, and for insuring lives; “seeing this will unite by interest many of the king’s subjects against the Pretender and his adherents for ever. In order to which, several of the petitioners have sent persons into Scotland for purchasing the forfeited estates there, and have since, by a voluntary subscription to the Governor and Company of Undertakers for raising the Thames water in York Buildings, raised a joint stock of 1,200,000_l._, on the credit of which estates they propose to grant annuities for and to insure on lives; for the benefit of such of his Majesty’s subjects as are straitened in their fortunes by the reduction of interest.”