It might also be an exception that if the widow that claimed had really, _bonâ fide_, left her by her husband to her own use, clear of all debts and legacies, £2,000, 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 or £25 per annum; and if a woman happen to pay that for twenty years, though she receives the £500 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.