The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-12-04 00:00:00

;rim NORTHERN TIMES.---LIVERPOOL, THURSDAY.

coming half-year is assured, as also that for the
month of November. La Epoca states that the
government have accepted the resignations of M.
Rios y Rosas as member of the council, and of
General Concha, governor of Cuba.
The King of the Belgians, in replying tb the I
address of the Chamber of Representatives, says : I
--It is most agreeable to me to receive the sincere
testimony of the sentiments of affectionate confi-
dence which you have just expressed to me, in the
name of the Chamber of Representatives. The
labours of this important session have been
worthily inaugurated. Your intelligent patriotism
will know how to second the efforts of my govern-
ment, with the view of assuring • thb regular.
development of the moral and material welfare of

of the nation.
Our usual telegraph despatch from Paris has
come to hand. It brings the following news from
Copenhagen, dated Dec. 3 :—The King has granted
a complete amnesty. Nineteen officers, who in
1848, had taken service in the Schleswig Holstein
army, have been recalled to the interior. The
Paris Bourse closed yesterday at 70f for the Three
per Cents.

The Courier has nothing more to say on the
subject of " Honest and Dishonest Assurers." It
has no desire to expose the rottenness of the prin-
ciple of disputability of policies after death. We
lad no desire," says our cotemporary, " to call par-
" titular attention to the case of LAURIE, but
" for the mistaken zeal of the parties, which
" has brought their conduct more prominently
" before the public, than, we think, will be found

" advantageous to them." We have quoted this
singular piece of composition just as we find
it, and we would simply ask. the Courier, once more,
what the " mistaken zeal" of the parties to the

negociation of an insurance, has to do with the
principle at issue in Mr. THOMAS LAURIE'S case ?
There are several hundreds of lives in this town
insured in the Merchant's and Tradesman's Office.
_The office is popular with what is called " The Low

" Church or Evangelical party," a fact which may
be, in some measure, explained by Dr. FALLOON'S
name appearing on the prospectus of the Merchant's
Company, as a medical referee. To this large and
respectable circle of the Liverpool community, Mr

LAURIE'S case is therefore one. of . vital importance
It is necessary that: they should knOw the exact
grounds on which the Merchant's and •Trad, Srrian's
Office resisted the payment of the sum insured on a
life which they have never questioned. What ,have
those whose fives are insured in office to do with
the " mistaken zeal" of its medical men or agents ?
If Mr. SHAIN, or Mr. ROBERT WEBSTER, were
over zealous in the transaction, surely that is not the
ground-on-which an-Assurance-Company is-to shake
off their liability to the insured !
Mr. ROBERT WEBSTER was certainly most
anxious to get Mr. LAURIE'S life insured in his
office. Of this we have abundant proof, in than
passage in his letter to Mr. SHAIN—
" Make your report a little stronger." But we
have -nothing on the face of the :proposals,
which are the true bases of the contracts, or on the
face of the medical reports, which are all that Mr.
SHAIN can be called upon to answer for, to show
that the latter gentleman was in any way zealous
in
.the matter. Mr. SHAIN was, if anything,
too apathetic for Mr. WEBSTER, as we sce
by his letter. But suppose Mr. SHAIN had proved
as pliant as the Company's agent could have desired
—suppose he had left the Directors nothing to
" boggle" at, and that, after Mr: WEBSTER had
gone the " whole hog," Mr. SHAIN bad supplied
the apple sauce, what would the million who are
insured have to do with the affair? If the insurer
can escape his liability to the insured, by proving
that one out of two, or more, of his agents are
creatures of " mistaken zeal," there is an end at
once to nine-tenths of the policies now in existence.
If, in fact, the insurer's objections are not limited to
the life insured, if he is allowed to go back, after
death, into the history of the insured's family
rake up tombstones—medical and burial certificates
---years after the members of. the "assured's family
have passed away to the grave, there can be no
security whatever for any class of the assurance
pularc, except for, those who have been so fortunate
as to insure in those offices which give them a policy,
on the back of which it is agreed, that " this policy
" is indisputable after death."
Weighing Mr. SHAM'S reputation, as a medical
referee,. or Mt'. ROBERT WEBSTER'S honour, as an
insurance agent, against the commercial value of
the principle for which we contend, is most puerile
on the part of our contemporary. Mr. LAURIE'S
life was a good one. All he said of himself, in the
two proposals published by Mr. SIIAIN, in his
.pamphlet, is admitted to be true. He stated, in
his proposal to the Merchants' Office, that he
" n ever had any sickness"— that he was "decided"
sober and temperate. All this is admitted, and
still the insurer's representative cannot recover
--the--arnount insured-upon—his lzfe,_b ecause_the_di-
rectors suspect that their medical officer knew
something more about the health of Mr. LAURIE'S
family than he stated in his report, and because
they believe that the words introduced into the
proposal in their agent's, Mr. ROBERT WEBSTER'S,
own handwriting, was " interlined at the request
"of the- insured." It may be all very well for an
Assurance Company to assume what they please ;
but where is the public's security while such
things are? possible? Mr. SiviWs pamphlet gives
its readers the documents on which Mr. LAURIE'S
'contract with the Merchant's Office was based ;
they were referred, by Mr. LAURIE, tO Mr.
PATERSON, the agent of the Industrial and General
Office, who had known the proposer for five years,
-and who had submitted the life to his own directors.
Here Mr. WEBS ER might possibly have obtained
every information he required, without interlining
Mr. LAURIE'S proposal. And_now that the case
has been brought before the world in its true
colours, Mr. WEBSTER'S champion, the Courier, is
desirous that Mr. LAURIE'S connection with the
Industrial Office should not be mentioned, and
that that office should be kept neutral.

------- -
Our object, however, is to get at the truth, and
we prefer taking a different course. And we
have again to thank Mr. SITAIN for putting us
in possession of the history of Mr. LAnatE's
negoeiations with the Industrial Company. Mr.
WEBSTER will pardon us for the digression. We
only seek to test the truth of the Roman belief—
Sunt in animis quasi virtutum envina. It may prove
a hopeless task in,the Insurance world. The vir-
tue of indisputability certainly does not belong to
the Merchant's office, and we are, therefore, bound
to look most closely into the acts of their agents.
Where it is alleged that proposals are interlined
in the hand writing of agents, with words which
defeat the claims of the representatives of proposers
after death, a great deal of close investigation
must be expected. It is quite a new phase
in the Insurance business of the realm,

and must be met in the spirit its importance
deserves.; And we are surprised that our enlarged
and respectable Conservative cotemporary should