It is difficult to imagine the state of indignation which would have been aroused if, during the late war when the King went to his troops in France, great premiums had been asked and paid against his return. Yet that happened to his predecessor in the 18th Century. When George the Second fought at Dettingen, 25 per cent. was openly paid against his return. The movements of Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, in 1745, provided one with a sensation of terror in the morning and an opportunity of putting some cash into one’s pocket in the afternoon. There were no daily newspapers, and in much later days, when Wellington was fighting in the Peninsula, the news of Busaco and Badajoz took a fortnight to reach London. Charles Edward’s march to Derby at the head of his dreaded Highlanders, and his retreat, put a good deal of money into the hands of the assurers of Lloyd’s and the members of Garraway’s. Nor, when this rabble had melted away, and he himself was a fugitive in the Western Islands, was their ingenuity at a loss. The Young Pretender was insured against capture; he was insured against decapitation; and if the poor youth could only have gathered up the money which was wagered one way or another upon his luckless head, he would have had enough for another fling at the Throne. But even though Charles Edward was not captured, many of his followers were. Everyone remembers how Lady Nithsdale rescued her husband from the Tower by dressing him in her clothes and remaining behind in his. You would hardly believe that that gallant exploit raised the wildest indignation in the City of London because so many underwriters stood to lose if Lord Nithsdale kept his head upon his shoulders. Would Admiral Byng be condemned and shot? Would he be condemned and not shot? Would he be acquitted? What was the value of the life of the Duke of Newcastle, Prime Minister when Minorca was lost? Any of these questions could form the subject of a wager by means of a policy of assurance. The strangest dispute of all, however, finally led to the intervention of the Law, and a decision by Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, that a policy of assurance entered into by a person holding no insurable interest was against public interest.