The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-12-18 00:00:00

FIRE AND LIFE ASSURANCE COMPANIES

(From the Morning Chronicle of Wednesday.)
It is impossible for the trade of the country to be in a
healthy state, or for the commercial interests to be prosper-
ous or contented, until this floundering system of managing
the national currency has undergone a searching investigation
and reform. But our whole system of banking must be
amended, and a proper code of legislation framed for the re-
gulation of the joint-stock banks. We are persuaded that
every impartial person must see the propriety of making it
imperative on every joint-stock bank, without regard to lo-
cality, to register the names of the partners annually at the
Stamp-office ; that their deeds of settlement should be sub-
mitted to the inspection of a pnblic officer, and that his cer-
tificate should be the warrant for the Stamp-office authorities
to issue the license. The regulation ought not, however, to
be confined to joint-stock banks. It ought to be extended
to all fire and life assurance companies. The facilities of es-
tablishing the latter class of companies are most objection-
able. They are under no species of legislative check or re-
gulation whatever, and thus temptations are put in the way
of the vicious to dupe the public. We are perfectly sensible
of the importance of life insurance companies, and of the
great benefits they confer upon the community. The re-
marks we have made, both as regards joint-stock banks and
insurance companies have, we trust, beeu explicit. We trust
that our object has been seen, namely, to protect the genuine
firms ; to separate the tares from the wheat ; to support the
real against the fictitious, and thus encourage and advantage
the sound institutions and the public. To accomplish this
purpose the life-insurance system specially requires to be
placed under the controul of legislative enactment, for seve-
ral bubbles of that class have burst in the metropolis, and
there may be more to come. We have heard of one instance
lately, of a most extraordinary kind, where the extent of the
delusion is perfectly incredible. But the plan is of easy ac-
complishment. A flaming prospectus with a series of names
for directors is published, all well " esquired " for effect ;
tables of the most tempting kind are circulated, promising
annuities on conditions which cannot pay the company ; but
as that is never intended, the parties concerned give them-
selves no trouble about it, and the public greedily take the
bait by paying the price generally at once, so as to secure
the bargain. Then, to make the picture more pleasing, they
take care to announce that the company is established under
and by virtue of a variety of acts of parliament, which are
enumerated. These are the statutes applicable to friendly
societies, which have nothing to do with insurance companies.
The object, however, is attained, and in a short time the
dupe finds the magnificent Royal Union Fire and Life Insu-
rance Association, or some other fine—sounding title, nothing
but a name. To prevent such impositions, and to secure the
public in the oenefits resulting from a proper system of well-
conducted life-insurance companies, the subject ought to be
taken up by some active member of the legislature. He will
find plenty of materials, and no want of evidence, to satisfy
him that legislation to correct existing evils is essentially re-
quired. It may be said, in answer to us on this point, as
has been done in regard to the London joint-stock banks,
ch.t altbough tho nut a...tali° tho partnere to bo re-
gistered, in p'actice the same thing is done, as the directors
of London joint-stock banks generally print the names and
addresses of their shareholders, which aro given with their

prospectus. Supposing such to be the usual practice, as re-
gards the London joint-stock banks, which it certainly is, the
same practice is not so general with regard to insurance com-
panies. But at any rate we do not consider it entitled to
much weight. Our object is not to obtain guarantees from
respectable establishments. We know that they will always
afford the public reasonable satisfaction, but the right of as-
certaining the names of partners in joint-stock banks and
life-insurance companies should not be left to the discretion
of the directors. To guard the public by imposition from
spurious firms, we maintain that the law should compel them
all to register them all annually. A mere printed list is no
guarantee of authenticity. We do not strictly believe every
thing that we see in print ; and, in point of fact, in the case
of the Imperial Bank not inure than one-sixth of the partners
returned to the Stamp-office ever signed the deed. Fictitious
firms could have no difficulty in providing printed lists of
shareholders, and the law should take care to prevent the
concoction of such fraudulent lists. Therefore the deeds of
settlement with the signatures of the partners, verified by the
oaths of witnesses who saw them sign, should be lodged with
a public officer, with duplicates for examination ; and his
certificates to the Stamp-office should he the warrant for a
licence, to be followed up with advertisements in the London
Gazette.

Brigadier-General Sir Charles F. Smith, K.C.8., cpm-
mander of the troops in Syria, is second son of the late George
Smith, Esq., of Burnhall, near this city, and received his
education at the Durham Grammar School, where he gave
early promise of those transcendant talents and that enter-
prising spirit which have since so eminently distinguished
him. Sir Charles was born July 9, 1786, and is consequently
in the 55th year of his age.—Durham Chronicle.
ANECDOTE OF NAPOLEON.. BCONAPARTE.—WhiIe about
famousto enter upon the Polish campaign, the emperor was
one day playing chess in the Tuileries with Marshal Berthier,
when the Persian ambassador was announced, as requesting
an audience. The game was
aninteresting crisis, and Na-
poleon would no more permit it to be suspended, than would
Charles of Sweden leave his chessboard when the Turks
commenced }battering down his house in Bender. Buona-
parte ordered the ambassador to be shewn in, and M. Amedee
Jaubert was commanded to the presence as interpreter. The
emperor continued his game with Berthier, overwhelming
the astounded Persian with questions all the while, in his
usual rapid mode of asking to gain information. The Mus-
sulman found it difficult to plant his replies suitably; the
various topics being Turkey, Persia, Mohammed, and the
Koran ; Eastern harems, wives in sacks, the vaccine, mili-
tary discipline, and ten thousand other matters. The Per-
sian, however, steered his way like the really skilful diplo-
matist he was. He exalted Persian institutes to the seventh
heaven, or a little higher, and dwelt especially upon the
horse-soldiers of Ispahan, as being the finest cavalry in the
world. Napoleon good-humouredly disputed the assertion,
and interrupted the son of Iraun more than once ; but the
ambassador constantly returned with his pet cavalry to the
charge, and, getting warmer, by degrees, pronounced his
judgment with even more and more decision. " There
could be no doubt about it—the foot soldiers of Europe were
excellent—but the Persian horse !" Napoleon laughed out-
right as the interpreter rendered the sentences in French ;
and carelessly addressing Jaubert in reply, said, " Tell him
that 10-morrow we'll shew him a little cavalry here." The
Persian made his salaam, and quitted the palace. The long-
contested chess-game was not even then finished. While
pondering over the subsequent moves, the emperor found
time to issue certain brief orders upon slips of paper, cen-
tralizing upon Paris the instant march of various bodies of
horse-soldiers from their cantonments in the vicinity. Like
the knights on the chess-board, he had them all in his band.
The subject was not again alluded to ; the game was played
out ; but the next morning saw 40,000 French cavalry defile
before Napoleon and the Persian envoy, in all the glittering
pomp of military decoration. Paris beheld that cavalry al-
most for the last time. Moscow awaited thm.—Fraser's
Magazine.

ENGLISH CHIVALRY DISHONOURED.—EngIish gold was
paid, was admitted to have been paid, to Maroto, as the price
of the blood of nine of Carlos's ablest generals, and subse-
quently for his betrayal of his master's cause. It matters
not whether that cause was a righteous or an unholy one,
and still less whether England could have reaped from such
purchased treason any solid advantage ; we maintain that
such system of warfare is not merely below the dignity of our
country, but cannot be adopted without entailing a curse,
permanent and terrible, in the moral degradation and profli-
gate principles which it thus announces to the world as the
creed of a British ministry. The naval uniform has been
soiled,—for one of its officers was made the go-between in
this convention of treason ; and we may add, that this took
place when our fight was not one pro aris et jocis, hut the
result of a forced interpretation put by a blundering ministry
on the quadruple alliance. We were not bound to interfer-
ence more than the French ; •and all our engagements would
have been equally fulfilled by our remaining either passive,
or at least acting the part of honourable allies in the field of
honourable war; it remained for an English minister to dis-
cover a necessity and sound policy in branding an English
officer as the pimp of traitors. The money has been paid,
and the blood has been sold ; but where is the harvest that
England or Spain was to reap? It has no existence save in
cold-blooded executions, and the usurpation of all legal au-
thority by self-constituted juntas, themselves the tools of
a self-elected dictator. The curse which has long hung over
Spain is at this moment more powerful than ever. English
honour has been prostituted, not to effect the regeneration of
an ally, but to accomplish her abasement. Yet, lest future
ages might suppose that a feeling of repentance had dis-
turbed the self-complacency of our self-confident ministers,
the grand cross of Bath has been bestowed on Espartero ;
and the hand of the queen's uncle has been the hand to trace
the damning lines, expressive of pleasure that the star of
English knighthood should glitter on the breast of the gam-
bler—the boaster—the traitor to his country and queen ! Well
did the latter say, when about to quit the land whence his
bloodhounds were hunting her,—" I have given you fortune
and rank ; I have done for you all I could ; I have madeyou
a duke,—l could not make you a gentleman." Philip of
Macedon used to say,—., I love the treason, but abhor the
traitor." To the more liberal spirit of an English minister
is due the honour of not merely loving the treason, but ful-
somely caressing the traitor.—From Fraser's Magazine.