Frozen Desire

   Property/casualtyinsurance is the lottery in a mirror.  Both imagine acataclysm of vanishingly small probability, value it in money and distribute it around apopulation so as to mitigate its force:  inone the event is good, a prize of cash oran annuity or, as in so many of the Dutch municipal lotteries, furniture or silver or a carpet; in the other, it isthat fire will break out in a baker’s shop andburn your house to the ground, or a storm run yourships aground.   The law establishing the London Chamber ofAssurance in 1601 describes, inundisguised delight, how a mere ‘consideracon of Monyto other persons’ ensures that ‘upon the loss or perishing of any ship therefollowthe not the undoinge of any Man, but thelosse lightethe rather easile upon many, than heavily upon fewe, and rather uponthem that adventure not than those that doe adventure.’

"Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned”Barbon aka “Praise-God Barebone” (1598-1679).

    Faith in God is displaced by faith in credit : faith that the lottery promoter or insurancecorporation will not abscond with your ticket or premium and beyond that in theability of the community to enforce public and private debts. The mental shift is evident in England in a single generation.  NicholasBarbon, whose father, Praise-God Barebones, MP, had preached hell-fire in Fleet Street in the 1630s, lucidlycontrasts the advantages of mutual and share-holder-owned fire insurance in hisLetterTo A Gentleman of January 26, 1684

 

NicholasIf-Jesus-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barebon (1640-98),the father of modern fire insurance.



    Life insurance takesthe mental procedure one step further.  It was Johan deWitt,among others, who showed that the chances of death, if they couldsomehow be tabulated, could be combined with anallowance for compound interest to give the present value of alife annuity; and those could be sold either by private promoters or to finance the state.  In other words, moneycould not defeat death, as Witt’s murder showed in peculiarly ghastly fashion,  but it could dull its effect on a man’s survivor’s andposterity.  O death, where is thy sting?  A burgher’s wife could be as richly left as Portia with all theacres of Belmont.  What a property of money:  that it could take aman’s affection for his wife, freeze it, and then, after his death, to thaw it out to succour the grieving widow!

Attributed to Jan de Baen, The corpses of the brothers De Witt,on the Groene Zoodje at the Lange Vijverberg in The Hague, 20 August 1672., 1672-1702,Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.  In 1671, Johan De Witt published his Waardije van Lyf-renten naer Proportie vanLos-renten ('The Worth of Life Annuities Compared to Redemption Bonds').

 

Edmund Halley,Estimate of the degrees of the mortality of mankind, 1693.

     The mathematicalwork was done by Edmund Halley, the great astronomer and discoverer of the famous comet,working from the bills of mortality ofthe city of Breslau in Silesia for the years 1687 to 1691; and the whole process clothed, in the unctuous language of acompany promoter of 1712, in terms of common sense.  The man who did not provide for his posterity:

"ought to forfeit the name of aRational Creature, and be no more ranked among Men; or who  there .. . who can think of leaving a near Friend, a dutiful child, or a tender Wife unprovided for, without the utmost Grief that HumanNature can suffer."

 -- James Buchan, Frozen Desire, pp 113-14

Grave of Edmund Halley(1656-1742)  St. Margaret'sChurchyard, Lee, Lewisham.

Age Pyramid, Breslaw1691. Data from Edmond Halley's AnEstimate of the Degrees of Mortality of Mankind (1693), table p.600.* (As the source does not distinguishbetween the male and female population, the diagram offers only a halfpyramid.)

NOTE:    

At the suggestion ofthe poet TomClark, Ihave been reading James Buchan’s book Frozen Desire (New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1997), a study of the history and meaning ofmoney.  As Tom pointed out, this is a book of tremendous value and actual profundity and a highly originalwork.   Buchan, a British novelist andjournalist,  is also the grandson of the famous Scottishnovelist, lawyer, politician and diplomat John Buchan, who is probably best remembered as the author of The 39 Steps.  As with all works of real intellect andimaginationwhere every page brings a new door and window-on-the-universe opening, Buchan’s book is both exciting andenervating.  Reading it in these sharp, scraping andstraitenedtimes makes me jumpy.  Interested readerscan easily find copies on abe.com.  For extra enjoyment (and maybe extra jumpiness),please see below for Edmund Halley's Hollow Earth (link).