BY M. B. PELL, ESQ. 227 



as the funds of a society increase, there is an increasing difficulty 

 in finding safe and profitable investments. It may happen, and 

 indeed has happened, that a portion of the contributions of the 

 earlier members of a society are more profitably invested than 

 the funds received from those who come after them. If, then, a 

 member is considered to retain any special property in the money 

 which he has paid to the society, the earlier members might well 

 contend that they are entitled to the full benefit of the higher 

 rate of interest at which their funds were invested, and it might 

 even perhaps be allowed that as the older investments expire, the 

 earlier members are entitled to have their funds reinvested in the 

 most profitable securities which the society can find. The justice 

 of this claim can hardly, I think, be disputed if the principle 

 against which I am contending be allowed. The newer members, 

 whose funds are necessarily invested at a lower rate of interest, 

 can hardly be said to have contributed to any surplus which 

 may exist, according to any higher rate of interest, than what 

 those funds have actually yielded. In England, where the rate 

 of interest upon money invested in good securities is tolerably 

 uniform, these considerations would not perhaps be of much 

 importance, but the case is very different in this colony. 



To take account of the various rates of interest in calculating 

 the contributions to surplus, would involve difficulties, which 

 would probably be found to be insuperable, but their neglect 

 would render the results of no practical value. 



If the principle is once admitted that the original contract of 

 assurance is to be varied, to the extent that every member is en- 

 titled to claim as his own, anything which he has paid in excess 

 of what experience has proved to have been requisite, we shall be 

 driven to* conclusions totally inconsistent with the nature of 

 insurance. If there has been a proportionally lower rate of mor- 

 tality among the younger lives than amongst the older, then the 

 younger lives should be charged with the losses upon their own 

 class only. The member who insured at the age of thirty should 

 be charged with no losses except those upon policies taken out at 

 that age. To push the principle a little further, those who in- 

 sured at the age of thirty, five years ago, should not be charged 

 with losses upon policies dated ten years bank ; and so on by 



