1826.) Life Insurance-—The Dueling Clause in Policies: 591 
' that‘a great number ‘of persons are entirely deterred’ from taking the 
benefit of Insurance by this very limiting clause; but I) am’ quite ‘sure 
that its abolition would gain general business to any Company ;) for ald 
_ men would ‘be ‘glad to be relieved from it. For it sovohappens—as I 
observed above—that a great proportion of ‘the very persons “most 
likely to avail themselves of the securities of Life Insurance (personal), 
ate men struggling in the liberal professions—frequently engaged in 
controversies with each: other—and men to whom high character, as a 
mere trading commodity, is indispensable ;—the very men to whom a 
duel—as a remote, yet possible, casualty—is the most likely to occur. 
“I barthe being supposed here to admit, indirectly, that this very circum-= 
stance increases the risk that an Assurance Office would incur from giving 
up the duelling clause. Ishall dispose of that point, in a few moments, quite 
sufficiently. But, in the mean time, the only point, it will be recollected, 
against which men ‘insure is the chance—in fact the possibility. We pay, not 
the veal value for the sum which we insure, but an amount very nearly, if 
not quite, double.» Except for the risk of accidentally early death, a 
man who'put ‘by annually the amount of premium which he pays to 
an Assurance Company, would, in the course of an average life, accu- 
mulate a much larger amount than that which he covenants to receive: 
He makes a great sacrifice to purchase an absolute certainty—pays 
£100 a year, for instance, to secure £2,000—when that £100 a year, 
otherwise applied, would in the same time produce him £4,000. He 
consents to this, only in order to make sure that his children may not 
be left to distress, by his death, before the £4,000 has accumulated. 
And we check him with this stipulation, «‘ If you should chance to die 
in a particular way, in which you are not likely to die, but in which. it 
is _possible—without any blame accruing from yourself—you may die 
then you shall receive nothing ;—so your surety,—for which you would 
pay £200, where you ought to pay £100—is at an end.” 
~ It is mere nonsense to decline the arguing this point, upon the plea 
that a change would afford even indirect encouragement to the practice 
of Duelling. It would no more do this than the invention of Dr. James's 
Powders encouraged men to get cold, or to throw themselves into fever. 
If'we are to debate upon the score of morality, J am perfectly ready to 
go into that question ; for I am sure it will be a strange principle of mo- 
rality or charity, which insists to add so much‘to the unhappiness of a 
man compelled to fight a duel, that he shall go into the field with 
the horrible sensation, that the whole safety of his family—the provision 
which he has endured labour and privation to raise for his: children— 
depends upon his personal fate. Any fair argument upon the question of 
morality, I am quite sure, must be all in my favour. 
~- But my immediate question is upon the policy—that is, I mean, the 
advisableness—of a change from the existing system, by any Assurance 
‘Company anxious to hold out attraction. And, witha very words more— 
‘just to shew that any Company may make the change, without even in- 
‘eutring any additional risk—I shall conclude this letter, which has already 
perhaps exceeded reasonable limits, upon a subject not very decidedly 
“one of amusement. pit 
‘od-think T have already shewn, with respect to the first clause upon 
“which I set out; the’ proviso against death by Suicide—that that provision 
‘is not effective—that it cannot compass that which it aims at—and that, 
“in practice, it would be of no force. 
