an injury it would be to your shipping. If the opposition to the liberal party get into power they may have it enforced, and they are very likely to be in power before long. It is true, they might not be able to keep it in force more than a year, but see what injury might be done to your shipping in that year. Suppose that the order came that no American ships in the ports of India, Canada, or Australia were to load cargoes in those ports for any port in Great Britain or in the British Possessions, see how many thousands of tons of shipping you would have suddenly locked up. Of course, it would enhance the price of produce to our consumers and raise the rates of freights in British vessels. Now, I am anxious to avoid the possibility of such an event, and I ask you to aid me by making concessions in your coasting trade. I do not think that by doing so you would suffer to the extent you suppose, or that England would gain to the extent she supposes by it, because I do not think any foreign nation can compete successfully with you for the trade along your own shores. If you can compete successfully with us in the trade I have named, why can you not in the coasting trade? Every nation can conduct its own coasting trade to the best advantage. England has got Swedes and Norwegians to compete with her for her coasting trade, which she has opened; but they have not done it, nor can they do it, because they cannot carry on that trade to advantage, unless they remove themselves and their families to our shores; and before you could compete with us in our coasting trade you would be obliged to come and live near the trade, and before we could compete successfully with you we would have to come and live with you.

you

But when I see your beautiful clippers of 1,000 and 2,000 tons, and your fine Baltimore clippers of 200 and 500 tons, all engaged in what your laws term the coasting trade, with exclusion of all chance of competition, I am compelled frankly to admit that I am amazed that should have in this matter abandoned the principles of reciprocity, so ably advocated by your great statesmen, through an imaginary dread of English competition. I wish the ship-owners to bear in mind the fact that the larger the commerce the better it is for them; because the shipowner is a mere carrier and does not create trade. The trade must be created or the ship-owner cannot exist. The freer the intercourse between nations the larger the development of the trade, and the greater the development of the trade the more employment for ship-owners. A free trade along your shores would tend materially to increase it.

But if you are not prepared to recommend the entire throwing open of the coasting trade, you ought at least, in common justice, to make some concessions, even if you had no higher reasons than to avoid the possibility of the British government closing against you the vast trade which you now enjoy with our Colonies and Possessions. But we have also concessions to make. While I don't think you deal justly or generously towards us in regard to the coasting trade, I don't think that we deal generously towards you in regard to the various taxes levied upon your vessels visiting English ports. You make us no charge for the lights shown upon your shores, and your lights are not inferior but equal to any. You act the part of a great people and say that it is the duty of an enlightened nation to place lights on her shores, not only for her own vessels but for all those ships that she invites to trade with her, and I, too, say that it is the duty of every nation to do so. England, while

she opens the coasting trade, still charges the vessels of other nations coming to her ports for the use of the lights on her coasts. She also charges them to maintain harbors, such as Dover, Ramsgate, Budlington, and other places which your ships cannot enter. England also charges you what is called local charges, at various ports, from which you derive no benefit whatever, and which are for purposes entirely municipal. She also charges you for pilotage, and under her compulsory pilotage law you are charged, whether you require to take a pilot or not. If you pass through Yarmouth Roads or the Motherbank, or various other places where your masters do not require pilots, your ships have pilotage levied on them. Now, I have been endeavoring to ascertain what the American ships pay in these ways. Of course it is impossible to arrive at the accurate amount; but I believe that your ships pay, in round numbers, for lights and compulsory pilotage, passing tolls and local charges, a sum close upon a million of dollars annually. Now if you were prepared to say that you would throw open your coasting trade, (which I think you ought to do,) or at least make some considerable concessions regarding it, I think that England, on the other hand, would be prepared to sweep away this system of charges. At all events, I, in the British Parliament, would do my best to have it done. I think, too, that you would get the best of the bargain when you got rid of paying this $1,000,000 annually, so that, as a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence, I think it deserves your attention.

In the early part of this century Great Britain passed a law that no produce could be taken from Great Britain to America except in British ships, while America passed a law that no produce could be carried from America to Great Britain except in American ships. Well, for some years they had the spectacle of American and British ships crosing each other in ballast, carrying out the theory of the respective governments of the day. Did the ship-owners gain by that? I think you will find it very difficult to argue that anybody gained by it. Say that the shipowner of America got twenty dollars per ton for the goods carried to Great Britain, he got nothing for coming back, while if he got twelve dollars per ton one way, and twelve dollars per ton the other way, the consumers on each side of the Atlantic would have got their produce carried for eight dollars less per ton, and the ship-owner would have had four dollars more for carrying it. We got wiser in the course of time, and we found that such a law did not benefit anybody, not even the parties who applied for its enactment-the ship-owners of England and America of that day-while it injured all. The ship-owner soon found that even he, himself, was losing four dollars per ton on every voyage that he made across the Atlantic, while he was at the same time materially limiting his trade by limiting the amount of goods which he had to carry over. Now, we find these two great countries doing nearly the same thing in that vast inland lake trade which is opened and opening up, and which I cannot leave this country without seeing. What are we doing at the present moment? Here is a little map, and in looking over it I find that the Canadians have a large portion of the northern side of the lakes, where they conduct a very extensive trade, and the Americans have also a very large trade on the south side of the lakes. Well, now, as the law stand, we still maintain our colonial coasting trade -that is to say, while American ships can go into the intercolonial trade,

they cannot go from one of our ports on the lake to another. And by your laws a British ship cannot go from an American port to an American port in the lakes; so that, whatever may be the course of commerce and the nature of the trade, we have actually a law which says to the American ship-owner; "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." And you, too, say the same to British ships. Now, is not that the very same system which our wise forefathers carried on across the Atlantic? Why should an American ship, if the exchange of commerce requires her to go between any British ports upon the lakes, have a legislative barrier set up which prevents her from going beyond a certain limit? And why should the American government have a similar law against our ships? Why should the respective governments set up such barriers as these? They must injure the consumers of the respective countries, and so far from benefiting the ship-owners they must do the reverse, for the same reason that applied to the trade of the Atlantic when it was carried on in the same way.

Well, of course, if your coasting trade was opened up, it would naturally be the duty of the British government, besides removing those heavy charges which I have named, to open up their coasting trade along the lakes and in the Colonies, and by that course I believe that not only would both nations be much benefited, but the ship-owners also would gain by it, and no one would suffer.

Now, gentlemen, these are the questions which I wish to lay before you, and which I hope will receive, at all events, your impartial consideration. And in dealing with them, you will do me the favor to separate them. I would not like you to mix up those questions on which we are likely to agree with those on which there may be a difference of opinion, because by doing so you may prevent the settlement of those questions which we all desire to see settled. I must tell you that, much as I desire to see your coasting trade thrown open, I am even more anxious to see a settlement of those first referred to; more especially the question of responsibility, which is a very great and important one, and which ought to be, and I hope will be, promptly settled. Mr. President, you were good enough to say that I might encroach upon the patience of the gentlemen present for one hour. I have occupied my time, and have finished, in however an imperfect manner, the subjects I desired to present to you for your consideration just as the hand reaches the hour. I hope I have presented them to you in a sufficiently clear, and I trust in an impartial manner. I hope that you will receive my observations in the spirit in which I have made them. My anxiety is to remove the rough edges which now cause friction between the two nations, and which often lead to rumors of war. Although I do not for a moment suppose that there is any likelihood of war between two such nations as England and America-nations speaking the same language, professing the same religion, sprung from the same race, and bound together by every tie that ought to bind men and nations together-still, there are often rumors of war, caused too often by some of these questions to which I have directed your attention this evening, and which do an immense amount of injury to the people of the two countries, by retarding, for the time being, free intercourse and exchange of commodities. If my friendly visit to the States can bring about a harmony between the laws of the two countries, so as to prevent the constant irritation arising

on both sides of the Atlantic-if I can, by any humble words of mine, aid in throwing oil upon the troubled water, then my visit will not have been made in vain. I hope, therefore, Mr. President and gentlemen, that, though I come not before you as a diplomatist, but simply as a man of business, you will give your best consideration to the imperfect words that I have addressed to you this evening, and that before long we may have these difficulties removed, and may thus, in our day and generation, do something to promote peace and good will between two great nations, and thus promote the interests and the happiness of mankind in general. With these remarks, I thank you warmly for the kind attention you have given me.

Art. IV.-VALUATION OF LIFE INSURANCE POLICIES.

NUMBER VIII.

THE valuation of a life insurance policy depends on a correct table of mortality. We continue our collection of tables for the purpose of procuring an average of the best. Since the publication of the experience of the seventeen London life offices, the Eagle Insurance Company has added its experience to the others. This extends over forty-four years, from 1807 to 1851. The deaths in that time amounted to 2,874, and the number of persons exposed to death for a single year amounted to 123,719. This is nearly one-half of the number in the Equitable Society, and the time being more than half as long, the report is of much value. We have taken each decade of the living and the dying, interpolated them for each year by the method of differences, then obtained the ratio and the rates of mortality, and then adjusted these by taking the geometrical mean of five consecutive ratios as the true ratio-all in the manner before explained-the results are to be found in the second column of the table at the end of this article. We are indebted for these materials to Mr. Homans of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York.

The Economic Society of London, which was one of the seventeen companies that contributed a part of its experience to the London actuaries in 1840, has published the expectation of life according to its experience on lives, and also on policies. These expectations are not adjusted, and the anomalies at each separate age are very large, as is usual in the limited experience of life offices. To adjust them we proceeded as follows:-From the expectation of life we obtained first the rate of mortality at each single age; then assuming the living to be of the same age as in the Eagle office, obtained the dying for each year of life, then collected the results for each decade, and then proceeded as before to determine the adjusted rate of mortality at every period of life. These results for lives and policies are inserted in the third and fourth columns of the table below. Both agree almost exactly at all ages, showing how nearly the results for persons and for policies correspond with each other. The number of deaths in the Economic was only 1,282, which renders the table less valuable than the Eagle's, but as the company is old, the

rates of mortality are not without value. We are indebted for these materials also to Mr. Homans.

The Gotha Insurance Bank of Germany, though a recent company, has had a very large and flourishing business. In thirty years, from 1829 to 1858, it has had a larger experience than the Equitable after a duration of seventy years. The number of deaths was 6,779, and of the living 371,131. As more of the members were recently admitted, and the average length of each insurance shorter, the result is not so valuable. This is made manifest from internal evidence in the report it has published. The rate of mortality at the younger ages, when the new members are first admitted, is very low-lower than in any other large company, and not more than one-half of the amount in American offices. Thus, under the age of twenty-six, there were only 12 deaths out of 2,833 living, while the Mutual Life at New York has had 39 out of 3,618, and the Mutual Benefit 29 out of 2,593, and the New York Life 10 out of 985. The whole experience of the Gotha is as follows:

We have constructed a table in the manner before described from these numbers, and the rate of mortality at each age forms the fifth column of the table below. At the middle and later ages this table is founded on so large an experience that it deserves much estimation.

To these tables of English and German offices we now add, in column sixth, the mortality of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, as published by their actuary at the end of fifteen years' experience. The number of deaths on which this table is based is 750, and the living amounted to 68,618. These numbers are considerable, but the average duration of their policies has been so short that it lessens very much the value of the resulting rate of mortality. The members have too recently come from the examination of the physician, who had excluded all who were not in perfect health. The past fifteen years cannot for this reason be a good guide for the next fifteen, into which many of the members entered in impaired health, or with broken constitutions, perhaps in the last stages of some fatal disease which must soon terminate their lives and their policies. We shall not hesitate, however, to give this table considerable weight in our proposed combination, because it is American; more for this reason than for its intrinsic merits. The adjustments having been carefully made, and evidently by a mathematical formula, we have not readjusted the table by the method of geometrical averages, which in this case would not have corrected errors, but introduced them. With this report of the Mutual Life of New York we have combined the statement of the Mutual Benefit of New Jersey, whose experience has been published for thirteen years. The deaths in both companies amount to 1,387, but the joint table has the same defect as the former; both extend over too short a period, have too many new members who have been recently examined by the doctor and pronounced sound and well; but as the numbers are larger than before, the joint table deserves to have more weight than the first.