It has become the practice of late years for Assurance Companies, when applied to for a policy of very large amount, to issue such an one as is required and to reduce the risk within the limits they have prescribed for themselves by effecting reassurances of portions of it with other Companies. The only alternative proceeding would of course be to issue a policy for the amount to which the Company limits itself, and to leave the applicant to effect the remainder of his proposed assurance where he may. Mr. Newbatt's paper, which, as having reference to a matter of official practice merely, is not inserted here, advocates the latter mode of procedure in preference to the former, and adduces a variety of arguments in support of that view.

The measure by which the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposes to extend the benefits of life assurance and annuities to the nation at large has now been before the public some time. Few Bills have of late attracted so much attention, and have been so earnestly discussed by all classes, as this. But beyond what was elicited at an interview that took place between the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Actuaries of several Offices, and some passing remarks on the subject made at the last meeting of the Institute of Actuaries, when we had the advantage of hearing Mr. Samuel Brown's excellent paper on Friendly Societies, the public have as yet had no opportunity of hearing the opinions of those, who after all are best able to judge. It now appears, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is opposed to a general inquiry and the calling for “persons, papers and records” by the Select Committee, to whom the Bill has been referred, and it therefore becomes all the more desirable that the merits of the proposition of the Chancellor should be calmly and impartially discussed by the members of this Institute.

Every branch of exact science has its paradoxer. The world at large cannot tell with certainty who is right in such questions as squaring the circle, &c. Mr. Weyman Lee was the assailant of what all who had studied called demonstration in the question of annuities; and he can be exposed to the world: for his error arose out of his not being able to see that the whole is the sum of all its parts.