As We Are and As We May Be | Page 7

every quarter, provide what seems the most simple of these
ways.
I take one table only, that of the cost of an annuity deferred for
twenty-five years. If the child is five years of age, and under six, an
annuity of £1, beginning after twenty-five years, can be purchased for a
yearly premium of 12s. 7d., or for a payment of £12 3s. 8d., the money
to be returned in case of the child's death. An annuity of £35, therefore,
would cost a yearly premium of £22 0s. 5d., or a lump sum of £426 8s.
4d.
One or two of the insurance companies have also prepared tables for
the endowment of children. I find, for instance, in the tables issued by
the North British and Mercantile that an annual payment of £3 11s.
begun at infancy will insure the sum of £100 at twenty-one years of age,
with the return of the premium should the child die, or that £35 10s.
paid annually will insure the sum of £1,000. There is also in these
tables a method of payment by which, should the father die and the
premiums be therefore discontinued, the money will be paid just the
same. No doubt, if the practice were to spread, every insurance
company would take up this kind of business.
It is not every young married man who could afford to pay so large a
sum of money as £426 in one lump; on the contrary, very few indeed
could do so. But suppose, which is quite possible, that he were to
purchase, with the first £12 he could save, a deferred annuity of £1 for
his child, and so with the next £12, and so with the next, until he had
placed her beyond the reach of actual destitution; and suppose, again,

that his conscience was so much awakened to the duty of thus
providing for her that amusement and pleasure would be postponed or
curtailed until this duty was performed, just as amusement is not
thought of until the rent and taxes and housekeeping are first defrayed:
in that case there would be few young married people indeed who
would not speedily be able to purchase this small annuity of £35 a year.
And with every successive payment the sense of the value of the thing,
its importance, its necessity, would grow more and more in the mind;
and with every payment would increase the satisfaction of feeling that
the child was removed from destitution by one pound a year more. It
took a very long time to create in men's minds the duty of life insurance.
That has now taken so firm a hold on people that, although the English
bride brings no dot, the bridegroom is not permitted to marry her until
he settles a life insurance upon her. When once the mother thoroughly
understands that by the exercise of a little more self-denial her daughter
can be rendered independent for life, that self-denial will certainly not
be wanting. Think of the vast sums of money which are squandered by
the middle classes of this country, even though they are more provident
than the working classes. The money is not spent in any kind of riot:
not at all; the middle classes are, on the whole, most decorous and
sober: it is spent in living just a little more luxuriously than the many
changes and chances of mortal life should permit. It is by lowering the
standard of living that the money must be saved for the endowment of
the daughters; and since the children cost less in infancy than when
they grow older, it is then that the saving must be made. Everyone
knows that there are thousands of young married people who can only
by dint of the strictest economy make both ends meet. It is not for them
that I speak. Another voice, far more powerful than mine, should
thunder into their hearts the selfishness and the wickedness of bringing
into the world children for whom they can make no provision whatever,
and who are destined to be thrown into the battle-field of labour
provided with no other weapons than the knowledge of reading and
writing. It is bad enough for the boys; but as for the girls--they had
better have been thrown as soon as born to the lions. I speak rather to
those who are in better plight, who live comfortably upon the year's
income, which is not too much, and who look forward to putting their
boys in the way of an ambitious career, and to marrying their daughters.

But as for the endowment of the girls, they have not even begun to
think about it. Their conscience has not been yet awakened, their fears
not yet aroused; they look abroad and see their