a loan given for life annuities with benefit of survivorship; so called from the inventor Laurence Tonti, a Neapolitan. He proposed his scheme in 1653 to reconcile the people to Cardinal Mazarine's government, by amusing them with the hope of becoming suddenly rich. He obtained the consent of the court, but the parliament would not register the edict. He made attempts afterwards, but without success.

It was not till Louis XIV. was distressed by the league of Augsburg, and by his own immense expenses, that he had recourse to the plans of Tonti, which, though long laid aside, were not forgotten. By an edict in 1689 he created a Tontine royale of 1,400,000 livres annual rent, divided into 14 clafs. The actions were 300 livres a piece, and the proprietors were to receive 10 per cent. with benefit of survivorship in every claf. This scheme was executed but very imperfectly; for none of the clafs rose to above 25,000 livres, instead of 100,000, according to the original institution; though the annuities were very regularly paid. A few years after, the people seeming in better humour for projects of this kind, another tontine was erected upon nearly the same terms, but this was never above half full. They both subsided in the year 1726, when the French king united the 13th claf of the first tontine with the 14th of the second; all the actions of which were polled by Charlotte Bonnemay, widow of Lewis Barbiere, a surgeon of Paris, who died at the age of 96. This gentlewoman had ventured 300 livres in each tontine; and in the last year of her life she had for her annuity 73,500 livres, or about 3600l. a-year, for about 30l.

The nature of the tontine is this; there is an annuity, after a certain rate of interest, granted to a number of people; divided into clafs, according to their respective ages; so that annually the whole fund of each claf is divided among the survivors of that claf; till at last it falls to one, and upon the extinction of that life, reverts to the power by which the tontine was erected, and which becomes thereby security for the due payment of the annuities.