“If a member suffer from fire, water, robbery, or other calamity, the guild is to lend him a sum of money without interest.
“If sick or infirm, through old age, he is to be supported by his guild according to his condition.
“If a member falls into bad courses, he is first to be admonished, and if found to be incorrigible he is to be expelled.
“Those who die poor, and cannot afford themselves burial, are to be buried at the charge of the guild.”
Societies like these, established at a period when
“The good old rule, the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can,”
was almost the law of the land, cannot fail to surprise those who believe that the past was an age of barbarism, and the present the culminating point of civilisation. It is certainly a curious truth, that that combination which has been esteemed a peculiar feature of modern times, had its antetype in societies framed when commerce and law were yet in their infancy.
Of the rise of assurance generally in Europe the information is limited enough. Malynes and Anderson say it was known about the year 1200, and refer to the marine laws of the isle of Oleron; but a perusal of these has satisfied later writers that the theory was too hastily adopted, and that the earliest ordinance on the subject with which we are acquainted is that of the magistrates of Barcelona, in 1523, to which city must be attributed the honour, until some authentic evidence to the contrary has been produced; and we must not omit to notice, also, that a writer on the “Us et Coutumes de la Mer” says assurance was long detested by the Christians, “being classed by them with the unpardonable sin of taking interest.”