LIFE INSURANCE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 46, 9 December 1871, Page 15

LIFE INSURANCE.

[lndependent.]

In the catalogue of matters mundane are two things to which nineteen twentieths of the community never devote a moment’s serious consideration—-the insurance of life and the making of wills. It needs not that we should call to our aid sophical arguments highly wrought out to prove the importance or rather the absolute necessity of doing either or both of these things. In cases of intestacy where a little property has been accumulated the neglect to make a will is often the subject of regret to the aged parents of a deceased son or to a wife and family, as the case may he. The property, which is of small amount in the majority of cases, is immediately vested in the Curator of Intestate Estates, and the only gratification afforded to the friends is that of standing aside and seeing the money which might have been of no little service to them expended in carrying out the forms prescribed by law for the management of the estates of persons so dying. As long as this wide-spread culpability, this universal neglect to provide for the disposal of what is in many cases the accumulated savings from years of labor, forms part of the shortcomings everywhere to be found in the human character it is proper that the legislature should provide, first, in cases where there are no friends on the spot, that the funeral obsequies shall be conducted in a respectable manner, and, secondly, that any surplus shall be legally secured to the next of kin. This part of the subject, we do not propose to dwell upon further than to point out

that no owner of property who desires that his descendents should profit by his good fortune or his industry should neglect this first article in the law of primogeniture. The more important of the two points selected is that which affects not property-holders alone, but every member of a community. A correspondent, who makes a plain statement of facts as they exist, draws our attention to the importance of insuring life 0 not only as a means of providing against the hardship often caused by the removal by death of the member of a family on whom the rest are depen dent, but also as a means of removing a complaint which threatens to assume the form of active discontent. Many unfortunate deaths of recent occurrence, in which no foresight had been exercised in the way of securing any of (he advantages accruing from life assurance, have placed a number of wives and children in the position, at all times unpleasant, of being compelled to accept the contributionsof the benevolent. Butthere is another way in which to look at this matter. People even of the most charitable dispositions, while expressing their commiseration for the feelings and the wants of the living, cannot help reflecting upon the want of preparation for a contingency which all know to be inevitable. Yet, although everyone of us experiences this feeling at some time or other during our lives, how 7 many are content themselves to be found in the position of the foolish virgins? Unfortunately there is a class in every community who live solely for the sake of the enjoyments of the day. The thought of anything beyond a hand-to-mouth existence is considered utterly superfluous. The Sybarite mode of life so natural to the voluptuary of Paris or Madrid is quite as well defined in the lives of no inconsiderable portion of the English-speaking race. They so far conform to the laws of the country in which they live, that they rescue from their prodigality sufficient means to meet payment for actual necessities only, but what happens when one of such persons meets with an unexpected or untimely end ? The w’ants of bis wife and family do not terminate with his existence, and who is to provide for their needs when he is gone for ever from them? His widow is probably unfitted by one of fifty causes from earning a livelihood for herself and children ; and it must not be forgotten that this is not only a provable case—it is the case most frequent, that these poor women are, from no fault of their own, entirely incapable of “ keeping the house together.” Then comes the equally inevitable subscription list, and there is no man in any community, be his position and his connections however obscure, who is not subject to frequent calls upon his good nature, the object of those who contribute and those who collect the contributions being, of course, to shield the family from the shame which is commonly understood to he inseparable from the acceptance of food or funds from a benevolent or other public society. A feeling such as that which finds expression in the correspondence columns of our present issue is now-a-days by no means rare or isolated in private circles. People ask themselves—and we think they are perfectly justified in doing so—why, because they choose to be frugal, prudent, and thrifty in their lives, they should be called upon to contribute to the support of families of men who have preferred a derelict course—men who, in many cases, have had far greater opportunity of providing for themselves and their families than have those upon whom the duty falls when they have passed away. The subscription list, therefore, in a great many cases, is neither more nor less than a tax upon prudence and frugality. The habit which so many people drop into, for habit it is, of living in a state of mental inertia—that feeling which makes it distasteful to think of death and of its consequences to themselves, and to the worldly prospects of those who live after them, is not only reprehensible, it is positively sinful. A shilling a week is sufficient to pay the premiums on an assurance of £IOO. Are there not amongst us many persons who consider they have been wonderfully abstemious if they have spent only five times that amount in beer or spirits in a week ? Are there not nearly as many more who spend ten times as

much over the billiard table in the same period, and think themselves fortunate to have got off with so trifling a loss ? And are there not a great number who spend sums small in themselves, but large in the aggregate, on objects of a trifling character; sums which would be by no means inadequate to the purchase of a policy in an assurance society. There wants something more of what our correspondent aptly calls “ self-denial ” in our colonial communities. Self-denial to the extent of a shilling, or even two shillings a week, would not involve the exercise of any great powers of restraint, for surely such ,c self-denial ” could, with, out difficulty, be practiced to the extent of two nobblers or one game of billiards less in the week. We are aware that many persons object to paying into an assurance office, and are of opinion that they might as well put by regularly a sum and take care of it themselves. This is a plan that is open to irregularity in the payments, but to even such a plan we do not object. What we advocate is that every man who is in a position to do so shall provide for his own family wants after his death as well as before it. We do not recommend any particular system, or investment in any particular society, for the accomplishment of the end desired, but while the uuwelcome presence of the subscription list can be got rid of by the payment of so small a rate as we have mentioned, we do not see why the hard-working, frugal portion of every community should be called upon to perform the double duty of supporting their own family and contributing to the support of that of others. Let our working men and others consider this matter, and act promptly 7.