Note 237-2 — Chapter III

Proposed national fire insurance (Landesbrandversicherung) in which for the time being several villages should form a company, the surplus of which was to go to the ærarian,[TN 57] and the deficit to be made up by the same: Georg Obrecht, Fünf unterschiedliche Secreta, Strasburg, 1617, No. 3. A similar proposition made on financial grounds in 1609, and rejected in Oldenburg. (Beckmann, Beitr. zur Gesch. der Erfind, I, 219 ff.) The idea sometimes suggested in our day, of making the system of insurance a government prerogative, arises as much from the passion for centralization as from socialistic tendencies. Compare the Belgian Bulletin de la Commission de Statist. IV, 210, and Oberländer, Die Feuerversicherungsanstalten vor der Ständeversammlung des k. Sachsen, 1857.