of Providence. Perhaps, if a man be decreed to be killed in the
trenches, the same foreknowledge ordered him to list himself a
soldier, that it might come to pass, and the like of a seaman. But
this I am sure, speaking of second causes, a seaman or a soldier are
subject to more contingent hazards than other men, and therefore are
not upon equal terms to form such a society; nor is an annuity on
the life of such a man worth so much as it is upon other men:
therefore if a society should agree together to pay the executor of
every member so much after the decease of the said member, the
seamen's executors would most certainly have an advantage, and
receive more than they pay. So that it is necessary to sort the
world into parcels--seamen with seamen, soldiers with soldiers, and
the like.

Nor is this a new thing; the friendly society must not pretend to
assume to themselves the contrivance of the method, or think us
guilty of borrowing from them, when we draw this into other
branches; for I know nothing is taken from them but the bare words,
"friendly society," which they cannot pretend to be any considerable
piece of invention either.

I can refer them to the very individual practice in other things,
which claims prescription beyond the beginning of the last age, and
that is in our marshes and fens in Essex, Kent, and the Isle of Ely;
where great quantities of land being with much pains and a vast
charge recovered out of the seas and rivers, and maintained with
banks (which they call walls), the owners of those lands agree to
contribute to the keeping up those walls and keeping out the sea,
which is all one with a friendly society; and if I have a piece of
land in any level or marsh, though it bounds nowhere on the sea or