TREATISE UPON THE LAW OF LIFE ASSURANCE: UPON THE CONSTITUTION OF ASSURANCE COMPANIES, THE CONSTRUCTION OF THEIR DEEDS OF SETTLEMENT, AND EQUITABLE LIENS ARISING IN CONNECTION WITH With an Appendix, OF PRECEDENTS FOR THE ASSIGNMENT OF POLICIES BY WAY of sale, mortgage, AND SETTLEMENT; NOTES OF CASES; STATUTES; AND AN INDEX OF PRIVATE ACTS OBTAINED BY INSURANCE COMPANIES. BY CHARLES JOHN BUNYON, M.A. OF THE INNER TEMPLE, ESQ., BARRISTER-AT-LAW. PHILADELPHIA: T. & J. W. JOHNSON, LAW BOOKSELLERS, NO. 197 CHESTNUT STREET. TREATISE UPON THE LAW OF LIFE ASSURANCE: UPON THE CONSTITUTION OF ASSURANCE COMPANIES, THE CONSTRUCTION OF THEIR DEEDS OF SETTLEMENT, AND EQUITABLE LIENS ARISING IN CONNECTION WITH LIFE POLICIES. With an Appendix, OF PRECEDENTS FOR THE ASSIGNMENT OF POLICIES BY WAY OF SALE, MORTGAGE, AND SETTLEMENT; NOTES OF CASES; STATUTES; AND an index of PRIVATE ACTS OBTAINED BY INSURANCE COMPANIES. BY CHARLES JOHN BUNYON, M.A. OF THE INNER TEMPLE, ESQ., BARRISTER-AT-LAW. PHILADELPHIA: T. & J. W. JOHNSON, LAW BOOKSELLERS, NO. 197 CHESTNUT STREET. PREFACE. IN laying the present Volume before the public, the Author trusts, that a sufficient apology may be found in the growing interest that is felt in all that relates either to the law or practice of Life Assurance, and the increasing importance of the institutions by which the latter is conducted. To this he may add, that he has been himself induced to undertake its preparation, by the belief that notwithstanding the eminent array of authors who have written on the subject of Assurance, the law of Life Assurance, has not, up to the present time, been treated from its Equity side. He therefore hopes that an essay, in which some of the numerous equitable and conveyancing points continually arising in practice are considered, may prove not unacceptable either to the profession or to that numerous and important class to which the management of Life Office is entrusted. He has endeavoured to condense into a small compass, such an amount of legal information as he has imagined likely to be useful, and which, if considered as a mere compilation, would at least require many bulky and expensive volumes to produce. His task has been rendered the easier in that he has found it desirable to deal with the subject in its legal aspect alone, leaving it to other pens to treat it commercially, financially, or mathematically. To have done otherwise would have been to trespass upon the province of others, and, he apprehends, have materially injured the usefulness of the book by clogging it with extraneous matter, and so far prevented it becoming that which its Author has desired to make it-a concise practical Law Book. Temple, November, 1853. |