CHAP. XV.
EXTENSION OF ASSURANCE.—SOCIETY FOR ASSURANCE AGAINST PURGATORY.—COMMERCIAL CREDIT COMPANY.—GUARANTEE SOCIETY.—MEDICAL, INVALID, AND GENERAL.—AGRICULTURAL COMPANY.—RENT GUARANTEE.—RAILWAY PASSENGERS.—LAW PROPERTY, AND INDISPUTABLE SOCIETIES.—DISPUTED POLICY.
It has been found that there are unchanging principles which regulate commercial losses; that the lives which are sacrificed by railway accident have similar conditions; that the storm which levels the wheat has its defined courses; that the murrain which devastates the cattle is as fixed in its movements as the disease which destroys humanity. To meet these casualties, societies have been started, founded on laws originating in the doctrine of probabilities, and regulated by tables to show the chance of their occurrence. Nor is there any reason against—nay, there is every reason to believe in—their success, provided only their promoters apply themselves with diligence to collect sufficient data whereby to rule their operations. Of one society only may a doubt be evinced and a smile raised at its presumption, and this is the
SOCIETY FOR ASSURANCE AGAINST PURGATORY!
for supposing the threepence per week paid by the credulous peasant be sufficient to satisfy the priest, yet there is every reason to doubt that the prayers and masses of such mercenary pastors will be sufficient to satisfy God. There is something half-grand and half-grotesque in this impudent provision against an indefinite future.
THE COMMERCIAL CREDIT MUTUAL ASSURANCE SOCIETY
is characteristic enough of a mercantile people. Prior to the foundation of such an institution, it is obvious that there must have been some important statistical information connected with commercial losses.
This was submitted to Mr. Finlaison; and his opinion being that the plan contained the strongest element of success, the society commenced business; and now any person supplying a number of traders with goods may secure himself from loss, 90 per cent. of which is paid to the assured party, the remaining 10 per cent. being placed as a reserve fund. There is also an annual charge for management, out of which the interest on the shareholders’ capital of 50,000l. is paid. There are many collateral advantages in connexion with the company, not the least of which is information concerning the trading community, so that a subscriber may ascertain the character and credit in the money-market of a new customer. All legal expenses are borne by the management commission fund; and there is something very amusing in the indifference with which any person insured in this society must attend a meeting of creditors; for while others look with bent brows and anxious faces, he may remain utterly careless about its proceedings. It is easy to suppose that this feeling may raise a spirit of recklessness in some; but the promoters have wisely interested this class, if such there be, by the deduction of the 10 per cent. on all losses, and by other wise arrangements which stimulate the careful and deter the careless. One half the surplus of the year’s premium will be applied to the reduction of the next payment of those whose losses have not equalled their annual premium; and as a similar society has been in operation in France for the last five years, which has met with signal success, there appears every reason to believe that this society will prosper. Within the first nine months, insurances have been effected of more than 3,000,000l. The theory of chances is as applicable to commercial transactions as it is to life. The close observer will not have failed to notice that the periodical epidemic—whatever form it may have assumed—has its representative in the commercial crisis. Every six or seven years, mercantile epidemics—analogous to the cholera, the influenza, or the typhus of an unhealthy season—which seem to defy all calculation and to level the lofty as well as the low, revolutionise our money system. So fixed have they become in their appearance and re-appearance, that they have ceased to be exceptional; and there is now plenty of information on which to base some estimate of the annual losses of special classes from bad debts.