SECT. 5.] Insurance and Gambling. 375 



bankruptcy, but even casual bad years, on the same principle 

 of commutation. Unfamiliar as such an aim may appear 

 when introduced in this language, it is nevertheless one 

 which under a name of suspicious import to the conservative 

 classes has had a good deal of attention directed to it. It is 

 really scarcely anything else than Communism, which might 

 indeed be defined as a universal and compulsory 1 insurance 

 society which is to take account of all departments of busi 

 ness, and, in some at least of its forms, to invade the province 

 of social and domestic life as well. 



Although nothing so comprehensive as this is likely to 

 be practically carried out on any very large scale, it deserves 

 notice that the principle itself is steadily spreading in every 

 direction in matters of detail. It is, for instance, the great 

 complaint against Trades Unions that they too often seek to 

 secure these results in respect of the equalization of the 

 workmen s wages, thus insuring to some degree against in 

 competence, as they rightly and wisely do against illness and 

 loss of work. Again, there is the Tradesman s Mutual Pro 

 tection Society, which insures against the occasional loss 

 entailed by the necessity of having to conduct prosecutions 

 at law. There are societies in many towns for the prose 

 cution of petty thefts, with the object of escaping the same 

 uncertain and perhaps serious loss. Amongst instances of 

 insurance for the people rather than by them, there is of 

 course the giant example of the English Poor Law, in 

 which the resemblance to an initial Communistic system 

 becomes very marked. The poor are insured against loss 

 1 All that is meant by the above forcing it, the matter would of course 

 comparison is that the ideal aimed assume a very different aspect, 

 at by Communism is similar to that Similarly with the action of Trades 

 of Insurance. If we look at the Unionism referred to in the next 

 processes by which it would be paragraph, 

 carried out, and the means for en- 



