CONSCIENCE MONEY.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIIC, Issue 14210, 27 May 1910, Page 7

CONSCIENCE MONEY.

A £350 CHEQUE. The Wellington '-.Evening Post'' records that the Phoenix Fire Insurance i Company's Wellington office has just received ail unexpected cheque lor £350 Irom Jiev. i'ather O'Connell, the missioner, 011 beha.ll: or a member of a Human Catholic church. The sum is presumably sent to the company by way of restitution. The identity of the original remitter and the corcumstances which prompted the return oi' the money are not, of course, disclosed. The company's oflicers, too j while rejoicing in renewed confidence in the better pin-;: ol' human nature, so seldom revealed to insurance companies as a general rule, is naturally not over-curious about the motive which prompted this practical lorm of Christianity. There is the money. While a romance might be weaveable around the act, the £3-50 will appear on the credit side of a matter-of-fact branch balance-sheet, unle-.s it be smothered unler the general heading cJ ''sundry receipts, 7 ' a sort of dust-bin of accountancy. "Conscience ""money" is now and again received by the Bailways. In-come-tax, Customs, and other Government departments, but usually in small sums, and not with the frequency tnat might be expected il consciences were oi that hair-spring sensitiveness they are supposed to be. However, large as the sum which the Phoenix ( ompauy has received Trom Paths r O-ConiuTi, it is net entirely without precedent in Xc.v Zealand. For example. in IS!K) a New Zealand lire insurance oiJice in Y\ elliiiL'ton had returned to sI .L'ol'U—this time from a lady, it was understood, who found the burden pressing; too heavilv in>on her conscience. Then in May, 'IOO7, Mr. Populewell. solicitor. of Gore. paid I'll)!I to the New Zealand Insurance Company as. conscience money, which had been forwarded to him through the agency of a Roman Catholic priest ministering in quire another part of the South Island. The sender, who had had a fire .some years before, siruirgied for years, it was stated, to save the I'UHI. The same company received also in 19l'i another £IOO conscience money, paid into its Invercargill office; and ; n it received 100 dollars at its San Francisco office from a former insurer whose mind was troubled about the money. A reference to receipts of conscience money by fire insurance offices show that the Catholic priest, with his sacred regard for the confidences of the confessional, has been the frequent medium through whom promiscuous justice has been done to fire insurance companies. A lane Loudon office, within the snare of ten years of its business, acknowledged the receipt of no lr»s* than £.">(">00 conscience money on account of fires on which it had paid.