Considering the repeated discussions which have taken place on the question of the Income Tax, it is not a little surprising that the true understanding of it has not made greater progress. After all that has been said to demonstrate the injustice and unequal pressure of the tax as at present levied, the perseverance of some portion of the press, and of one or two persons of considerable reputation as regards their understanding of such matters, in the opposite opinion, is quite unaccountable. It will be seen by the Second Report of the Committee of the House, just published, that some still maintain that the taxing a temporary annuity at the same rate as a perpetuity is perfectly fair and equitable, because, as they are at great pains to show, the present value in each case is mulcted in the same ratio. It is, at all events, satisfactory to find that these authorities so far admit that “present value” is the proper thing to tax. They maintain, in fact, that in these cases a property tax and an income tax have an identical operation; and as they approve of the one, they must clearly give their sanction to the other. But, unfortunately, the identical character of the two does not hold good, in spite of the assertion of these gentlemen to the contrary; they do not observe that in the case of the temporary annuity the wave of taxation having once passed over, must, to make their argument good, leave it ever untouched thereafter, let the capital out of which it arises reappear in what shape it will: otherwise it is clear that such capital is liable to be taxed over and over again.

One of the most important problems of social statistics, after the questions of food and labour, is to determine the ratio of mortality and sickness.

The general mortality having been a subject of investigation during a long period, and the collection of facts and deductions therefrom being essential to the operations of the various respectable and long-established Assurance Companies, has at length been determined with sufficient exactness.

In the course of the inquiries which led to the paper, read before the Institute of Actuaries, and published in the last number of the Assurance Magazine, on “the Uniform Action of the Human Will,” which was principally illustrated by the regularity in the proportion of marriages between different classes and at different ages, I was very much struck by the law which appears to regulate the relative proportion of the sexes at birth. It has long been observed that, in all countries in which the law of population is not unusually disturbed, more males are born than females. This is the result, not of a few isolated observations, but of more than seventy millions of facts, collected from authentic sources in different kingdoms, and for many succeeding years. The proportion varies from nearly 109 males to 100 females in Russia, down to 104·62 males to 100 females in Sweden; Great Britain occupying the last place but one, about 104·75 to 100. The average births for all Europe may be taken as 106 males to 100 females.