its legal jargon, the intent and meaning we take to be this: that from the moment a policy is brought within the pale of the fortunate five thousand, provided six annual payments have been made, that policy is entitled to, and will receive, such additions as may thereafter be made, namely, at the next succeeding decennial period; that these additions will then be made retrospectively from the year in which the assurer was admitted into the five thousand, provided he be living at the said succeeding period when the additions are ordered; but that the executors of those who had died in the intermediate time between the two periods would receive only the bare sums mentioned in their respective policies. Whether such be the right or wrong interpretation, a most unjust distinction is made by this new regulation between two large, and almost equally numerous, classes of the society. It amounts to this;-that the persons who had assured previous to 1817 will enjoy exclusively, and for many years, the profits contributed by the latter class who insured subsequently to that period. In the year 1824, Mr. Babbage ascertained that the number of the excluded amounted to about four thousand, and this was sufficient to deter him from adding one more to the hopeless multitude; for he had calculated that nine thousand persons reduced by deaths to five thousand, supposing them at the average age of 40, would require 27 years; if of 45, 23 years; if of 50, 20 years; if of 55, 17 years: that eight thousand reduced to five thousand would require, at the same ages, 231, 20, and 17 years respectively; and that seven thousand would require 19, 17, and 19 years before they could be brought within the number of the elect,' according to the Equitable experience.' These calculations may or may not be right; but the conclusion this highly-distinguished mathematican draws from them, whether right or wrong, will, we think, startle a few of those middle-aged gentlemen who may have made assurances at this office subsequent to the year 1816; and we have the authority of Mr. Morgan, that the great majority of the assurances lately made consists of lives between the ages of 35 and 50.'

Now, supposing that as many deaths would happen amongst the assurers as if they were all aged fifty-five, then, if I had assured the life of the friend, at whose request I made the application alluded to, in all probability he would have been obliged to pay seventeen annual premiums, before he could be qualified, under these new regulations, to participate in the profits: this would happen in the year 1841, or just one year after the decennial division. He must, therefore, continue paying his annual premiums nine years longer, before that qualification could be of any avail; thus he would not, in truth, partake of the profits until twenty-six years after he began to assure. Now, unless a person be younger than the age of forty-four, even though he be such

C 2

a life

a life as the Equitable would admit, he has not an even chance of living twenty-six years.'-pp. 112, 113.

We again repeat our hope that Mr. Babbage's interpretation of the words of the bye-law may be erroneous; nothing so monstrous, so outrageously unjust, could possibly be intended by so respectable a society; and yet we have a lurking suspicion that all is not right; that the appropriation is made to act retrospectively, and not as it ought to be, prospectively, that is to say, from the moment the assurer becomes one of the five thousand. If the former should be the case, so that his friend would not have actually received additions in the year 1841, but must have waited nine years longer, there is something rotten in the state of Denmark.' If Mr. Babbage be right in his view of the matter, he may indeed well say, that nothing but a desire of reducing the number of assurers could have suggested a measure so wholly undeserving the name of equitable; and that as soon as the operation of the law in question becomes sufficiently understood by the public at large, such must be the consequence.' At all events, the statement ought immediately to be refuted, if not correct; or explained, if it be so. A direct answer from Mr. Morgan to a simple question, which, we think, he is bound to give, would decide whether the view taken by Mr. Babbage be right or wrong. person assures in 1826; he is declared to be within the pale of the elect in 1841; he dies in 1845, having made nineteen payments. Will his executors, according to the present regulations, receive any, and what, additions to his policy, either from the appropriation of profits to be made in January 1840, or from that of January 1850, or from both? And how much per cent. will be added, supposing three per cent. to be the annual addition?

It is the more necessary, as Mr. Morgan is pleased to consider the Equitable, as indeed it ought to be considered, a public or national Institution, that there should be no mystery in its proceedings and practices. The assurers in particular have a right to know in what manner the enormous profits are to be disposed of. The Equitable has a capital at this moment of eleven millions, the property of many thousand families, and to be distributed chiefly in charitable purposes. By the 1st January, 1830, it must exceed twelve millions, when the surplus profits, or two-thirds, or some other portion of them, left to the discretion of the directors, are to be appropriated, solely, as the regulation now stands, among the five thousand elect, to the exclusion of four or five thousand others, who have materially contributed towards those

In his address of 1819, Mr. Morgan says that their capital had increased above three millions in the last ten years. It must now be increasing at a much higher rate. profits.

profits. It is not for us, who never have tasted, and are now too old ever to hope to taste, any of the good things of this magnificent Institution, to point out what the excluded assurers ought to do; but we should indeed be surprised, if they passively look on, and suffer three or four millions to be shared away among those who have already received additions to their policies to the extent of from twenty-five to four hundred per cent., while it is not intended that the smallest fraction of the enormous sum to be so appropriated should fall to their own lot. But we do hope that, in the mean time, the directors, for their own sakes, may receive some new and better lights, and prevent so glaring an act of injustice from being attempted under their sanction. It might be a fatal delusion were they to imagine that, because they have inflicted on this vast body of assurers the additional injustice of excluding them from being heard in their general courts, it is therefore absolutely impossible for them to make their voice be heard anywhere. It would be the extreme of folly to expect that, when the door has been shut in the faces of from four to five thousand assurers, while their copartners are passing resolutions how they shall divide the spoil so as to secure for themselves the lion's share, these aggrieved copartners in the same concern should remain in a state of listless and ignorant tranquillity.

The directors and Mr. Morgan can hardly indeed be supposed to persuade themselves that the representatives of so many thousand families will be satisfied by being tauntingly told of their impatience,'—' that their interests are only postponed,'-' and that they have contributed little to entitle them to share.' Such observations are more likely to be considered as adding insult to injury. They have contributed, not little,' but largely; not only 30 per cent. annually more than they ought to have done, but full 50 per cent. We say this not loosely, but advisedly, and we will prove it-ay, and by Mr. Morgan's own printed statement. He says, in his Address' of 1800, that the following statement of the decrements of life among the members, compared with those in the table of observations from which the premiums are computed, contains the result of an annual experience of thirty years:

From the age of 10 to 20 they have been as 1 to 2

From which it appears that, at all ages taken together, these probabilities are in the ratio of three to two; that is to say, the society for the last thirty years has only paid two claims, where the

tables

tables supposed that three would become due.' These are his words; so that, instead of any estimated sum, say 300l., they have paid only 2001., which, if there be any truth in Cocker, proves that they have taken from these repudiated and insulted new members, generally, 50 per cent., and from young members, between the ages of ten and thirty, 100 per cent. as their little contributions' to the funds of the society.

6

It seems, from Mr. Morgan's Address,' in 1825, that an eager desire manifested itself of prematurely sharing in the surplus' that is, of not waiting the expiration of ten years, before they shared such portion of the ELEVEN MILLIONS as the directors might think proper to divide; and that various propositions were made and discussed at a general court, chiefly as to the time and mode of the appropriation of the sum to be divided; but the directors would listen to none of them; and they were probably right, excepting as to the obnoxious bye-law of decennial periods, and the illegal (as it appears to us) division of the society into two classes. On this latter point not a word was spoken; not one dissentient voice was heard; indeed, how could that be expected, when none but the first class were allowed to be present, and consequently every man in the room had a direct interest in approving the measure? The directors express their opinion that everything went on as it should do, and that any departure from the essential principles of the society, as they are to be deduced from the practice existing on the 1st day of January, 1817, would not be advisable,might be highly injurious,-would be detrimental to the members individually,' &c. It has taken them a long time to discover this new and admirable system, which has authorized so bold a measure as to overturn at once all the essential principles,' and to annul all the various practices' which existed between the years 1762 and 1817, and which have been so frequently belauded by their actuary in his numerous flourishing 'Addresses.' Now, however, after so many changes and chances which have happened to this society, and after so many storms which have been weathered by the directors, per tot discrimina rerum-they have at length, on the 1st of January, 1817, safely gained a port, and, as they think, snugly secured the vessel, by the sheet-anchor of a new law, that is to be as immutable as those of the Medes and Persians; for the directors report that, so ably and completely has some ingenious attorney or other clenched it, that no power on earth can make any alteration therein without unanimous consent; which would be somewhat difficult to bring about, as, by the very law in question, one half of the society are excluded from any voice at all!

This is a master-stroke of policy. Fifteen elderly gentlemenfive would be much better, and three better still,-fifteen, how

ever (several of them octogenarians), by the advice of an able but a very old actuary*, make a regulation which nothing can set aside but the unanimous consent of nine thousand of their own body, all copartners in the same concern, and equally interested, as far as the number and amount of their payments entitle them; with this little difference, however, that four thousand of them, who are materially injured by it, and who are deprived of the means of expressing their grievances and their dissent, were no party to the measure. Hitherto these directors have felt no scruple to make and dissolve such bye-laws as circumstances might seem to require, or their actuary point out; many of them in direct contradiction to the original deed of settlement, which, in fact, from the numerous changes, has become nearly a dead letter, and all of them at variance in their essential principles' with this new and irrevocable bye-law;-of which they appear, for the present, to be so strangely enamoured, that they certainly look upon it to be, what has been said of law in general- the perfection of human reason.' These fifteen elderly gentlemen may be assured, however, that others, as well as the unfortunate sufferers, will be disposed to consider this measure in a very different light, amounting to a complete forfeiture of the proud title of Equitable.' One might almost suspect that some of these too potent seniors had been studying Blackstone, and relied for their justification on the dictum of that high authority, which declares law without equity, though hard and disagreeable, to be much more desirable for the public good than equity without law.'

As to anything like argument or plausible grounds for the adoption of a measure so contrary to justice and to the letter and spirit of the Institution, these are matters for which we should look in vain. The directors content themselves by referring to their actuary, to whose opinion,' they say, they cannot too much defer' while, in the same breath, they admit that it has been supposed that he is influenced by prejudices arising from longformed notions and opinions.' Mr. Morgan, as all the world knows, is an able calculator of annuities, &c., and the society is mainly indebted to his fostering care and skilful management of its concerns, more particularly in the earlier periods of its existence; but Mr. Morgan is now, we regret to perceive, far advanced in years, and old age, we know, is proverbially tenacious of its habits and opinions. He has also, as may be perceived by his various Addresses,' at all times set his heart upon a large surplus capital; he seems indeed to pride himself on the means taken to secure its accumulation, and we need hardly observe, that the auri sacra fames does not diminish with age.

* Mr. Morgan has been actuary fifty-three years.

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