wring a consideration for a consent out of a son tenant in tail in remainder resettling his property on his marriage would be liable to much objection; and the assignees take the estate subject to all its incidents, one of which is the liability to be barred.

When the separate interests in the family property pass through the hands of an actuary, and are valued and tested by the actual requirements of the possessors, the merits or demerits of the system under which they are created stand out more prominently than under any other circumstances. At the present time, when there is a demand for the abolition, as it is said, of entails, founded in many cases in mere ignorance, but in others in a longsighted political design of altering the constitution of Society, it is interesting to consider the question as it actually appears in practice. The powers of sale and the management powers contained in all well-chosen settlements, and the Provisions of the Settled Estates Acts, provide, or seek to provide for the well-being of the estate independently of the successive possessors. It is argued, on the other hand, that an absolute owner can alone deal with the land so as to give the greatest stimulus to its powers of production, and the largest benefit from it to the community at large.

I do not propose on the present occasion to fall back upon first principles, and consider the foundations upon which property in land is admitted at all. When, however, it is conceded that land is property, it may be thought impossible to contend that the owner shall not be permitted to limit a life estate in it, while the possessor of personal property retains the power to do so. All that then really remains for consideration is the system of limiting estates tail under the present law.

The advantages seem to be the following:

(1). It enables the settlor to provide for the devolution of the family property in such a manner that it will always accompany an hereditary dignity, and such dignities represented by the House of Peers form an integral part of the constitution of the Country.

(2). The power exercised by the protector of the settlement, usually the tenant for life, and the limited power of the tenant in tail in remainder, practically leave the property at the disposal of the family rather than of the individual, and tend to its preservation. An improvident youth, who after running a career of riot dies in early manhood without descendants, and before possession brings with it the sense of responsibility, is prevented from dissipating it.

On the other hand the theory of base fees is not so defensible. It gives the remainderman one chance more. The tenant in tail

may survive the tenant for life, but die before perfecting the disposition, although he may be bound to do so, and the Court of Chancery, if time were given, would compel it. In exchange for and as the consequence of this chance, the tenant in tail cannot borrow except upon onerous terms; not in general being able to do so without insuring for the whole term of life instead of insuring against the contingency of his death in the lifetime of the tenant for life-a difference, as is well known to actuaries, of very important moment. It is true that a mode of proceeding has been suggested for obviating this necessity, (a) but in the absence of judicial approval cautious practitioners not unfrequently hesitate to run a risk in important transactions. We then come to this curious result, that the only parties who benefit from the present system of base fees are the insurance offices, which divide among them the large premiums payable upon the insurances effected to cover reversionary loans; and the practical question follows, whether it would not be an amendment of the law to take away from the tenant in tail in remainder the power of creating a base fee, but to give to his conveyance, enrolled in Chancery, if you will, the power of operating upon the fee simple, provided only that he survives the tenant for life and his estate tail succeeds to the possession?

If the power to create a base fee were taken away, it would follow that during the lifetime of the tenants for life the tenant in tail could no more bar his own issue than those entitled to the succeeding estates. To take the common case where a father has settled his property upon himself for life, with remainder to his sons successively in tail male; the eldest son becoming a spendthrift, could no more during his father's lifetime bar his own children than he could his brothers and their issue. And there is no earthly reason, except that he could formerly effect this by a fine, why he should be able to do so. It would be much to the benefit of the family that his power in this respect should be restricted, and the only persons who benefit by the present law are his creditors, who, as we have shown, would be more than compensated by the alterations proposed.

At the present time, when legal reform has become a reality, and is likely to be pressed forward by vigorous hands, the amendment would carry with it the recommendation of being an

(a) This is described by Mr. Sprague in the course of the discussion on his paper "On Reversionary Life Interests as Securities for Loans" (see vol. xvii, p. 247): the borrower insuring his life, not for the whole term, but against that of the life tenant, and for, say, one year longer, and a power of attorney being given for the execution of a deed of confirmation immediately upon the death of the tenant for life.-ED. J. I. A.

important simplification of the law. The greater part of the cumbersome provisions of the Fines and Recoveries Act might be swept away. At the same time, the power of appointing a statutory protector might well be dispensed with, being rarely exercised and almost a dead letter, and principally interesting as presenting a casus omissus in the Act. When it was passed, fines and recoveries were not only venerable, but almost sacred in the eyes of conveyancers; but since that time we have got rid of many superstitions, and to the list of the defunct base fees should now be added.

The practical reason for this alteration of the law may not generally occur to conveyancers, but the reasonableness of the suggestion has not escaped them. Thus we find Lord St. Leonards observing, "If this be the true view of the operation of the section, it would "perhaps have been more consistent with the object of the Act, if "it had enacted that when, after the death of a tenant in tail "without his assurance having operated to bar the remainders, issue "in tail should live to be competent to bar the remainder, without "the consent of any other person, the remainders should be at once "barred."(a) And again, it may be observed that when, upon the bankruptcy of a tenant in tail, base fees are created or transferred under the bankruptcy clauses of the Substitution for Recoveries Act, they are enlarged by the Act by the event of there ceasing to be a protector of the settlement.(b)

The above observations apply to the case when the base fee has been created, and no further compulsion can be brought to bear against the tenant in tail. It may, however, happen, that he has contracted to execute his powers of confirmation, and it is considered that although the Substitution for Recoveries Act expressly provides that no contract shall have any effect under it, yet that a Court of Equity may compel specific performance of such a contract. We say may, rather than will, for this jurisdiction is at the discretion of the Court. Again, when the tenant in tail is under covenant for the payment of a reversionary charge, or any sum beyond his means, he may be made bankrupt and the remainder barred by the operation of the statute; but these latter cases involve future proceedings, and when the object is to make a complete security, a purchaser or lender may well decline to rely upon them.

(a) Real Property Statutes, 89.

(b) 3 & 4 Will. IV., c. 74, ss. 60, 61. Bankruptcy Act, 1869 (32 & 33 Vict., c. 71, s. 25).

On the Method used by Dr. Price in the construction of the Northampton Mortality Table. By WILLIAM SUTTON, B.A., of the London and Provincial Law Assurance Society.

[Read before the Institute, 29 December 1873.]

THE Northampton Table has played such an important part in the life insurance transactions of this country, and is still used to such a considerable extent, that a short explanation of the method by which it was constructed, may not even at the present day be without interest to the actuarial profession. In many ways we are greatly indebted to Dr. Price, and in the writer's opinion anything emanating from him is well worthy of our consideration. It is to be hoped, therefore, that no further apology need be made for the following remarks on one of his most important works.

In the 1st edition of Dr. Price's work on Reversionary Payments, published in 1771, there is given on p. 317 a table showing the "probabilities of life at Northampton," and on pp. 255 and 256 is given an account of the data employed, and an explanation of the method by which the corresponding mortality table was constructed. An examination and comparison of these with what is generally understood to be the Northampton Table, as given in the 4th and succeeding editions, at once shows us that the two tables and the data on which they are based are different. In fact Dr. Price, in a footnote on p. 358 of the 4th edition, has himself pointed this out. He says:"The table printed in the "first three editions having been formed from the Northampton "Bills for 36 years, this table was rendered a little more correct " in consequence of being formed from the same Bills for 46 years. ""* * * In consequence of these alterations, and also of "increasing the radix from 1165 to 11,650, in order to adjust the "decrements with greater regularity and precision, this table, in my opinion, gives the mean probabilities and values of lives at 66 every age with more accuracy than any other table extant."

It will be seen, however, that Dr. Price gives the same explanation mutatis mutandis in the 4th edition of the method by which the 2nd table was constructed as he had already given in the three preceding editions of the method by which the first table was constructed; and we are led to the conclusion that the only material alteration in the two tables was the extension of the data; and this I shall presently show was substantially the case.

Bearing in mind the enormous importance which the Northampton Table acquired, it is a conspicuous fact how comparatively

little was thought of it by its author when he first published it. In the preface to the 1st edition, he does not even mention it by name, but only speaks of it indirectly as one of "several new tables." In that edition no annuity values based upon the table are given, although it is mentioned in the headings of the table of annuity values according to De Moivre's hypothesis as giving (along with the Breslau and Norwich Tables) nearly the same probabilities of life as De Moivre's hypothesis. In the 3rd edition, the only calculations based on it are given in the Appendix, and consist of tables of values of deferred increasing annuities. The calculation of annuity values was at that time, however, a matter of considerable labour, and Dr. Price doubtless considered that the table, although useful for purposes of comparison, was not sufficiently trustworthy to justify any extensive calculations.

In the 4th edition, published in 1783, Dr. Price, as already pointed out, had reconstructed the Northampton Table, having an additional 10 years of observation for his basis. Before this 4th edition, containing Dr. Price's new Northampton Table, was published, the annuity rates and premiums had been already calculated by him, and adopted by the Equitable Society, in the place of the premiums calculated by Dodson, and in use up to that time. The second Northampton Table differs but slightly from the first, and it is difficult at first sight to account for the prominent part the Northampton Table has since taken in the insurance and annuity business of the country. Much of this prominence is undoubtedly owing to the fact that the table was adopted as the basis of the rates of the Equitable Society; and it seems by no means improbable that the success of that Society was one of the reasons which led the Government, in the Life Annuity Scheme passed in 1808, to make the Northampton Table the basis of the annuity rates, entirely ignoring the fact that what is profitable to the buyer of annuities will be unprofitable to the seller. No doubt Dr. Price's acknowledged ability and reputation carried great weight with Mr. Pitt's Government, but Dr. Price had been dead some 17 years, and it is by no means unlikely that could he have been consulted he would have advised against the adoption of the Northampton Tables. It is still more remarkable when we remember, as Mr. Frederick Hendriks has explained in a paper read before the Statistical Society in 1856 "On the Financial Statistics of Government Life Annuities," that Mr. Pitt had so far back as 1789 already at his command Kerseboom's Tables, and had contemplated their employment, these tables giving