The result of all this faithlessness is seen in the present condition of life insurance affairs. Is the remedy to be found in legislation, in new attempts to make supervision on the part of the State more than a name, or in the abandonment of the whole scheme of supervision and in leaving the business to be carried on without any State control or supervision? This is really the momentous question of the hour, and one that cannot be too thoroughly discussed or too carefully considered. In its consideration the status of a policy-holder in a life insurance company must be taken into consideration. To thoroughly understand what that status is, it is necessary to examine carefully the contract on which it rests. Each policy in a life insurance company provides for a life-long engagement on the part of the assured. He is to continue to pay premiums as long as he lives, if he does not anticipate them by a single payment, or by several payments. On its part the company agrees to pay to the assured, or rather to his nominee at the death of the assured, a certain sum. In addition, however, to this simple contract, the policy-holder is entitled to a share in the profits of the company. That share is greater or less as the case may be, as the organization of the company provides. The policy-holder is thus in a certain sense a partner in the business. He has an expectation of profits, either in the shape of reduced premiums, increased insurance, or actual money. The contract is not one of indemnity merely. It is a contract to pay at death a fixed sum, in consideration of the payment during life of certain sums known as premiums. It is an arrangement by means of which the pecuniary hardships incident to premature death are borne by a great number of persons instead of the family of the person who dies before his expectation of life has been reached. It is apparent from this contract that the company which issues it must in the nature of things have the custody and management of large sums of money. It is contemplated by the parties that accumulations in the hands of the company must exist, and it is an incident of the contract that the officers of the company shall have the management of that fund. Is the fund a trust to be held by the company for the benefit of the policy-holders? If it be, then the courts of equity have complete and entire jurisdiction, and to them it should be left. They are competent to enforce the proper execution of other trusts, and presumably of this. Give perfect freedom of individual action to each policy-holder, take off the leading-strings of State supervision, and leave the parties to a life insurance contract where the parties to other contracts are left, to themselves and the courts. THE GREAT SEAL OF THE UNITED STATES. CONCERNING SOME IRREGULARITIES IN IT.