December 24, 1886.] 



SCIENCE. 



579 



the year of his birth from that of his accession, 

 and is therefore liable to no error greater than a 

 fraction of a year. Following this is the expecta- 

 tion of life at the epoch of accession as deduced 

 from the ' combined experience ' table of mortali- 

 ty. This expectation is taken in the usual way, 

 as the number of years after which it would be an 

 even chance whether the individual was hving or 

 dead. Although this is not a mathematically rigor- 

 ous definition, yet in the case under consideration 

 it differs from the rigorous one only by an amount 

 too small to be worth consideration. Following 

 this is given the number of years which the in- 

 cumbent actually survived after entering upon the 

 duties of his office. 



Omitting the only • living ex-President, and 

 taking the sums of the expected and of the actual 

 years of life in the case of all the others, we find 

 them to be : — 



Total years to have been expected . 331 



Actual years of life 281 



If we omit the two abnormal cases in which a 



President died by assassination, the result will 



stand : — 



Years to have been expected . . . 289 

 Actual years 277 



If we reasoned from this general result alone, 

 we should conclude that Presidents were not, as a 

 class, less viable than the average of other men, 

 since the difference of twelve years between the 

 actual and expected sum total of life might well 

 be the result of chance. But a more minute 

 analysis of the table will show a feature which, 

 taken in connection with the historical facts, pre- 

 vents us from disposing of the subject in this 



summary way. Of the eight Presidents up to 

 Van Buren inclusive, all but one lived out the full 

 term of life allotted them by the tables, the single 

 exception being Washington. On the other hand, 

 of the thirteen men who have held the office since 

 Van Buren, all but four have died before living 

 out their allotted term. This fact raises the ques- 

 tion vsrhether we can attribute these premature 

 deaths to the more arduous nature of the duties 

 which the President is now called upon to per- 

 form. From this point of view, the dividing line 

 would not be between Van Buren and Harrison, 

 but rather between John Quincy Adams and 

 Jackson, because it was under the latter that the 

 change in question took place. Perhaps we ought 

 to introduce a third epoch with the civil war. 

 Making such a division, and omitting the cases of 

 Lincohi and Garfield, the exhibit, which seems to 

 show a total deficit of 53 years since Jackson, 

 stands thus : — 



Notwithstanding the color thus given to the 

 view that the modern President is liable to be 

 broken down by the duties of his office, it must be 

 considered, that, taking these numbers as they 

 stand, the number of cases is too small to sustain 

 such a conclusion. There is, however, another 

 circumstance to be considered. It is a weU- 

 known fact that the tabular expectation of 

 life has been considerably exceeded in the general 

 average of men who, during the present genera- 

 tion, have insured their lives. How great the in- 

 crease is, cannot at present be exactly stated, but 

 I do not think that it is less than one-fourth. It 

 will also, I think, be conceded that all who have 

 acceded to the presidency have been men with 

 good insurable lives. If, now, we increase the 

 expectation of life by one-fourth in the last two 

 lines above, we shall have a decidedly greater dis- 

 crepancy : namely, expected years, 252 ; actual 

 years, 149. If it were allowable to include the 

 cases of Lincohi and Garfield, which are omitted 

 in this comparison, the discrepancy would be 

 greatly increased. 



While the danger of assassination has undoubt- 

 edly been gTcatly lessened by the deserved fate 

 which the two assassins of Presidents met, I do 

 not think we can consider it as a vanishing quan- 

 tity. I think assassination should be regarded as 

 a real danger to which a President is subject, and 

 that a prudent life-insurance company would con- 

 sider that fact in deciding upon an application for 

 insurance. 



