Montesquieu's opinion that in monarchies luxury is necessary to preserve the difference of class but that in republics it is a cause of decline, is very peculiar. In the latter, therefore, luxury should be restricted in every way: agrarian laws should modify the too great difference in property and sumptuary laws restrain the too glaring manifestations of extravagance. (Esprit des Lois, VII, 4.) As an auxiliary to the history of sumptuary laws, compare Boxmann, De Legibus Romanorum sumptuarias, 1816. Sempere y Guarinos, Historia del Luxo y de las Leyes sumtuarias de Espana, II, 1788; Vertot, Sur l'Establissement des Lois somptuaires parmi les Français, in the Mémoires de l'Academie des Inscr., VI, 737 seq, besides the sections on the subject in Delamarre, Traité de la Police, 1772 ff.; Penning, De Luxu et Legibus sumtuariis, 1826. (Holland.)
CHAPTER III.
INSURANCE IN GENERAL.
INSURANCE IN GENERAL.
The idea of societies for mutual assistance intended to divide the loss caused by destructive accidents which one person would not be able to recover from among a great many is very ancient. The insurance of their members against causes of impoverishment was one of the principal elements[237-1] of the strength of the medieval communities (Gemeinden und Körperschaften.) If we compare these insurance institutions of the middle ages with those of the present, we discover the well-known difference between a corporation and an association. There the members stand to one another in the relation of persons who, therefore, seek to guaranty their entire life in the one combination; here, they appear only as the representatives of limited portions of capital confronted with a definite risk, the average of which may be accurately determined. Hence, the former are of small extent, mostly local; the latter may extend over whole continents, and even over the whole earth. The former have uniformly equal members; the latter embrace men of the most different classes. While the former, therefore, simply govern themselves, often only on the occasion of their festive gatherings, the latter need a precise charter, an artificial tariff and a board of officers.
As the absolute monarchical police-state constitutes, generally, the bridge between the middle ages and modern times, so too the transition from the medieval to the modern system of insurance has been frequently introduced by state insurance.[237-2] [237-3] This was very natural at a time when the guilds of the middle ages had lost their importance, and private industry was not ripe enough to supply the void left by them. The government of a country, far in advance intellectually of the majority of its subjects, may, by force, induce them to participate in the beneficent effects of insurance, and immediately provide institutions extensive enough to guaranty real safety. While it may be called a rule that mature private industry satisfies wants more rapidly, in greater variety, and more cheaply than state industry; in the case of insurance against accidents, especially of insurance against fire, there are many peculiarities found which would make the entire cessation of the immediate action of the state in this sphere, or its limitation simply to a legislative and police supervision of insurance, seem a misfortune. A dwelling is one of the most universal and urgent of wants, and indeed a governing one in all the rest of the arrangements of life. If it be destroyed, it is especially difficult to find a substitute for it, or to restore it. And to the poorest class of those who need insurance, private insurance will, perhaps, be never properly accessible.[237-4] If German fire insurance and the German system of fire prevention be so superior to the English and North American, etc., one of the principal causes is that German governmental institutions so powerfully participate in it.[237-5]
[237-1] The Icelandic repps consisting as a rule of 20 citizens subject to taxation, who mutually insured one another against the death of cattle (to the extent of at least one-fourth the value), and against damage from fire. After every fire three chambers of each house were replaced; so also the loss of clothing and of the means of subsistence, but not other goods or articles of display. (Dahlmann, Danisch Gesch., II, 281 ff.) Scandinavian parish-duty, (Gemeindepflicht), of assistance in case of damage by fire: Wilda, Gesch. des deutschen Strafrechts, I, 142. Similarly Capitul. a. 779 in Pertz, Leges, I, 37. This matter plays an important part in the guilds out of which a large portion of the ancient cities were evolved: compare Wilda, Gildenwesen in M. Alter. 123.
[237-2] Proposed national fire insurance (Landesbrandversicherung) in which for the time being several villages should form a company, the surplus of which was to go to the ærarian,[TN 57] and the deficit to be made up by the same: Georg Obrecht, Fünf unterschiedliche Secreta, Strasburg, 1617, No. 3. A similar proposition made on financial grounds in 1609, and rejected in Oldenburg. (Beckmann, Beitr. zur Gesch. der Erfind, I, 219 ff.) The idea sometimes suggested in our day, of making the system of insurance a government prerogative, arises as much from the passion for centralization as from socialistic tendencies. Compare the Belgian Bulletin de la Commission de Statist. IV, 210, and Oberländer, Die Feuerversicherungsanstalten vor der Ständeversammlung des k. Sachsen, 1857.
[237-3] Maritime insurance is much older than insurance against risks on land; the Dutch institutions of Charles V.'s time seem to have existed long before. (Richesse de Hollande, I, 81 ff.) On Flemish, Portuguese and Italian maritime insurance in the 14th century, see Sartorius, Gesch. der Hanse, I, 215; Schäfer, Portug. Gesch. II, 103 ff., and F. Bald. Pegolotti, Tratato della Mercatura in Della decima, etc., della Moneta e della Mercatura dei Fiorentini, 1765. The class engaged in maritime commerce are indeed especially and early rich in capital, speculative and calculating.