the people at Lloyd's submit them to sober
calculation in sober books, aiid arrive at
certain averages which safely enable them to
insure ships against all calamities in all seas,
and under all variation of season and weather.
The very complete and remarkable organisation
whereby the marine assurance business
is conducted at Lloyd's has been described in
an earlier volume.*

* See Household Words, vol. v., p. 535.

How can you possibly tell whether
Simpson, your porter, will thrust the
corner of a shutter through a monster square
of plate glass in your brilliant shop window?
Simpson is not more careless than
other porters; and yet he may have this
misfortune. Or a mischievous rascal out of
doors may hurl a stone at the window, and
shatter the crystal sheet—who knows? There
appears to be a company whose directors are
not appalled by the difficulty of the matter.
They say that plate glass windows are broken
by the carelessness of servants, by the opening
and closing of shop fronts, by the cleaning
of windows, by explosion from gas, by the
subsidence or settling of buildings, by the crowded
state of thoroughfares, by alternations of
temperature, by malicious design, by stones cast
up by the feet of horses in macadamised
roads. They say that, according to the
present law, if a square of plate glass be
unintentionally broken, the owner can only
recover the value of common glass of a
certain size. They say that they will venture
to insure plate glass of every description,
whether used as windows, panels, enclosures,
pilasters, show-glasses, shop-side cases, or
looking-glasses; by replacing the same with
glass of similar description and quality; by
becoming, in fact, a glazing company as well
as an insuring company. Moreover, they
announce their intention of becoming the
universal protectors of shop-windows, by
prosecuting all malicious breakers thereof.
Of course the premium demanded for all
these benefits, must depend on the judgment
of the parties concerning the average
probability of glass-fracture.

It is difficult for the mind to grasp all the
responsibility of companies which offer to
guarantee against losses arising from
robberies, forgeries, frauds, debts, insolvency,
and non-payment of rent? One company
ventures upon a rough estimate of the
probable average number of robberies, and
amount of property stolen; of the
tendency of men to commit forgery; of the
numberless peccadilloes included under the
name of fraud. Another company insures
the debts which ought to be paid at a certain
time, or within a certain limit: there is of bad
debts a per-centage which does not differ
greatly from year to year; and among the
tradesmen carrying on business, the number
who become insolvent through roguery or
misfortune bears a nearly constant ratio to
those who pay their way; and of all the
rent owing from tenant to landlord, so
much in the pound may, with safety, be
considered as lost through the unwillingness
or inability of the tenants or lodgers to pay.

With respect to insolvencies and bad debts
there is some force in this remark, "that
when every business, notwithstanding
individual and occasional failures, is in the main
profitable, it must be evident that the losses
form only a per-centage upon the gains; and
that if the former could be spread over the
whole, instead of falling upon a few, failure
would become almost impossible; the general
uncertainty would be converted into
certainty for each, and individual chances and
accidents would be neutralised by the
prevailing safety." In other words the whole
trading community would share such losses,
and share alike. On what basis the estimate
is grounded, we do not know; but there is a
rough guess that the losses of debts and rents
in the United Kingdom reach the enormous
amount of sixty millions sterling annually.
But no matter about the amount; if it maintain
anything like a general yearly average,
the materials may be found whereon to
ground an insurance against those losses—
the insurers who do not lose, helping to share
the burden of those who do. With regard
to the rents of houses, there is this singular
fact observable—that not only do
rent-defaulters bear a stated ratio to rent-payers,
but that empty houses and apartments
present a nearly uniform per-centage to those
which are occupied; and there is one
company which, combining these two ratios or
per-centages, actually undertakes to secure for
us a certain income from property, whether
the houses be occupied or unoccupied. A
paradox, but not a fallacy; for it all depends
upon the premium per cent charged for the
insurance.

In theft, fraud, forgery, and so forth, there
are more efficient means for establishing
averages, than in respect to rents and bad
debts, because they come more frequently
under the cognisance of the law. Few
persons would suppose, on a consideration of the
subject, how little change there is in the
number of our rascals, or the extent of their
rascality, from year to year. Take the
metropolis alone, and take the number of
robberies which occurred in eighteen
hundred and fifty, and the two following years;
in no year were there less than thirteen
thousand five hundred, and in no year were
there so many as thirteen thousand six
hundred; the amount of property stolen and
not afterwards recovered, was in each year
between thirty-four and thirty-eight thousand
pounds. Not only for those three years,
but also before and since, the average value
of property lost by robbery in the metropolis,
for each year, differed very little indeed
from forty-seven shillings per robbery. If a
hundred thousand dwellers in the