The Norwegian General Widows' Fund (Den norske almindelige enkekasse) is a public institution, guaranteed by the Norwegian Government, and consisting of two sections. The older of these, which ceased to receive new members in 1848, contains (1) the members of the Norwegian Widows' Fund, established on 20 March 1814, and (2) the Norwegian members of the old Danish-Norwegian Widows' Fund, who were transferred to it in 1821 in accordance with the Treaty of Kiel.

A paper bearing the title “Life Offices:—in reference to Expenses, New Business, Profit divided, and Competition”, was read before the Institute at its Ordinary Sessional Meeting on 25 March last, and was followed by a discussion, of which a summary is appended hereto.

From the nature of the subject it was necessary that the author should quote from the Board of Trade Returns of the various life offices, and these quotations being in such a form as to enable anyone versed in the business of life insurance to identify in various instances the companies to which they related, it was considered by the Council of the Institute desirable that, acting in conformity with its practice not to give countenance to criticisms upon the affairs of individual life offices, only an abstract of the leading features of the paper should be given instead of printing the paper and tables in extenso.

In the article “Mortality”, in the Penny Cyclopæia, the late Professor De Morgan gave the following description of the law of mortality propounded by Gompertz in the paper presented to the Royal Society in 1825. “As this ingenious paper”, says De Morgan, “contains a deduction from a principle of high “probability, and terminates in a conclusion which accords in a “great degree with observed facts, it must always be considered “a very remarkable page in the history of the enquiry before “us…. There is in the human constitution a power of “resisting the effects of disease which increases from birth up to “a certain age, and diminishes from that time forwards.… “Mr. Gompertz assumes that the power to oppose destruction “loses equal proportions in equal times, &c, &c.” Gompertz's theory of mortality, then, is based upon the supposed physiological fact that the living human organism is endowed with a certain recuperative power, becoming (after a few years from birth) ever less and less efficient with the lapse of time, which he terms “the power to oppose destruction”, but which, for brevity, I will call “vital force”, the truth of which supposition is evidently a question for common observation.