I. While so much improvement has recently taken place in the arrangement and construction of various tables for facilitating calculations founded on existing data, very little has been done in the way of investigating and correcting the data themselves; and it is feared that the question of the rate of mortality among select lives is still involved in the greatest doubt and obscurity.

II. It is not proposed in the present paper to go farther than to show that the rate of mortality, during the first year of selection, of select assured lives is so materially different from what it has hitherto been represented, as to lead to the inference that the data from which the erroneous deduction has been made cannot be true data for the ascertainment of the value of selection. To investigate the rate of mortality of select lives at separate ages, I conceive to be of the utmost importance for the elucidation of truth, and the proper direction of sanatory inquiries; but I do not consider that sufficient data at present exist for the determination of this, and these can only be obtained by a united inquiry. I shall be very happy if the present observations have any effect in hastening such an investigation, which sooner or later must be entered upon.

The question is frequently asked, in what respect competition in life assurance business differs from that in any other trade or profession. It is contended, that in trade the effect of competition is to produce a better article at a lower price—to awaken new tastes and desires in the public, and so to create a market, which, notwithstanding the diminution in the price, may afford larger profits to the merchant, by the greater quantity of the commodity which he can sell or the greater frequency with which his capital may be turned. But there is nothing analogous to this in life assurance, for in truth it is nothing more than a redistribution of the capital of the public—a deduction of the portion which one man may save out of his profits in the course of a long life, for the benefit of the family of another who does not live to save it.

The recommendations made to and approved by the Select Committee of 1852 on Friendly Societies, with reference to the abolition or reduction of the duties payable in respect of policies for life assurance, have been acted upon more promptly than could well have been hoped for. The duties, it is true, have not been partly abolished in the way suggested, but the reduction now effected is so considerable as to make them fall very lightly upon those who will hereafter have to pay them.

In order perfectly to obtain its object, a table of mortality must exhibit the actual mortality at the different ages; and to be of any practical use, we should be able from the results of the past to predict events for the future.

The actual mortality can only be directly determined by knowing the population, as well as the number of deaths, which occur at each age. There are, however, very few countries in Europe in which these two elements are sufficiently ascertained. Even in Belgium, the division of the population by ages was but imperfectly known till the census of 1846, the results of which were only published about the end of 1848. It was therefore necessary, in order to form the tables of mortality, to pass over the important element of the existing population, and frame them from the registers of deaths. In this manner, the tables of mortality which I have given successively since 1827 have been constructed on the hypothesis of a stationary population.

Although this document has already appeared in several publications devoted to the discussion of life assurance matters, we think our readers will consider, with us, that the importance of it justifies its republication in the pages of this Journal.

To the Institute of Actuaries it cannot but be gratifying to observe that the recommendations made by the Committee tally as nearly as possible with the resolutions, so far as they go, adopted at the Special General Meetings held on the 12th and 19th April, in the present year. Thus the first resolution was to the effect that the Act of 1844 has created an invidious distinction between the Offices established prior to 1844 and those established since, and that the Act in question ought to be forthwith repealed, and provision made for putting all existing Offices on an equal footing.

As already stated by the writer, in a former paper on the subject, “In the absence of any large collection of facts and observations in Jamaica, from which such a table could have been deduced, he has necessarily been compelled to proceed upon probability and approximation, according to the experience and opinions of persons whose age and long residence in the community, or whose peculiar means of information, would give weight and authority to their statements; and, as a consequence, to any system which might be based upon them.