On his own hearth,
“Free from the griping scrivener’s hands
And the more biting mercer’s books,
Free from the bait of oiled hands
And painted looks?”
It is clear, from these and other facts, and from the circumstance that it would be very difficult to separate the casual visitors from the fixed inhabitants of London, that up to the year 1700 there was little information on which to found an argument. All that we possess is vague and desultory. Lord Salisbury, in a letter written to Prince Henry prior to 1612, says, “Be wary of Londoners, for there died here 123 last week.” On the 1st of May, 1619, we learn by another source that the number of deaths in London was from 200 to 300 weekly. At the accession of James I., London was said to contain little more than 150,000 inhabitants; and at the restoration of Charles II., 120,000 families were said to be within the walls of London. “Before the Restoration,” said Sir William Petty, “the people of Paris were more than those of London and Dublin put together; whereas, in 1687, the people of London were more than those of Paris and Rome.” Evelyn, again, says, in his Diary, in 1684, that he had seen London almost as large again as it was at that time. Judging from various independent sources, however, the population of England at the time of the Revolution may be fairly estimated as ranging from 5,000,000 to 5,500,000.
That the tables of Graunt and Petty had produced small practical effect, and that little or nothing was known as to the chances of life, may be gathered from a pamphlet printed in 1680, in which the whole doctrine of the value of life as then understood and acted on is affirmed: the utmost value allotted to the best life was 7 years, at which the life of a “healthful man,” at any age between 20 and 40, was estimated; while that of an aged or sickly person was from 5 to 6 years, the various limits between these two extremes constituting the whole range of difference in value.
Such was the limited nature of the statistics of life when the Astronomer Royal Halley compiled those calculations which make his name honoured by directors and actuaries. To him we owe the germ of all subsequent developments of this science, in that general formula for calculating the value of annuities which is yet regarded with so much respect.
Up to the period in which he lived—the latter half of the seventeenth century—the town of Breslau, in Silesia, was the only place which recorded the ages of its dead; and from these Halley drew a table of the probabilities of the duration of human life at every age. This was in 1693, and was the first table of the sort ever published.[8] In it he taught, with great clearness and exactness, the conditions needful for the formation of rates of mortality; the manner of forming them with complete geometrical precision; of deducing a corresponding table of the present state and annual movement of the population; of reading in them the probability of survivorship of any person taken at random in a given society; of, in truth, concluding upon the probable duration of the co-existence of several individuals from the sole knowledge of their age. He also first developed the true method of calculating life annuities, taking for his guide the rate of mortality during five successive years in Breslau.
That the tables of Dr. Halley were very much wanted may be assumed, as in 1692 annuities were granted on single lives at 14 per cent., or only 7 years’ purchase; and that the State took very little trouble to apply these tables is as true, for we read that, soon after they were published, annuities were estimated on 1 life at 9 years’ purchase, on 2 lives at 11 years’, and on 3 lives at 12 years’ purchase. Some allowance must, of course, be made for the difficulty of raising money and the difference of interest; still the price paid was out of all proper proportion. But the most singular circumstance connected with government annuities at this period is, that, when life annuities were changed into annuities for 99 years, the owner of a life annuity might secure an annuity for 99 years, by paying only 4 1/2 years’ extra purchase. Thus, by the payment of 15 1/2 years’ purchase, a certain annuity of 99 years could be procured.