362 APPENDIX. [No. XXXIII. 



There are reasons to suppose that ships doomed to destruction, together 

 with their cargoes, are frequently assured to many times their value. 



No insurance ought to be permitted beyond three-quarters of the value 

 of the object assured, so that the owner may have a direct interest in the 

 preservation of the thing assured. 



Any enactment should provide against the probability of the payment 

 of a claim beyond the intrinsic value of the object assured. This might 

 be done by the public registration of every claim paid. 



With regard to the past, perhaps it would be more magnanimous to 

 let bygones be bygones ; but if it be thought advisable to make an example 

 to deter others, then it is manifest that the archives of all the winding-up 

 marine companies would supply ample materials for a wholesale punish- 

 ment of the worst offenders. 



The exposures which have already taken place in the ' Insurance Times ' 

 are reported already to have made the stoutest hearts of the delinquents to 

 quake, but Parliament next session will take care that marine insurance 

 shall no longer lead to the death of sailors and the destruction of ships. 



Westminster. (Signed) JTTDEX. 



SIR, There is a phase of marine insurance which has not as yet been 

 noticed by any of your correspondents, and that is the bearing which the 

 electric telegraph has upon the results of marine insurance. In former 

 times every marine risk offered was a fair insurance risk, as the result was 

 unknown. Now, however, the electric telegraph extends so far, and com- 

 municates its intelligence so rapidly, that persons are able to effect 

 insurances after the event has happened. As a matter of fact it is 

 possible now to hear of a loss of a vessel in America, and assure the 

 vessel, if lost in Europe, by the clock time before it was lost. To assure a 

 contingent event after the event has happened is no insurance at all, but 

 direct, downright robbery, and yet it has been known that ships have been 

 chartered to convey the intelligence of the loss of a vessel to the nearest 

 electric telegraph station, from which a telegram has been sent directing 

 assurances to be effected upon a lost vessel. Neither insurance offices nor 

 underwriters can stand against claims arising in this manner, and the only 

 wonder is that this class of cheating has not been described before. 



(Signed) R. T. 



No. XXXIII. 

 ANONYMOUS LETTERS ON CHANCERY REFORM. 



CHANCERY LIQUIDATIONS. 



Remarkable stories are current amongst the members of the Bar, of 

 the power which some liquidators claim to possess as officers of the Court 

 of Chancery, and more wonderful facts are narrated of the means by which 

 some of these appointments have been obtained. 



In some liquidations every legal quibble is raised. Acts done for the 



