jecture; he has omitted the higher element, which we know to "That was mine, my dream, I knew it For these I thought my dream would show to me, The mulberry-faced Dictator's orgies worse And hands they mixt, and yell'd, and round me drove Half-suffocated, and sprang up, and saw— Was it the first beam of my latest day? And here is the real Lucretius, to which we subjoin Mr. Munro's prose translation :— 'O genus infelix humanum, talia divis cum tribuit facta atque iras adiunxit acerbas! quantos tum gemitus ipsi sibi, quantaque nobis. nec pietas ullast velatum saepe videri vertier ad lapidem atque omnis accedere ad aras, illa quoque expergefactum caput erigere infit, perpetuo possint aevi labentia tractu 'O hapless race of men, when that they charged the gods with such acts and coupled with them bitter wrath! what groanings did they then beget for themselves, what wounds for us, what tears for our children's children! No act is it of piety to be often seen with veiled head to turn to a stone, and approach every altar and fall prostrate on the ground, and spread out the palms before the statues of the gods, and sprinkle the altars with much blood of beasts, and nail up vow after vow; but rather to be able to look on all things with a mind at peace. For when we turn our gaze on the heavenly quarters of the great upper world and ether fast above the glittering stars, and direct our thoughts to the courses of the sun and moon, then into our breasts burdened with other ills that fear as well begins to exalt its reawakened head, the fear that we may haply find the power of the gods to be unlimited, able to wheel the bright stars in their varied motion; for lack of power to solve the question troubles the mind with doubts, whether there was ever a birthtime of the world, and whether likewise there is to be any end; how far the walls of the world can endure this strain of restless motion, or whether gifted by the grace of the gods with an everlasting existence they may glide on through a neverending tract of time, and defy the strong powers of immeasurable ages. Again, who is there whose mind does not shrink into itself with fear of the gods, whose limbs do not cower in terror, when the parched earth rocks with the appalling stroke and rattlings run through the great heaven? Do not peoples and nations quake, and proud monarchs shrink into themselves smitten with fear of the gods, lest for any foul transgression or overweening word, the heavy time of reckoning has arrived at its fulness? Vol. 128.-No. 255. C ART. ART. II.-1. Life Assurance Companies. Return to an Order of the House of Commons. 29th April, 1869. 2. Albert Life Assurance Company. Mr. Price's Report to the Shareholders and Policyholders. 28th August, 1869. 3. The Insurance Register. By a Fellow of the Statistical Society. 1869. IT T was scarcely to be expected that Life Assurance would escape the commercial demoralization that has been so marked a feature of recent Joint Stock enterprise. Railway Companies, Banking Companies, Finance Companies, Hotel Companies, Rolling Stock Companies, and Assurance Companies, have each their frightful examples' to exhibit, of undertakings begun in speculation and ending in fraud; of schemes whose prospectuses promised an easy road to fortune, but which proved, when followed, only the certain road to ruin. All sorts of Companies, limited and unlimited, have now had their turn; but whether we have yet reached the lowest deep remains to be seen. Joint Stock undertakings have either been very unfortunate, or there must be some weak point in their constitution which exposes them to the operations of the unprincipled. The most flagrant swindles of late years have certainly been those practised upon public Companies. It is enough to remind the reader of the cases of Watts of the Globe Assurance, Robson of the Crystal Palace, Redpath of the Great Northern Railway, Pullinger of the Union Bank, and Benjamin Higgs of the Central Gas Company-each a genius in his way, qualified to occupy among the loftiest niches in the Newgate Valhalla. All these persons carried on their operations in the most deliberate way, under the eyes of respectable Boards of Directors, and with the apparent sanction of the able auditors who periodically investigated and certified the accounts of the respective Companies. The facility with which such frauds are effected is doubtless attributable in some measure to the magnitude of Joint-Stock undertakings, the complicated and elaborate character of their accounts, and the difficulty of keeping the details of their operations under continuous check; but it is also due in some measure to the system itself—to divided responsibility, loose management, and inefficient supervision. The early Joint-Stock Companies were usually directed by men of special knowledge, who were largely interested in the undertakings by investment, or because they carried out some important scheme of public utility. They managed the Company's business as if it had been their own, and looked for their remuneration rather to the profits earned upon upon the capital invested by them, than to the fees paid for their attendance at Board meetings. But it is very different now that the office of Director of public Companies, especially in London, has becomre a regular branch of business. Directors now number by thousands, their names filling an octavo volume far larger than the Court Guide.'* This Directors' list is a somewhat heterogeneous one. It includes peers and commoners, knights and honourables, judges and barristers, retired colonels, admirals, land and sea captains, men of all professions and callings, and men of none. The list of Companies served by some of these gentlemen is surprising. To sit at a dozen different Boards is no unusual thing. Thus the Director by profession will be found one day directing an Hotel, another a Bank, another an Assurance Company, another a Mining Company, filling up the remaining intervals of his time in directing half-a-dozen Railways. It is simply impossible that the multiplicity of concerns which these Directors undertake to manage can be properly looked after. Joint-Stock Companies, because of their very magnitude, require much closer attention than smaller concerns, and yet they usually receive much less. It stands to reason that a dozen gentlemen, meeting at a Board for a few hours once a week or so, should give less careful attention to a matter of business than a small number of partners, or a single individual, would do, whose whole interests are involved in the results of his management. In the one case the Director is working for a body of shareholders rather than for himself. The capital he holds in the concern may but a bare qualification, the dividend upon which is of very small moment to him; and, if he have other Boards to attend, his duties, such as they are, will probably be hurried through or performed in a perfunctory way. In the other case, the head of a business is working mainly for himself, and he knows that if he would succeed in it he must give his close personal attention to all its details. be Directors do not intend to be careless. They are not individually careless of their own affairs, yet when upon Boards they insensibly slide into extravagancies. They are very liable to be managed;' for managing saves them trouble. The clever manager adroitly pulls the wires, and while the fantoccini who appear from time to time on the stage 'retire by rotation,' the voice which issues from behind the scenes usually remains the With a good Board of the old-fashioned kind, and a good manager, everything will go well enough; but with a careless same. * See 'The Joint-Stock Companies Directory,' 1869. c 2 Board Board of professional Directors, an incompetent or unscrupulous manager, and a number of outside intriguers watching for opportunities of working a concern with a view to their own interest, everything will soon go altogether wrong. And it is very difficult for a body of men, meeting at casual intervals, to resist for any length of time persuasive, persistent, pushing individuals, always lying in wait for an opening. For this and other reasons, the multiform system of conducting public Companies generally, by whatever name it be called-whether Joint-Stock, Co-operation, or Associative—is almost invariably found inefficient and liable to jobbing, extravagance, and abuse, compared with that which is individual and responsible. Individual responsibility at Boards can scarcely be said to exist. If it exists at all, it is reduced to its minimum by being divided perhaps amongst a dozen men. Every one knows how Boards work. Does any important matter of business arise requiring attention and investigation, it is usually referred to a Committee to inquire into and report upon it. The Committee inquires and reports, with a recommendation to the Board. As a matter of course, the recommendation is almost invariably adopted. If it turn out to be right, well and good; but if it turn out to be wrong, nobody is to blame. The Board is not to blame, because they referred it to the Committee to inquire and report; and the Committee is not to blame, because they left it to the Board to decide. Suppose that a great blunder has been committed, a great loss been incurred, and that the shareholders propose to bring the Directors to book. The Directors can at once relieve themselves of their office by selling their shares, and thereby disqualifying themselves as Directors; or they may resign their seats, and there will probably be an end of the matter so far as they are concerned. Thus some of the most disgraceful blunders and extravagancies of recent times have been committed. Let the attempt be made to attach blame to individuals-to fix responsibility somewhere-and see what will be the result? The unfortunate Directors will receive general sympathy; they will be dismissed from the presence of the judge with congratulations, perhaps with cheers; and though a thousand families may have been ruined, it will usually be found that nobody has been to blame.' Not only Joint-Stock blunders, but positive frauds have come to be committed with impunity under the presidency and with the apparent sanction of men of the highest rank. But sitting as one of a number upon a Board, seems as it were completely to alter the character of men. In disposing of their own money they may be most scrupulous; but in dealing with the money of others, they will be found risking it upon schemes in which individually |