For many years prior to 1774, a spirit of gambling which took the form of assurance was prevalent in the City, and so serious did it become that the legislature were compelled to notice it. This mode of speculation is one of the strangest by-ways in the annals of insurance. From 1720 much of the legitimate business had been usurped by it, policies being opened on the lives of public men, with a recklessness at once disgraceful and injurious to the morals of the country. That of Sir Robert Walpole was assured for many thousands; and at particular portions of his career, when his person seemed endangered by popular tumults, as at the Excise Bill; or by party hate, as at the time of his threatened impeachment; the premium was proportionately enlarged. When George II. fought at Dettingen, 25 per cent. was paid against his return. The rebellion of 1745, as soon as the terror which it excited had passed away, was productive of an infamous amount of business. The members of Garraway’s, the assurers at Lloyd’s, and the merchants of the Royal Exchange, being unable to raise or lower the price of stocks any more by reports of the Pretender’s movements, made sporting assurances on his adventures, and opened policies on his life. Sometimes the news arrived that he was taken prisoner, and the underwriters waxed grave. Sometimes it was rumoured he had escaped, and they grew gay again. Thousands were ventured on his whereabouts, and tens of thousands on his head. The rebel lords who were captured in that disastrous expedition, were another source of profit to the speculators. The gray hairs of old Lord Lovat did not prevent them from gambling on his life. The gallantry of Balmerino and the devotion of Lady Nithsdale, raised no soft scruples in the minds of the brokers; and when the husband of the latter escaped from the Tower, the agitation of those who had perilled their money on his life, and to whom his violent death would have been a profit, is described as noisy and excessive. But no sooner was it known that he had escaped, than fresh policies were opened on his recapture, and great must have been the indignation of his high-minded wife when she afterwards heard this trait of City character. Devotional as is the mind of the great metropolis in the presence of mammon, there were perhaps no blacker instances of that foul spirit which sought to make money from the sufferings of gallant though mistaken gentlemen.