Again: “A corporation taketh 100_l._ of a man, to give him 8_l._ in the 100_l._ during his life without restitution of the principal. It is no usury, for that here is no lending, but a sale for ever of so much rent for so much money. Likewise, if a private man have 1000_l._ lying by him, and demandeth for his life and his wife’s life 100_l._ by the year, and never to demand the principal, it is a bargain of sale and no usury.” But though these things are evidences of something closely akin to the principles of life assurance, it is certain that no system existed by which so happy a result could be habitually attained. The state of society was opposed to it. Life was then scarce “worth a pin’s fee.” The noble was at the mercy of his own fierce passions, and, if not engaged in some intestine warfare, was crossing and recrossing seas, was making or unmaking kings. The knight sought dangerous adventures with an avidity which would place his life on the trebly hazardous list of assurance-offices, and pale the roses on the cheeks of directors. The citizen, again, was constantly embroiled in quarrels with which he had no business, and merchants would have looked doubtfully on any proposal to accept a life which was likely enough to end the day after its assurance. In addition to these chances, there was the liability to “plague, pestilence, and famine.” The black pest, the sweating sickness, the small-pox, are names to conjure up frightful images. Nothing is now certainly known of the numbers which these diseases swept away in our early history, but the rapidity with which whole families disappeared tended to exaggerate the feeling of insecurity. It seems, therefore, almost impossible to suppose that any plan of life assurance could have existed during these ages, when there were no documents to give the number of deaths, and no laws to determine the value of life. But if assurances were rare, we have constant evidence that annuities were familiar enough. The State employed them for its wants; scriveners employed them for the necessities of their clients; Pole and Whittington, Canning and Gresham, invested their mercantile gains in them; the usurer made his money breed by granting them in many forms and on various securities; and although to arrive at a just system of annuities was as difficult as a just system of assurance, yet the usurer took as much care in the one case to secure his own interest, as he would in the other had it been an operation into which he chose to enter.