Whatever defects may have characterised the constitution of this Society, it was a great improvement on the arrangements of the Amicable and the two proprietary companies. It did all that a legitimate life office could be supposed to do. It assured lives for any number of years, or for the whole continuance of life. It took the price of the assurance in one present payment, or it accepted annual premiums. It allowed annuities to the survivors if they preferred it; and though the scale might be too high for what we now know, it at least was more business-like than its contemporaries; for so slow were the latter to profit by experience, that it was not until the commencement of the nineteenth century that the Royal Exchange Corporation availed itself of the Northampton Tables to compute its premiums.
In 1779, Mr. Morgan produced his “Doctrine of Annuities and Assurances.” This gentleman was the first to detect the inaccuracy of the rules which Mr. Simpson with others had given to discover the value of contingent annuities, and which he himself had adopted in the above work. Notwithstanding the castigation he received from Mr. Baily, for his “loose and obscure manner,”—for the “grossest errors,”—for “distorting,”—for “enveloping in mystery,”—for “introducing a depraved taste in mathematical reasoning,” there is no doubt that his was the earliest attempt to give correct solutions on the various cases of deferred annuities which had arisen out of his experience in the Equitable.
The following additions were made to the policies of the Equitable by 1800:—
| £ | s. | d. | |
| For every 100l. assured in 1762 | 258 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1763 | 249 | 10 | 0 |
| ””1764 | 241 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1765 | 232 | 10 | 0 |
| ””1766 | 224 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1767 | 215 | 10 | 0 |
| ””1768 | 207 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1769 | 198 | 10 | 0 |
| ””1770 | 190 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1771 | 181 | 10 | 0 |
| ””1772 | 173 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1773 | 164 | 10 | 0 |
| ””1774 | 156 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1775 | 147 | 10 | 0 |
| ””1776 | 139 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1777 | 130 | 10 | 0 |
| ””1778 | 122 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1779 | 113 | 10 | 0 |
| ””1780 | 105 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1781 | 96 | 10 | 0 |
| ””1782 | 88 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1783 | 81 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1784 | 74 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1785 | 67 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1786 | 60 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1787 | 54 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1788 | 48 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1789 | 42 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1790 | 36 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1791 | 30 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1792 | 24 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1793 | 19 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1794 | 16 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1795 | 13 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1796 | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1797 | 8 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1798 | 6 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1799 | 4 | 0 | 0 |
| ””1800 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
That a desire for the benefit of insuring was spreading, and that the commercial relations of the Continent were increasing, may be traced in the fact that in 1765 his Prussian Majesty granted letters patent for establishing a chamber of assurance in Berlin for thirty years, during which period no other assurance office was to be allowed in any part of Prussia; and during the same year, the free city of Hamburg established a company for the sale, not only of immediate, but of deferred annuities.
In 1765, one of those insolent attempts occurred on the part of the state, which reminds the reader of an absolute, rather than of a representative, government. The peace concluded in 1763, followed a war which cost upwards of a hundred millions, and the bribery which was necessary to carry the treaty through the House, had contributed to exhaust the treasury. Money was to be acquired, and the people grumbled at the taxation necessary to raise it. In this dilemma it suddenly occurred to the ministers that there might be unclaimed property in the assurance offices, and by some confusion of right and wrong it was thought just to claim this private property for the public good. Nothing could more decidedly approach confiscation. But in dealing with these offices the government was dealing with a large and influential body of proprietors whose gains were aided by this “dead cash,” and who were not men to see their purses invaded with impunity. The Amicable, the Royal Exchange, the London and the Equitable Assurance Companies numbered among their shareholders the greatest mercantile names of the day; they were the same men, or of the same generation, who as directors or as proprietors of the Bank of England resisted, a few years later, the just demand of William Pitt for the unclaimed dividends on the national debt; a demand so obviously sound that its opponents had not an argument to support their refusal. If, then, they were so vigorous when wrong, it may be imagined that they stood boldly forward when they were right. Their courage was undaunted, and they positively defied the claim. The Whigs declared that it was as barefaced as shutting the Exchequer by the Second Charles; the Jacobites said they might as well have a Stuart as a Guelph, that the minister had mistaken his men, and that under no circumstances would they voluntarily yield. Pamphlets were issued, which distinctly asserted that no one would trust a government acting so infamously; that confiscation of private property to pay a nation’s debts was only one remove from bankruptcy; and that no citizen would lend money to a government so unprincipled. The propriety and proper feeling of the people aided the resistance of the offices, and the attempt was only successful in proving to the state, that all arbitrary power had past away, and that for the future an honest course would be their best policy.