8. At the same time the words of the first section, enacting that no
r:f.-iq-\ iDsurance should be made on any event wherein *the person on
L J whose account the policy shall be made shall have no interest, ot
by way of gaming or wag6ring, would invalidate any contract of insur
ranee conceived in the form of a bet for the purpose of evading the Act,
It may be thought that this would be the case whether the words " or by
way of gaming or wagering" had been inserted by way of explanation or
on the alternative ; but the latter construction has received the sanction
of Mr. J. Grose in the lastly memtioned case, who observed the statute
meant that every insurance on lives or on any other event in which the
assured had not an interest, should be void, whether effected in the form
of a policy or by way of gaming or wagering. When therefore the con-
tract is an insurance, the form will not be material. " What," said
Lord Mansfield, " is a policy ? It is derived from a French word which
means a promise. Is a particular form necessary? Must it begin 'In
the name of Grod, Amen V or refer to Lombard Street ? A mercantile
policy we all know, but a gamiiag policy is a mere wager. If the form
were essential under the Act, it might be evaded immediately."('v)

9. Every other aleatory contract however, if in the form of a policy,
will be considered an insurance, and be comprehended by the words " or
on any other event or events whatever." Thus in Roebuck v. Hamer-
ton,(i«) the contract was to pay a certain sum in case the Chevalier
D'Eon should at any time prove a female, the consideration being an im-
mediate payment of 35 per cent, upon the sum to become payable in that
event. " The parties themselves, said Lord Mansfield, have called this
a policy. It is indorsed as a policy, opened as a policy, and any num-
ber of persons whatever might have subscribed it as such, and therefore
it is clearly within the Act. In Millison v. 