LAW IN POLITICS. 405 



we take the trouble to trace any social or political 

 phenomena through the sequences of cause and 

 effect from which they come. Not unfrequently 

 these illustrations are of a melancholy kind, and 

 give us much to think of respecting the better under- 

 standing and the better management of our compli- 

 cated nature. Thus, for example, there seems good 

 reason to believe there is a direct relation between 

 the amount of life and property annually sacrificed 

 by shipwreck, and the legislation which recognises 

 and sanctions Insurance to the full amount of the 

 value of ship and cargo. The cause of this is ob- 

 vious. Care for life is less eager and less wakeful 

 than care for property. This is true even when 

 men are dealing equally with their own property, 

 and with their own lives. It is still more true when 

 they are dealing not only with property which is 

 their own, but with lives which belong to others. 

 The inevitable effect of such Insurance is therefore 

 to relax the motives of self-interest which are the 

 strongest incitements to precaution.* Similar re- 



* A curious and instructive Paper upon this subject has been 

 published by Mr Edwin Chadwick, having been read before a 

 recent meeting of the Social Science Association. 



