page 429 note * J.I.A., ix, 204.

page 433 note * J.I.A., xxxv, 268.

page 436 note * Since writing the above, I have seen mentioned a Belgian law of May last, which authorizes yearly to certain purchasers of small old-age pensions, grants, speaking broadly, of 60 centimes in respect of every franc (up to 15 francs) paid in by them during the year. On the credit reaching a sum which will buy an annuity, beginning at 65, of 360 francs, no further allowance will be made. It has also been stated that the German Empire, by an Act of this year, subsidizes with one hundred marks persons who have made a qualifying number of weekly payments for pensions.

page 437 note * I venture to add the suggestion that in lieu of the small pensions now granted, for example, to sailors and soldiers, a plan of, or at any rate an option of taking, deferred (and larger) annuities might be formulated; and indeed, if the digression may be pardoned, it is possible that others, such as officers compulsorily retiring at young ages with a pittance, might prefer a pension deferred until they have ceased to earn a salary in the vocations to which they turn their abilities, but then of a more satisfactory amount.

page 438 note * Much Ado about Nothing, Act ii, Scene 1.

page 442 note * J.I.A., xxxv, 362.

^{page 442 note †} J.I.A., xxxiv, 304.

page 443 note * Such a petty mulcting as lately on the conversion of Jamaica Railway Bonds into Colonial Government Stock, in the deduction of income tax at the present rate of one shilling in the £ on interest which had only been recovered in the current fiscal year though it became due when the tax was at eightpence, needs for its appreciation but a consideration of what would have been likely to happen had the position been reversed. The treatment of certain persons as to rebate of income tax in respect of portions of premium advanced by the company is another case in point.

page 445 note * The Warden of Merton (Hon. Geo. C. Brodrick), in an article on “A Nation of Amateurs”, in the Nineteenth Century for October 1900 (No. 284, p. 531), thinks that “Special branches of business, like those of actuaries,” chartered accountants, and engineers, are guarded against incompetence by “strict professional tests”, &c. It is to be wished it were so.

^{page 445 note †} J.I.A., i, 114.

page 451 note * J.I.A., xxix, 14.

^{page 451 †} Actuarial Society of America—Papers and Transactions, vi, 183.

^{page 451 note ‡} I remember a solemn embassage to ask whether it was the practice when a prospectus was requested to give a proposal form too.

^{page 451 note §} Memoir of Augustus De Morgan, Section viii, p. 223.