hazardous enterprises, and of insurance against fire, are too well known and too universally acknowledged to require illustration.

Insurance against marine risks and against the calamities of fire, however, do not require any special applications of the mathematics; and it was not until about the middle of the seventeenth century, that the doctrine of probabilities (doctrine of chances, generally so called by English writers) began to be successfully applied to life-insurances, annuities, reversions, &c. Establishments for effecting insurance, of all these various kinds, have long been very numerous in France and England, and are continually becoming more known in this country.

It may be well to observe, that prejudices have existed, to some extent, against life-insurances, and are believed to exist still, among persons whose merits entitle their feelings and opinions to the most respectful consideration. Their objections seem to be referable to two particulars, to the term, life-insurance; as if man were assuming to take the dispensation of life and death from the hands of the Almighty, and to the doctrine of chances or probabilities, by which life-insurances, annuities, &c., are calculated. Both these difficulties, however, are instantly removed, when the true meaning of the terms chance and lifeinsurance, are explained.

It may be admitted, that the term life-insurance is an unfortunate one, in some respects; but let it be called a guaranty that a sum of money will be paid at the decease of a person, or termed a means of leaving a legacy to a family or heirs, which is its true meaning, and it will at once become intelligible to all; and all reasonable objection against the term, and against the institution itself, must at once vanish.

So, also, in respect to the term, chance. It is to the imperfection of the human mind, and not to any irregularity in the nature of things, that our ideas of chance and probability are to be referred. Events, which to one man seem accidental and precarious, to another, who is better informed, or who has more power of generalization, appear to be regular and certain. Contingency, verisimilitude, probability, and chance are, therefore, the offspring of human ignorance, and, with an intellect of the highest order, cannot be supposed to have any existence. Chance means an event,

or a series of events, not regulated by any law that we perceive. Not perceiving the existence of a law, we reason as if there were none, or no principle by which a previous state of things determines that which is to follow. But the farther our knowledge has extended, the more phenomena have been rescued from the dominion of chance, and brought within the government of known causes, and the farther off have the boundaries of darkness and uncertainty been carried. * No such thing, therefore, as chance can exist in the Divine mind, nor in the nature of things; still, with respect to us, the term has a real and important meaning, derived from the relation which our imperfect knowledge sustains to the laws by which all things are regulated. The only caution to be suggested, is, that we use it with a full knowledge of its meaning, and so that it may not exclude from any event the Providence of God.

To the members generally of the three learned professions, to every one whose income arises from his own personal exertions or talents, to every one having a life income, or receiving a salary that will cease at his death; to every person engaged in commerce, manufactures, or any other employment, whose own immediate exertions are the support of the establishment in which he is engaged; to persons generally, who have not yet acquired a sufficiency to leave at their death a comfortable maintenance for their wives, children, or dependents, to all such, and to many other classes of persons, who cannot be particularly enumerated, life insurance and annuities become a subject of vast importance and are well adapted to their situation. Their families are frequently nurtured in ease and indulgence, and, in a greater or less degree, they have been accustomed to the refinements and elegances of superior society. But their condition is lamentably reversed, when death deprives them of their natural protector. The comforts of life vanish from around them; they are unable to struggle through the world by the labor of their hands; and, while they mourn the loss of a husband or a father, want, with its attendant evils, embittered too by the remembrance of happier

* La Place, Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilités. Edinburgh Review, Vol. XXIII. pp. 320, 321.

days, closes upon them and completes their melancholy lot. We frequently meet with cases of this description.

There are few persons, in any of the situations which have been described, who, when the subject is brought before them and understood, must not be desirous of appropriating some small part of their present emoluments or profits, not only with a view to secure a suitable provision for their families at their decease, but likewise for their own satisfaction, to render their own lives easy and comfortable under the pleasing reflection, that they have guarded against one of the great evils of a premature death.

This may well be illustrated by an example. A man is in possession of an income which enables him to support his family, but this income will cease with his life. He is unwilling that the subsistence of his wife and children shall depend on an event so uncertain as life, and is anxious to raise a fund that will provide for their relief upon its failure, say $5,000; but his only means of raising this fund is by savings from his income. From this, he cannot spare more than $125 a year, the usual premium on the insurance of $5,000. Upon such scanty means, it is probable that he will despair of accumulating the desired sum, and, therefore, will expend that which he might save, in present indulgences. Yet, in fact, in about twenty-one years, that annual saving, improved at compound interest, would realize $5,000; and such a number of years, a young man has an equal prospect of living. This is incontrovertible, as a matter of calculation. Still, in practice, it must be confessed, that the case is but too discouraging. For, first, he will find it extremely difficult to invest the small receipts of interest immediately as they arise, so as to give them the effect of compound interest. And again, he has an equal chance of not living to complete his design. But his object, otherwise so distant and uncertain, is, to all practical purposes, accomplished, from the moment he effects a life-insurance upon this plan.

It must appear manifest, to all who will examine and consider the subject, that if this is not the best, it is at least one of the best possible modes that can be devised, for a person wishing to set apart a portion of his annual receipts, with a view to make some provision for a surviving family. In truth, life-insurance is

applicable to the wants of the community in so great a variety of ways, that it is difficult to select particular instances, without too much diffuseness. A creditor may secure a debt which he may be in danger of losing in case of the death of his debtor; and persons may secure expectancies which they may have, depending on the lives of others, by insuring the lives upon which their interest depends. These kinds of insurance, like insurance against fire or the perils of the ocean, are wise provisions against the contingencies of life, and will become more and more common, as prudence and foresight gain ground in any community.

Life-insurances ought to be more general than other insurances, inasmuch as the event, against which they provide, is certain to happen sooner or later; and there are few, perhaps it might be said no cases, in which the insured is not greatly the gainer by the transaction. If he has paid, in insurance, nearly or quite the amount which is received, it is like so much laid up in a savings bank, which might not otherwise have been saved; and the person or persons for whose benefit the insurance was effected, the insured or his heirs, receiving the full amount at once, are able to apply it more effectually, than if it were to be received in small portions. A man who has his life insured, has taken considerate precaution for those depending on him, and has evinced his acquiescence in the uncertainty of human life, which is the order of Providence, and one of the designs of which is, we may not doubt, to promote that precaution and solicitude for the welfare of others, which the present state of society preeminently demands.

The practice of life-insurance, if encouraged and promoted until it becomes general, will have a powerful influence in increasing the comforts and independence, and consequently the peace and happiness, of mankind. Then we shall, in future, see in this country, as there are at this moment in England, thousands of families in the enjoyment of comforts, of which they would have been destitute by the death of their heads or relatives, had it not been for such provident precaution. It may well be said, that scarcely any subject of equal importance is, at present, so little understood or attended to, by the people of the United States, and at the same time, no plan, when understood, promises to be

more warmly or universally approved. The object of all insurance, of whatever kind, is, to equalize losses, and to distribute among many, burthens and calamities, which must otherwise overwhelm an individual.

5. Lastly, the welfare and happiness of mankind, may, beyond measure, be advanced, by promoting the spirit and the prevalence of peace. The calamities, which mankind have suffered from war, are too great to admit of any adequate description. Cicero refers to a treatise, written by Dicæarchus, a copious writer and distinguished Peripatetic philosopher, concerning the destruction of mankind (de interitu hominum), in which, it seems, he enumerated all the great causes, which have been most destructive to mankind, pestilence, famine, inundations, irruptions of wild beasts, &c., and came to the conclusion, that a vastly greater number of men had been destroyed by wars and convulsions, than by all other calamities combined.f

Originally, wars knew no other termination than the destruction of one of the parties; and generally this was not accomplished, without irreparable injury being done to the other. Both parties were severe, if not equal, sufferers. Revenge and retaliation. were the spirit with which these contests were waged, and the conflicts to which those direful passions led, were, above measure, sanguinary and destructive. "Ten years were employed,"

says Sismondi, "in subjecting the Gauls to the Romans. And, if we believe the conqueror himself, the conquest was not achieved but by a frightful massacre. Never did man cause so much blood to flow as Cæsar; and, in his narrative, the Gallic nation appears to have been destroyed rather than conquered." Prisoners of war were either indiscriminately put to death on the field of battle, or were reserved for the still more cruel fate of torture. Domestic servitude or an enormous ransom was the mildest lot, which, according to universal usage, they could expect. Frequently entire countries, in the utter devastation and overwhelming ruin with which they were overtaken, bore melancholy witness of the fierce and unrelenting passions awakened by war. * Ezekiel xiv. 21. De Officiis, Lib. II. c. 5. Histoire des Français, Tome I. p. 5; C. Julii Comment. de Bello Gallico, passim.