One exception must be made, and that is, either very unequal matches (as
when a woman of nineteen marries an old man of seventy), or women who
have infirm husbands—I mean, known and publicly so; to remedy which two
things are to be done:
1. The office must have moving officers without doors, who shall inform
themselves of such matters, and if any such circumstances appear, the
office should have fourteen days’ time to return their money and declare
their subscriptions void.
2. No woman whose husband had any visible distemper should claim under a
year after her subscription.
One grand objection against this proposal is, how you will oblige people
to pay either their subscription or their quarterage.
To this I answer, by no compulsion (though that might be performed too),
but altogether voluntary; only with this argument to move it, that if
they do not continue their payments, they lose the benefit of their past
contributions.
I know it lies as a fair objection against such a project as this, that
the number of claims are so uncertain that nobody knows what they engage
in when they subscribe, for so many may die annually out of two thousand
as may make my payment £20 or £25 per annum; and if a woman happen to pay
that for twenty years, though she receives the £500 at last, she is a
great loser; but if she dies before her husband, she has lessened his
estate considerably, and brought a great loss upon him.
First, I say to this that I would have such a proposal as this be so fair
and so easy, that if any person who had subscribed found the payments too
high and the claims fall too often, it should be at their liberty at any
time, upon notice given, to be released, and stand obliged no longer;
and, if so, _volenti non fit injuria_. Every one knows best what their
own circumstances will bear.
In the next place, because death is a contingency no man can directly
calculate, and all that subscribe must take the hazard; yet that a
prejudice against this notion may not be built on wrong grounds, let us
examine a little the probable hazard, and see how many shall die annually
out of 2,000 subscribers, accounting by the common proportion of burials
to the number of the living.
Sir William Petty, in his political arithmetic, by a very ingenious
calculation, brings the account of burials in London to be one in forty
annually, and proves it by all the proper rules of proportioned
computation; and I will take my scheme from thence.
If, then, one in forty of all the people in England die, that supposes
fifty to die every year out of our two thousand subscribers; and for a
woman to contribute 5s. to every one, would certainly be to agree to pay
£12 10s. per annum. upon her husband’s life, to receive £500 when he
died, and lose it if she died first; and yet this would not be a hazard
beyond reason too great for the gain.
But I shall offer some reasons to prove this to be impossible in our
case: first, Sir William Petty allows the city of London to contain about
a million of people, and our yearly bill of mortality never yet amounted
to 25,000 in the most sickly years we have had (plague years excepted);
sometimes but to 20,000, which is but one in fifty. Now it is to be
considered here that children and ancient people make up, one time with
another, at least one-third of our bills of mortality, and our assurances
lie upon none but the middling age of the people, which is the only age
wherein life is anything steady; and if that be allowed, there cannot die
by his computation above one in eighty of such people every year; but
because I would be sure to leave room for casualty, I will allow one in
fifty shall die out of our number subscribed.
Secondly, it must be allowed that our payments falling due only on the
death of husbands, this one in fifty must not be reckoned upon the two
thousand, for it is to be supposed at least as many women shall die as
men, and then there is nothing to pay; so that one in fifty upon one
thousand is the most that I can suppose shall claim the contribution in a
year, which is twenty claims a year at 5s. each, and is £5 per annum.
And if a woman pays this for twenty years, and claims at last, she is
gainer enough, and no extraordinary loser if she never claims at all.
And I verily believe any office might undertake to demand at all
adventures not above £6 per annum, and secure the subscriber £500 in case
she come to claim as a widow.
I forbear being more particular on this thought, having occasion to be
larger in other prints, the experiment being resolved upon by some
friends who are pleased to think this too useful a project not to be put
in execution, and therefore I refer the reader to the public practice of
it.
I have named these two cases as special experiments of what might be done
by assurances in way of friendly society; and I believe I might, without
arrogance, affirm that the same thought might be improved into methods
that should prevent the general misery and poverty of mankind, and at
once secure us against beggars, parish poor, almshouses, and hospitals;
and by which not a creature so miserable or so poor but should claim
subsistence as their due, and not ask it of charity.
I cannot believe any creature so wretchedly base as to beg of mere
choice, but either it must proceed from want or sordid prodigious
covetousness; and thence I affirm there can be no beggar but he ought to
be either relieved or punished, or both. If a man begs for more
covetousness without want, it is a baseness of soul so extremely sordid
as ought to be used with the utmost contempt, and punished with the
correction due to a dog. If he begs for want, that want is procured by
slothfulness and idleness, or by accident; if the latter, he ought to be
relieved; if the former, he ought to be punished for the cause, but at
the same time relieved also, for no man ought to starve, let his crime be
what it will.
I shall proceed, therefore, to a scheme by which all mankind, be he never
so mean, so poor, so unable, shall gain for himself a just claim to a
comfortable subsistence whosoever age or casualty shall reduce him to a
necessity of making use of it. There is a poverty so far from being
despicable that it is honourable, when a man by direct casualty, sudden
Providence, and without any procuring of his own, is reduced to want
relief from others, as by fire, shipwreck, loss of limbs, and the like.
These are sometimes so apparent that they command the charity of others;
but there are also many families reduced to decay whose conditions are
not so public, and yet their necessities as great. Innumerable
circumstances reduce men to want; and pressing poverty obliges some
people to make their cases public, or starve; and from thence came the
custom of begging, which sloth and idleness has improved into a trade.
But the method I propose, thoroughly put in practice, would remove the
cause, and the effect would cease of course.
Want of consideration is the great reason why people do not provide in
their youth and strength for old age and sickness; and the ensuing
proposal is, in short, only this—that all persons in the time of their
health and youth, while they are able to work and spare it, should lay up
some small inconsiderable part of their gettings as a deposit in safe
hands, to lie as a store in bank to relieve them, if by age or accident
they come to be disabled, or incapable to provide for themselves; and
that if God so bless them that they nor theirs never come to need it, the
overplus may be employed to relieve such as shall.
If an office in the same nature with this were appointed in every county
in England, I doubt not but poverty might easily be prevented, and
begging wholly suppressed.