Daniel Defoe: Political Writings (Including The True-Born Englishman, An Essay upon Projects, The Complete English Tradesman & The Biography of the Author). Даниэль Дефо

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СКАЧАТЬ and lost one leg . . . . . . . . . 50 B blown up with powder, and has lost an eye . . . . 25 C had a great shot took off his arm . . . . . . . . 100 D with a splinter had an eye struck out . . . . . . 25 E was killed with a great shot; to be paid to his wife 50 === 250

      The governors hereupon settle the claims of these persons, and make publication “that whereas such and such seamen, members of the society, have in an engagement with a French privateer been so and so hurt, their claims upon the office, by the rules and agreement of the said office, being adjusted by the governors, amounts to 250 pounds, which, being equally divided among the subscribers, comes to 1s. 3d. each, which all persons that are subscribers to the said office are desired to pay in for their respective subscriptions, that the said wounded persons may be relieved accordingly, as they expect to be relieved if the same or the like casualty should befall them.”

      It is but a small matter for a man to contribute, if he gave 1s. 3d. out of his wages to relieve five wounded men of his own fraternity; but at the same time to be assured that if he is hurt or maimed he shall have the same relief, is a thing so rational that hardly anything but a hare-brained follow, that thinks of nothing, would omit entering himself into such an office.

      I shall not enter further into this affair, because perhaps I may give the proposal to some persons who may set it on foot, and then the world may see the benefit of it by the execution.

      II. — For Widows.

      The same method of friendly society, I conceive, would be a very proper proposal for widows.

      We have abundance of women, who have been bred well and lived well, ruined in a few years, and perhaps left young with a houseful of children and nothing to support them, which falls generally upon the wives of the inferior clergy, or of shopkeepers and artificers.

      They marry wives with perhaps 300 pounds to 1,000 pounds portion, and can settle no jointure upon them. Either they are extravagant and idle, and waste it; or trade decays; or losses or a thousand contingencies happen to bring a tradesman to poverty, and he breaks. The poor young woman, it may be, has three or four children, and is driven to a thousand shifts, while he lies in the Mint or Friars under the dilemma of a statute of bankruptcy; but if he dies, then she is absolutely undone, unless she has friends to go to.

      Suppose an office to be erected, to be called an office of insurance for widows, upon the following conditions:

      Two thousand women, or their husbands for them, enter their names into a register to be kept for that purpose, with the names, age, and trade of their husbands, with the place of their abode, paying at the time of their entering 5s. down with 1s. 4d. per quarter, which is to the setting up and support of an office with clerks and all proper officers for the same; for there is no maintaining such without charge. They receive every one of them a certificate sealed by the secretary of the office, and signed by the governors, for the articles hereafter mentioned:

      If any one of the women become a widow at any time after six months from the date of her subscription, upon due notice given, and claim made at the office in form as shall be directed, she shall receive within six mouths after such claim made the sum of 500 pounds in money without any deductions, saving some small fees to the officers, which the trustees must settle, that they may be known.

      In consideration of this, every woman so subscribing obliges herself to pay, as often as any member of the society becomes a widow, the due proportion or share, allotted to her to pay towards the 500 pounds for the said widow, provided her share does not exceed the sum of 5s.

      No seamen’s or soldiers’ wives to be accepted into such a proposal as this, on the account before mentioned, because the contingencies of their lives are not equal to others — unless they will admit this general exception, supposing they do not die out of the kingdom.

      It might also be an exception that if the widow that claimed had really, bona fide, left her by her husband to her own use, clear of all debts and legacies, 2,000 pounds, she should have no claim, the intent being to aid the poor, not add to the rich. But there lie a great many objections against such an article, as:—

      1. It may tempt some to forswear themselves.

      2. People will order their wills so as to defraud the exception.

      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 pounds or 25 pounds per annum; and if a woman happen to pay that for twenty years, though she receives the 500 pounds 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 pounds 10s. per annum. upon her husband’s life, to receive 500 pounds 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 СКАЧАТЬ