a schoolmaster in the Maze, in the Borough!_” The trial immediately ceased: “a screw is loose,” said Innes, as in vain he endeavoured to glide out of court. Of the confederates in this base deed one graced the pillory, another was imprisoned, Innes himself paid the extreme penalty of life, the office escaping the meditated fraud. It is said to be the boast of the Equitable that this was the only case in which they found it necessary to appeal to law. Whatever defects may have characterised the constitution of this Society, it was a great improvement on the arrangements of the Amicable and the two proprietary companies. It did all that a legitimate life office could be supposed to do. It assured lives for any number of years, or for the whole continuance of life. It took the price of the assurance in one present payment, or it accepted annual premiums. It allowed annuities to the survivors if they preferred it; and though the scale might be too high for what we now know, it at least was more business-like than its contemporaries; for so slow were the latter to profit by experience, that it was not until the commencement of the nineteenth century that the Royal Exchange Corporation availed itself of the Northampton Tables to compute its premiums. In 1779, Mr. Morgan produced his “Doctrine of Annuities and Assurances.” This gentleman was the first to detect the inaccuracy of the rules which Mr. Simpson with others had given to discover the value of contingent annuities, and which he himself had adopted in the above work. Notwithstanding the castigation he received from Mr. Baily, for his “loose and obscure manner,”--for the “grossest errors,”--for “distorting,”--for “enveloping in mystery,”--for “introducing a depraved taste in mathematical reasoning,” there is no doubt that his was the earliest attempt to give correct solutions on the various cases of deferred annuities which had arisen out of his experience in the Equitable. The following additions were made to the policies of the Equitable by 1800:--