1. Our subscriptions respect all persons grown and in the prime of their age; past the first, and providing against the last, part of danger (Sir William’s account including children and old people, which always make up one-third of the bills of mortality).
2. Our claims will fall thin at first for several years; and let but the money increase for ten years, as it does in the account for three years, it would be almost sufficient to maintain the whole number.
3. Allow that casualty and poverty are our debtor side; health, prosperity, and death are the creditor side of the account; and in all probable accounts those three articles will carry off three fourth-parts of the number, as follows: If one in forty shall die annually (as no doubt they shall, and more), that is 2,500 a year, which in twenty years is 50,000 of the number; I hope I may be allowed one-third to be out of condition to claim, apparently living without the help of charity, and one third in health and body, and able to work; which, put together, make 83,332; so it leaves 16,668 to make claims of charity and pensions in the first twenty years, and one-half of them must, according to Sir William Petty, die on our hands in twenty years; so there remains but 8,334.
But to put it out of doubt, beyond the proportion to be guessed at, I will allow they shall fall thus:
The first year, we are to note, none can claim; and the second year the number must be very few, but increasing: wherefore I suppose
| £ | |
| One in every 500 shall claim the second year, which is 200; the charge whereof is | 500 |
| One in every 100 the third year is 1,000; the charge | 2,500 |
| Together with the former 200 | 500 |
| £3,500 |
To carry on the calculation.
| £ | s. | d. | |
| We find the stock at the end of the third year | 66,933 | 18 | 0 |
| The quarterage of the fourth year, abating as before | 19,000 | 0 | 0 |
| Interest of the stock | 4,882 | 17 | 6 |
| The quarterage of the fifth year | 18,600 | 0 | 0 |
| Interest of the stock | 6,473 | 0 | 0 |
| £115,889 | 15 | 6 | |
| The charge | 3,000 | 0 | 0 |
| 2,000 to fall the fourth year | 5,000 | 0 | 0 |
| And the old continued | 3,500 | 0 | 0 |
| 2,000 the fifth year | 5,000 | 0 | 0 |
| The old continued | 11,000 | 0 | 0 |
| £27,500 | 0 | 0 |
By this computation the stock is increased above the charge in five years £89,379 15s. 6d.; and yet here are sundry articles to be considered on both sides of the account that will necessarily increase the stock and diminish the charge:
| First, in the five years’ time 6,200 having claimed charity, the number being abated for in the reckoning above for stock, it may be allowed new subscriptions will be taken in to keep the number full, which in five years amounts to | 3,400 | 0 | 0 |
| Their sixpences is | 115 | 0 | 0 |
| £3,555 | 0 | 0 | |
| Which added to £115,889 15s. 6d. augments be stock to | 119,444 | 15 | 6 |
| Six thousand two hundred persons claiming help, which falls, to be sure, on the aged and infirm, I think, at a modest computation, in five years’ time 500 of them may be dead, which, without allowing annually, we take at an abatement of £4,000 out of the charge | 4,000 | 0 | 0 |
| Which reduces the charge to | 23,500 | 0 | 0 |