Omitting the introductory paragraphs, partly for lack of space and partly because they contain nothing which is not already known to the public, we subjoin the remainder of the report:

"The evidence shows that the petitioner, Stephen English, was arrested upon an order granted by Judge Barrett of the Supreme Court, on the 13th day of January last, and bail fixed at the sum of $20,000; that on the same day another order of arrest was granted by Judge Barbour of the Superior Court, upon which bail was fixed at the sum of $20,000; that said English being unable to procure the required bail was soon after arrested, and has ever since been confined in Ludlow street Jail, in the city of New York. The alleged libels upon Frederick S. Winston, the President of the Mutual Life, are fully set forth in the complaint and answer, and your Committee have necessarily been compelled to inquire into all of them in order to determine their weight and thereby to measure the justice or injustice of the incarceration of the petitioner, English. They find that most of the material allegations of English against the character and actions of Winston are not new or original, but that they have been heretofore charged, and been made the subject of investigation, sometimes by trustees or others connected with the company, other times by policy-holders, and especially by one who for four years appears to have been the most active, outspoken and resolute opponent of the officers of the

company.

"With the exception of the investigation made by the late superintendent, George W. Miller, when the policy-holder above alluded to appears to have been present during the greater part of the investigation in the attitude of a prosecutor, these investigations have been ex parte, and appear to your Committee, from the evidence, to have been conducted more for the purpose of pallating and defending, than correctly ascertaining and declaring the true character of those actions for which the officers had been arraigned.

"Your Committee do not deem it necessary to go into all the charges in detail, but to report only and briefly on those deemed most material which are contained in the petition of Stephen English, and which constitute the chief element of the libel, if any has been committed, upon President Winston, and to submit for your consideration the conclusions at which the Committee have arrived.

"The charge, that surrendered and forfeited policies on the life of President Winston's son had been revived after his death, was proven to be true. All the policies alluded to had been surrendered and paid for, or forfeited for non-payment of premiums, nearly two years before his death, and were revived aft r death to the extent of twelve thousand dollars. The deceased son appears to have been an efficient and popular young officer, and worthy to have been properly considered; but the restoration of the policies in the manner and under the circumstanc s which it was done was, in the opinion of your Committee, a wrong upon the other policy-holders of the company which the officers and trustees should not have committed, and for which they may be justly censured.

"The illegal purchase, at a higher rate than its surrender value, of a policy upon the life of a trustee; its subsequent restoration when he was actually moribund and its payment as a death claim, was proven. The transaction appears to have been without the knowledge or sanction of the insurance committee or the board of trustees, and the whole responsibility appears to rest upon President Winston, and the evidence afforded to your Committee no ground upon which such a palpable violation of official dutyan be justified. The manner and apparent object of the purchase of some other policies was such as your Committee could not approve, but as they are of minor importance they need not be more fully noticed.

"The distribution of a bonus of over $189,000 among the officers of the company, in addition to their ample salaries, and its concealment from the policy

holders by charging far the greater portion of it to 'dividend account,' was proven to be true. Whilst your Committee fully approve the giving of liberal compensation for services of faithful officers, they hold that such compensation should be so given that it may be received as a reward, without operating as corruption, and that in this view the 'bonus' distribution and its concealment from the policy-holders are deserving of serious condemnation.

"Some loans and advances were made by President Winston in an unauthorized and irregular manner, but no loss appears to have been thereby incurred by the policy-holders, and but for their irregularity and the misrepresentation by which it was attempted to conceal them, naturally begetting suspicion of wrong intent, these loans would probably never have been made the subject of adverse criticism and censure.

"The use made by President Winston unofficially of over $18,000 in payment of drafts of agents of this state in 1864, has been severely criticised and as warmly defended on the score of its necessity and patriotic motive, but in the opinion of your Committee, the facts and atten ing circumstances disprove its necessity and invalidate the plea of patriotism, and show it to have been an undoubted violation of the charter, and an unwarrantable use of trust funds by President Winston to serve his personal friends.

"Considerable sums of money are shown to have been expended and charged as taxes, office rent, counsel fees, etc., about which their fairly ex sts the suspicion of their improper use to influence legislation at Albany and elsewhere; and of which the unauthorized payment by President Winston of $3,500 to George W. Miller, the then Superintendent of the Insurance Department, to further the so-called 'Miller Life Bill,' is a notable example, which called forth that just and merited rebuke contained in the report of the Insurance Committee of this House in April, 1872, and some of which gave rise to the controversy between the President and the Actuary under whose direction the distribution of dividends had been acceptably made for many years, during which the company had attained its great position, and about whose capacity and integrity no question seems ever to have arisen until the will of the President was opposed by the Actuary under a sense of duty which caused the withholding of the usual form of audit to the company's statement of No evidence was adduced to sustain account which were known to be incorrect. the charge of an imposition upon borrowers of unlawful and oppressive rates of interest, and it is therefore dismissed.

"The collection of proxies by President Winston and Vice-President McCurdy, through the agents of the company, under their direction, in numbers amply sufficient to secure absolute control over the election of trustees, is proven, and its justification attempted on the ground of its necessity to thus guard against the intrusion of unfit trustees. But to this your Committee wholly dissent, perceiving in such a practice a far greater danger to the policy-holders in thus empowering the officers to select the trustees at will, thereby virtually making the officers the masters instead of the servan s of the policy-holders, who do not seem to have fully comprehended that the charter of the company, in giving them the right, imposed upon them the duty to elect the trustees without deference to the will or wishes of the officers of the company, and thus to maintain and directly exercise the power to correct and remedy defective or unfaithful management of its affairs.

"The charges above alluded to constitute the gravamen of the alleged libels by the petitioner, English, upon President Winston, and your Committee feel it incumbent upon them to state, that whilst the petitioner, English, has been guilty of intemperate and harsh criticisms upon President Winston, others who have not been molested have in language n0re temperate, but with even greater severity, publicly arraigned President Winston upon the same charges; and as there is much foundation in truth in the allegations of the petitioner, English, it is im

probable that a jury would award President Winston damages at all commensurate with the enormous amount which he claims to have sustained, and that therefore the bail required of the petitioner, English, is excessive and oppressive; that his imprisonment is a just cause of grievance and a proper subject for relief. And further, that as it is apparent to your Committee that whilst President Winston is nominally the plaintiff in the suit, the proceedings are in fact conducted by and at the expense of the Mutual Life Insurance Company, thereby showing that personal liberty may be abridged and unjust and illegal punishment inflicted through f rms of law by a powerful corporation arrayed against an individual, and in the opinion of your Committee demonstrating the necessity of such legislation upon the law of libel as will prevent the infliction of punishment until guilt has been clearly established.

"And your Committee would respectfully recommend the immediate passage of Assembly Bill No. 1064, entitled 'An act in relation to orders of arrest in actions to recover damages for slander or libel, or on a promise to marry.' "All of which is respectfully submitted.

"C. W. HERRICK, Chairman,

แ E. S. WHALEN,

"N. A. WHITE,
"E. TOWNSEND."

No jury could deliver a worse verdict than this. A more severe sentence has never been passed on the officers of any company. But is it too severe ? No unprejudiced friend of the great cause of insurance will think it is. Nor is it through any ill-will toward either Mr. Winston, or Mr. McCurdy, that we say so, for we entertain no such feeling. We present our readers all that is material of the report without any garbling, only marking in italics some of the more significant passages, partly because we feel that it should receive as much publicity as possible, and partly because it declares the worst criticisms we have made for twelve years past on the Mutual Life and its officers to have been but too well deserved. But although it is in no spirit of exultation that we place upon record this sentence of condemnation, we hold that the public has good reason to exult, that amid so much corruption four men are to be found in our state legislature which the Mutual Life, or its managers, cannot purchase. We do not know any of these gentlemen personally, but we say, most cordially and earnestly, all honor to the four.

We cannot say the same of the three who issue the "minority report." This is too much like the "reports" in regard to the Mutual Life to which the public has been accustomed for several years past. We will not say that the Messrs. Abbott, Blessing and Campbell have been " seen "in a proper or improper way in regard to this matter, although many are ill-natured enough to impute something of that kind to them. Yet those who examine the document carefully will see that after all it does not afford Messrs. Winston and McCurdy much comfort under their condemnation by the majority. This we think will be sufficiently seen from its concluding remarks:

"That, in view of the whole case, your Committe must decline to commit themselves to the support of any of the charges made against the company in question

but, in order that the nature of the charges themselves, and the refutations or explanations of them offered by the company, may be fully understood, they beg leave to lay before your honorable body the testimony in full, and respectfully recommend that it be printed at large for the information of the legislature and of the public.

66 'Finally, for the purposes specified in the former part of this report, and to secure more perfectly the personal liberty of the citizen and the freedom of the press against the abuse of judicial proceedings to personal ends, your Committee respectfully recommend the enactment of the following bill."

The words we have italicised are virtually a condemnation of the plan of Winston, and fully sustain the views we expressed on the subject three months ago. Indeed, these words should be held to exculpate the minority from all dishonorable imputation in reference to their course in this matter. If not, the bill which they recommend to the legislature, and which we subjoin in its integrity, should have that effect:

"An Act in Relation to Orders of Arrest in Actions to Recover Damages for Slander or Libel.

"The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:

"SECTION 1. No person in any civil action to recover damages for slander or libel shall be held to bail in any greater sum than two thousand dollars, or imprisoned or restrained of his liberty by reason of any order of arrest requiring him to give bail in any greater sum than that named in this section.

"§ 2. If more than one action to recover damages for slander or libel be pending at the same time on behalf of the same plaintiff against the same defendant, the defendant shall not be held to bail, or imprisoned, or restrained of his liberty, by reason of any orders of arrest requiring him to give bail in the aggregate in any greater sum than five thousand dollars.

"§ 3. This act shall apply to all orders of arrest in civil actions to recover damages for slander or libel now pending, in which any persons are now held to bail, or imprisoned, or restrained of their liberty. In all such actions in which persons are now held to bail, or imprisoned, or restrained of their liberty, upon orders requiring them to give bail in larger sums than are specified in this act, it shall be the duty of the courts, in which such actions are pending, to so reduce the bail that it shall not exceed two thousand dollars in any one case, or five thousand dollars in the aggregate, if there be more than one such action pending between the same parties in which the defendant is required to give bail.

"§ 4. This act shall take effect immediately.

The reader is now prepared, we think, to agree with us, that the chief difference between the majority report and the minority report is, that while the former condemns Winston & Co. directly and explicitly, the latter only condemns them indirectly, or by implication. One, as well as the other, fully recognizes the sentiment to which we gave expression three months ago, namely that the "American people have far too much generosity not to frown grimly on those who,

having a giant's strength (especially in the form of wealth), use it like a giant in oppressing the weak.”*

But thus condemned as the worthies of the Mutual Life are, on all sides, they have recourse, as usual, to their characteristic plan of "white-washing." This time the process assumes the form of a long memorial, or petition to the legislature, quoting as conclusive evidence of honesty, integrity, innocence, etc., a "report" made by certain members of the board of trustees and certain policy-holders. This document is a veritable curiosity. If it does not presuppose that the public has no more sense or perception than an overgrown baby in swaddling clothes, it at least presupposes an enormous amount of silliness and credulity. After this disinterested, impartial tribunal has duly "endorsed" the similar performances of all its predecessors, the memorial proceeds to say:

"That the persistence of the assailants of the company in repeating their attacks, and endeavoring to prejudice the public mind against it by the repetition of them, after so many and complete refutations, evinces a state of mind so hostile, not to say malicious, toward the company and its officers, as to d prive them, with all impartial minds, of any just claim to consideration."

If any of our readers can read this passage without laughing, we certainly cannot compliment them on their perception of the ridiculous in the art of Mutual "white-washing." It would be an injustice to Barnum to give the above as a specimen of his style, when the great charlatan is describing his woolly horses and Fee Jee mermaids, for Barnum has sense enough to avoid being caught himself, in his own trap. Probably it is "the assailants" that are meant by the worthy memorialists as the parties deprived, "with all impartial minds, of any just claim to consideration," but in our humble way of reading the announcement we can only refer that interesting phrase to "the company and its officers." Whether it was intended to have this bearing or not, we confess we are rather inclined ourselves to the opinion that there is a peculiar fitness in it "in that connexion; " although the grammar of the passage might have been improved by having it read, that "the white-washers of the Mutual, including the president and vice president, have done their work, from time to time, in such execrable style as to deprive them, with all impartial minds, of any just claim to consideration."

But, be this as it may, the Mutual Life and its officers are pretty fully convicted of the worst charges we have ever made against them. Yet, there are several of those companies which make loud pretentions to honesty, stability, etc., which we regard as vastly less reliable at this moment than the Mutual. Thus, for example, if we were forced to make a choice, among the policies of the Mutual, the Ætna, the Home, the Traveller's, the New York, the Globe, the Brook

*Nat. Quar. Rev. No. LII. p. 408, March, 1873.