their liberty at any time, upon notice given, to be released, and
stand obliged no longer; and, if so, volenti non fit injuria. Every
one knows best what their own circumstances will bear.

In the next place, because death is a contingency no man can
directly calculate, and all that subscribe must take the hazard; yet
that a prejudice against this notion may not be built on wrong
grounds, let us examine a little the probable hazard, and see how
many shall die annually out of 2,000 subscribers, accounting by the
common proportion of burials to the number of the living.

Sir William Petty, in his political arithmetic, by a very ingenious
calculation, brings the account of burials in London to be one in
forty annually, and proves it by all the proper rules of
proportioned computation; and I will take my scheme from thence.

If, then, one in forty of all the people in England die, that
supposes fifty to die every year out of our two thousand
subscribers; and for a woman to contribute 5s. to every one, would
certainly be to agree to pay 12 pounds 10s. per annum. upon her
husband's life, to receive 500 pounds when he died, and lose it if
she died first; and yet this would not be a hazard beyond reason too
great for the gain.

But I shall offer some reasons to prove this to be impossible in our
case: first, Sir William Petty allows the city of London to contain
about a million of people, and our yearly bill of mortality never
yet amounted to 25,000 in the most sickly years we have had (plague
years excepted); sometimes but to 20,000, which is but one in fifty.
Now it is to be considered here that children and ancient people