STATEMENT. Counties in order of Total Population. LONDON. 1 Middlesex WESTMINSTER. 38 38,116 512,903 38,769 503 590,291 117,197 11,965 1568 1173 18,502 5117 981 597 2 Lancaster 4 Devon 1 5 Kent 7 6 Surrey 25 7 Somerset 12 157,791 107,738 49,375 11,574 326,478 3 York, W. Rid. 5 185,658 65,887 61,826 8,597 281,969 175,412 47,461 2,624 1,927 227,425 257,917 106,452 8,258 1,159 373,787 83,585 148,026 19,672 1,355 252,639 136,841 32,398 1,993 3,350 174,582 4,205 2,728 282,158 38,965 4,351,227 1,740,139 242,153 87,748 6,421,267 1,951,973 35,733 3608 2626 251,025 22,811 5,237 3,161 282,234 136,183 74 2 1 4,602,252 1,762,950 247,390 90,909 6,703,501 2,097,066 35,708 36102627 The population return of 1821, represents 2,088,156 houses in England and Wales as being inhabited in that year, another return made to parliament in the session of 1823, represents 437,626 out of that number charged with duty, on the assessed taxes in the year ending April 5th, 1822, the total value assessed being £10,168,574, and the amount of the assessment £1,180,250, about half of which amount is contributed by the 41,945 houses enumerated in the above statement. 202,628 farm houses occupied by tenants, and used bonâ fide for husbandry,-exempt leaving the occupiers of 1,447,902 out of the 2,088,156 houses inhabited in 1821 to be too impoverished to contribute to direct taxation. 2 5 1 3 These companies may be considered as constituted on three different plans. The first is, where all the assurers for the whole term of life are mutually responsible. They participate in the profits, and are subject to calls to replace any Joss or deficiency in the funds. This responsiility, however, is merely nominal, as a large urplus fund must necessarily accumulate from le circumstances already noticed so highly faorable to the offices. A capital to commence with is wholly unnecessary, as the receipts continue to be annually paid in, and are placed at interest in the public securities, long before any large demands can take place, and there is no danger of losses occurring from bad debts. Of societies founded on this principle of mutual assurance, there are established in London the Amicable, Equitable, the London Life Assurance and Norwich Life, and in these the assurers are entitled to share in the profits; but they do not share in the whole of them, one-third being generally reserved. The second principle on which institutions of this kind are founded, is that of a number of persons forming a company, and raising a capital among themselves, as a guarantee for the payment of all contracts or policies which they may effect. Security to the assured, and freedom from responsibility, are the supposed advantages held out by this plan; in consideration of which the rates charged are generally as high as the preceding, though the exact sums only, named in the policies, are paid on the deaths of the parties, without additions or deductions. The offices which have adopted this plan are the Albion, British Commercial, Eagle, Globe, London Assurance, Pelican, Royal Exchange, Sun, West of England, Westminster. Whatever advantages may be supposed to attach to these offices, the assurer most undoubtedly pays very high for a security, that is merely nominal, or at least unnecessary; but we suppose the greater number of the assurers are proprietors, and as such share in the profits of the concern. The third principle consists of a combination of these two. The proprietors subscribe a capital, relieve the assured from all loss and responsibility, take one portion of the profits to pay the 308 ENGLAND. interest of the capital, and give the assured, at certain intervals, the remainder. The Rock, the Alliance, the Guardian, the Palladium, and some others, are founded on this principle, which is, perhaps, as good as any other, though it curtails the amount of the additions which would other wise be made to those assurers who are not proprietors, or holders of shares. From a table given by Mr. Morgan, the actuary of the Equitable, formed from above 150,000 instances, Mr. Babbage concludes that fortyseven is about the average age at which persons assure; that is to say, as many persons assure later in life than this age, as under it; that about one-third commence between forty and fiftynine-tenths between thirty and seventy; that about one-fifteenth of the whole are under twenty when they commence; that on a life aged forty-six, the profits per cent on the premiums demanded by the several following offices, are as follows: £. s. 30 2 25 5 Crown 23 2 16 2 Medico-Clerical United Empire University 7 9 West of England Before, however, we can judge accurately of the comparative advantages to the assurers, this table must be viewed in conjunction with the proportion of those profits which is returned to them in the shape of a bonus; the mode of assigning that proportion; the periods at which it is so assigned; and the periods at which the assurers become entitled to participate in those profits. Mr. Babbage says, that the only two companies (and they are those which probably rank highest in public estimation and importance) that have yet assigned a bonus to the assured, by adding a certain per centage to the amount of the policies, are the Equitable and the Rock. In this, we apprehend, he must be mistaken; at least, he is inconsistent with his own statement, wherein he had just told us that all but the ten proprietary companies profess to make certain returns of their profits; perhaps, however, they may not yet have made a commencement of fulfilling their professions. The Rock is a young establishment compared with the former, and only made its first dividend of profits in the year 1819, thirteen years after its establishment, when it is stated to have added twenty per cent. to those policies which had existed ten years. The Equitable, at various periods since the year 1782, and in two periods of ten years each ending in 1820, added to each policy, existing at the former date, 185 per cent., the average addition of ten years being £23 2s. 6d. per parison is important. one-sixth between two offices, may not appear 'A difference of £3 2s. 6d. on £20, or nearly very great; and it may perhaps be expected that, on a larger experience, they will approximate much more nearly to each other. That there are case, and that the relative advantages of the two very sufficient reasons why this cannot be the offices are not truly estimated by the numbers 20, and 231, I shall now proceed to show. In order to render this matter, which is of considerable importance, more clear, I shall suppose time, one on the plan of the Equitable, the other two assurance offices to commence at the same makes by its business a clear profit of £300,000 on that of the Rock and some others; that each every ten years; each office awards two-thirds of the profits to the assured, but one of them, immediately on each division, transfers one-third of the profits to a body of proprietors. "By tracing the progress of these offices through a considerable period of years, we shall see the important result produced by the deduction of one-third of the profits for the payment of those who guarantee the capital. At the end of the first ten years, both offices divide a profit of £300,000, and two-thirds o. this are added to the policies of the assurers at both offices; but at the Equitable, the other third increased during the next ten years, suppose it only at three per cent., amounts to £134,392; and at the second division, the profits of the Equitable are greater than those of the other office by this sum. The following table will show the sums the plan of the Equitable :— added, at intervals of ten years, by an office on At the end of the first ten years At the end of the second ten years At the end of the third ten years At the end of the fourth ten years. At the end of the fifth ten years At the end of the sixth ten years 'Whilst at an office in which one-third of the £200,000 can only be added at the decennial profit is paid to proprietors, the constant sum of period of division; and, in the course of sixty nearly £682,000 at one office above those given years, the assurers have received additions of by the others. 359,373 two-thirds is the sum nominally divided amongst Nor is this the whole difference; for although the assured, since that sum is only payable on really equal to two-thi.ds, and is, in fact, difthe death of their respective nominees, it is not ferent for different ages. Thus suppose three assurers of the ages of twenty, thirty-five, and sixty, and that £100 is the addition awarded to each of their policies, the present value of that sum to each of these parties, is £34 9s. 9d., £42 3s. 1d. and £61 7s. 9d., respectively; and even when aged eighty, it is worth in present money only the same sum is added to a policy on a life £82 2s. 10d.; this inequitable mode of apportioning them is not however so disadvantageous in a system of mutual assurers, because the reserved surplus again accumulates for the benefit of the assured at the next period of division. F |