[12] The writer can add his personal testimony to the necessity of some such office. Twenty years ago, he suffered similarly to Mr. Marshall, and has since been debarred from the benefit of life assurance, although in possession of good average health. There are a thousand other cases; and the fact that the Gresham gradually increases in business, and has in the first year granted policies to the amount of £150,000, producing nearly £6,000 yearly, is very suggestive of the public requirements. The fact, also, that in such a company no death has occurred during the first twelve months, is honorable to the skill of its medical officer. APPENDIX. THE ANATOMY OF EXCHANGE ALLEY; OR, A SYSTEM OF STOCK-JOBBING: PROVING THAT SCANDALOUS TRADE, AS IT IS NOW CARRIED ON, TO BE KNAVISH IN ITS PRIVATE PRACTICE, AND TREASON IN ITS PUBLIC.[13] The general cry against stock-jobbing has been such, and people have been so long and so justly complaining of it as a public nuisance, and, which is still worse, have complained so long without a remedy, that the jobbers, hardened in crime, are at last come to exceed all bounds, and now, if ever, sleeping justice will awake, and take some notice of them, and if it should not now, yet the diligent creatures are so steady to themselves, that they will, some time or other, make it absolutely necessary to the government to demolish them. I know they upon all occasions laugh at the suggestion, and have the pride to think it impracticable to restrain them; and one of the top of the function the other day, when I casually told him that, if they went on, they would make it absolutely necessary to the legislature to suppress them, returned, that he believed it was as absolutely necessary for them to do it now as ever it could be. But how will they do it? It is impossible, said he; but if the government takes credit, their funds should come to market; and while there is a market, we will buy and sell. There is no effectual way in the world, says he, to suppress us but this, viz., that the government should first pay all the public debts, redeem all the funds, and dissolve all the charters, viz. Bank, South Sea, and East India, and buy nothing upon trust, and then, indeed, says he, they need not hang the stock-jobbers, for they will be apt to hang themselves. I must confess, I in part agree that this is an effectual way; but I am far from thinking it the only way to deal with a consideration of usurers, who, having sold the whole nation to usury, keep the purse-strings of poor and rich in their hands, which they open and shut as they please. But before I come to the needful ways for restraining those people, I think it will be of some service to expose their practices to common view, that the people may see a little what kind of dealers they are.