The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-01-17 00:00:00

LIFE ASSURANCE.

TEE facilities afforded by means of advertising in the
public press, and the freedom with which they are made
available by Life Assurance Companies for disseminating
the knowledge of the several advantages which they offer,
:could naturally lead to the impression that such a mode
of providing against the contingencies of human life is
Teusxtensively adopted by the classes to whom it would
ordinarily prove of advantage. There are many thousands
is this country, professional men and others, who are
earning beyond their necessary expenditure—who have no
ether means of making a provision for a family in the
event of premature death—who have no realised capital
to bequeath by will to a widow and children, and yet how
few of them, comparatively, resort to the system of Life
Assurance, by which the payment of a small periodical
'premium would ensure the possession of a certain sum to
those the payer holds most dear, at the very time when,
deprived of his aid, they have most need to be placed above
the cold charity of the world. Assurance becomes, there-
fore, a positive duty to the man so situate ; and he who
scommencing the world, has as yet no ties of wife and
family, should insure his life as a measure of prudence for
the future—the earlier the commencement the lower being
the rate of premium—while the amount so paid is per-
mitted by the law to be a reduction on the income liable
to tax. Much discussion has taken place on the claims of
particular offices to public confidence in their ultimate
ability to meet their engagements, and no doubt some of
them have been established without due regard to this
important particular, but the majority will be found free
from such hazard, and a slight consideration must serve
to convince most men that, if an office be conducted by
inen of experience, with common honesty, and upon rates
of premium sufficient for ordinary contingencies, there
can be no reasonable doubt of their want of success. The
business of Life Assurance has, however, been mostly con-
fined to those who are in a position of life to pay an annual
-premium ; but there is a far more numerous class below
them to whom the system might be extended with consi-
derable advantage. The working man earning weekly
wages has, in most cases, no other means of providing for
the future than by small weekly payments, and he com-
monly resorts to Friendly Societies, and other similar in-
stitutions, in order to secure himself or his family against
-unforeseen contingencies. In too many cases these so-
cieties, from their confined operations, have proved to be
unequal to their engagements, and the hard-earned
wings have thus been lost to those who depended on
them for a dine of need. The advantages of the Life As-
surance Offices should be thrown open to these men, by
premiums being received in smaller sums, at shorter in-
tervals, and there can be no doubt that many thousands
would avail themselves of the opportunity. If every man
in settled employment, every man earning his means of
subsistence by his own exertions, were to effect an Insur-
ance on his own life, there would be full employment for
snore offices than at present exist, and the advantages to
be afforded might be indefinitely varied as ingenuity
might devise. In some the premiums might be payable
for a wed term of years, in others the amount insured
might be payable on arriving at a certain age, in some
future children might be provided for, in others the pre-
miums might be returned on demand, with the addition

of a low rate of interest, so as to combine the advantages
of a savings'-bank In plumy ways such offices might be
_made beneficial in encouraging habits of prudence and
economy, by only a slight restraint from present gratifica-
tion, and the effect would be of advantage to the com-
munity, by diminishing the claims on the poor-rate, which