230 ESSAY ON PROBABILITIESo 



the total value. To the problems connected with this 

 subject I now pass. 



A great many interests are held in this country on 

 the consideration of rents, fines, or whatever they may 

 be called, which are not paid at any fixed time, but at 

 the deaths of successive lives which are named, each life 

 being nominated, and the rent or fine paid, at the death 

 of the preceding nominee. Leases held under ecclesi- 

 astical and other corporations, copyholds, &c., are in- 

 stances. By a statute of Henry VIII., corporations are 

 permitted to lease lands for three lives, or twenty-one 

 years; so that it may be suspected the legislature ima- 

 gined the average term of the duration of three lives to 

 be 21 years; or that, any three mature lives being 

 named in one set, and a large number of such sets being 

 taken, and each set being considered as a status to last 

 as long as any one of its lives was in being, the average 

 duration of such a status was 21 years. If this were 

 the opinion, and grounded upon any thing like experi- 

 ence, the value of life in that day must have been incre- 

 dibly below what it is at present: but it must be 

 remembered that in that day of insecurity few people 

 would venture on the life of a child or a woman ; and 

 that in all probability the lives contemplated were those 

 of men of middle age. However this may be, since that 

 time the tenure of lease upon lives has become ex- 

 tremely common, it being understood that the lives 

 which drop are renewable upon the payment of a fine, 

 either fixed or at the discretion of the lessor. 



It is, of course, the interest of the lessor that the lives 

 should be as bad, and of the lessee that they should be 

 as good, as it is possible : but the lessee, having the no- 

 mination of the lives, will choose the best the tables 

 afford. The rate of interest being settled, the highest 

 life annuity in the tables gives the age which the life 

 nominated ought to have. The best age in the North- 

 ampton tables is 8 years, and in the Carlisle 7 years : 

 for which ages I subjoin the values of annuities at va- 

 rious rates of interest, adding also the age of 24 3 which 



