“When,” says a writer already quoted, “I landed, about three years back, upon one of the group of rocks lost in the bosom of the waves, and which are called the Scilly Islands, there was only one thing which brought London to my mind, and that was the name ‘Lloyd’s’, in letters of brass, on the door of one of the least poor-looking houses. I might have gone much further afield, into some of the still wilder islands of the Old or New World, and there, even at the very ends of the earth—provided only that there was a town or port of some sort—I should have found an agent of this English society. The definition of Lloyd’s which was given by a City merchant can now be better understood by us. ‘It is,’ said he, ‘a spider planted in the centre of a web which covers the whole sea, and the shipwrecked vessels are the dead flies.’”(38) “The loose connection existing between the underwriters of London,” says the leading authority on the subject,(39) “as frequenters of the same coffee-house, where they carried on their business transactions, formed itself into a final ‘system of membership’ by transmigration to the Royal Exchange in 1774. The author and leading spirit in this all-important movement, which had far-reaching consequences for the commerce, not only of England, but for that of the whole world, was Mr. John Julius Angerstein, a native of St. Petersburg, but of German extraction, descended from an old and highly respected family of merchants.” The writer goes on to show how young Angerstein, from junior clerk, had risen to be a successful merchant and underwriter. He became one of the most honoured of those who assembled at Lloyd’s Coffee-house, as he was a most sagacious and far-seeing man, of unimpeachable integrity, and when the movement for obtaining a suitable home for the underwriters was mooted he was its greatest supporter. He became virtually the leader in the whole matter, and seventy-nine underwriters agreed to pay one hundred pounds each to start it fairly. Thus was the “New Lloyd’s,” as it was then called, first organised. It is not, nor ever has been, an insurance _company_, but rather a fraternity of merchants, shipowners, bankers, and capitalists subscribing for a place where they could meet and transact business. It is a maritime exchange. But each man is guided by his own intelligence, and must measure the extent of business which he undertakes by the standard of his personal capital.