On this page

• Text (2)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    BEING A REPLY TO AN ARTICLE IN THE BRITISH MEDICAL ALMANACK FOR 1837 . The article , concerning which we are about to make a few remarks , is entitled ' National Statistics ; or , the Incapacity of the Statistical Officers employed by the English Government / That Government continually employs many officers who are

    g ifted with extraordinary incapacity for the situations they hold , we do not need to be informed by the * Medical Almanack ; * but in the present instance we propound that the incapacity is on the side of the would-be reformer , and as we love truth we mean to prove it . Whether the attack

    ofthe'Medical Almanack / does or does not contain a serious libel upoti the professional characters of Mr Rickman and Mr Finlaison , is left for others to determine ; all we propose is to show the injustice that has been done . We cannot deal with Mr . Rickman ' s case this month , as it would occupy too much time ; we shall therefore begin with the attack made on Mr Finlaison .

    In September , 1808 , Mr Percival first introduced the practice of granting Government Life Annuities . The Act set forth the Tables by which they were to be sold . At this time there was no Government Actuary , so that the Treasury were guided by the opinion of Mr Morgan of the Equitable , who advised

    them to value the annuities by the Northampton Tables , being the very same measure by which the Equitable is guided in effecting Assurances . Now every body , who is at all conversant with these subjects , knows that those Tables undervalued the duration of human life exceedingly , and therefore the premiums of Insurance at the Equitable were and are so excessive , that that office has amassed a surplus of maijy

    millions . And Life Annuities being the converse of Insurance , in the same degree that those Tables caused a gain to tfye Insurance Office , they caused a ruinous loss to the Government , but which was never once suspected , nntil in 1819 , Mr Finlaison then holding an important office in the Admiralty , pointed it out to Mr . Vansittart . This minister immediately employed him to investigate the true duration of life by the only unerring method , namely , the actual experience of the lives of annuitants as shown on the Government Records .

    This observation he completed in 1822 , as appears by the late Sir Gilbert Blanes ' s Medical Essays , published in that year , where the results are shown , and two very remarkable facts are brought to light , —1 st . That the duration of human life is very

    Untitled Article

    Liberal Mathematics , 43 ... . .., y

    Untitled Article

    LIBERAL MATHEMATICS .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1837, page 43, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1827/page/45/