The third, the amount for which he is insured; which, after a time, begins to increase by the addition of bonuses.

The fourth contains the sum to which his investments would amount, year by year, with the constant addition of compound interest. And

The fifth shows the advantage in favour of Life Insurance as an investment, over the other security adopted.

The table ends with the 64th year, because at the age of 30, a healthy man has, on an average, the expectation of living 34 years to come, which will bring him up to 64; and all calculations of this kind must proceed on average principles. If a man at 30 lives longer than the 34 years which he may reasonably expect, he will, no doubt, to some extent, be a pecuniary loser by such a want of practical wisdom, as would be shown by living beyond the average age of men.

In order to avoid too many details, the calculations are only given for every second year; and the nearest shilling has been taken in the amount specified.

Thus, it is evident that for above thirty-one years he must be a gainer by investing in a life policy; and it is only in the last two or three years that he can be a gainer by adopting any other form of investment; and even if he should be so unfortunate as to select an office which is not able to declare a bonus at all, it is still evident that he must invest for above 24 years without withdrawing a farthing of his funds, or sustaining any loss either of principal or interest, before his accumulation will amount to the sum for which he is insured.

The amount of risk which a person sustains during the 24 or 31 years that he must be investing before his savings can equal his life policy, may, perhaps, be placed in a still more striking light by reference to the Carlisle mortality table, from which it appears that if 5642 people are alive at the age of 30, fifteen hundred of them will die within 24 years, and two thousand within 30 years. What security, then, has any individual that he will not be one of the fifteen hundred or two thousand that die, and that he will ever have the opportunity of adding to his yearly accumulations until they amount to the policy, with bonuses, or even to the naked policy, without such additions?

With one illustration further, I shall conclude this part of the subject, and it is taken from an ordinary endowment table. At the age of 14 or 15 years, the time arrives for thinking how to provide premiums for our sons' education in business; and after the age of 20, our daughters sometimes evince signs of taking flight from the paternal roof, when an unappropriated hundred pounds may be a convenience towards adorning her wings and providing orange blossoms. Now an annual payment, from birth, of £5 16s. or something under £6, will secure a hundred pounds for the boy at the age of 14, and a payment of little more than £3 (£3 4s. 3d.) a-year will secure a like sum for a daughter at the age of 21; but

the first premium multiplied by 14 only amounts to £81, and we have, therefore, gained £19 in the hundred by that investment, and the girl's premium multiplied by 21 only amounts to £67, and we have, therefore, gained £33 in the hundred by that. Now, it is scarcely necessary to repeat that it is difficult to find an investment for such sums as the £6, or the £3 required for the premiums; and that if these amounts happen to be in hand without any special application in view, they may possibly disappear and leave no permanent fruits behind them; whilst, on the other hand, if an insurance premium must be paid by a certain day, or loss ensue, we may even make some little retrenchment or sacrifice to provide the amount, if it does not happen to be ready without such an effort being necessary.

Here, however, we may be met by the very natural question, "If the profit be so great to the insurer, how is the office enabled to carry on a business which shall be profitable to itself also?" and the answer is to be derived from many sources, but chiefly, perhaps, from this, viz., that it is very difficult for private persons who have other engagements to occupy their thoughts, to find profitable investments for small sums, such as have been mentioned; whilst it is easy for an office-whose business, from first to last, is connected with finance-to find investments for the hundreds or thousands of pounds which an accumulation of these small premiums may amount to. It will also be seen, by reference to the table, that the average expectation of life at 30 is 34 years; and, therefore, the office will, in the long run, make a profit of £25 7s. upon the average of the lives assured; so that the advantage to the individual insurer arises from his certainty of gain for above 30 years should he be one of the unfortu

* The premiums are returned if the child dies under the age specified. If they are not so returned the annual premium required is much less than the sum here mentioned.

nate two thousand who die early; whilst the profit to the office arises from the premiums paid by the remaining three thousand, who live, on an average, beyond the period, when their payments will be entirely swallowed up by their policies at the time of death.

2nd. The circumstances which have operated to limit the extension of Life Assurance, notwithstanding its

acknowledged advantages.

Having thus shown the value of Life Assurance, regarded merely as an investment, independently of the arguments in its favour, derived from the uncertainty of life, and the obvious duty of making a provision for our families at death, the question must now be considered-" What are the circumstances which are in operation to prevent a more general adoption of the practice?" These appear to be chiefly the three following, so far as I have been able to gather, either from conversation or from reading :

1st. Imperfect knowledge of the real advantages which Insurance offers as an Investment.

2nd. Doubts as to the security of the Investment. And

3rd. The remote period at which the Investment becomes valuable; and its unmarketable nature in the mean time.

1st. I am under the impression that much remains to be done in the way of bringing the great pecuniary advantage of Insurance intelligibly before the public. The ordinary tables published by the different Insurance offices contain the materials for many of the calculations I have just laid before you; but I have only met with a single case in which even some of those advantages are put prominently forward, in a form appreciable by the ordinary public, without the necessity for making the calculations themselves. For instance-an ordinary

endowment table furnishes the materials for discovering the gain of £33 in the £100 by insuring a child's life for 21 years; but it is necessary to make sundry calculations before discovering the result; and a large portion of even the provident public is able to appreciate an advantage of this nature when plainly stated, although it would not think of making the calculations, because such subjects are foreign to its daily pursuits.

2nd. But a more serious obstacle arises from a feeling of doubt about the safety of the investment-that is to sayabout the ability of the office to meet its engagements when the day of reckoning eventually comes; which in this particular form of investment is only after the death of the insurer; and, therefore, after he has lost all power of lessening or remedying the evil, should the office prove to be unsound. This feeling of doubt can hardly be considered unreasonable on the part of the public when we look at the history of Insurance offices; and a few years since, it rose to such a height, that, in the year 1853, a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to investigate the subject, the result of which was a most valuable blue-book on Assurance Associations, from which much of the materials of this paper is derived. At that date, the number of Insurance offices was estimated at about 100; but "between 1844 and 1853 no fewer than 311 Insurance companies of various kinds were provisonally registered, of which only 96 continued to exist in the latter year."-Report, p. 430. Since that date, a large number of Insurance offices have come into existence, and have also disappeared; and the general result is, that from the year 1844 to the commencement of 1860, 146 Life Insurance offices have wound up their affairs, or have come to an end in some other way. *

In addition to this circumstance, a considerable number of

* i. e. 78 between 1844 and 1856 (see "Hand-book of Insurance," p. 61), and 68 between 1856 and 1860 (calculations from the lists in the medical directories).