perience of the companies has taught them lessons which they were little prepared to learn; and these curious ones amongst others: 1. That, notwithstanding the salubrity of the country-its freedom from the excitement, solicitudes, nuisances, and confinement of the towns-yet the mortality, taken at all ages together, is annually less in town assurances than in those of the country. 2. That, although from the experience of the Government annuity office, females were always considered longer lived than males, yet the mortality amongst assured females is greater than amongst males; and 3. That the mortality in assured Irish lives is greater than either amongst town or country lives, and very nearly approaches (all ages being taken together) to within 5 per cent. of the Northampton table. This conclusion was drawn from 8,391 Irish male lives, and 845 female lives.

Few persons are at all aware of the great variety of circumstances arising in the course of human life and human relationship, to which the principle of life assurance is applicable. There is, indeed, scarcely a pecuniary contingency depending upon the continuance or failure of one or two, or even three associated lives, which cannot be converted into a pecuniary certainty by recourse to a respectable office. The same principle has been extended to railway and other accidents;

versionary Society. This society consented to advance the loan upon Jodrell's granting them an annuity for his life of 4000l. a year, to commence at his father's death, in order to secure the repayment of the loan. To protect itself against the possibility of Jodrell's dying in his father's lifetime, it assured the life of the son. The whole sum necessary to be assured on Jodrell's life was 26,000l. His life was declined by four offices (as the Norwich Society fairly acknowledged); but the Westminster accepted it for 1500l. The son died before his father. The Westminster thought it had been deceived as to the son's health, and declined to pay. Hence a long and important trial. The evidence fully showed that the life was bad, and that the deceased was seen drunk two or three times a week for three weeks in succession, thus inducing delirium tremens. The jury found that misrepresentation and concealment had been used by Jodrell and his agents, but not by the secretary of the Norwich Company. They also found that disease did exist. The whole evidence should be perused by all interested in these matters.

Another late case of consequence was that of Mackay v. Stephenson, in which Mr. Hunt had assured his life for 5000l. in the Economic, and died a year afterwards. The Economic refused to pay, on the ground of fraudulent suppression of information as to a recent attack of severe illness. A special jury decided that the policy had been obtained by fraud. The full trial is printed.

and there is no valid objection to its application to casualties and diseases in general. Thus healthy entrants might assure for a provision in case of paralysis, insanity, blindness, fracture of limbs, and all other incapacitating afflictions. Existing offices might add casualty tables to their present system, and in this way there are large opportunities for an accession of business. Amongst the more curious cases occasionally brought before actuaries, are those professionally called 'issue 'cases.' The individual entitled to a life interest in a certain property, if another, now in possession of it, should die without leaving issue,-may resort to a life office to raise money upon his contingent life interest; to effect which he must assure against the life-tenant's leaving issue. Sometimes such contingency is naturally very remote; yet the transactions being peculiar, premiums of 20s., 30s., and even 40s. per cent. per annum have been demanded for such assurance, probably because actuaries have been unable to obtain a close approximation to the actual risk. From this illustration the reader may judge of the fertility of the applications of the principle to the most singular contingencies.

One signal benefit of life assurance institutions is the facility they afford for securing loans of money by policies as collateral securities. Only persons actually engaged in the finance of loans, debts, credit, and accounts can form an idea of the extent to which the different offices are made use of for this purpose. Although, in one point of view, too great facilities for borrowing are not without moral detriment, yet in another morality is the gainer by the extinction of the usurer with his exorbitant rates. For such cases short-term policies, or such as extend over five, seven, or ten years, are much in vogue, as the premiums for these are proportionately small.

To make policies for the whole term of life marketable securities, not only should the office in which they are effected be good and sound, but the policy itself should be indisputable. If disputable, it is scarcely marketable. Here, again, we see the great importance of the liberality of dealing to which we have just alluded. Policies in good offices, after five or seven years' standing, are always saleable, and a considerable number are sold by auction every year. We noticed the advertisement of a sale in Dublin of twenty-seven policies of assurance in various offices. It is worthy of remark, that they generally find purchasers at fair values when effected in the first-class offices. The offices themselves will state the value of their own policies for a fee; and the common practice is to obtain the office value, and that of an independent actuary, before the sale.

Assurers should remember that their policies do not acquire an appreciable value until they have been in force some years; and that the sums given by the office will be considerably less than the total premiums they have paid, putting bonuses and additions out of consideration; but if these have been added, their surrender will be paid for.

We have now completed the task which we had set to ourselves, having left many things unsaid for want of space. We have had no professional or party object to serve, and are neither blind friends of the old offices nor bigoted foes of the new. We think we have shown that all officials require to be carefully watched, and we have endeavoured so to illustrate the principles and practice of life assurance, as to indicate some of the prevailing tendencies to error. It is highly desirable that assurers would study their own interests, and thus emancipate themselves from unfounded fears on the one hand, and unfounded hopes on the other. If they would inform themselves upon the several points at issue, there would be but a brief span of existence for puffing advertisers, vulgar agents, half-qualified lecturers, ephemeral directors, smooth-tongued caterers, penny trash, and all-promising prospectuses. The actuaries themselves have taken a wise course in founding their Institute and printing their Journal, thereby vindicating for themselves the honour and credit due to a body of gentlemen for the most part able and accomplished, in a profession which calls into exercise the high qualities of forethought and judgment, as well as mere mathematical knowledge.

VOL. CIX. NO. CCXXI.

F

ART. III.-1. The Church Rate Question Considered. By Lord STANLEY. London: 1853.

2. Speech of Sir William Clay, Bart. On moving the Second Reading of the Church Rate Abolition Bill, March 5. 1856. 2nd edition. London: 1856.

3. Illegal Church Rates: being Practical Directions to prevent their Collection. 2nd edition. London: Society for the Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and Control, 2, Serjeants' Inn, Fleet Street.

A RESPECTABLE weekly contemporary, little given to sentimentality, recently published a pathetic appeal to the conflicting parties in the church-rate controversy, whether churchmen or dissenters, not to join issue or do battle on a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. As well might Hampden and the law officers of Charles the First have been adjured not to mix up the liberties of England with a paltry pecuniary claim for shipmoney. The stern realities of political life cannot be evaded in this fashion; and if the struggle must come, the formal ground of difference matters little. The question whether the whole or a section of the community are legally or morally bound to maintain the ecclesiastical fabrics of the Establishment, will most assuredly be discussed, both in and out of Parliament, with increasing vehemence, until it is authoritatively set at rest; at the same time, we do not see why it should inevitably involve or draw after it an internecine conflict between the endowed clergy and the advocates of the voluntary principle. Much, however, will depend on the temper with which the immediate topic is approached; and there can be no difficulty in showing that, in a case so curiously beset with doubts and difficulties, the language of reproach or recrimination would be singularly misplaced. The churchman is not in a position to charge the dissenter with designing to throw off an inherited obligation confessedly based on right and justice. The dissenter is not entitled to retort that the churchman is endeavouring to enforce, by an abuse of power, an unequal and oppressive tax. The law which enables the majority of the parishioners in vestry assembled to reject the rate, is a material deduction from the alleged grievance; and history, by explaining the origin of the impost, seriously diminishes the force of the main arguments by which the recusant conscience is addressed.

Blackstone and Burn, both apparently relying on Linwood, concur in stating that, at the first establishment of parochial

clergy, the tithes of the parish were distributed in a four-fold division: one for the use of the bishops, another for maintaining the fabric of the church, a third for the poor, and the fourth to provide for the incumbent. Lord Campbell, when AttorneyGeneral, boldly declared that all the books of authority, lay and ecclesiastical, agreed in the position that the burden was at first laid and long continued upon tithes. Probably,' he adds, it was very gradually shifted to the parishioners, and their ❝ contributions to the expense were purely voluntary. The custom growing, it was treated as an obligation, and enforced by eccle'siastical censures.' His Lordship's authority on this subject was disputed at the time by Mr. Pemberton Leigh (now Lord Kingsdown) and the late Sir William Follett; nor is it easily reconcilable with the recorded judgments of Holt and Coke. But the point remained, and still remains, undecided, although we think, with Dr. Lushington, that, assuming Linwood to be correct, there is little difficulty in conceiving how the obligation was transferred. In the course of his examination before the Select Committee of 1851, that accomplished civilian said:

Q. 2358. Really the whole thing is fully explained if you only look at the history of church-rates; when you remember that the origin of church-rates was this, that the whole people of this country were Roman Catholics, and that in those days the idea of any man refusing to contribute to what was necessary for the performance of divine service and for upholding the fabric, was an offence in the sight of the Church, which would not have been endured for one hour, and the Church would have instantly pounced upon him; so it went on till the Reformation; and when the Reformation came, things were a little shaken; but then came the High Commission Court, and every person who refused to repair was put into the High Commission Court. I need not tell gentlemen here assembled, that Archbishop Laud was not backward in enforcing the repairs of the church or making church-rates. This went on till Charles the Second's time; then we have a series of litigation. Then in William the Third's time, when things began to assume another appearance, the litigation commenced with rather another aspect, and so we have kept on from that day to this; but it is quite evident what the principle was; the principle was, that every individual was ex necessitate a member of the existing Church, and no man living dare disavow himself so to be.'

Q. 2359. Then the existence of Dissent has, in fact, introduced an entirely new element into the controversy?-Completely.'

The introduction of this new element was slow, and its expansion as a disturbing power was long, though not unaccountably, delayed. The opinion was almost universal, till about forty years ago, that both the making and levying of a church-rate