1827.] Letter on Affairs in general. 181 



peculiarly striking illustration of that fact. The annual fire premium 

 charged in ordinary cases for the insurance of 100. upon any house or 

 lot of goods, amounts only to two shillings which is just one-thousandth 

 part of the sum assured. Therefore, allowing for the accumulation of 

 money by interest, a house insured at this rate must go on paying its 

 premiums for five centuries in safety, before the Assurers would receive 

 enough to indemnify them in case of loss. The number of " fires'* 

 seem to be very great to persons who live in London, and who regularly 

 find such accidents quoted as they occur in the newspapers of the day : but 

 the truth is they are so few in proportion to the amount of property existing, 

 as scarcely (one might think) to be worth making an item in account. 

 For if the annual premium of insurance taken by a company upon each 

 house, or lot of property, valued at 100, be only two shillings, it 

 follows that, if out of every thousand such lots so insured and paid for, one 

 only annually were destroyed, still the assurers (who would have received 

 two thousand shillings, and would have to pay 100.) would merely have 

 taken up the same amount which they have to lay down, without having 

 got one farthing either for profit, or to defray the expences of their 

 business ? and, consequently, when we find such companies enabled to 

 live, it is impossible to estimate the number of losses by fire, at more than 

 one in every fourteen, or fifteen hundred divisions of property. And yet 

 fire insurance associations do live and thrive : for, against this RISK, 

 small as it is with fifteen hundred chances to one already in their 

 favour so valuable is absolute certainty, that all the world is contented 

 to insure. 



The Dissenters of England who are a highly respectable as well as 

 numerous body of persons (and, therefore, able to command attention,) 

 are making a great disturbance now about the hardship of being com- 

 pelled to " be married,'* according to the ritual of the Established Church. 

 This seems to me, however, to be a very uncomplimentary proceeding (as 

 far as the gentlemen are concerned) towards their ladies : for there are times 

 at which an honest man might be content to bo married, although even a 

 certain dignitary who shall be nameless, had to perform the ceremony 

 and never be the worse Christian, in my estimation, neither. .But 

 your people who have " a conscience" that is the devil of them never 

 have any conscience: whence it is, I am sure, and for no other reason, that 

 VIRTUE has, time out of mind, been unpopular; and that many men 

 now-a-days are frightened at the thought of any pretensions to it. If 

 ever any very particular rogue is taken up and carried to a police office, 

 the " reporter" fined, perhaps, at some period of his life for having 

 been drunk is sure to describe him as " Hezekiah," whatever his name 

 may be a person having much the air and appearance of a " preacher.*' 

 And Falstaff, speaking with the public voice three centuries ago, cries out 

 " Praised be these rebels! they offend none but the VIRTUOUS : I laud 

 them I praise them ! " N. B. To prevent any possibility of mistake 

 as a great deal that we do in this publication is remarkably sound and 

 honest, and might be liable to such misconstruction I really think I 

 ought to take this opportunity of announcing, that ours is not a VIRTUOUS 

 Magazine. 



By the way speaking of "Magazines" I don't think it is at all a 

 bad way for a periodical to get on, to puff the books now and then of some 

 good, speculating, advertising, publisher. But then you should be careful 

 to select only those books which are such stuff that nobody else will touch 



