In the year 1823 a plan was projected, by the late Dr. George Pinckard, for establishing an Assurance Office which should undertake, as its leading feature, to grant policies on lives deviating so much from the common standard of health as to render them wholly inadmissible at any Office then existing. In pursuance of this plan, the Clerical, Medical, and General Life Assurance Office was established early in 1824.

In any Company or Society for the assurance of lives—let it be constituted in whatever manner it may—it is evident that certain rates of mortality and interest are always prevailing; and that such rates are more or less constant throughout any given period. as the causes on which they depend are more or less stationary.

The third question proposed to Mr. Sang is as follows :—

B, aged 30, requires an advance of £100 ; and in consideration thereof, offers to pay to the lender an annuity during his life after A’s death. Required the annuity to be demanded, and the sum to be assured.

The point here proposed for consideration is not the mere amount of the annuity to be charged, the computation for which is sufficiently simple, but the nature and amount of the assurance.

In laying before the members of the Institute of Actuaries this hasty sketch of the Progress of the Assurance of Life and Property on the Continent, I beg to offer a few words of explanation on what induced me to attempt it.

Understanding that several actuaries and managers of Foreign Assurance Companies were likely to be in England at this time, without any general acquaintance with, or means of introduction to, those who are engaged in similar pursuits and studies in this country, the council of the Institute were led to propose a general meeting and conference, and to offer to them the hospitality and attentions which, all classes and professions are vying with each other in paying to our distinguished foreign visitors.

In the present paper it is intended to investigate the nature of mortality from Suicide, with a view to assist statists in estimating the value of life, and society in its endeavours to remedy so frightful an evil.

It is usual with Assurance Offices to make void policies which have lapsed from the above cause; and it was not until a very recent period that the justice of this proceeding was called into question,—especially when it is borne in mind that these risks are invariably calculated in the premiums.