218 ON PROSPECTS OF THE CIVIL SERVICE, &c., 



This table shows (1) That a person now of the age of 

 twenty, who desires to obtain at "the age of sixty, should he live 

 so long, a pension of 100 a year for the remainder of his life, 

 should pay 5 per annum until he attains that age ; (2) that the 

 present value of such payments is 76 ; (3) that the present value 

 of the utmost which the law can require of him is 60 ; (4) and 

 that the difference, or 16, must (if he is to receive at sixty years 

 of age that yhtch the law prescribes) be obtained from some other 

 source. Again, as a contrast, the table shows that a person now 

 of the age of fifty, who desires to obtain at the age of sixty, a 

 pension of 100 a year for the remainder of his life, should pay, 

 until he attains that age nearly 64 per annum. The present 

 value of such payments being 455, and that of the utmost the 

 law requires being 29, the remainder, or 426, should be 

 supplied at once from some other source. 



For pensions of greater value, the sums which should be paid, 

 can be demanded, and must be obtained from other sources, vary 

 of course in exact proportion to the rate of pension, and can be 

 readily calculated from the table. 



From column three can be ascertained the present value of the 

 utmost which any officer can be called on to pay, but not that 

 which probably he will pay. Take, for instance, the case of an 

 officer who enters the service at the age of twenty at a salary of 

 100 a year, and retires at sixty at a salary of 600. To enable 

 him to receive from an unendowed fund at the latter age a retir- 

 ing pension of 600 per annnm, he should, as the table shows, 

 pay from the first, 30 per annum, i.e., 5 per cent, on 600, his 

 ultimate salary, which is equivalent to 30 per cent, on his salary 

 on entering the service. The law only requires that he should pay 

 4 per cent, on the salary he may at the time be receiving. There- 

 fore, the present value of the sum which such an officer will be 

 required to pay cannot be correctly ascertained from column three 

 of the table ; and the insufficiency of his payments to yield the 

 sum he is entitled to receive at sixty, is not correctly represented 

 by column four, which only indicates the actual insufficiency in 

 the improbable case of an officer entering the public service, and 

 remaining in it until sixty years of age, without an increase of 

 salary. I draw attention to this, to remark that the examples I 



