LEVEL PREMIUM COMPANIES 33

matics in one of the universities, by means of public lectures in London, upon the subject of life insurance from a technical standpoint, as well as a practical. Simpson was, in fact, the discoverer of the method of computing a correct level premium, although the manner of computing the value of an annuity- had been understood for a half century already.

Sufficient support having been secured to war-rant it, application was made to Parliament for a charter. It was opposed both by the Amicable Corporation, which asserted that its charter was intended to be exclusive, so far as mutual life insurance was concerned, and by both the stock companies, on the ground that it would not be right, after granting them charters under which only a very small and unprofitable business had been secured or could be secured, to open the door to a new company which would compel a further division of this very limited business.

All these companies also objected to the granting of the charter on the ground that the level premium plan was an untried and very questionable experiment which the ignorant public should not be encouraged to essay.

Curiously enough, nearly seventy-five years later the New York Life and Trust Company, which has now long ago ceased to do a life insurance business at all, appeared in Albany in 1833 to protest against the granting of a life insur-