in general is to secure for the public a better article at a lower price, and even to create a market where none previously existed, as well as to promote the use of commodities on an extended scale, so, similar advantages-mutatis mutandis-must follow from the establishment of new Life-Assurance Companies; that the old and exclusive Companies will be compelled to be more liberal; and that vigilance and devotion to the interests of the office will be largely increased. To a limited extent, some of these pleas may be applicable; but certain essential differences between the business of Assurance offices and that of other mercantile concerns must be observed. In the extended use of the necessaries of life, and in the increased consumption of manufactured articles, the cost of produce and production, or manufacture, may be diminished by the profits creating capital, which will return into the respective businesses; thus more skilled labour will be brought into action, and then will follow a subdivision of labour in the several processes of production. Nothing analogous to this can take place in Life offices, unless it be found in the employment of the highest medical science in advising upon the acceptance of the proposed lives. Such advantage, however, is simply a closer approximation to the true mortality of select lives amongst a class which is superior to the average, and to whom the Premiums charged in the Tables do not really apply, as they were founded upon the average of society at large.

Certainly, in so far as this truest law of mortality is ascertained, there may be ground for some reduction of the premiums. Let us, therefore, consider to what such reduction would lead. Nearly all Companies, arguing from the ascertained experience supposed, would be induced or compelled to reduce their premiums, and the necessary vigilance in selection would be relaxed to a greater or less degree; that is, the experience of the company which had the best lives would be accepted as the rule for many, if not all others. Thus it is clear that, under such a procedure, the benefit of selection would disappear; for all cannot have the best lives, and, in proportion as the lives of the general population were insured, so there would be a continually increasing approximation to the average mortality of the nation-the advantage of the few would be given to the many, and cease to be an advantage.

Every office thrives in proportion to the selection of its lives. The more cautious the admission, the more continuous the season of prosperity. What is technically termed "the benefit of selection," is simply the benefit of early and continual caution in rejecting unsound lives. Relax your strictness, and you relax the sinews of your strength. The Scylla and the Charybdis of Life offices are scarcity of good business, and abundance of bad business. To one or the other they are constantly tending, in these days of striving and beating about for lives to assure. No one knows the keenness of the competition until they are engaged in it. We have counted more than two thousand Directors of British Life and Fire Insurance offices. Every one of the two thousand is a secret friend to his

office, and a foe to your peace until you are linked with him. You must either assure your house or yourself, or both, in his office.

What, then, are the limits of this competition? We may con jecture them to be as follows:-The average annual expenses of an office being £3,000 per annum, we must presume that it consists of 3,000 assurers, whose average annual payment is £10 per head, in order that the total annual income may be £30,000; and this income allows for a deduction of £10 per cent. for the annual expenses. These are supposed to be the elements of a fair condition of healthy existence. A smaller number of Assurers, and conse quently smaller income, would leave the fixed expenses nearly the same, but make their proportion too heavy upon the smaller business. We have only to extend these elements, and we shall arrive at our limits.

What is the supposed number of assurable lives in the country? Mr. Edwin Farren and others have concerned themselves in answering this question, and they calculate that the number of good and assurable lives in this country, at any one period, and of the class likely to effect assurances that may cost £10 per annum on the average, is never more than 600,000 persons. Now, under the preceding case, as the office must have 3,000 customers, it clearly follows that 200 such offices would exhaust all the commonly assarable lives. Were there more than 200 such offices, the average annual expenses of Life Assurance would be greater than at present; and, therefore, its cost to the public, or the rates of premium, proportionably higher. If this view be well-founded, there is not a very large scope for many new offices. A few more may be founded, and, if well supported, flourish to a moderate extent; but recent experience has proved that their great and almost unavoidable expenses of establishment swallow them up, or lead to their specy amalgamation with other older and abler offices. The lean kine have first attempted to feed upon the fat kine, but in the end the ta: kine take their revenge upon the lean kine, who can but grow leaner if they refuse to fatten the fat kine.

Among the more recent allurements to Insurers, what is called the half-premium system is prominently put forward. It may be thus expressed:-"Half the annual premium on policies for the whole of life may remain unpaid for the first seven years, on the condition that 5 per cent. interest on such unpaid half-premuras shall be paid in advance." This is undeniably a great accomr.odation to Assurers who may be short of ready cash, and whose means are likely to increase in the course of the seven years. If the Assured should die within the seven years, the policy would be paid, after the deduction of the balance of half-premium unpaid. It the Assured survive the period, then, to retain the policy in force, tie entire premium, as originally designed, must be annually paid, and the arrears of the seven half-premiums may be either liquidated once, or still remain to be deducted from the claim at death, tog tha~ with the interest then unpaid. This plan is so specious that we see it frequently advertised, and doubtless it is often adopted.

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Let, however, the Assurer clearly understand the price he pays for this accommodation. At the day when his premium becomes due, he pays, first, half his premium for the current year; next, 5 cent. on each half-premium unpaid; and 5 per cent. upon the halfpremium just due, which he withholds. The office obtains a pretty safe investment of one-half of the premium at 5 per cent.: safe, if the Assurer decease before the septennial period; safe, if he abandon his policy before or after; while, when more than five years have elapsed, the half-premiums already paid are sufficient to cover the risk of the assurance for seven years. But the man who is thus drawn in to effect an assurance, must bear in mind that he is merely taking long credit from the office, and paying full interest into the bargain; and the chances are that he may be disposed, through unforeseen difficulties, to abandon his policy, or to allow the half-premiums to accumulate all his lifetime, and be deducted with interest at his decease, and thus greatly diminish his family's claim.

Nor is this practice to be commended to the consideration of every office. Directors should know that they cannot adopt it, unless the half-premiums paid, added to the interest on the half-premiums in arrear, exceed, on the average of seven years, the rate payable for a term-policy of seven years. The plan, therefore, is most advantageous to offices charging high rates, and is not desirable when low rates are demanded; nor is it applicable to the non-profit scale of most offices. Another disadvantage to the office is that the Assurer, upon this plan, may continue his policy without re-examination of health, while he may (if the rates are low) have been paying little more than for a term-assurance of seven years. If it should be supposed that managers could adopt this plan for a longer period than seven years, it is to be observed that, although they thus put out their money at a high rate of interest (probably higher than that inscribed in their tabular calculations), yet the law of mortality is all the time in operation; and, if any considerable portion of their capital were thus invested, although the nominal assets of the Society may appear to be satisfactory, the available funds would not be sufficient to meet the claims, unless counteractive measures had been taken in other forms, which must be attended with corresponding disadvantage. Furthermore, when an office invests its money in mortgages and other similar securities, it frequently obtains additional business from the parties concerned; and all such business is forfeited in the case of half-premium assurance. Such a plan, therefore, will chiefly suit young offices with a large paid-up capital, or older offices charging high rates of premium.

One of the advantages secured, perhaps, by the competition which

*A Term Policy means an assurance for a given number of years only, as five or seven; the premiums for which are naturally less than those for a whole Life Assurance, the risk to the office being reduced to a chance of death within the assigned term. After that, the contract ends. Such policies are frequently used to protect creditors in the business of loans, and are very useful as well as easy.

has made it imperative upon the older offices to become more liberal than was their wont, is this:-It had always been the custom to declare a policy wholly forfeited when one or more premiums were left unpaid; whereby a person who had for years punctually attended to the notice of the office, that his renewal premium was due-upon one instance of neglect or inability, lost all the benefits of previous punctuality. Now, however, it has become the habit of offices to return a certain portion of the premiums paid-always a safe propor tion for the risk actually incurred. Such a concession has been considered to be the utmost that could be expected; but a further accommodation has been proposed, and although not, we believe, adopted by more than one or two offices, yet it appears to be well worthy of general adoption. No provision having hitherto been made for what, unhappily, is too common a case in the history of that large classes of persons whose incomes are derived from professions, namely, a temporary failure of resource, perhaps at the very period when the insurance office remits its notice of the annual premium being due-it occurred to an Actuary that a principle of suspension might be admitted, the effect of which is as follows:-A party who may be insured, but from unforeseen emergencies may find himself unable to pay his premium, will be allowed once or oftener to exercise the privilege of suspending the payment of such premiam. (he having already paid three or more premiums at least), and his policy will be endorsed with a concession of its continuance, the holder thereof having it in his power at any time to discharge the debt incurred upon it, of premiums unpaid, and interest thereon. Of course should he decease in the interim, the debt must be deducted from the sum paid to his executors.

Another improvement now frequently adopted is, the permission that an Assurer may at any time terminate his future payments, and either receive a return of a proportion of the premiums which he is paid, or an equivalent reduction shall be made upon the sum pri after his death. Very few, however, of the offices fix the scale of the reduced assurance at the time of issuing the policies, and scareer any forego a reserved and arbitrary power of dealing with the Assurer as they see fit at the period of his difficulties. We see IO objection to such a condition as the following being arranged upea the issue of the policy: that after the payment of the fifth or sever ́h full annual premium, the Assurer shall be regarded as having secury 1 a reduced assurance to be estimated by the subtraction from the original amount of his policy that amount of assurance which is rate of premium would purchase at the advanced age when he ceases from all subsequent payments. Thus, if at commencement the est of assuring for a policy of £1,000 be £20 per annum, and if at the termination of payment of premiums the cost of assuring £1,9 at the increased age would be £35 per annum, then subtracting f the £35 whatever sum has been charged in the annual premiuras the security and expenses of the office, say 20 per cent, remainder, £28 per annum, is at the advanced age the net premi

which would assure a new policy for £1,000. Now if £714 5s. is nearly (as it is) the sum which £20 would assure at the advanced age, then the original policy for £1,000 should be diminished by this measure, and the remainder, or the reduced policy, would be £285 15s. If this plan were followed, the Assured would always be able to learn the minimum amount of Reversionary Assurance which they would certainly have secured by past payments.

We have a favourable opinion of a plan, or branch of Life Assurance, which is of recent suggestion, and has not yet, we think, been fairly tried. Its want of success in one or two instances obviously arose from the weakness or misfortune of the hands into which it fell.* There can be no reason inherent in the plan itself against its success and extensive acceptance, except a partial and primary one-the expenses of its management in earlier stages. We allude to the Accumulative or Deposit system of Assurance. By the usual plan a comparatively small annual payment secures a large deferred payment upon the death of the Assurer, whenever that may happen, and by such plan the premiums once paid cannot be withdrawn, except in the form of a loan, and under fixed restrictions, producing a loss to the Assurer, and a corresponding gain to the office. But permit Assurers to deposit at the Assurance office or at a Bank small or large sums, not at fixed but at variable and convenient periods, and grant policies whose value increases with the number and amount of the deposits made, with the additional benefit of being able at any time, upon due notice, to withdraw the whole or part of the money so deposited, with a corresponding endorsement upon the policies and then, we think, a very large portion of the public would avail themselves of Life Assurance who now hold entirely aloof from it. Such a plan, properly executed, and conducted with undeniable credit, and by unquestionable men, would present numerous advantages not probably to be secured in any other manner. It would afford a secure investment for all spare sums of money at a continually increasing value, and procure an equitable Life Assurance at the same time, and in the same office. It would prevent any fear of loss of premium, and would afford an inducement, stronger than now commonly exists, to husbands and fathers immediately to place any unneeded monies in the office. It would combine an Assurance office and a Bank of Deposit in one. It would meet the case of that large number of the community who have only fluctuating and precarious resources, and who are deterred from Life Assurance, at present, by the prevailing fear of being unable to continue the payment of the premiums. It is true that, even now, every man can, in part, adopt this plan by payment of a single premium for an Assurance, but then he cannot withdraw. A person age twenty may, by a single deposit of £100, acquire a policy of £253 12s. upon this principle, and increase that policy by occasional deposits, or, at the age of sixty, withdraw £100 by surrendering

* One or two respectable offices now adopt this plan with modifications.