In applying this title to the following remarks, I am quite aware of the fact that a number of authorities, whose opinion is entitled to the highest respect, will at once pronounce it a misnomer, for the reason that, while all statistical returns disclose an increase in the rate of mortality from cancer, such increase is held to be only apparent, and is not real, but is due to improved methods of diagnosis. This view was propounded and ably advocated in a paper by Mr. Geo. King, F.I.A., and Dr. Newsholme, printed in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, vol. liv, 1893. The position taken up in that paper was that, as cancer is a disease of middle life and old age, no satisfactory conclusion could be reached, except by a distribution of the living and the recorded deaths from cancer into the various age periods. The gentlemen named proceeded with their investigation on this basis, and arrived at the conclusion that no actual increase in the death rate from cancer had taken place, but that the apparent increase was due to improved methods of diagnosis and to erroneous methods of tabulating the data.

In a short paper, which I read before the Second International Actuarial Congress, held in these rooms in May 1898, I gave the solution of some problems which frequently arise out of the Rules of Pension Funds and Friendly Societies. That paper is printed in the Transactions of the Congress, published by the Institute, page 860. I was unfortunate in the selection of the table which I used for illustrating the formulas, as there was a printer's error in the value of the most important term. That, however, did not affect the formulas themselves. Mr. McGowan, in a letter to the Insurance Record of 2 February 1900, said that my remark on page 861 (of the Transactions), that “it will be P years before the annuity payments equal the price given, does not seem quite correct in the case where P is an integer plus a fraction”, and I explained, in a letter which appeared the following week, that the correction, which would be the value of the assurance of the fraction of the annuity for the fraction of the year in which the fraction would occur, is so insignificant that it might be ignored.

The liability of the employer to compensate his employees, as well as other persons, for injuries sustained through his fault, may be traced from an early period in the world's history in the Common Law of various countries.

For example, by the Jewish Law, said to have been promulgated about the year 1500 B.C., if a master were the means of causing the loss, either intentionally or unintentionally, of the eye or of the tooth of his slave, he was bound to let him go free for his eye or his tooth's sake. Again, according to the same law, if an employer allowed his ox to gore either his servant or a stranger, he was required to pay various compensations to the injured if he survived, or to his relatives in the event of the injury being followed by death.

On the invitation of the President, I have undertaken, not without reluctance, to open the present Session with some observations upon the varied and interesting questions arising out of our Census system. The reluctance is to be explained as being due not to the disinclination to accept any task that may be thought to be of service to our Institute, but to the feeling that I have perhaps too readily consented to fill the part in the proceedings of the Session which has on some previous occasions been upheld by the President himself in a second inaugural address. The great interest excited by our President's address twelve months ago will cause legitimate regret that he should have ceded the place of honour and responsibility to a humbler member of the craft, thus adopting a course which, though also sanctioned by custom, leaves our anticipations unsatisfied. My fellow-members will be prompt to realise that this circumstance increases the anxieties with which I enter upon the subject of this evening's discussion, and will grant me that indulgence always extended to those who find themselves in a position to which they are unaccustomed.

During the last few years the minds of medical men and of the general public have been exercised over the rapid and striking increase in the mortality from cancer, as shown by the statistics contained in the Registrar-General's Annual Reports. The following table, taken from these reports, shows how great this increase in registered mortality has been. The registered death-rate of males from this disease was 2·7 times, for females 2·0 times, and for both sexes together 2·2 times, as high in 1891 as in the average for the decade 1851-60.

This subject was ably dealt with in 1894 by Mr. G. F. Hardy (J.I.A., xxxi, 261), who submitted suitable methods and formulas for the calculation of premiums, and dealt with other practical points, such as the treatment of these policies at a valuation. The article and the discussion constitute a most valuable contribution to the science of life assurance: accordingly in the following essay it is proposed to avoid the repetition of questions which were then fully discussed, and rather devote attention to the application of the system.

The Paper of Mr. H. R. Harding upon “Government “Legislation in reference to the working of Life Assurance “Companies”, submitted to the First International Congress of Actuaries, the supplement added thereto by myself relative to German Law, and my paper upon German Insurance Legislation for the Second International Congress, show that the public Law relative to the business management of home and foreign Life Insurance Offices differed until recently in the individual German States, and in many of those individual States a firm basis was lacking.

So far as I have been able to discover, very little has been written on the effect which the allowing for the lapse element has on premiums and the corresponding reserves. In Mr. T. G. Ackland's paper, reported in vol. xxxiii, part II of the Institute Journal, he treats of the “Effect of an Estimated Allowance for “Withdrawals upon the Net Premiums and Valuation Factors “computed, and upon the Reserves on Net Liability”, and shows the effect which a certain assumed lapse rate has on the premiums and reserves, but does not show what effect there is when the lapse rate is increased or diminished. The province of this paper is to show the general effect of lapse rate, and whether a larger element of lapse in the calculation increases or decreases the corresponding reserves.

In the following pages we give a description of the method pursued in an investigation into the Mortality Rates of the combined populations of New South Wales and Victoria, also tabular statements of the results at which we arrived. We offer no apology for trespassing on the courtesy of the Institute and asking their attention to a paper on such a well-worn subject as mortality rates, inasmuch as the rates of mortality being experienced by persons living in different parts of the world, are in themselves of more than passing interest. Moreover, where the population under consideration has been largely transplanted from a home on one side of the globe to a new land on the other, amidst new surroundings, experiencing a new climate, and cultivating almost virgin soil, its progress in the social scale will probably attract more than usual attention. The Australian Colonies afford an excellent example of such a new nation, and their rapid development makes their experience in mortality a subject of more than usual moment, both to themselves and to the mother country. Not only is there the desire to compare their present mortality rates with those prevailing in the mother land but there is the additional incentive to enquiry as to whether their own present experience is varying from that of their earlier days. To those engaged in the conduct of Industrial Business, rates of mortality, derived from the statistics of the general population, are an absolute necessity; and as industrial assurance is now making rapid strides in the Australian Colonies, a paper dealing with Australian mortality should be welcomed by those most closely associated with that class of business.