But I go farther.  The Old-Age Pensions Act, so far from being in conflict with a scheme of contributory insurance, is really its most helpful and potent ally.  The fact that at seventy the State pension is assured to all those who need it, makes a tremendous difference to every form of insurance confined to the years before seventy, whether for old age or for invalidity.  I asked an eminent actuary the other day to make me some calculations.  They are rough, general calculations, and no doubt they might be more exact.  But roughly, I believe it to be no exaggeration to say that the rates to cover a man till seventy are in many cases scarcely half what they would be, if they had to cover him till death.  Do you see what that means?  It is a prodigious fact.  It is the sort of fact by the discovery of which people make gigantic fortunes; and I suggest to you that we should make this gigantic fortune for John Bull.  It means that the whole field of insurance has become much more fruitful than it ever was before, that there is a new class of insurance business possible which never was possible before.  It means that the whole field of insurance is far more open to the poorest class of people than it was before, and that with a proper system the benefits of the Old-Age Pensions Act would not be confined to the actual pensioners who are drawing their money, but would extend forwards in anticipation to all other classes and to all other people, and that so far as five shillings a week is concerned—­that is not much unless you have not got it—­the actuarial position of every man and woman in this country has been enormously improved by the Old-Age Pensions Act.

It is of that improvement that we mean to take advantage next year.  Next year, when Free Trade will have yielded the necessary funds to the revenue, we mean to move forward into this great new field.  But let me say one thing which is of the utmost importance.  We must remember that the field of insurance is already largely covered by a great mass of benevolent and friendly societies, just as the field of unemployment insurance is already occupied to some extent by trade unions, and the Government would not approve of any development or extension of the policy of insurance which did not do full justice to existing institutions, or which did not safeguard those institutions, to whom we owe so inestimable and incommensurable a debt, or caused any sudden disturbance or any curtailment of their general methods of business.  On the contrary, we believe that when our proposals are put in their full detail before the country, they will be found to benefit and encourage and not to injure those agencies which have so long been voluntarily and prosperously at work.