Courts and the Insurance Commissioners of the respective States, and I believe that our best future interest lies in keeping up the fight on present lines with an abiding faith that our institutions are absolutely secure under the arm of the sovereignty of the respective States. There are threatening dangers as stated in a recent editorial of a leading New York daily, in the following language: "Framed with wise and provident intent, the insurance laws of a majority of the States have been perverted and debauched in the interests of blackmail and graft. There is no shame, no concealment about it. The candidate for the office of Superintendent or Commissioner of Insurance knows perfectly well what the office implies when he seeks it. Its prerogatives and perquisites are fully understood. It means so much per annum, and in the hands of an active, enterprising man it may mean so much more. If the insurance companies want to do certain things they can do them by paying for it. Immunity is a commodity, and the price is as well known as the price of wheat. "Are savings banks subject to political blackmail? If they are not, why should life insurance companies be victims? Life insurance companies are victims of such ease that only the consciousness of guilt can admit. The saloonkeeper pays through the nose to the vampire in his ward, and the toll exacted from him differs in no particle from the toll exacted from the insurance company in its time of periodical stress. Can any sane man hold that a life insurance company, a great moral and fiduciary trust, sacred in its very nature, would yield to the political blackmailer if it were not unnerved by its feelings of inward and accusing guilt?" ance. But we can conclude this review as the editor closed his article. "Nevertheless, we do not believe in the federal regulation of insurWe do not think it necessary. We think that there is a greater power even than the power of the government, and we know that that power has never been invoked in vain. We mean the power of public opinon. Public opinon is just now deeply concerned with certain persons and certain abuses, and the near future will be largely occupied with retribution and redress." HOW MAY AN INSURANCE SOCIETY PROTECT ITSELF IN ITS FORCED ACCORDING TO THE LAW OF THE PLACE A paper by Hon. George W. Miller, First Assistant Corporation Counsel of Chicago, Ill., and General Attorney for the Royal League, read before the Law Section at its annual meeting held in Montreal, Canada, in August, 1906. Mr. Miller's paper was as follows: This subject and paper is the outgrowth of some litigation in which the Order represented by the writer is now involved, and that the precise question which the final outcome of the litigation should settle may be clearly understood a statement of the facts and the manner in which the question arose may be here permitted. In 1895 a citizen of Illinois and resident of Chicago became a member of one of the Chicago Councils of the Royal League and that Order issued and delivered to him a benefit certificate for four thousand dollars in which his wife was named as his beneficiary. There was at that time in force in the Order a suicide by-law to the effect that if any member should within two years subsequent to his admission into the Order die by his own act or hand, sane or insane, his beneficiary should only receive one-half the face value of his certificate. The agreement in the medical examiner's blank signed by the member when he joined the Order contained the usual provision that the member would be bound by the laws, rules and regulations then in force or that might thereafter be enacted, and the benefit certificate was issued upon condition that the member would comply in future with the laws, rules and regulations then governing the said Council and the benefit fund or that might thereafter be enacted by the Supreme Council of the Order to govern said Council and fund, etc. The member in question maintained his membership from the time 2 of joining the Order until August, 1905, when he committed suicide. During the period of his membership several changes were made in the suicide by-law and at the time of his death the by-law then in force limited the liability of the Order in case of suicide to the aggregate amount paid by the member into the widows' and orphans' benefit fund, so that while if he had committed suicide within two years subsequent to his joining the Order under the by-law then in force his beneficiary would have received two thousand dollars, the amount that was due her under the by-law in force when the member did commit suicide was a little over three hundred dollars. That a member, agreeing in his contract of membership with a fraternal beneficiary association to be bound by future enacted by-laws, and his beneficiary are bound by a subsequently enacted suicide by-law is no longer an open question in Illinois whatever the rule may be in a few of the other States of the Union. Supreme Lodge K. of P. vs. Kutscher, 179 Ill. 340. Supreme Tent, Etc. vs. Stensland, 105 Ill. App. 267. Baldwin vs. Begley, 185 Ill. 180. Moerschbaecher vs. Royal League, 188 Ill. 9. Covenant Mutual Life Association vs. Kentner, 188 Ill. 431. Supreme Council Royal League vs. Scow, decided by the branch appellate court of Illinois, first district, on April 18, 1905, and not yet reported. While the member's death took place in the State of New York he had from the time of his joining the Order continued to reside in the city of Chicago and at the time of his death his home was still in Chicago and his beneficiary resides there now. Under the laws of Illinois it is perfectly clear that the rights of the beneficiary are governed by the suicide by-law in force at the date of the member's death and that she can recover not more than the aggregate amount of the member's contributions to the widows' and orphans' benefit fund. While the great weight of the authorities throughout the country at large sustains the right of these Societies to modify and change their by-laws or to enact new . by-laws reasonable in character and bind all members thereby whose contracts of membership contain agreements to be bound by future enacted by-laws, the State of Missouri through the adjudications of its Courts has, in so far at least as suicide by-laws are concerned, established and maintained the contrary view, for it is there held that it could not have been within the contemplation of a party joining the Order to be bound by a subsequently enacted by-law, the effect of which would be to decrease the amount to be paid his beneficiary in case he committed suicide, even where the contract of membership contains an express provision that the member will be bound by all future enacted by-laws without any limitation whatever as to the kind or character and where the benefit certificate is made and delivered expressly subject to a like provision. This is the express holding of the St. Louis Court of Appeals in the case of Morton vs. The Royal League, 100 Mo. App. 76, where the very form of contract which the Courts of Illinois have sustained and enforced where future enacted by-laws were in question was under consideration by the Missouri Court and where in a labored. opinion containing the citation of numerous authorities, a casual examination of which will show are all clearly distinguishable in that the contracts involved in the cases cited do not contain any provision to be bound by future enacted by-laws, in which case all Courts agree members and beneficiaries will not be bound. The Missouri Court arrives at the conclusion that the beneficiary of the member was not bound by a subsequently enacted suicide bylaw in spite of the fact that the member had expressly agreed that he would be bound by all by-laws and the promise to pay was by the very terms of the certificate involved subject to that agreement. In line with this Morton case and subsequently decided will be found the cases of Campbell vs. American Benefit Club Fraternity, 100 Mo. Ap. 249. The beneficiary in this case declined to accept the amount offered by the Order and acting under advice of counsel familiar with the Missouri rule threatened to go into the State of Missouri, where the Order in question is licensed to do business and has a considerable membership so that service can be had there upon it, and bring suit upon the benefit certificate. Section 2 of article 4 of the Federal Constitution provides "That the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states." In Cole vs. Cunningham, 133 U. S. 107, the Federal Supreme Court said: "The intention of section 2 of article 4 was to confer on the citizens of the several states a general citizenship and to communicate all the privileges and immunities which the citizens of the same State would be entitled to under the like circumstances, and this includes the right to institute actions." The right, therefore, to sue in the Courts of the State of Missouri is guaranteed by the Federal Constitution although the beneficiary in this case is a citizen of Illinois. It is axiomatic in the law as applied to contracts that the laws of a State where a contract is made if to be performed there, and if not the laws of the place of performance enter into and become a part of the contract for these are the laws which are supposed to have been in the contemplation of the parties at the time the contract was made. "The doctrine seems to be settled that, as a general rule, the law of the place where a contract is made must govern the performance of its terms and conditions. But when it is to be performed at a different place and under a different jurisdiction from that where it was entered into, then the law of the place of performance must govern" is the language of the Supreme Court of Illinois in Lewis vs. Headley, 36 Ill. 433. The same Court said in Barrett vs. Boddie, 158 Ill. 479, that "The contract is made with reference to the law as it exists, and the law thus becomes a part of the contract." And the Supreme Court of New Hampshire in Limerick National Bank vs. Howard, 71 N. H. 13, in a case involving the question of whether a bank was a bona fide holder of a note where the solution of the question depended upon the law of the State of Vermont thus expresses it: "The solution of this question depends primarily upon the legitimate ascertainment of the intention of the parties; and as it is |