A gentleman, aged thirty-one, in excellent health, assured his life for a 1000_l._ Having paid only three annual premiums, he removed to a sickly spot in the Bethnal Green Road, and died of typhus fever after a few days’ illness.” These ideas are gaining ground. Mr. Austin first started them, and Mr. Dickens has reproduced them. They arose during the fatal sickness just alluded to, and are certainly not unworthy the consideration of all who are interested on the subject. A new plan, now known as the half-credit system, was first introduced in 1834, by the United Kingdom Life Assurance Company; and although strongly opposed at its commencement, has since been very generally adopted. By this system a person aged 30, whose annual premium for insuring 1000_l._ would be 21_l._ 18_s._ 4_d._, may insure 2000_l._ by paying the same premium annually for five years, after which 43_l._ 16_s._ 8_d._ would be required. This would leave 109_l._ 11_s._ 8_d._, including interest, to be paid off at his convenience, or to be deducted at his death; but should he die within the first five years, his family would receive 2000_l._ instead of the 1000_l._ they would have received under the old system. FOOTNOTES: [20] It is difficult to avoid blaming the offices. These large and varied insurances were, probably, known to every company in existence. The reasons assigned should have been tested, and very little trouble would have shut the door of every office in London on Wainwright and his companions. For so much money to be risked on the life of a girl of twenty-one, described as “remarkably healthy, whose life was one of a thousand,” and that too for only two years, merely because a nominal plea of insurable interest was given, was neglectful and almost culpable; although there is some extenuation in the fact that this lady assisted to deceive by uttering, or at least coinciding in a false statement to Mr. Ingall, at the Imperial, is certain. The slightest inquiry would have discovered that Wainwright was a beggar, that this young lady had no direct or indirect interest in any property whatever, and that the premiums must have been paid with some sinister purpose by a man steeped in difficulties and overwhelmed with debt, on the life of a healthy but most unhappy girl, entirely under his control. [21] “Lucretia.”--By Sir E. B. Lytton. [22] This man appears to have been an innocent tool in the hands of his acute brother-in-law. [23] This was first pointed out by the Quarterly Review.