Mr. Gladstone has introduced a most important bill. It is
technical in form, professing only to do away with certain restric- tions, but its real objects; are twofold. It enables the Chancellor of the Exchequer to turn the Post-office Savings' Banks into benevolent societies, where the poor, by paying pennies a week for long periods, may purchase deferred annuities guaranteed by the State, and to sell policies of life insurance under the value of 100/. We have dis- cussed the first proposition, which is really one of the greatest ever brought forward by an English statesman, in another column ; but the second must wait for Mr. Gladstone's exposition. Its merits depend upon the machinery he intends to employ, on the precau- tions he takes against any increase of the temptations to murder, and on one or two points of detail, which must be officially stated before they can be discussed. The insurance offices are very angry with the second proposal, but the hostility of great corpora- tions is not prima facie an argument against any reform.
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