The annual income, after deducting expenses, was divided yearly among the representatives of those who had died. Thus a healthy year, with only a slight mortality, made the division good; but in an unhealthy year it was proportionably less. An annual distribution of this kind was manifestly unsound, if not unfair; and must have been sometimes severely felt by the representatives of the deceased. The Amicable, however, may be received as the nursing mother of life assurance at a period when, little as arithmetical economy was understood, it was still less acted on. Besides the attempt to engraft an annuity society on the Mercers’ Company, various minor endeavours were made, from 1690 to 1712, to establish institutions which should grant yearly payments and pay specific sums to the representatives of the deceased. The principle of assurance, applied to other subjects than merchandise, seemed a sudden light to those who had capital, and did not know how to employ it; while it was a great boon to those who wanted money, and did not know how to get it. The latter employed their wits in its application to subjects which are not yet allowed to be legitimate; and, while the former, with the praiseworthy caution of men who had “put money in their purses,” went slowly but surely to work to found institutions like the Amicable, the Royal Exchange, and the London, the others did not hesitate to form societies, to frame rules, and to decoy all they could meet, under titles as promising as their results were ruinous.