NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. .343 



of clerks, secretaries, collectors, and all such functionaries 

 as are usually obliged to find security for money passing 

 through their hands in the course of business. A gentle- 

 man of the highest character as an actuary spoke of the 

 plan in the following terms : — " If a thousand bankers' 

 clerks were to club together to indemnify their securities? 

 by the payment of one pound a year each, and if each 

 had given security for ;£"5oo, it is obvious that two in 

 each year might become defaulters to that amount, four 

 to half the amount, and so on, w^ithout rendering the 

 guarantee fund insolvent. If it be tolerably well ascer- 

 tained that the instances of dishonesty (yearly) among 

 such persons amount to one in five hundred, this club 

 would continue to exist, subject to being in debt in a bad 

 year, to an amount which it would be able to discharge 

 in good ones. The only question necessary to be asked 

 previous to the formation of such a club would be — may 

 it not be feared that the motive to resist dishonesty would 

 be lessened by the existence of the club, or that ready- 

 made rogues, by belonging to it, might find the means of 

 obtaining situations whicli they would otherwise have 

 been kept out of by the impossibility of obtaining security 

 among those who know them? Suppose this be suffi- 

 ciently answered by saying, that none but those who 

 could bring satisfactory testimony to their previous good 

 character should be allowed to join the club ; that per- 

 sons who may now hope that a deficiency on their parts 

 will be made up and hushed up by the relative or friend 

 who is security, will know very w^ell that the club will 

 have no motive to decline a prosecution, or to keep the 

 secret, and so on. It then only remains to ask, whether 

 the sum demanded for the guarantee is sufficient 1 " * 



•* Dublin Hevieic, Aug. 1840. The Guarantee Society has since been 

 established, and is likely to become a useful and prosperous institution. 



