Amicable Society.—We now arrive at the period of the formation of the Fourth Mutual Contribution Life Office established in London. This was designated the Amicable Society for a Perpetual Assurance; and it was destined, if not to be perpetual, to live long enough to become famous. It differed in some material respects from its predecessors, the chief distinction being that the contribution to its funds was fixed at £6. 4s. per annum. The first 2,000 members to pay, in addition, 5s. to the registrar and 5s. to the joint stock of the office; and all subsequent members were to pay 10s. to the joint stock. The founder and the registrar of the society was John Hartley; and he was to receive, permanently, 1s. per quarter out of each contribution.

We commence our third epoch with the year 1721, and with the fact that there was at that period but one Life Assurance Office in existence in Great Britain—the Amicable, founded 1706. That too, so far as we have the means of knowing, was the only Life Assurance Association in the world. It was very defective in its mode of working, at the best; but it stood alone. The Society had at this date an accumulated fund of about £50,000; it had distributed in death claims £118,000. Thus it had obtained a solid hold upon public confidence, but I suspect its business suffered considerably from the general shock to public credit. The days of Mutual Contribution Life Assurance Associations, as such, were gone for ever in England. This Society had to take steps to mitigate the element of uncertainty, or it would most probably have died out. Solidity was now the one thing sought for.

I have lately examined the Blue Book on the Health of the Navy for the year 1878, in order to ascertain whether the information contained in it could be utilized for life insurance purposes. I thought that it might perhaps assist the Actuary in fixing the rate of extra premium to be charged for sea risk; but the general conclusion at which I have arrived is, that while the information contained in the Blue Book is extremely valuable for the purpose of estimating the healthiness or unhealthiness of different naval stations, and the special risks that have to be guarded against in each, and for other kindred purposes, yet the information is of very little value (if any) to insurance companies. It may, nevertheless, be useful to lay before the readers of the Journal of the Institute of Actuaries a few of the figures contained in the book.

Amongst the various descriptions of securities, whether requiring for their absolute safety the insurance of a life or lives or not, it is well known by those who are called upon to advise lenders with regard to them, that none require more anxious care and caution than dealings involving expectancies, reversions and postobits. A long course of judicial decisions makes it manifest that our Courts are averse from giving any facilities for enabling persons entitled to such interests to obtain money on them; and until the Legislature interfered to modify the doctrine so often enunciated by the judges, so far at least as sales of reversions are concerned, the purchase of expectant titles was rendered almost impossible. But even the Act to which we allude protects the purchaser only in a modified degree, for instead of relegating his position to that of ordinary purchasers of other kinds of property, it enacts merely that a sale, otherwise bona fide, and without fraud or unfair dealing, is not to be set aside on the ground of undervalue alone. We have intimated that this enactment applies only to sales of reversions. This is the received opinion in the legal profession, although it is quite arguable, from the scope of the interpretation clause in the Statute, that it might be held to apply equally to advances on reversionary interests.