The rate of mortality experienced by residents in India will supply an answer to an enquiry of the highest interest in an actuarial sense. The enquiry may even be considered of national importance so long as our countrymen seek their fortunes in a region where the effects of the climate on their prospects of health and longevity continue to be regarded as uncertain and hazardous.

Many years having elapsed since the Eagle Insurance Company first undertook to issue policies of assurance upon unsound lives, and some doubts having arisen as to the way in which the funds of the Society had been affected by such transactions, the Directors decided that a thorough investigation should be made into the business connected therewith, with the view of obtaining not only a record of the past, but also, if possible, of establishing a guide for the future, and I now have the pleasure, with their permission, of making public the results of that investigation.

The business of Life Assurance is founded on the principle that the number of deaths which will occur among a large number of persons in a given time is not a matter dependent entirely on what is called chance; but is subject to a law of average so uniform in its operations, and so trustworthy as to its results, as to be capable of forming the basis of calculations on which the shareholder may stake his capital, and the assured the welfare of those for whom it is his duty to provide. Proceeding on this principle, tables of mortality have been constructed,—from data collected at different places and under a variety of circumstances, and tabulated and adjusted with various degrees of accuracy,—which show, out of a given number of persons born, the number who survive each year of age, and the number who die at each age from year to year. From such tables, companies transacting the business of assurance calculate the rates of contribution to be required from their clients; and on the sufficiency of the rate of mortality founded on in any instance depends, of course, the sufficiency of the premiums which the company is to receive in consideration of its risks. It is therefore of great consequence that the company should ascertain from time to time how the rate of mortality actually experienced compares with that indicated by the table on which the calculations are founded, in order that there may be proper grounds for being satisfied that the basis is a correct one. For it is not sufficient that the mortality table founded on should be known to represent faithfully the death-rate prevailing among the general population, or even among assured lives generally.

We are so accustomed, even when we do not aim at scientific exactness, to regard every phenomenon as produced by causes,—as the resultant of forces,—that we cannot help looking on what we call “life” as the effect of certain definite forces, and on death as the consequence of the extinction of those forces. But when we thus contrast life and death, we must always bear in mind not only that what we call “life” is a condition which presents itself under circumstances of unexhaustable variety, but that in all probability quite as many differences in its manifestation entirely elude our observation. Given the effect, we reason as to the cause; when the effects are different, we infer that either the causes are different, or the conditions on which the effect depends. But if the differences are so numerous that we can scarcely find two cases exactly alike, we can draw no conclusion either as to the causes or as to the conditions. Since in no single case can we recognize the various conditions under which the cause of life works, we cannot hope to decide how the effect is connected with the conditions and how with the causes. Death too is a phenomenon as to which we have not the least idea why it happens; whether because the vital force in the individual has sunk below a certain degree which is necessary for the maintenance of life, or whether as a result of wholly different forces. On this point we scarcely know more than that the possibility of organic life depends upon certain conditions, that it can exist so long as these conditions remain within limits more or less wide, and that a transgression of the limits causes death. We do not, however, know exactly what these conditions are, and still less do we know the limits within which human life can exist; and if we reflect how complicated are the circumstances to be taken into account, we can scarcely hope to see these relations settled for some time to come. It is further to be observed that life, being regarded as the effect of a force, and death as its extinction, there must be a gradual transition from the one to the other.