total amount assured in
existing British offices, mostly by the middle classes, is about three
hundred and fifty millions sterling; and that the annual premiums
payable amount to not less than eleven millions sterling. And yet no
more than one person in twenty of the persons belonging to the classes
to whom Life Assurance is especially applicable, have yet availed
themselves of its benefits.]

The Friendly or Benefit Societies of the working classes are also
Co-operative Societies under another form. They cultivate the habit of
prudent self-reliance amongst the people, and are consequently worthy of
every encouragement. It is certainly a striking fact that some four
millions of working men should have organized themselves into voluntary
associations for the purpose of mutual support in time of sickness and
distress. These societies are the outgrowth in a great measure of the
English love of self-government and social independence,--in
illustration of which it maybe stated, that whereas in France only one
person in seventy-six is found belonging to a benefit society, and in
Belgium one in sixty-four, the proportion in England is found to be one
in nine. The English societies are said to have in hand funds amounting
to more than eleven millions sterling; and they distribute relief
amongst their members, provided by voluntary contributions out of their
weekly earnings, amounting to above two millions yearly.

Although the working classes of France and Belgium do not belong to
benefit societies to anything like the same extent, it must be stated,
in their justification, that they are amongst the most thrifty and
prudent people in the world. They invest their savings principally in
land and in the public funds. The French and Belgians have a positive
hunger for land. They save everything that they can for the purpose of
acquiring more. And with respect to their investments in the public
funds, it may be mentioned, as a well-known fact, that it was the French
peasantry who, by investing their savings in the National Defence Loan,
liberated French soil from the tread of their German conquerors.[1]

[Footnote 1: At the present time one individual out of every eight in
the population of France has a share in the National Debt, the average
amount held being 170 francs. The participants in the debt approach
closely to the number of freeholders, or rather distinct freeholdings,
which amount to 5,550,000, according to the last re