expended, but carefully funded for the benefit of their survivors at death.

Some of the offices which withhold all information as to their expenses of management, are nevertheless profuse in their professions of unreserve, and in their display of tabular statements drawn up for the purpose of exhibiting their financial position. In these statements they take credit to themselves for deducting the whole of the loading' to cover the expenses of management, possible losses, and other contingencies. But as this loading' is shown to amount to over twenty per cent. of the whole premium paid, and as it is principally out of this fund that the bonus additions to policies are obtained, we hold that the assurer is as much entitled to be informed as to its application, and how it is expended, as with respect to the other and larger portion of the premium. It is not enough to assure us that the loading is carefully reserved and set aside, and that it is amply sufficient to cover the working expenses. Let us have the figures, the actual facts; and let us be informed what is expended on commissions, on advertising, on management, and on architecture. So long as such details of the expenses of management are withheld, while no information is vouchsafed as to the manner in which the 20 per cent. 'loading' is disposed of, any number of tabular statements and so-called balance sheets must be regarded as altogether unsatisfactory.

Besides satisfying himself as to the cost at which the new business is obtained and the existing business managed, the intending assurer is also justified in looking closely to the liabilities of an office and the amount of assurance fund accumulated to meet them. All other considerations ought to be subordinate to that of security; and the amplest materials ought to be supplied to enable the public to form a correct judgment on this point. It may be that only an actuary can fully appreciate the value of any statement of the liabilities and assets of a Life Office; for it is no more to be expected that the public at large can find time to study and master the doctrine of Probability on which Life Assurance is founded, than that they should individually master the sciences of law or medicine, with the view of becoming their own lawyers or doctors. At the same

time, there can be no difficulty in furnishing such an amount of information as to enable the public generally, or at all events the actuaries, to form a pretty accurate proximate opinion on this subject.

An office may be considered sound when its life table is correct and its mortality within the calculated average; when

the

the rate of interest on the accumulated fund is realised according to the tables; and when it holds in hand the nett premiums (exclusive of the loading) received since the commencement of business, less the sums paid for death claims, cash bonuses, and surrender values. Various methods have been suggested for roughly estimating the proportion which the accumulated assurance fund should bear to the annual premium income, or rather to the gross premiums received (including the profits divided) upon subsisting policies since the commencement of a Life business. It has been laid down as a general rule that an office ought to show an accumulation of funds for forty years or so after its institution, almost in proportion to the period it has been in existence; that, speaking generally, it should show an accumulated fund of from 30 to 40 per cent. of the premiums received on the policies in force if the Company is under twenty years of age, and 50 per cent. if above that age,-increasing every year at the rate of 25 per cent. of the gross premiums received.

A still rougher, but less reliable test, has been suggested. It has been said that an office may be regarded as sound that holds eight times its premium income in reserve. But this throws entirely out of consideration the ages of the subsisting policies, to which the reserved fund, to be adequate, must bear a relative proportion. In the case of a new office, in which the greater portion of the lives are young, such a reserve would be far more than enough; whereas in the case of an old office, doing comparatively little new business, and on which the assurers are well advanced in life, this amount of accumulated fund would be found altogether inadequate.

It is, indeed, impossible to decide upon the condition of any office, by these isolated tests, without also taking into account the ages of the assured, the duration of the policies, and the death-rate experience during the existence of the Company. The only approximate method of satisfying the public on this point is that which has been adopted by the Friends' Provident, the Provident Life, and which other leading offices are about to follow-in anticipation of the action of Parliament-of publishing a tabular statement of the whole of the policies in force, the ages of the assured, the amount of policies at each age including bonuses, and the annual premiums payable thereon, accompanied by a detailed statement of assets, with the table of mortality and rate of interest on which the premiums are calculated. If to this a like detailed statement of the expenses of management were added, with a list of the cash value of the investments, the interest paid upon them (such as is furnished in so complete

complete a form by the London Life Office), together with the interest (if any) in arrear, certified by the Chairman or Deputy Chairman, and the Actuary of the Company, it would probably leave nothing to be desired. The public would thus be put in possession of the fullest means of satisfying themselves as to the soundness and security of any office. Even the most unskilled in actuarial calculations would readily appreciate such kind of evidence, and it would not be without its influence in restoring that public confidence in Life Assurance Companies, which has of late been so rudely shaken.

At the same time it must be acknowledged that, without constant vigilance on the part of the public themselves, all such measures will prove comparatively inefficient in protecting them. The ignorant and ill-informed are always at the mercy of the unprincipled; and the ignorant are as yet greatly in the majority. When a French quack was taken before the Correctional Tribunal for obstructing the thoroughfare of the Pont Neuf, the magistrate said to him, 'Sirrah! how is it you draw such crowds about you, and extract so much money from them in selling your "infallible" rubbish?' 'My lord,' replied the quack, how many people, do you think, cross the Pont Neuf in the hour?' 'I don't know,' said the judge. 'Then I can tell you: about ten thousand. And how many of these, do you think, are wise persons?' Oh! perhaps a hundred,' was the reply. It is too many,' said the quack, 'but I leave the hundred persons to you, and take the nine thousand nine hundred for my customers.'

And so it is with quacks of many other kinds, lying in wait for the pounds, shillings, and pence of the people. The most unsound schemes readily pass muster with them. This is especially the case with what are called the 'Industrial' societies, some of which-with as great confidence in the public ignorance as the French quack displayed-boldly placard their advertisements in all the papers, and publish statements which, if arithmetic be worth anything, clearly prove their own insolvency.

A few years since, a measure was adopted by Parliament and passed into law, enabling the humbler classes to effect assuranceswith Government through the medium of the Post Office. In the words of Mr. Gladstone, who introduced the measure, it was offered as a refuge from the error, deception, fraud, and swindling perpetrated upon the most helpless portion of the community.' But up to the present time that Act remains almost a dead letter, and the poor are not yet protected. From the commencement of the working of the Government Industrial. scheme

scheme in April, 1865, to December, 1868, only 1789 policies had been taken out, while the Industrial Societies continue their operations as audaciously as before.

The suggestion which has been made in some quarters, that Government should take in hand the business of Life Assurance, is not justified by the result of this experiment. Nor is it at all necessary to discuss the question until it has been ascertained that private enterprise, under proper regulations and restrictions, is unable to conduct Life Assurance on sound principles. That the great majority of existing offices are sound-conducted by careful, prudent men of business-and in a position to fulfil their obligations to the last penny is, we believe, unquestionable. It is not against these that the public require protection. But with respect to others, at present carrying on their operations without check or control, and collecting money often from poor persons, for the purpose of enabling them to make provision for widows and children at their death, it seems meet that Government, acting in the interests of society at large, should see to it that the payments made to such societies are duly accounted for and properly invested, with a view to the accomplishment of so truly noble and beneficent a purpose.

ART. III. —History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne. By W. E. H. Lecky, M.A. 2 vols., 8vo. London, 1869.

F all the branches in which modern historical enquiry has

O developed itself, none can claim to be either more interesting

or more substantially valuable than the history of morals. Standing midway between the history of speculative philosophy on the on hand and political history on the other, it unites the attractions of both, draws from both alike its materials, and deduces from them conclusions of the highest practical as well as speculative importance. Its two leading aspects or divisions, to trace and determine the action of each of which upon the other is the student's great object, are nearly related the one to the history of metaphysics, the other to that of states and nations. These two aspects correspond to the two senses in which the word 'morals' is employed. By it we mean sometimes to denote moral theories (whether the systems of philosophers or the less developed notions of the multitude), the opinions and beliefs of men as to what is meant by right and wrong, as to the nature of happiness, duty and virtue. Sometimes, again, we mean by 'morals' the classes of acts which spring from these notions and beliefs-that is to say, the character Vol. 128.-No. 255.

Ε

and

and conduct of men considered in reference to a standard (absolute or relative) of right and wrong. Now since speculative thought is one of the most potent agencies in the formation of theories of morality, its history is constantly intertwined with that of moral opinions, and must be attentively studied by one who undertakes to describe their origin, their variations, and the nature of their influence. Precisely the same relation to the other or concrete side of morals-moral acts-is occupied by political history. For as the history of philosophy shows us how moral opinions are formed, so the history of public events shows us how they are tested; it sets before us the practical consequences of these opinions in the acts of the men who professed them, and states. their result upon the collective happiness of mankind. Thus political history renders its highest service, over and above the pleasure its narratives give to our sympathy and curiosity, when it leads us up to moral history, when it explains the action of the events it chronicles-wars, treaties, laws, constitutional changes, parliamentary struggles-upon the daily life of man, and when at the same time it shows how the characters of individual great men, of classes, of nations, are in the last analysis the factors of history, the permanent cause whereto nearly every change in the welfare of a state may be traced back. And the peculiar dignity and value of the history of morals lies in this, that taking the chief positive conclusions which political history and the history of speculative philosophy have worked out, it combines and applies these conclusions to the investigation of the most complex and interesting of all subjects, human character, and undertakes to deal directly with that which is the great aim and object of all history, the throwing of light upon those practical problems of life which each successive generation is called upon to solve.

We have thought it worth while to make these remarks, not so much for their own sake, since they are obvious enough to any one who thinks about the matter, as for the sake of showing how necessary to the historian of morals is a familiarity with the facts and mastery of the methods of those other departments of history with which his own is so inseparably interwoven. To do justice to it, he ought to be both a philosopher and an historian; he must unite to the acumen and grasp of abstract ideas which belong to the metaphysician, that wide learning, knowledge of politics and society, capacity for care and accuracy in details which the metaphysician does not need, but without which a political historian, however great his abilities, will fail to make any substantial and permanent additions to our knowledge of the past. Questions of morality, like questions of taste, are things on which any clever person is, by many people, supposed to be qualified