In the year 1875, the blow fell which destroyed the Beaver Insurance Company, and well nigh ruined every man concerned in it, from the president to the remotest agent. In April of that year, a bill was passed by the Dominion Legislature relative to mutual fire insurance companies. It so happened that the Premier of Canada was then the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie, for whose benefit, it was understood, the Hon. George Brown had got up a stock company styled the Isolated Risk Insurance Co., of which Mr. Mackenzie became president. There was a strong rivalry between the two companies, and possibly from this cause the legislation of the Dominion took a complexion hostile to mutual insurance. Be that as it may, a clause was introduced into the Act without attracting attention, which required the Beaver Company to deposit with the Government the sum of fifty-thousand dollars, being the same amount as had been customary with companies possessing a stock capital. For eighteen months this clause remained unobserved, when the Hon. J. Hillyard Cameron, being engaged as counsel in an insurance case, happened to light upon it, and mentioned it to me at the last meeting of the Board which he attended before his death, which took place two or three weeks afterwards. At the following Board meeting, I stated the facts as reported by him, and was instructed to take the opinion of Mr. Christopher Robinson, the eminent Queen's counsel, upon the case. I did so at once, and was advised by him to submit the question to Professor Cherriman, superintendent of insurance, by whom it was referred to the law officers of the Crown at Ottawa. Their decision was, that the Beaver Company had been required by the new Act to make a deposit of fifty thousand dollars before transacting any new business since April, 1876, and that nothing but an Act of Parliament could relieve the company and its agents from the penalties already incurred in ignorance of the statute.

On receipt of this opinion, immediate notice was sent by circular to all the company's agents, warning them to suspend operations at once. A bill was introduced at the following session, in February, 1877, which received the royal assent in April, remitting all penalties, and authorizing the company either to wind up its business or to transmute itself into a stock company. But in the meantime, fire insurance had received so severe a shock from the calamitous fire at St. John, N. B., by which many companies were ruined, and all shaken, that it was found impossible to raise the necessary capital to resume the Beaver business.

Thus, without fault or error on the part of its Board of Management, without warning or notice of any kind, was a strong and useful institution struck to the ground as by a levin-bolt. The directors, who included men of high standing of all political parties, lost, in the shape of paid-up guarantee stock and promissory notes, about sixty thousand dollars of their own money, and the officers suffered in the same way. The expenses of winding up, owing to vexatious litigation, have amounted to a sum sufficient to cover the outside liabilities of the company.

These particulars may not interest the majority of my readers, but I have felt it my duty to give them, as the best act of justice in my power to the public-spirited and honourable men, with whom for twenty-three years I have acted, and finally suffered. That the members of the company--the insured--have sustained losses by fire since October, 1876, to the amount of over $45,000, which remain unpaid in consequence of its inability to collect its assets, adds another to the many evils which are chargeable to ill-considered and reckless legislation, in disregard of the lawful vested rights of innocent people, including helpless widows and orphans.