sums in mortgages on freehold and leasehold property. Why should you and I fear to tread where these angels rush in? Because the insurance companies, making these investments on a magnificent scale, and deriving from them a princely revenue, can afford to expend upon them the funds necessary to secure the professional vigilance that is necessary in the case of property whose value has to be constantly watched, and watched by an eye that can detect symptoms of decay, because there is no market quotation. With this safeguard, the application of highly qualified expert knowledge, mortgages are a very pleasant form of debt to an investor who can afford it.
Without it, you and I would be in danger of lending £1,000 on property valued at £1,500—or not only valued but known to have changed hands yesterday at that figure—and then finding in ten years' time, either because we ask the debtor to repay it and he cannot do so, or because we cannot get him to pay the interest, that our attempt to get our money back by foreclosure is a dismal failure, because the property is not worth £500. If we are very ignorant and unjust we may call the valuer bad names and threaten him with proceedings; he will say, with perfect justice, that all he said was that the property was worth £1,500 ten
