assured sum. Many of the Societies combine these two methods, giving the assured the choice of a larger premium with profits, or a smaller premium without profits. We believe the former method, or insurance with a share of the profits has become the more favorite method; but we confess we are not prepared to recommend it in preference to the old method. In the first place, it is the grand end and design of assurance to substitute certainty for chance; and this method of sharing the profits does not so effectually secure this end, but rather substitutes one uncertainty for another. And then it is evident also that the perfection of Life Assurance would be, to have no profits such as those that by the mutual assurance Societies are shared among the assured. In the present state of our knowledge regarding life contingencies, it would be altogether unsafe to establish such rates as would be just calculated to afford no profits, because we cannot yet tell with perfect accuracy the amount of risk; and the fixing of the rates too low even by a fraction would be fatal to the whole concern. however our knowledge of risks increases, and it is perpetually increasing, it will become more and more safe to fix the rates, so as that the expense of management may be defrayed, and a fair return allowed to those who undertake the risk. Perhaps, however, in the present state of our knowledge, when it would be utter folly to support a Society, which should profess to have rates so low as to preclude the likelihood of profits, the better course for the person effecting an assurance may be, to stipulate for a participation of profits.*

As

Many very curious results have been educed by the inquiries that have been instituted into the subject of the average duration of human life; on some of which, if we had time and space, and other things in fair "concatenation accordingly," we should be very willing to bestow a portion of our tediousness. But this may not at present be; and in what remains of our "notice" we must constrain ourselves to abide by a very few remarks on the duration of Indian life, and on the assurance companies that extend their good offices to India.

There are very few subjects that occupy more of the thoughts of our good "friends at home," than the climate in which we live; and the time has not yet come when we shall be able to give them facts and figures by which they may form an accurate estimate of the

One point we never find stated so clearly as we think it ought to be in the schemes and tables of those offices that unite the two methods. We refer to the point, what profits they are that are shared? whether the profits arising from both branches or from the mutual asssurance branch alone. It does not seem to us that those assuring, with a right to participate in the profits, have any title to more than the latter benefit, and we do not suppose that they receive it; but we remember in the proposals of various societies what appeared to us a studied ambiguity. They constantly contain long details as to the method of striking the balance and ascertaining the profits, which from the very nature of the case it is altogether impossible for any but a skilful accountant to understand: whereas they often do not contain any statement of what it is essential that all should know. It is impossible to impute this to any intention to deceive or keep in the dark. Independently of the high character of hundreds of those who are at the heads of the various offices, the vast amount of competition precludes the possibility of this.

actual risks that we encounter, when we become denizens of "Benga la's plains." Various attempts have been made to estimate what is technically called the value of European life in India; but the available data are not, in our estimation, sufficient to warrant general conclusions. The late Mr. James Prinsep drew up tables from the Civil Service list, valuable so far as they go ; in the Asiatic Researches, there is a learned and important paper by Major Henderson; and Mr. Woolhouse, the Actuary of one of the London Assurance offices, has analysed Dodswell and Miles's Army list. We believe we cannot treat the subject better, having regard the while to our limited space, than by stating in a tabular form, the results of the last-named gentleman's inquiry, and then making some remarks upon the nature of his data, which will be equally applicable to those of Mr. Prinsep and Major Henderson. The reason of our singling out Mr. Woolhouse's pamphlet for the basis of our observations will appear in the sequel.

For the sake of those who have not hitherto given attention to the subject, we may mention that " tables of mortality," are constructed the supposition of a certain number of persons, generally 100,000 having been born at the same time, and calculating how many, according to the ascertained rate of mortality, should be alive at the close of each succeeding year of life. Now we have before us many such tables calculated according to the rates ascertained by various experi ences in England. The most important of these experiences are the Northampton table, the Carlisle table, and what we shall call the adjusted experience table, being one formed by the actuaries of the principal assurance offices in London from the experience of the duration of lives assured in their various offices. Now these are not in a fit state to be compared immediately with Mr. Woolhouse's tables; but we have taken the trouble to reduce them by a calculation, with the details of which it were needless to trouble the reader, to uniformity, so that a glance will shew out of 100,000 who have com pleted their 18th year, how many may be expected to survive each successive fourth year thereafter. It will be sufficient to range in parallel columns the results of this adjusted experience table, and of the Bengal Army list, merely stating that the English table exhibits about a medium rate of mortality in England, while the Bengal Army list shews a much more favorable return than those of Madras or Bombay.

It will be observed that this table shews a very great difference of the value of life in England and India. It will perhaps shew the contrast still more strikingly if we deduce from these results a table of the comparative "expectancies of life." Such a table we have calculated from Mr. Woolhouse's returns, and now put the results for every fourth year along-side of the corresponding results as deduced from the adjusted English table. In forming the average for the whole Indian army, we have merely taken the arithmetical mean of the Bengal result on the one side, and the combined Madras and Bombay result on the other. method gives all but perfect accuracy, as the number of officers included in the experience of the Madras and Bombay services is very nearly equal to the number in Bengal. The deviation from perfect accuracy on this score is so small that it will probably not affect in any case the second decimal place, certainly never the first.

This

Age. Adjusted Eng. Bengal Army. Mad. and Bom. Army. Average Ind. Army.

These results are certainly not of a kind to diminish the terror that many experience on the contemplation of an Indian climate. We think however they are too unfavorable, and shall endeavour to state why. The army list does not give the age of the officers. It was

therefore necessary to assume some one age at the time of their receiv ing their appointments. Mr. Woolhouse accordingly assumes that al the Cadets attained their eighteenth year complete in the middle of the year in which they were appointed. Now we suspect that this average is too low. The average age of cadets now may be 18; but we suspect that formerly it was greater. Now if we be right in this conjecture, it will appear sufficiently evident that even a small fraction added to each individual life included within the experience, would considerably improve the expectancy at any given age. This, then, is the first ground on which we conclude more favorably of Indian longevity than Mr. Woolhouse's tables direct us: the other ground is more important and less conjectural.

The army lists from which Mr. Woolhouse's tables are deduced detail, not life, but service; in all cases then in which the service terminates before the life, the individual is withdrawn from the experi ence at the period of his withdrawing from the service. Of course Mr. Woolhouse calculates these withdrawals at the period of their occurrence; but still we apprehend that it is impossible to make a fair allowance for them. This does not seem to have occurred to Mr. Woolhouse, or indeed to any who have calculated tables from service lists;-but it does seem to us to be an unavoidable vitiation, incident to all tables so constructed. It does seem to us certain that all such tables must give too unfavorable a view of life. Suppose a number of young officers at 18; a certain number of them die, and a certain number retire, during the earliest years of their service; but during these years the retirements bear a very small proportion to the deaths. Afterwards however the case is altered; and although of course those who retire do not swell the number of the deaths for any given year, yet we cannot doubt that the effect of the whole method is that the data from which the rates are deduced include all those who die young, exclude a large portion of those who die old. This appears to us unavoidable, as long as rates are computed from service lists; and its effect is evidently to diminish the apparent duration of life, and to perpetuate the exaggerated notions that so generally prevail regarding the insalubrity of our climate.

but

It may be in our power at some future period to recur to this subject, and to view it in other lights than that in which it now occurs to us. Meantime we have but a few words to say on the subject of life as

surance.

It is our firm belief that it is a duty incumbent upon every man who has a family dependent upon him, and whose income ceases with his life, to embrace the opportunity which assurance offices afford him of making a secure provision for them after his death. Now there are many offices which put in competing claims for his patronage, and offer

There are other legitimate objects to which life assurance is applied; but we intentionally confine our attention to this view of the case.

him various advantages. In considering their several claims, the first
question is as to the safety of their several rates. It is an evil that
a man should be required to pay 2 or 3 rupees a year too much; but
it is an incalculably greater evil to subscribe to a fund whose
rates are fixed so low that unavoidable bankruptcy is the result. Such
is not an imaginary case; but one that frequently happened in the infancy
of the system; and one that the prevailing competition would certainly
cause to happen frequently again, were not the rates of every new
claimant of support rigidly examined.

Now here again we know not how we can better lay the subject of
rates before our readers, than by first presenting them with a comparative
tabular statement, and then making a few observations upon it. We have
alluded to certain societies which divide a portion of their profits among
the assured. The rates charged for the participation of such
profits it is clearly impossible to compare, as, the profits being neces-
sarily fluctuating, it is impossible to say what ought to be paid for
a share of them. The only proper subjects of comparison therefore
are the rates charged by the different offices for the insurance of
the same fixed sum to be paid without increase or diminution in the
event of the failure of the life on which the assurance is effected.
As it is of military life that we have been speaking, we shall also
restrict our rates to this.

Premium required to assure 1,000 rupees on a Military life in India.
Age. Family Endowment. Universal. Church of England. New Oriental.*

From this table it will be seen that the Family Endowment office
charges premiums about 20 per cent lower than any other office, and 30
per cent lower than some. The only question then is whether its
rates are safe. Now with the best attention that we are able to give the
subject, we cannot doubt that they are perfectly so; and that for the
following reasons, viz.

1. They are calculated upon Mr. Woolhouse's tables of morta-
lity for the Indian Army. Those tables, as we have already shewn,
give too low an estimate of the value of life; the difference goes of
course to the profit of the society.

2. The premiums seem to us to be calculated so that the society
will not lose if they can invest their money at 2 per cent.

Now

The rates of the Indian Laudable are the same with those of the New Oriental.