for gain, and when I am necessitated to have a greater cargo of
goods in such or such a bottom than my stock can afford to lose,
another may surely offer to go a part with me; and as it is just if
I give another part of the gain, he should run part of the risk, so
it is as just that if he runs part of my risk, he should have part
of the gain. Some object the disparity of the premium to the
hazard, when the insurer runs the risk of 100 pounds on the seas
from Jamaica to London for 40s., which, say they, is preposterous
and unequal. Though this objection is hardly worth answering to men
of business, yet it looks something fair to them that know no
better; and for the information of such, I trouble the reader with a
few heads:

First, they must consider the insurer is out no stock.

Secondly, it is but one risk the insurer runs; whereas the assured
has had a risk out, a risk of debts abroad, a risk of a market, and
a risk of his factor, and has a risk of a market to come, and
therefore ought to have an answerable profit.

Thirdly, if it has been a trading voyage, perhaps the adventurer has
paid three or four such premiums, which sometimes make the insurer
clear more by a voyage than the merchant. I myself have paid 100
pounds insurances in those small premiums on a voyage I have not
gotten 50 pounds by; and I suppose I am not the first that has done
so either.

This way of assuring has also, as other arts of trade have, suffered
some improvement (if I may be allowed that term) in our age; and the
first step upon it was an insurance office for houses, to insure