10 Pa. 357 | Pa. | 1849
A society for mutual assistance in time of sickness or inability to labour, not caused by voluntary exposure of the person to extraordinary perils, is doubtless legal; and perhaps an exception of disability incurred by following the profession of a soldier or a sailor, is not forbidden by any principle of public policy. I see no room for objection to such a condition in articles of association, as it would leave the maintenance of the worn-out soldier to the government bound to provide for him, and not to private citizens associated for other purposes than pensioning soldiers. As they have an undoubted right to combine for mutual assistance, and as they are not bound by any consideration, moral or political, to bear more than their share of the public burthens, it seems to follow that they may combine for lawful objects on their own terms, and without being compelled to take collateral risks, with which they may choose to have no concern. Such an association is virtually a mutual health-insurance company, standing, as regards the present question, exactly as a life-insurance company, which, as it is said in 2 Phillips on Ins. 143, constantly inserts a condition like the present in a policy effected by a person on his own life. If disability incurred from soldiership could not be excepted, neither could disability incurred from serving in the commercial navy, in which the nation has a stake, as a school for those who are to man its ships of war. The objection would go to the legal existence of the association, which would not have been formed had the condition not been inserted as a fundamental one; consequently, it would have been the duty of this court to withhold its certificate, in the first instance, that the objects, articles, and conditions, set forth in the constitution were lawful, instead of suffering the members of the projected incorporation blindly to incur responsibilities, against which they had mutually protested.
But as such a condition undoubtedly holds out to the corporators inducements not to serve in the army, it is not to be favoured in construction. • In this instance, the relator’s case may be within the reason of the exception, but it is not within the letter of it, beyond which we are not bound to carry it. “No soldier of a standing army,” the article runs, “seaman, or mariner, shall be capable of admission; and any member who shall voluntarily enlist as a soldier,
Judgment affirmed.