ABSTRACT
Few modern institutions touch the daily life of communities more intimately than life insurance. Life insurance is thus the outcome of a high state of civilisation as now understood. Life insurance especially implies also a revenue from interest, and interest is a product which postulates debt. The first beginnings of life insurance were extremely feeble, and do not yet date back three centuries. Mention of the necessity for stability in the rates of interest naturally leads the author to discuss other aspects of this investment side of life office business. It had long ago passed beyond a state of dependence upon merely national debts. Without well-secured debts, the interest upon which can be relied upon as absolutely as the successions of seasons, life insurance business could not exist in any satisfactory manner. All the life companies can do is to spread these risks as widely as possible, and to try to select the best amongst the multitudes of investments offering.
