ANOTHER branch of insurance is by contribution, or (to borrow the term
from that before mentioned) friendly societies; which is, in short, a
number of people entering into a mutual compact to help one another in
case any disaster or distress fall upon them.
If mankind could agree, as these might be regulated, all things which
have casualty in them might be secured. But one thing is particularly
required in this way of assurances: none can be admitted but such whose
circumstances are (at least, in some degree) alike, and so mankind must
be sorted into classes; and as their contingencies differ, every
different sort may be a society upon even terms; for the circumstances of
people, as to life, differ extremely by the age and constitution of their
bodies and difference of employment—as he that lives on shore against him
that goes to sea, or a young man against an old man, or a shopkeeper
against a soldier, are unequal. I do not pretend to determine the
controverted point of predestination, the foreknowledge and decrees of
Providence. Perhaps, if a man be decreed to be killed in the trenches,
the same foreknowledge ordered him to list himself a soldier, that it
might come to pass, and the like of a seaman. But this I am sure,
speaking of second causes, a seaman or a soldier are subject to more
contingent hazards than other men, and therefore are not upon equal terms
to form such a society; nor is an annuity on the life of such a man worth
so much as it is upon other men: therefore if a society should agree
together to pay the executor of every member so much after the decease of
the said member, the seamen’s executors would most certainly have an
advantage, and receive more than they pay. So that it is necessary to
sort the world into parcels—seamen with seamen, soldiers with soldiers,
and the like.
Nor is this a new thing; the friendly society must not pretend to assume
to themselves the contrivance of the method, or think us guilty of
borrowing from them, when we draw this into other branches; for I know
nothing is taken from them but the bare words, “friendly society,” which
they cannot pretend to be any considerable piece of invention either.
I can refer them to the very individual practice in other things, which
claims prescription beyond the beginning of the last age, and that is in
our marshes and fens in Essex, Kent, and the Isle of Ely; where great
quantities of land being with much pains and a vast charge recovered out
of the seas and rivers, and maintained with banks (which they call
walls), the owners of those lands agree to contribute to the keeping up
those walls and keeping out the sea, which is all one with a friendly
society; and if I have a piece of land in any level or marsh, though it
bounds nowhere on the sea or river, yet I pay my proportion to the
maintenance of the said wall or bank; and if at any time the sea breaks
in, the damage is not laid upon the man in whose land the breach
happened, unless it was by his neglect, but it lies on the whole land,
and is called a “level lot.”
Again, I have known it practised in troops of horse, especially when it
was so ordered that the troopers mounted themselves; where every private
trooper has agreed to pay, perhaps, 2d. per diem out of his pay into a
public stock, which stock was employed to remount any of the troop who by
accident should lose his horse.
Again, the sailors’ contribution to the Chest at Chatham is another
friendly society, and more might be named.
To argue against the lawfulness of this would be to cry down common
equity as well as charity: for as it is kind that my neighbour should
relieve me if I fall into distress or decay, so it is but equal he should
do so if I agreed to have done the same for him; and if God Almighty has
commanded us to relieve and help one another in distress, surely it must
be commendable to bind ourselves by agreement to obey that command; nay,
it seems to be a project that we are led to by the divine rule, and has
such a latitude in it that for aught I know, as I said, all the disasters
in the world might be prevented by it, and mankind be secured from all
the miseries, indigences, and distresses that happen in the world. In
which I crave leave to be a little particular.
First general peace might be secured all over the world by it, if all the
powers agreed to suppress him that usurped or encroached upon his
neighbour. All the contingencies of life might be fenced against by this
method (as fire is already), as thieves, floods by land, storms by sea,
losses of all sorts, and death itself, in a manner, by making it up to
the survivor.
I shall begin with the seamen; for as their lives are subject to more
hazards than others, they seem to come first in view.
_Of Seamen_.
Sailors are _les enfants perdus_, “the forlorn hope of the world;” they
are fellows that bid defiance to terror, and maintain a constant war with
the elements; who, by the magic of their art, trade in the very confines
of death, and are always posted within shot, as I may say, of the grave.
It is true, their familiarity with danger makes them despise it (for
which, I hope, nobody will say they are the wiser); and custom has so
hardened them that we find them the worst of men, though always in view
of their last moment.
I have observed one great error in the custom of England relating to
these sort of people, and which this way of friendly society would be a
remedy for:
If a seaman who enters himself, or is pressed into, the king’s service be
by any accident wounded or disabled, to recompense him for the loss, he
receives a pension during life, which the sailors call “smart-money,” and
is proportioned to their hurt, as for the loss of an eye, arm, leg, or
finger, and the like: and as it is a very honourable thing, so it is but
reasonable that a poor man who loses his limbs (which are his estate) in
the service of the Government, and is thereby disabled from his labour to
get his bread, should be provided for, and not suffer to beg or starve
for want of those limbs he lost in the service of his country.
But if you come to the seamen in the merchants’ service, not the least
provision is made: which has been the loss of many a good ship, with many
a rich cargo, which would otherwise have been saved.
And the sailors are in the right of it, too. For instance, a merchant
ship coming home from the Indies, perhaps very rich, meets with a
privateer (not so strong but that she might fight him and perhaps get
off); the captain calls up his crew, tells them, “Gentlemen, you see how
it is; I don’t question but we may clear ourselves of this caper, if you
will stand by me.” One of the crew, as willing to fight as the rest, and
as far from a coward as the captain, but endowed with a little more wit
than his fellows, replies, “Noble captain, we are all willing to fight,
and don’t question but to beat him off; but here is the case: if we are
taken, we shall be set on shore and then sent home, and lose perhaps our
clothes and a little pay; but if we fight and beat the privateer, perhaps
half a score of us may be wounded and lose our limbs, and then we are
undone and our families. If you will sign an obligation to us that the
owners or merchants shall allow a pension to such as are maimed, that we
may not fight for the ship, and go a-begging ourselves, we will bring off
the ship or sink by her side; otherwise I am not willing to fight, for my
part.” The captain cannot do this; so they strike, and the ship and
cargo are lost.
If I should turn this supposed example into a real history, and name the
ship and the captain that did so, it would be too plain to be
contradicted.
Wherefore, for the encouragement of sailors in the service of the
merchant, I would have a friendly society erected for seamen; wherein all
sailors or seafaring men, entering their names, places of abode, and the
voyages they go upon at an office of insurance for seamen, and paying
there a certain small quarterage of 1s. per quarter, should have a sealed
certificate from the governors of the said office for the articles
hereafter mentioned: