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Untitled Article
considerably greater now than it was a century previously . 2 nd . That females of the richer classes enjoy a duration vastly superior to that of males in the same station . It had been long known and proved by the Swedish Tables , that there is a difference in favour of the female among mankind in general ; but this knowledge was of no practical utility until the precise value of that difference among the class of annuitants was determined in England—a service for which we are indebted to Mr Finlaison .
Although , in 1822 , they appointed him Actuary of the National Debt , the Government could not , however , be induced , by all his endeavours , to change the old system of the Northampton Tables , until his remonstrances , showing that the loss of public money was advancing at the rate of 4 , 000 / . a week , and had already amounted to more than three millions , happened to fall into the hands of the Committee of Finance which sat in 1828 , under the Presidency of Sir H . Parnell . That Committee immediately made a Report , containing only one or two sentences ,
which induced the House of Commons to change the system forthwith , and to adopt his new Tables for the respective sexes . ( See a very able article on this subject in the ' Westminster Review / of that period . ) But previously to the adoption of the new Tables , the House required a demonstration of their accuracy , which was accordingly supplied in Mr Finlaison ' s Report , which was printed the 31 st of March , 1829 , Parliamentary Papers , No . 122 . This Report soon attracted the attention of scientific men , as the following quotation from Mr Babbagein ' Brewster ' s Journal of Science , for May , 1829 , may serve us as instance : —
" Facts and accurate enumerations are the great and only bases on which such ( meaning Life Annuity ) transactions can securely rest , and in this point of view I cannot but congratulate the public on a most invaluable collection recently prepared by the command of the Lords of his Majesty ' s Treasury , under the superintendence of Mr Finlaison . The circumstances under which the lives enumerated were placed , and the number of individuals whose period of existence has been precisely traced , give to this collection a great importance . " Again , let us refer to Mr Lubbock , the new Vice-Cbancellor of the London University , (^ ee the Transactions of the Cambridge Phil . Society for 1830 : )—
" Mr Finlaison has very recently published extensive Tables of Mortality , formed from the Government Tontines and Annuitants , which are rendered equally valuable by the accuracy of the materials from which they have been deduced , and the very great care and attention which has been bestowed on them by the author . " Those two eminent men were expressly commenting on the Tables in question , and if there had been any imperfection in
Untitled Article
' 44 lAberal Mathematics *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1837, page 44, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1827/page/46/
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