metropolls chose to share among them the loss
of fifty thousand pounds annually, which is
occasioned by robbery, it would only be ten
shillings a-year each; nobody would feel it.
This is the principle ot mutual insurance
thoroughly developed.

Notwithstanding the many curious
examples of insurance which we have brought
forward, there is one which perhaps exceeds
in peculiarity all the others. It is that in
which each insurer guarantees the honesty of
all the others. There is such a large number
of societies which undertake this work,
that we must fain think there is something
feasible in it.

Their main object is to obviate the
inconvenience and defects of suretyship by means
of private bondsmen, by offering the security
of a company having a subscribed capital. It
is known that persons of high character and
qualifications sometimes decline valuable
appointments, either from an unwillingness
to place themselves and their friends under so
serious an obligation, or from the difficulty of
obtaining satisfactory sureties. Let this
matter be taken up by a public company, and
much of the pain and difficulty ceases. The
company undertakes for a small yearly
premium to make good to the employer any loss
by fraud or dishonesty of the person
employed, according to the amount specified in
the bond. The result as regards others, is
believed to be this; that employers are
assured of the continued solvency of the
surety for the person employed, whereby the
security becomes a permanent one; and that
friends and relatives are relieved of the fear of
those pecuniary losses to which persons are
exposed, who become responsible for the acts
of others.

Bankers and commercial men gradually
acquire experience concerning clerks and
shopmen who embezzle, or wrongly
appropriate; they begin by degrees to know
the ratio which the bad bear to the good;
and only when this is pretty well known can
a Guarantee Society be based on a really
sound foundation. How strikingly does this
show how much we are all interested in the
general honesty! An honest clerk at a
hundred a-year, is obliged to provide surety or
security, because there are some clerks at a
hundred a-year who are not honest, and for
this surety he is obliged to pay a small sum
annually to a Guarantee Society; he forfeits
something, not for his own misdoings, but for
the misdoings of others. From the tables of
various companies, it would seem that an
annual premium, varying from ten to forty
shillings per cent according to the
circumstances of each particular case, is deemed
an equitable payment for the surety
obtained.

Thus it is, then. If you lose your life, your
fellow-men provide something for those who
may be left to mourn you. If you meet with
an accident, they will support you while on
your sick bed. If your house be burnt, or
your ship sunk, they will share the loss with
you. If your debtor or your lodger run
away and forget to pay you, they will bear
part of your burden. If you are insolvent,
they will pay your debts. If you are wanting
in honesty to your employer, they will
bear the loss as sureties. That is, they will
do so to you if you will do so to them. And
if all join in these mutual arrangements, the
effects will be two,—loss and suffering will
not fall so heavily on any one person; and
every member of the community will be
directly benefited by the honesty and
carefulness of all the others.

THE ROVING ENGLISHMAN.

DOLMA BAKJAH.

DOLMA BAKJAH, signifying literally a garden
for those little stuffed vegetable marrows
of which the Turks are very fond, is rather a
remarkable name for a Sultanic residence.
Nevertheless it is the name of the new
palace to be occupied, in some distant age,
by the Sultans of Turkey. I felt some
curiosity to ascertain who gave it that
strange name,—who were its godfathers
or godmothers; but I have not been so
fortunate as to fall in with any wise
man of the East who has been either able
or disposed to gratify a thirst for knowledge
which I still continue to think is but reasonable.

The name, however, is not altogether a
misnomer; for the ground on which the
palace is still building has been a sort
of Tommy Tiddler's ground to all who
have had anything to do with it. There is no
reason why it should not grow little stuffed
vegetable marrows at the present moment.
It has passed into a sort of proverb among
the ribald and envious, that a man
would be rich who might possess for his
whole fortune no more than five per
cent on the money which has been stolen
during only a fifth part of the time
which the palace has taken to build. The
palace has been building so long a time,
that the oldest attaché to the British Embassy
cannot remember the laying of the foundation
stone. It is said even that the architects
and workmen have got into such a hopeless
state of confusion that the Greek Kalends
is the only date which can be fixed
with certainty for the termination of
their labours. The earliest raised part of the
structure will, it is expected, be in ruins
before the whole is completed. To be sure, as the
palace is understood not to be wanted at all—
the Sultan having already a great many more
than he knows what to do with—there is no
particular occasion for hurry, and I have
therefore no doubt whatever that a large
number of little stuffed vegetable marrows
still remains to be grown upon its unbuilt
ground before the picturesque dresses of the