obtained for France the "Pragmatic Sanction." Her voice was consulted on the question of the Salic Law; unhappily, also in the trial of Jeanne d'Arc; and when Louis XI. concluded a treaty of peace with Maximilian of Austria, the University of Paris was the guaranty on the part of France.

Universities are no longer political bodies, but they may be still political powers, centres and sources of political influence. Our own College in the time of the Revolution was a mani

fest power on the side of liberty, the political as well as academic mother of Otis and the Adamses. In 1768, "when the patronage of American manufactures was the test of patriotism," the Senior Class voted unanimously to take their degrees apparelled in the coarse cloths of American manufacture.

In 1776, the Overseers required of the professors a satisfactory account of their political faith. So much was then thought of the influence on young minds of the right or wrong views of political questions entertained by their instructors. The fathers were right.

-

When the life of the nation is concerned, in the struggle with foreign or domestic foes, there is a right and a wrong in politics which casuistry may seek to confuse, but which sound moral sentiment cannot mistake, and which those who have schools of learning in charge should be held to respect. Better the College should be disbanded than be a nursery of treason. Better these halls even now should be levelled with the ground, than that any influence should prevail in them unfriendly to American nationality. No amount of intellectual acquirements can atone for defective patriotism. Intellectual supremacy alone will not avert the downfall of states. The subtlest intellect of Greece, the sage who could plan an ideal republic of austere virtue and perfect proportions, could not preserve his own; but the love of country inspired by Lycurgus kept the descendants of the Dorians free two thousand years after the disgrace of Chæronea had sealed the fate of the rest of Greece.

In my college days it was the fashion with some to think lightly of our American birthright, to talk disparagingly of republics, and to sigh for the dispositions and pomps of royalty.

"Sad fancies did we then affect
In luxury of disrespect
To our own prodigal excess
Of too familiar happiness."

All such nonsense, if it had not already yielded to riper reason, would ere this have been washed out of us by the blood of a hundred thousand martyrs. The events of recent years have enkindled, let us hope, quite other sentiments in the youth of this generation. May those sentiments find ample nutriment within these precincts evermore.

Soon after the conquest of American independence, Governor Hancock, in his speech at the inauguration of President Willard, eulogized the College as having "been in some sense the parent and nurse of the late happy Revolution in this Commonwealth." Parent

and nurse of American nationality, — such was the praise accorded to Harvard by one of the foremost patriots of the Revolution! Never may she cease to deserve that praise! Never may the Mother refuse to acknowledge the seed herself has propagated! Never may her seed be repelled by the Mother's altered mind!

"Mutatam ignorent subito ne semina matrem.”

When Protagoras came to Athens to teach in the university as self-appointed professor, or sophist, according to the fashion of that time, it was not to instruct Athenian youth in music or geometry or astronomy, but to teach them the art of being good citizens,Τὴν πολιτικὴν τεχνὴν, καὶ ποιεῖν ἄνδρας ἀγαθοὺς πολίτας. That was his profession. With which, as we read, Hippocrates was so well pleased, that he called up Socrates in the middle of the night to inform him of the happy arrival. We have no professorship at Cambridge founded for the express purpose of making good citizens. In the absence of such, may all the professorships work together for that end. The youth intrusted to their tutelage

ONE

NE of the subjects which for some time has commanded the public attention is that of Life Assurance: the means by which a man may, through a moderate annual expenditure, make provision for his family when death shall have deprived them of his protection.

The number of companies organized for this purpose, their annual increase, the assiduity with which their agents press their respective claims, the books, pamphlets, and circulars which are disseminated, and the large space occupied by their announcements in the issues of the press, all unite in creating a spirit of inquiry on this interesting subject. We propose in this article to submit a few statements, the collection of which has been greatly furthered by

recourse to the treatises of Babbage, Park, Duer, Ellis, Angell, Bunyon, Blayney, and other writers on insurance.

In the early history of insurance, objection was continually made that it was of the nature of a wager, and consequently not only unlawful, but contra bonos mores; yet the courts of law in England from the first drew a distinction between a wager and a contract founded on the principle of indemnity, which principle runs through and underlies the whole subject of insurance. Lord Mansfield denominated insurance "a contract upon speculation," and it has universally been considered as a contract of indemnity against loss or damage arising from some uncertain and future events.

Insurance may be defined generally as "a contract by which one of the parties binds himself to the other to pay him a sum of money, or otherwise indemnify him, in the case of the happening of a fortuitous event provided for in a general or special manner in the contract, in consideration of the sum of money which the latter party pays or binds himself to pay"; or, in the words of an eminent English judge, "It is a contract to protect men against uncertain events which in any wise may be a disadvantage to them."

The contract securing this indemnity is called a policy, from the Italian polizza d'assicurazione, or di sicurtà, which signifies a memorandum in writing, or bill of security. The sum paid for the indemnity is called a premium, or price; the party taking upon himself the risk being termed the underwriter, because his name is written at the bottom of the policy, while the person protected by the instrument is called the assured. Says one, "The premium paid by the latter and the peril assumed by the former are two correlatives inseparable from each other, and the union constitutes the essence of the contract."

Some writers, Mr. Babbage among others, use the words "assurance" and "insurance" as having distinct meanings; but with all underwriters at this day they are considered synonymous.

Insurance in the first instance was exclusively maritime, and great efforts have been made to prove its antiquity. Some have endeavored, by appeals to Livy, Suetonius, Ulpian, and Cicero, to show that insurance was in use in ancient Rome, and that it was invented at Rhodes a thousand years before the Christian era; while others claim that it existed at Tyre, Carthage, Corinth, Athens, and Alexandria.

There is little doubt, however, that it was first practised by the Lombards, and was introduced into England by a Lombard colony, which in the thirteenth century settled in London, and controlled entirely the foreign trade of the kingdom. After the great fire in London, in 1666, the protection hitherto afforded by

insurance to ships only was extended to goods and houses; and insurance as a contract of indemnity was subsequently extended to human life.

It is a singular fact that the subject of effecting insurance on lives was largely and excitingly discussed on the continent of Europe before it had attracted the slightest attention in England; yet at this day it prevails throughout Great Britain, while upon the Continent it is comparatively unknown; its operations there being chiefly confined to France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark.

In Holland, as early as 1681, Van Hadden and De Witt produced elaborate works upon the subject, while no publication appeared in England until twenty years after. These writers were followed by Struyck, in 1740, and by Kirseboon, in 1743; while Parcieux, father and son, St. Cyran, and Duvillard, in France, with Euler, Suchmilch, and Wargentin, in Germany, were with great ability pressing the subject upon the notice of their countrymen. But these efforts led to no practical results, and it was reserved for England at a later day to illustrate the principles of life assurance, and enable the public to enjoy extensively its privileges.

Policies of life assurance were issued in England before any companies were organized to prosecute the busi

ness.

Like marine policies, they were subscribed by one or more individuals; and the first case we find is that of a ship captain, in 1641, whose life had been insured by two persons who had become his bail. The policy was subscribed by individual underwriters, and an able author observes that the case singularly illustrates the connection which probably once existed between life and maritime insurance, and shows how naturally the latter may have sprung from the former.

No business, with the exception, perhaps, of the express system and of photography, has grown in the United States so rapidly as that of life assurance. There is scarcely a State that has not one or more companies organ