[196] Hansard, vol. clxxv. p. 479.
[197] “Seriously speaking,” said another writer, who signed, “One well behind the Scenes,” in the Times of 18th February, and had been indulging in all kinds of pleasantry on the impossibility of the Government undertaking Life Insurance, “if Mr. Gladstone must go into business, he had better take an easy business first, and have Government ginshops at one corner of the street, and Government tobacco-shops at the other, and leave the delicate matters of Assurance for the present.”
[198] The Times and the Daily Telegraph.
[199] Between 8,000 and 9,000 of these Societies have failed since the passing of the Friendly Societies Act. It has been calculated that about 100 Societies fail in each year.
[200] Hansard, vol. clxxv.vol. clxxii. p. 1581.
[201] Hansard, vol. clxxv.vol. clxxiv, p. 1474.
[202] Both Tables and Regulations may be obtained quite easily at any Post Office opened for the transaction of this business, and an Abstract of the Regulations, entitled Plain Rules for the guidance of Persons desiring to Insure their Lives or to purchase Government Annuities, has been and still is distributed widely, and may be had gratis from any postmaster or letter receiver.
[203] Thus, at the age of thirty, a person with 8l. 14s. 9d. to spare may buy an assurance of 20l. to be paid at death. Two or three years afterwards, and after a prosperous interval, he may be disposed to increase that amount to 25l., 40l., or 50l. Suppose the latter sum, and he has attained the age of thirty-three, he pays down another sum of 13l. 13s. 10d., and then finds himself insured by these two single payments in the sum of 50l. whenever death may occur. Of course he may stop here; but he may also, if he thinks fit, go on adding, at such intervals and in such amounts as may best suit his convenience, to his original policy, till at last it acquires the value of 100l.
[204] Many postmen and rural letter-carriers are insured in this way for a sum of 100l.
[205] It will be remembered that under the Act 16 and 17 Vict., c. 45, a person could only insure his life on condition that he purchased an annuity. It is not so generally known that in the course of eleven years not one proposal for this twofold contract was ever received. It is not a little remarkable that now, this arrangement being no longer compulsory, one in every hundred proposers for Life Insurance also proposes for the purchase of an Annuity.