Page:The Effects of Civilisation on the People in European States.djvu/32

10 honourable manner, part of the premiums that had been received from the insured, which they continue to do, at certain periods, with still greater liberality. The Society, notwithstanding, continued to increase greatly in riches. The cause of this phenomenon, therefore, was a matter of inquiry; on which it was found that they had adapted their premiums to the deaths of the rich and poor taken together; and it soon occurred that none but the rich were insured. Their extraordinary profit, therefore, must arise from the circumstance of their being fewer deaths annually among the rich than among the poor, in proportion to the numbers of both,

It is not possible to calculate what this great disproportion is between the deaths of the rich and the poor, as that cannot be done without the knowledge of the exact profits of the Company; but it seems probable that the deaths of the poor are to those of the rich as two to one, in proportion to the numbers of each.

This greater mortality among the poor can only be owing to the difference in the manner in which they are supplied with the necessaries of life.

I will add one other relation of a fact, from which the inference is obvious.

There are, at the cotton-mills belonging to Mr. Dale, of Lanark, in Scotland, three thousand