In 5000 shares of £20 each.
It has been long a matter of astonishment that, in a community so essentially mercantile as Jamaica, no Company should have been formed for the purpose of effecting Insurance on Life and Property; although it cannot be doubted for an instant, that not only would such an establishment be highly useful to all classes of the community, but that it must yield a handsome return to such persons as may be inclined to invest their money in it," &c.
Farther down in the prospectus we are told--"It may here be stated, that the scheme for the formation of this Company has been mentioned to some of the principal Merchants and Gentlemen of the Country, and has met with decidedly favourable notice: and it is expected that the shares, a large number of which have been already taken, will be rapidly disposed of."
The same paper, the Morning Journal, from which we make this extract, informs us: Nov. 2d--
"The shares subscribed for yesterday, in the Marine Fire and Life Insurance Company, we understand, amount to the almost unprecedented number of One Thousand Six Hundred, with a number of applicants whose names have not been added to the list."
The Morning Journal of October 20th in remarking upon this project says:--
"Jamaica is now happily a free country; she contains within herself the means of becoming prosperous. Let her sons develope those resources which Lord Belmore with so much truth declared never would be developed until slavery had ceased. She has her Banks.--Give her, in addition, her Loan Society, her Marine, Fire, and life Assurance Company, and some others that will shortly be proposed, and capital will flow in from other countries--property will acquire a value in the market, that will increase with the increase of wealth, and she will yet be a flourishing island, and her inhabitants a happy and contented people."
Now men desperately in debt might invite in foreign capital for temporary relief, but, since the compensation, this is understood not to be the case with the Jamaica planters; and if they are rushing into speculation, it must be because they have strong hope of the safety and prosperity of their country--in other words, because they confide in the system of free labor. This one prospectus, coupled with its prompt success, is sufficient to prove the falsehood of all the stories so industriously retailed among us from the Standard and the Despatch. But speculators and large capitalists are not the only men who confide in the success of the "great experiment."
The following editorial notice in the Morning Journal of a recent date speaks volumes:--
SAVINGS BANK.