380 Insurance and Gambling. [CHAP. XV. 



is technically quite correct (since any such deliberate risk of 

 money, upon an unproductive venture, may fall under the 

 definition of a bet), there is the broadest distinction between 

 betting with no other view whatever than that of risking 

 money, and betting with the view of diminishing risk and 

 loss as much as possible. In fact, if the language of sporting 

 life is to be introduced into the matter, we ought, I presume, 

 to speak of the insurer as hedging against his death. 



9. Again, in Tontines we have a system of what is 

 often called Insurance, and in certain points rightly so, 

 but which is to all intents and purposes simply and abso 

 lutely a gambling transaction. They have been entirely 

 abandoned, I believe, for some time, but were once rather 

 popular, especially in France. On this plan the State, or 

 whatever society manages the business, does not gain any 

 thing until the last member of the Tontine is dead. As the 

 number of the survivors diminishes, the same sum-total of 

 annuities still continues to be paid amongst them, as long as 

 any are left alive, so that each receives a gradually increasing 

 sum. Hence those who die early, instead of receiving the 

 most, as on the ordinary plan, receive the least ; for at the 

 death of each member the annuity ceases absolutely, so far 

 as he and his relations are concerned. The whole affair 

 therefore is to all intents and purposes a gigantic system 

 of betting, to see which can live the longest ; the State 

 being the common stake-holder, and receiving a heavy com 

 mission for its superintendence, this commission being natur 

 ally its sole motive for encouraging such a transaction. It is 

 recorded of one of the French Tontines 1 that a widow of 97 

 was left, as the last survivor, to receive an annuity of 73,500 

 livres during the rest of the life which she could manage to 

 drag on after that age ; she having originally subscribed a 

 1 Encyclopedic Methodique, under the head of Tontines. 



