1826!] Life Insurance.—The Duelling Clause in Policies. 589 
by the actual party so dying upon his own life, shall be void and of no 
benefit.\; With? the first and last of these conditions, I have nothing in 
the main to do. Men donot contemplate the ordinary possibility, either 
of their destroying themselves, or doing any act which shall cause them 
tobe hanged. My purpose (eventually) will apply only to the duelling 
_ Clause; but, as Thave had occasion to name the other provisions along with 
it, perhaps I may as well, in a few words, shew the uselessness and impo- 
tency of al] the three. 
onthe first place, then, with reference to the clause of “ suicide,”— that 
provision, asit stands, I take to be wholly inoperative tor the purpose for 
which it is intended. The purpose aimed at, is obviously to prevent a 
man, whose circumstances may induce him to destroy himself, from first 
effecting a policy, by which he may defraud some Assuring Company of 
£7,000 : the clause, altogether, I take it, is pretty nearly needless ; but 
certainly, as it stands, it is not capable of producing any such effect as 
this. - Because an insurance upon life is not an act that can be done by the 
will of one party, nor that can be performed ina moment. The Assuring 
Company, as well as the insuring party, must be agreed, to make such 
a contract. Two or three meetings, at which many persons are present, 
commonly ‘take place before the business is completed. In all cases, the 
party insuring must give references to medical men and private friends, 
who answer in writing (at their peril of any collusion), as to his state of 
health, &c. The whole transaction must occupy two or three days— 
more commonly it takes up five or six; and, up to the last moment, the 
Company—if from any cause it finds reason to dislike the “ risk ”"—has 
the power to reject it. i 
Now all this delay affords, on both sides, a very liberal allowance 
for what the lawyers call the locus poenitentig. A man would not 
bevat all unlikely to change his mind about destroying himself, in 
the-course of such an arrangement of business — say, between 
Wednesday night and Saturday morning :—and therefore, I doubt 
whether» an’ Assurance’ Company need be very apprehensive about 
the consummation of any man’s intention of Suicide, who should sit down 
to work a long arithmetical calculation before he went about it. But—that 
which is still more to the point—as shewing the inutility of the existing 
clause—is—that any man who had sufficient firmness of purpose to bring 
himself within its etfect, would have abundant power to evade it. A man 
who could coolly keep up his determination to end his existence, for 
three days together—and go on transacting in the mean time all the detail 
of a life-assurance contract—would have plenty 6f coolness so to end his 
life, that the Suzeide—(which would vitiate that contract)—could never 
be proved against him. 
" For the proof of suicide, it should be observed, must come from the 
Assurance Company. ‘The death of the individual, primd facie, gives the 
claim to recover on the policy. The evidence must be distinct of felo 
dese; for, incase of insanity—(the point has never arisen)—but I take 
it to be clear, the claimant must receive. Juries would require rather 
distinct proof, too, where money had been paid, and an unfavourable 
verdict was to leave a family perhaps to beggary ; and without selecting 
modes to aid the desperately bent, I believe that a gentleman might 
slip overboard from an Irish steam-packet—or make a false step upon the 
edge of the precipice at Dover or at Clifton—or go toa closet, and 
swallow his paper of oxalic acid by mistake for salts—or even be merely 
found in a river, into which a body might have fallen by accident—or 
