actual risks that we encounter, when we become denizens of " Bengala's plains." Various attempts have been made to estimate what is technically called the value of European life in India; but the available data are not, in our estimation, sufficient to warrant general conclusions. The late Mr. James Prinsep drew up tables from the Civil Service list, valuable so far as they go ; in the Asiatic Researches, there is a learned and important paper by Major Henderson; and Mr. Woolhouse, the Actuary of one of the London Assurance offices, has analysed Dodswell and Miles's Army list. We believe we cannot treat the subject better, having regard the while to our limited space, than by stating in a tabular form, the results of the last-named gentleman's inquiry, and then making some remarks upon the nature of his data, which will be equally applicable to those of Mr. Prinsep and Major Henderson. The reason of our singling out Mr. Woolhouse's pamphlet for the basis of our observations will appear in the sequel.

For the sake of those who have not hitherto given attention to the subject, we may mention that " tables of mortality," are constructed on the supposition of a certain number of persons, generally 100,000 having been born at the same time, and calculating how many, according to the ascertained rate of mortality, should be alive at the close of each succeeding year of life. Now we have before us many such tables calculated according to the rates ascertained by various experiences in England. The most important of these experiences are the Northampton table, the Carlisle table, and what we shall call the adjusted experience table, being one formed by the actuaries of the principal assurance offices in London from the experience of the duration of lives assured in their various offices. Now these are not in a fit state to be compared immediately with Mr. Woolhouse's tables; but we have taken the trouble to reduce them by a calculation, with the details of which it were needless to trouble the reader, to uniformity, so that a glance will shew out of 100,000 who have completed their 18th year, how many may be expected to survive each successive fourth year thereafter. It will be sufficient to range in parallel columns the results of this adjusted experience table, and of the Bengal Army list, merely stating that the English table exhibits about a medium rate of mortality in England, while the Bengal Army list shews a much more favorable return than those of Madras or Bombay.

It will be observed that this table shews a very great difference of the value of life in England and India. It will perhaps shew the contrast still more strikingly if we deduce from these results a table of the comparative "expectancies of life." Such a table we have calculated from Mr. Woolhouse's returns, and now put the results for every fourth year along-side of the corresponding results as deduced from the adjusted English table. In forming the average for the whole Indian army, we have merely taken the arithmetical mean of the Bengal result on the one side, and the combined Madras and Bombay result on the other. This method gives all but perfect accuracy, as the number of officers included in the experience of the Madras and Bombay services is very nearly equal to the number in Bengal. The deviation from perfect accuracy on this score is so small that it will probably not affect in any case the second decimal place, certainly never the first.

Age. Adjusted Eng. Bengal Army. Mad. and Bom. Army. Average Ind. Army.

20

41.49

25.23

23.13

24.18

21.95

22.92

20.90

21.69

19.93

20.46

18.95

19.25

18.05

18.06

17.34

16.96

16.72

15.89

52

18.82

14.84

13.12

11.26

9.44

7.82

6.36

5.11

2.17

2.74

These results are certainly not of a kind to diminish the terror that many experience on the contemplation of an Indian climate. think however they are too unfavorable, and shall endeavour to state We why. The army list does not give the age of the officers. It was

therefore necessary to assume some one age at the time of their receiving their appointments. Mr. Woolhouse accordingly assumes that all the Cadets attained their eighteenth year complete in the middle of the year in which they were appointed. Now we suspect that this average is too low. The average age of cadets now may be 18; but we suspect that formerly it was greater. Now if we be right in this conjecture, it will appear sufficiently evident that even a small fraction added to each individual life included within the experience, would considerably improve the expectancy at any given age. This, then, is the first ground on which we conclude more favorably of Indian longevity than Mr. Woolhouse's tables direct us: the other ground is more important and less conjectural.

The army lists from which Mr. Woolhouse's tables are deduced detail, not life, but service; in all cases then in which the service terminates before the life, the individual is withdrawn from the experience at the period of his withdrawing from the service. Of course Mr. Woolhouse calculates these withdrawals at the period of their occurrence; but still we apprehend that it is impossible to make a fair allowance for them. This does not seem to have occurred to Mr. Woolhouse, or indeed to any who have calculated tables from service lists;-but it does seem to us to be an unavoidable vitiation, incident to all tables so constructed. It does seem to us certain that all such tables must give too unfavorable a view of life. Suppose a number of young officers at 18; a certain number of them die, and a certain number retire, during the earliest years of their service; but during these years the retirements bear a very small proportion to the deaths. Afterwards however the case is altered; and although of course those who retire do not swell the number of the deaths for any given year, yet we cannot doubt that the effect of the whole method is that the data from which the rates are deduced include all those who die young, but exclude a large portion of those who die old. This appears to us unavoidable, as long as rates are computed from service lists; and its effect is evidently to diminish the apparent duration of life, and to perpetuate the exaggerated notions that so generally prevail regarding the insalubrity of our climate.

It may be in our power at some future period to recur to this subject, and to view it in other lights than that in which it now occurs to us. Meantime we have but a few words to say on the subject of life as

surance.

It is our firm belief that it is a duty incumbent upon every man who has a family dependent upon him, and whose income ceases with his life, to embrace the opportunity which assurance offices afford him of making a secure provision for them after his death.* Now there are many offices which put in competing claims for his patronage, and offer

There are other legitimate objects to which life assurance is applied; but we intentionally confine our attention to this view of the case.

him various advantages. In considering their several claims, the first question is as to the safety of their several rates. It is an evil that a man should be required to pay 2 or 3 rupees a year too much; but it is an incalculably greater evil to subscribe to a fund whose rates are fixed so low that unavoidable bankruptcy is the result. Such is not an imaginary case; but one that frequently happened in the infancy of the system; and one that the prevailing competition would certainly cause to happen frequently again, were not the rates of every new claimant of support rigidly examined.

Now here again we know not how we can better lay the subject of rates before our readers, than by first presenting them with a comparative tabular statement, and then making a few observations upon it. We have alluded to certain societies which divide a portion of their profits among the assured. The rates charged for the participation of such profits it is clearly impossible to compare, as, the profits being necessarily fluctuating, it is impossible to say what ought to be paid for a share of them. The only proper subjects of comparison therefore are the rates charged by the different offices for the insurance of the same fixed sum to be paid without increase or diminution in the event of the failure of the life on which the assurance is effected. As it is of military life that we have been speaking, we shall also restrict our rates to this.

Premium required to assure 1,000 rupees on a Military life in India. Age. Family Endowment. Universal. Church of England. New Oriental.*

From this table it will be seen that the Family Endowment office charges premiums about 20 per cent lower than any other office, and 30 per cent lower than some. The only question then is whether its rates are safe. Now with the best attention that we are able to give the subject, we cannot doubt that they are perfectly so; and that for the following reasons, viz.

1. They are calculated upon Mr. Woolhouse's tables of mortality for the Indian Army. Those tables, as we have already shewn, give too low an estimate of the value of life; the difference goes of course to the profit of the society.

2. The premiums seem to us to be calculated so that the society will not lose if they can invest their money at 24 per cent.

Now

* The rates of the Indian Laudable are the same with those of the New Oriental.

for this country this is at least 2 per cent too little. Now 2 per cent is amply sufficient to defray the expense of management, and the occasional losses to which every such society is liable.

3. The tables give the rate of mortality ascertained from the duration of all lives; including equally those of healthy and of diseased persons. But this and all other Societies grant assurances only on the lives of those who are certified to be in good health when the policy is granted.

4. We cannot doubt that the value of life in India will greatly im prove, by the amelioration of men's habits, the improvement of the country through cultivation, irrigation, &c. and the greater facilities for visiting healthier regions.

We have no personal interest in the Family Endowment or any other Assurance Society; but we deem it our duty to recommend it, as being in our opinion the most advantageous, to the support of the community.

The necessity for Christian Education to elevate the native character in India. An essay to which the Sir Peregrine Maitland prize has been adjudged by the University of Cambridge. By George Nugée, B. A. London, 1846.

THIS essay is the first fruits of a monumental prize-fund, instituted by the friends of Sir Peregrine Maitland, whose stand for Christian principle at Madras is fresh in the minds of our readers, and we trust, will be had in perpetual remembrance. The interest of a thousand pounds is to be applied to the grant of a prize once in three years to a student in the University of Cambridge for the best "English Essay on some subject connected with the propagation of the gospel, through Missionary exertions, in India and other points of the heathen world." We know no better method of keeping up the memory of a distinguished man, and we trust that much good will result from it, not only by the publication of the essays, but still more by the direction of the attention of so large a body of the ingenuous youth of England to the state and prospects of India in connection with the spread of the gospel among its people.*

The author of the present essay very creditably belies his very unfortunate name; for his production shews a very proper seriousness, and is written in a vigorous chaste style, and is altogether less chargeable

*Such a result did unquestionably accrue from Dr. Claudius Buchanan's Prize Essays and poems. The literary productions that resulted from his munificent gifts are now little set by. But a careful observer of the progress of events cannot fail to estimate highly their influence in stirring up in the minds of many, an intelligent interest in the affairs of India.