Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1880-07-21
Ancient Insurance.
from the New York Times. !

Although, In the manner In which IL Is
now carried on, insurance against losses
of various kinds is comparatively mod
ern practice-for the oldest organized as
sociations do not date back much over
two hundred years - the principle of
sharing among number the loss of
single Individual seems to have been an
accepted method from very early
period. The earliest recorded statement
Of transactions of this kind is found in
the Babylonian Talmud, and as they are
there systemized into something ap.
preaching a code, it Is safe to assume
that they must have been in use among
the Jewish people long prior to the com.
pilation of that work. The forms Of
agreement then entered into were, of
course, crude, but they seem to have an
swered the purposes for which they were
intended. An illustration of this can be
given in the case of ass drivers, by quot
ing the law laid down for their benefit:
at shall be lawful for ass-drlvers to
come to an understanding whereby they
may agree, whenever one of the members
of the company shall lose an ass by
robbers or wild beasts, to furnish
another in the place of the one
lost; but in case driver shall
have lost his ass through his own
negligence, 1t shall not be necessary to
supply him with another. In case the
owner says, Give me the value of the ass
and | will purchase a new one for my.
self the offer need not be accepted; let
an ass be bought for him and placed at
his disposal" Indeed, protection for the
owners of asses seems to have formed
large part of the Jewish notion of mutual
insurance, showing at once the character
of mercantile business at that time, and
the many hazards to which 1t was ex.
posed. In marine insurance, the oldest
precept in existence, AMI the one which
still forms the basis of all of our modern
laws Of general average, is found in what
the Romans termed the jus Rhodianorua,a,
which comes down to US from the fact
that it was incorporated into the Digest
and Institutes of Justinian. This pTinci-
pie OF mutual interdependence is not less
than 2,700 years old, and was developed
by the Rhodians at time when they
were about the only maritime people in
the world. The law reads: "If goods are
thrown overheard to Tighten a ship, that
which has been given by all shall be re
placed by the contribution of ALL" q rule
which is essentially fair, since at that
time galley making a voyage to some
Mediterranean port might have on
board a cargo which was made
up of the adventures of a
score or more of different individuals. In
attempting to adapt this method to their
own requirements, the Jews, through want
Of nautical, and even extensive mercan
tile experience, seem to have fallen into
a very grave error. Their idea was that
each one should, upon the spot, contribute
his share from his own goods of the mer-
chandise to be thrown over to tighten the
ship, and that this proportion should be
adjudged by weight, for the Hebrew au-
thorlty says: "It one passenger throw
overheard certain weight of iron belong
ing to him, and another passengers share
of the cargo consists of gold, the last shall
throw over an equal amount in weight of
his gold" This was manifestly very
unjust method of procedure, since the
wisdom of sacrificing the cheapest and
heaviest cargo is so plainly apparent that
it is hard to understand how even the an
clients, when they were formulating law,
could have come to any other conclusion.
But then the Jews were not, and their de.
scendants have never been, greatly inter.
ested in maritime pursuits, and it Is not
unlikely that this absurd rule may have
been due to this circumstance.