SECT. 4.] Insurance and Gambling. 373 



essence of all insurance. Such points as the fact that the 

 agreement for indemnity extends only to a certain definite 

 sum of money; and that instead of calling for an occasional 

 general contribution at the time of the death of each member 

 they substitute a fixed annual premium, out of the proceeds 

 of which the payment is to be made, are merely accidents of 

 convenience and arrangement. Insurance is simply equiva 

 lent to a mutual contract amongst those who dread the con 

 sequences of the uncertainty of their life or employment, 

 that they will employ the aggregate regularity to neutralize 

 as far as possible the individual irregularity. They know 

 that for every one who gains by such a contract another will 

 lose as much; or if one gains a great deal many must have 

 lost a little. They know also that hardly any of their num 

 ber can expect to find the arrangement a fair one, in the 

 sense that they just get back again what they have paid in 

 premiums, after deducting the necessary expenses of man 

 agement; but they deliberately prefer this state of things. 

 They consist of a body of persons who think it decidedly 

 better to leave behind them a comparatively fixed fortune, 

 rather than one which is extremely uncertain in amount; 

 although they are perfectly aware that, owing to the un 

 avoidable expenses of managing the affairs of such a society, 

 the comparatively fixed sum, so to be left, will be a trifle less 

 than the average fortunes which would have been left had 

 no such system of insurance been adopted. 



As this is not a regular treatise upon Insurance no more 

 need be said upon the exact nature of such societies, beyond 

 pointing out that they are of various different kinds. Some 

 times they really are what we have compared them with, 

 viz. mutual agreements amongst a group of persons to make 

 up each other s losses to a certain extent. Into this category 

 fall the Mutual Insurance Societies, Benefit Societies, Trades 



