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so as to prevent imposition; and then to members entering in early life, say under thirty, the payment of 3d. per week would probably secure from 10s. to 15s. per week during sickness, and £5 burial fee in case of death up to the age of sixty.*

But sick clubs (in this restricted sense) standing alone would leave provision for old age to be otherwise made. They would only fulfil the proper function of co-operative insurance against sickness up to old age. They would be an aid to, not a substitute for, saving. They would secure a man from contingent disaster while he was saving, and so prevent his savings being dissipated by temporary ill-health or accident.

There remains, therefore, the question how the provision for old age ought to be made.

We have already insisted that the attempt to provide sickness allowances or pensions in old age, through the agency of the ordinary class of benefit clubs, is disastrous and must end in disappointment; and that if made at all, it had much better be made under Government security through the medium of the Post Office. But we wish to go one step farther, and to ask whether, after all, this kind of provision be in itself a good one, regarded as a general mode of saving, for adoption by the working classes? Is the benefit club or pension system in principle and in practice a mode of providing for old age on which an independent, honest working-man ought to be encouraged to rely?

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Looking at the system from the point of view of the working classes, instead of the ratepayers, it is impossible to regard it as satisfactory. A member of a benefit club may have been saving for years; but in case of his death, whether at thirty, forty, or sixty, it is as though he had not saved at all. Beyond the mere burial fee spent on the day of his funeral, his family are left as destitute as if he had not saved at all. Is it, indeed, a very laudable and meritorious thing for a man to throw his savings into

* Very useful and simple clubs for this restricted object may be constructed on the principle of co-operative insurance, either with the same payment for all members who enter under a certain age, or with graduated payments. And such a club may be so constituted as to divide its surplus between its members at the end of every year, keeping a very small sum in hand to equalize the averages of good and bad years. It never could be insolvent for more than a month or two at most, because each fresh year would start with a clean balance-sheet; and if from special circumstances 4d. instead of 3d. was needed, the payment could easily be raised for a while to meet emergencies, or lowered if found to be more than was needed.

such a shape, that, whilst affording to himself a precarious security against having to end his days in the workhouse, his family are left to the tender mercies of the Poor Law after his death? Would it be thought a sound and right mode of saving for the richer classes? And if not, why is it for the poor? While rich men have their settlements and entails and life insurances to keep their family property together, poor men are forsooth so to invest their savings that they may die with them! Could a scheme be devized more adapted to the purpose it has so fatally secured, namely, the perpetuation from generation to generation of a "proletariat"?

Again, if the system be tried by the test of how far it places the working man in an independent position in case of his being thrown out of work, or in connection with disputes between capital and labour, or if perhaps it should be desirable for him to emigrate, or, lastly, in enabling him to take advantage of opportunities for bettering his position and rising in the world, the conclusion is the same. However much he may have saved, it is, in all these cases, just as tho' he had not saved anything. If thrown out of work, his club does not help him. If he considers himself entitled to higher wages, he cannot, without combining with others in an organized strike, press his demand, because he has no capital to fall back upon. If he wishes to emigrate, not only has he no money saved which is available to pay his passage, but also by emigrating he will lose all his savings: he must, in most cases, leave behind him the provision for his old age for which he may have been subscribing to his club for years. Lastly, if the chance should offer of his becoming his own master, and a little capital needs to be invested in a workshop, materials, or tools, the money he may have been putting for years into a club is wholly out of his reach. Valuable, therefore, as might be sick clubs, restricted to the special and most useful object of insurance against the risks of sickness while people are saving, the system of benefit clubs, as a mode of saving, stands condemned on all hands: (1) as notoriously and almost necessarily insecure; (2) as uneconomical; (3) as vicious in principle, being a system of saving whereby no capital is created in the hands of the working classes. It is a system, which, if relied on by the working classes in the future to the same extent as it has been in the past, must tend to perpetuate a proletariat, and to keep the working classes in that state of famine as to capital, which has been pointed out as the great blot on their economic condition.

On Rates of Mortality and their Causes. By W. Lazarus, of Hamburg, Actuary of the General Insurance Company of Trieste. Translated by T. B. SPRAGUE, M.A., Manager of the Scottish Equitable Life Assurance Society.

A CORRECT knowledge of the rate of mortality among mankind is of such importance for answering many interesting questions, that we might hav expected it would hav been diligently studied from the earliest times. This, however, appears not to hav been the case, the reason probably being that questions as to the expectation of life arise in the first instance with reference to particular persons, and not to men in general. The proverbial uncertainty of human life-so often seen in the occurrence of death when least expected

-is unfavourable to the notion of a general law of mortality, but naturally suggests the search after a means of predicting the duration of individual life. As thus understood, the question of the duration of life has at all times attracted great attention. Soothsayers and magicians claimd to hav the power of discerning from signs and omens of many kinds every event of life, its termination not excepted, and astrologers pretended to read in the stars the precise hour of each man's death.

It was reservd for a comparativly recent period to perceiv that the prediction of future events cannot be the result of a special prophetic gift; but that the only means we hav of lifting the veil of the future consists in a knowledge of the laws of nature that determin that future. If we wish to predict the length of human life, we must investigate the natural law which regulates life and death.

But so long as enquirers attempted to construct a law of mortality from observations on individuals, they must necessarily be unsuccessful, because the human organism thro' its complexity modifies a thousand-fold every law of nature that influences it. Whenever we hav recognized in nature the regular sequence of cause and effect, so as to refer the effect to a cause that has calld it into existence, we hav always found this effect to depend upon a definit set of conditions, which accompany the cause in such a way that a change in the conditions is followd by a change in the effect, the conditions themselves thus really constituting a part of the cause. If, however, we mentally distinguish between the conditions and the cause, this is solely for the sake of simplicity of conception. The various states and relations of the human organism, deviating on both sides from a certain medium (or normal) state, form such conditions; and when we have observd the effect that a given cause has

produced on the normal organism, we hav no right to expect that it will produce the same phenomenons on an organism that deviates from the medium; for the conditions in the two cases are different. Now in making observations as to mortality, we find it utterly impossible to select for the purpose individuals who can be considerd as completely normal and agreeing in all respects with the medium; for not only is that medium itself imperfectly known to us, but even if it were known, agreement with it would be extremely difficult to define and to test, because the living organism is in a constant state of development and change. In order, therefore, to determin the typical man to which our observations are to refer, we must adopt the expedient of classing together a very large number of individuals who are as nearly as possible in the same circumstances, and observing this aggregat. The larger the number of the persons combined in such a group, the greater becomes the probability that deviations in one direction among the individuals composing it will be compensated by equal deviations in the contrary direction; and altho' the individual men observd will not coincide with the typical or normal man, yet, if the group is sufficiently large, the average represents an ideal type, so that by observing the aggregat of the phenomenons of this group, we may trace the law they follow under normal conditions. Various circumstances concur to make the collection of a sufficiently extensiv number of exact observations on the rate of mortality, one of the most difficult of statistical undertakings; and thus it happens that the knowledge of human mortality is even at the present time far from complete. The results hitherto obtaind are, as regards their details, far from certain and well establisht; much remains to be done in this direction, and the work is still being carried on with the greatest zeal.

Altho' the determination of the numerical death-rate is certainly the most important part of the enquiry, the following pages are devoted to a totally different branch of it, their aim being to consider the manner in which the observd facts of mortality may be referd back to the causes that produce them. No apology, however, will be required for the investigations, if they either lead to a satisfactory theoretical conclusion, covering the whole observd phenomenons, or are used for the discovery of new truths. Either of those results, tho' of no present practical utility, would be sufficient justification of the course of reasoning that led to it. Moreover, experience teaches us that, sooner or later, such labours are rewarded by useful practical results.

The author of these remarks, conscious that he has gained no such end, and that his work therefore requires some apology, hopes that a sufficient one may be found in his wish to direct the attention of more able enquirers to some noteworthy points well deserving their consideration; and that, if his remarks should giv an impulse to more successful investigations in the same direction, and to the attainment of more valuable results, they may lay claim to indulgent consideration.

The very slightest consideration of the rate of mortality shows that it exhibits a certain regularity and conformity to law; and even in early times it appears to have been seen that the death rate among mankind must stand in some relation to the age. The fact that the death rate, which is very considerable at birth, diminishes pretty rapidly until it reaches a minimum; and then increases, at first slowly, but afterwards with constantly increasing rapidity; is so obvious that it could not long remain undiscoverd. It required, however, closer observation to investigate the numerical changes in the rate of mortality in passing from one age to another, and the actual rate at each age, and at the same time to determin whether the above is a complete description of the general course of the curve of mortality, or whether there are, besides the minimum mortality just mentiond, other less conspicuous minimums and maximums. We hav already seen that this problem can be solvd only by means of observing a large body of persons. If we wish to determin the rate of mortality at the various ages, we must collect into a group, as large a number as possible of persons of the same age, and we must observ how many of these persons die in a given time, making this observation for each age separatly.

But when observation has furnisht the answer to this enquiry, the further question arises, whether it is possible to survey from a common point of view, and to combine into a whole, the series of separat results so obtaind, in such a way that the observd ratios shall appear as the consequences of a law which governs the mortality. This question is quite independent of the former, and, to answer it, we must attempt an explanation of the observd facts and argue back from them to their causes. The following remarks hav to do with this enquiry, which, it will be seen, belongs to the recognized domain of speculativ investigation. Taking for granted the facts, as determind by observation, we shall seek to elucidate them, to combine them into a whole, and explain them as a consequence of a law of nature, which is the real object of our search.