248   RIGHTS OF BENEFICIARY, INSURED AND ASSIGNEE

pear to have been decided by our courts. The case of Mulford v. Bowen, 4 Hal. 315, was an action upon a wager about the weight of a hog, in which the judgment was reversed upon the ground of variance, no notice having been taken by the court of the general question, although it was directly involved, and was argued by the counsel. In the case of Hutchinson v. Targee, 2 Green 386, a wager policy depending upon the result of a lottery, was held void, upon the special ground that it contravened the policy of the act for suppressing lotteries. Wagers on indifferent questions are held good grounds of action in England; and it was there held that at common law wagering policies of insurance were valid. Crawford v. Hunter, S Term R. 13. In New York, actions on wager policies and other wagers, were sustained, until a statute was passed declaring them illegal. * * * In several other states, where statutes existed prohibiting gaming in such terms as were held to include all wagers, wager policies have been declared illegal. * * * The American text writers strongly favor the doctrine that wager policies should in all cases be held bad, upon general principles of policy and morality. * * * I confess, however, that whatever might be my opinion as to the expediency of a statute like that in England, before quoted, I must agree with the Irish courts in holding that such is not the law. Our act to prevent gaming (Rev. Stat. 572) does not, in terms or by implication, prohibit all wagers. but only particular kinds of gaming. Until the legislature shall think proper to interfere, the courts can only adhere to the common law as they find it established. To do otherwise, would be an act of legislation, and not of judicial construction.

It was insisted by counsel, and with much apparent force, that wagers on the life of a third person are in their very nature dangerous, and contrary to the policy of the law, and to sound morality. But the danger, if any exists, would apply with great, al-though not with equal force, to policies where there is an interest, as well as to those where there is none. All life insurances have been prohibited in some countries. The objection made to the wager in the case of Gilbert v. Sykes, 16 East 150, was not merely that a wager on the life of another would endanger his assassination, the fear of the law being deemed sufficient to countervail that, but that the bet was on the life of Napoleon, a foreign sovereign, and grew out of a conversation upon the probability of his being assassinated, so that to entertain an action on it was considered to contravene public policy. As was well remarked in the argument of that case, such an objection would apply with equal force to cases for the life of a third person, which have never been held illegal. * * *

Modern experience has proved the value of insurances upon the insurer's own life, or upon the life of another, upon whom the in-surer may be dependent. or in whose life he has a real or supposed interest. And it is worthy of notice, that even in England since the