On the invitation of the President, I have undertaken, not without reluctance, to open the present Session with some observations upon the varied and interesting questions arising out of our Census system. The reluctance is to be explained as being due not to the disinclination to accept any task that may be thought to be of service to our Institute, but to the feeling that I have perhaps too readily consented to fill the part in the proceedings of the Session which has on some previous occasions been upheld by the President himself in a second inaugural address. The great interest excited by our President's address twelve months ago will cause legitimate regret that he should have ceded the place of honour and responsibility to a humbler member of the craft, thus adopting a course which, though also sanctioned by custom, leaves our anticipations unsatisfied. My fellow-members will be prompt to realise that this circumstance increases the anxieties with which I enter upon the subject of this evening's discussion, and will grant me that indulgence always extended to those who find themselves in a position to which they are unaccustomed.

The Paper of Mr. H. R. Harding upon “Government “Legislation in reference to the working of Life Assurance “Companies”, submitted to the First International Congress of Actuaries, the supplement added thereto by myself relative to German Law, and my paper upon German Insurance Legislation for the Second International Congress, show that the public Law relative to the business management of home and foreign Life Insurance Offices differed until recently in the individual German States, and in many of those individual States a firm basis was lacking.