A BURNING QUESTION.

Auckland Star, Volume XIX, Issue 195, 20 August 1888, Page 2

A BURNING QUESTION.

It would be neither uninteresting nor unprofitable. for our public teachers of morality and religion to discuss the question as to whether colonial morality ia inferior to that of England;, nob so much with relation to the lower forms of vice, but more particularly with regard to general honesty and commercial probity. An announcement in a recent English paper throws a rather lurid light upon one phase of the question, and is not. .unworthy of consideration when the incendiary "rat1 is so busy and energetic. In the paper referred to, an insurance company which has now been in existence more than eighty years, announces that " All those who have made, seven annual payments, and have had no claim for fire, are informed that the bonus returns are more than sufficient to meet the premiums due midsummer quarter, and that, consequently, they have no premium to pay for the renewal of their policies. This return system does nob extend to .'farming stock and hazardous insurances. The rates charged are the same as those quoted by other offices giving no return."' I refrain from giving the name ofi the Company, as to do co might arouse a suspicion that I desired to advertise ib in an indirect though very apparent manner. It may be stated, however,: that ib is not doing business here, and has no colonial ageacies. The rate charged for first-class risks is Is 6d per £100. Here the rate is 15s per £100 for the same class of risks. Now, apart from the circumstance that ,the insurers as well as the shareholders participate in the proiits of the Company by having their premiums from time to time remitted, there are here some remarkable facts tor consideration; In England this Company has had a prosperous existence for more 80 years, ib charges a, merely ' nominal premium of Is 6d per £100, yet it is enabled not only to give", a satisfactory return to the • shareholders, bub to relieve the insurers frequently from the payment of their premiums'. Hue, the premium charged is exactly tenfold, and no insurers have yeb been relieved from payment. Not only so, but of late years insurance companies doing business here have been actually losing money instead ot making it. How is this? The answer seems simple enough. .Fires are proportion ately to the number of buildings far more frequent here than in England. But this is really only half an answer. The real question is, why are iires more frequent hererf There is but one reply to the query, and ib is a most painful one. No person who has read the accounts of the Hies xvhicli have occurred here dining tho last few years can, I thitik, fail to have been convinced a very, large proportion of thorn have been tho result of deliberate incendiarism. It is absurd to say that fires are more prevalent here because of .the greater number of wooden buildings. Eire is no more likely to originule in a wooden building than in a brick one, unless as in many country settlers1 houses the chimneys ate also wooden. But it is a significant fact that very few of the latter are destroyed by fire, despite the wooden chimneys. The majority ofthari'ave notinsumL- Of course, 'when a fire does occur in a wooden building its progress is more rapid^the destruction is greater and more complete than in a brick building, and ib is more difficult to subdue. Bub even assuming that lires from some mysterious cause do originate more readily in, a wooden erection than in a brick one, yeb sbill the fires occurring in the latter are abnormally numerous. There seems to be no'1 reasonable room for doubt that there 13 rapidly spreading in the com-, muriity a species of morality regarding incendiarism-sitnilar- to the Arabian code respecting liion.e3.ty."' 'TW^/firim^ qqtfsis ts in being found out.- ■•!§ is'di?gvacßiul;ohly to be detected. It is immoral only to blunder. . The man who has a " successful"' fire is considered not only fortunate, but clever. He who achieves two or more "successes :> is a genius. The insurance companies are regarded as legitimate prey to be plundered without compunction, to, be defrauded without remorse. It may be, true—it probably is true-—that the insurance companies have; by over-insuring, and by lax inspection, to some extent developed and encouraged the incendiary spirit. "Opportunity • makes the thief" is an old proverb, but a fallacious one. Opportunity _'never ' yet made a thief of a man imbued with the true principle of honesty: There■■'ihus'b -be a 1 pre-existenfc criminal mind before there can too any response to the temptation wMoh opportunity.presents.' it follows, therefore, that though the insurance companies are Bomewhat to blatae, yet they are certainly nob responsible for the existence of tho v incendiary spirit that is now rampant. • Even with respect to men concerning whose guilt as incendiaries there is no moral doubt, the general sentiment is almost as muph one of: admiration for their cleverness- in eluding detection as ' O ofcondemnationl for their crime. While this sentiment pre : , vails incendiarism will flourish and insurance companies fail, unless the latter adopt a"different system in conducting their business. But whatever measures the com- '"■■ pariiesmay adopt,jithecause which is producing such disastrous results will still exist. ; How k the standard of morality to Ibe raised ? This is the problem which requires solution, and ifc is one with which tb'e insurance companies have nothing to do. They may contrive to diminish fires, but the spirit of dishonesty - will be as active as. ever tintil the fountain of public morality can by some means be purified. ~ William Coopek. ■