and Wales.

ACCORDING to Kemp's Mercantile Gazette, the total number of commercial failures recorded in England and Wales during the week ending Friday, Nov. 9th, was 172, viz. :New Bankruptcy Proceedings published in the London Gazette, 90; Deeds of Arrangement registered, 82. The respective numbers in the corresponding week of last year were: Bankruptcies, 92; Deeds of Arrangement, 97-total, 189; being a decrease of 17. The total number of commercial failures recorded during the 45 weeks of the present year is 7,229; the total number recorded in the corresponding 45 weeks of last year was 7,740, showing a decrease of 511.

The number of Bills of Sale, including Re-registrations, filed in England and Wales for the week ending Friday, Nov. 9th, was 155. The number in the corresponding week of last year was 183, showing a decrease of 28. The total number filed during the 45 weeks of the present year is 6,598; the total number filed in the corresponding 45 weeks of last year was 7,273, showing a decrease of 675.

Debentures.

The Mortgages and Charges registered by limited companies in England and Wales during the week ending Friday, Nov. 9th, amounted to £465.751, by way of addition to £1,527,608, previously issued by the same companies. The amount registered in the corresponding week of last year was £777,632, showing a decrease of £311,881. The total amount registered during the 45 weeks of the present year was £69,305,154 (in addition to the issues in previous years by the same companies), as compared with £65,878,893 for the corresponding 45 weeks in 1905, showing an increase of £3,426,261.

The Profession in Scotland.

Obituary.

Mr.

preaching in the end of the eighteenth century. Haldane's father was in 1790 inducted as an independent pastor to the charge of the Tabernacle in Greenside Place, where he preached gratuitously for fifty years. The Haldanes trace their descent through twenty generations over a period of seven centuries of Scottish history. The late Mr. Haldane was descended from a branch of the family who migrated from the neighbourhood of the Tweed into Perthshire in the twelfth century, and there is still in possession of the family a charter of the lands of Frandie, part of the Gleneagles estate, granted to Roger de Haldane by King William the Lion. Educated at the High School and University of Edinburgh, Mr. Haldane was apprenticed to Mr. Ralph Erskine-Scott, at that time a well-known accountant, and afterwards he entered the office of his brother Mr. Robert Haldane, Writer

to the Signet. Subsequently he returned to the accountant's profession, and in 1856 he became a member of the Society of He Accountants in Edinburgh. had thus attained his jubilee in the membership of a body which in 1895 did him the honour of electing him their President. In 1858 Mr. Haldane became a partner with Mr. Donald Lindsay and Mr. George Auldjo Jamieson, in the firm carried on under the well-known name of Lindsay, Jamieson & Haldane. Mr. Haldane's business connections were wide in their ramifications. He was a director of the Royal Bank of Scotland, a director of the Arniston Coal Company, a director of the New Zealand and Australian Land Company, and a director of the Scottish Trust and Loan Company of Ceylon. He was auditor of the Scottish Widows' Fund and of the North British and Mercantile Insurance Company, as well as many other companies, and at various times of several of the principal Scottish banks. He acted until recently in a similar capacity for the County Councils of the Lothians. Lord Bute's huge trusts were audited by him, and in 1878 he and Mr. Auldjo Jamieson were appointed two of the liquidators of the City of Glasgow Bank. Mr. Haldane was intimately connected with the work of the Representative Church Council of the Episcopal Church in Scotland, and took an active share in its deliberations. A trustee of the Council, he was also chairman of its Business Committee and a member of the Executive Committee. Outside purely business concerns his ripe experience made

men

in Edinburgh, died on the 30th ult., at his residence in Grosvenor Crescent. He had been ill for a month. Born in 1831, Mr. Haldane belonged to an old Scottish family, the Haldanes of Gleneagles. The uncle of the Right Hon. R. B. Haldane, Secretary of State for War, he was the son of James Alexander Haldane, one of the

willing helper. He was a manager of the Royal Infirmary for five years, and until recently he acted as chairman of the Committee of Contributors, and in other ways he took a sympathetic interest in the whole work of the institution. The movement for the erection of the Victoria Memorial School for the Sons of Scottish Sailors and Soldiers found in him a warm friend, and he acted

as chairman of a sub-committee of subscribers appointed to carry out the scheme. In politics he was a Unionist, and one of the originators of the Scottish Conservative Club. He was chairman of the club for ten or twelve years, and resigned that position only last year. He was a Deputy Lieutenant for the City of Edinburgh. Of Mr. Haldane's three sons, the eldest is Mr. Francis G. Haldane, W.S., of the firm of W. & F. Haldane, W.S.; Mr. Herbert W. Haldane, C.A., is a partner of the firm of Lindsay, Jamieson & Haldane; and the third son is Mr. Henry C. Haldane, a partner in the firm of Neish, Howell & Haldane, solicitors, London. His nephew, the brother of the Secretary of State for War, is Mr. W. S. Haldane, W.S., the Crown Agent in Scotland.

The death took place recently of Mr. Alfred A. Matthew, C.A., Edinburgh, at the age of thirty years. The deceased served his apprenticeship with Messrs. Bringloe & Maxtone Graham, C.A., Edinburgh, and was admitted to the Edinburgh Society of Accountants in 1898. He thereafter proceeded to New York, and remained there until two years ago, when he returned to this country on account of ill-health.

East of Scotland Bankruptcy Association.

Procedure in regard to the winding up of estates under the Bankruptcy Court and by private arrangement, as at present existing, was the subject of a lecture delivered by Mr. W. Kinniburgh Morton, S.S.C., at a meeting of the East of Scotland Bankruptcy Reform Association in the Goold Hall, St. Andrew Square, on the 1st inst. A comparison of the Scottish and English laws greatly favoured, he held, the methods adopted by the latter, Scottish law presenting many anomalies and allowing debtors greater licence than was the case in the south. In place of the old enactments, he suggested that one law, intelligible to all, should be framed. Privilege of class must yield to the rights of the general community. Every right available to a debtor should be available to a creditor. He advocated that imprisonment in some modified form should be imposed, as in that way a large amount of fraudulent trading would be brought to an end. The remedy lay in their own hands. If associations such as theirs combined to collect evidence of typical failures to meet legal obligations, of cases where dishonest debtors had flourished at the expense of creditors, a case would be made out which would compel action by the authorities.

With regard to the above report, which appeared in the

Scotsman, Mr. Kinniburgh Morton wrote as follows to the editor of the paper :

"27 Rutland Square, Edinburgh, November 2 1906.

"Sir,-Kindly allow me space to correct a wrong impression conveyed by your report in to-day's issue of my address to the Bankruptcy Reform Association, arising, no doubt, from the necessity for condensation. I am made to say that a comparison of Scottish and English laws greatly favoured the methods adopted by the latter. Incidentally, I did remark that in certain matters, notably the appointment of a receiver to protect the bankrupt estate till the trustee could take possession, and to inquire officially into the bankrupt's conduct, and also the power of a Judge to order imprisonment in cases of wilful failure to pay debts, English practice might well be adopted. I am far from thinking, however, that the English system, taken as a whole, is equal to our own.-I am, &c.

W. KINNIBURGH MORTON."

Faculty of Actuaries in Scotland.

Interesting Inaugural Address.

The session of the Faculty of Actuaries in Scotland was opened on the 5th inst. in the Hall, 24 George Street, Edinburgh. There was a large attendance.

Mr. Archibald Hewat, the President, delivered his inaugural address, the subject of which was "The Actuary in Scotland." He prefaced his address by a reference to the loss which the Faculty had sustained by the death of three of the Fellows-Mr. Hugh Blair, Mr. Philip R. D. Maclagan, and Mr. David Clunie Gregor. Mr. Hewat pointed out that by sheer force of circumstances the Scot is, and has long been, a citizen of the world, a traveller, a pioneer, a founder of empires, and a successful administrator in the State and in the Church, in the industries and in the finances of nations, as well as of the insurance companies of the world. These last, in their multifarious forms, their enormous resources, and the vastness of their influence for good, have taken, he said, an admittedly high place among the civilising agencies of the world. Also that it was a Scotsman who projected the Bank of England, which received its charter of incorporation in 1694, one year before the Bank of Scotland was instituted by a charter of incorporation from the Scots Parliament; and that it was John Coutts, Lord Provost of Edinburgh

(1742-44) who founded, in Edinburgh, the famous banking house of Coutts & Co., now in London. Proceeding, he said:-The Scot has long had the credit of being a frugal | person, shrewd and thrifty, who husbands resources for future eventualities, cautiously enterprising withal. It is to the prudent and thrifty Scot, who has realised that "the "bed rock of prosperity in nations and municipalities is "the due consideration of finance," he said, the world owes much that is best and soundest in the development and management of insurance, banking, and railway companies, not to mention other joint-stock concerns, and com. merce generally. Our Scottish-trained bankers, insurance, and railway officials, as well as our Scottish-trained merchants, are to be found in all the habitable parts of the earth. The Scot has largely developed in him the gift of finance. He has devoted much time and skill specially to institutions founded for the encouragement of thrift in its many forms, and to the successful development of schemes of provision for the future, for himself and his dependants-especially to friendly societies, widows' funds, and life assurance companies. Few know better than the Scot that the family, love of kith and kin, is the true foundation of prosperous national life. In referring to friendly societies, Mr. Hewat mentioned that the first attempt to collect data and to form tables by which to estimate sickness experience was made by the Highland Society of Scotland in 1824, and that there are now over 2,000 such societies in Scotland, with funds amounting to nearly £3,500,000. As an improvement upon and an upward step from the friendly society came the widows' funds, these being for the most part founded towards the close of the eighteenth century and early in the nineteenth. The first of these was that for the widows of the ministers of the Church and the professors in the Universities of Scotland, founded in Edinburgh so far back as 1744-a city minister, the Professor of Mathematics, the Lord Provost, and the City Accountant being the founders. followed by others. The total amount of the funds belonging to those of the ministers and professors, schoolmasters, lawyers, bankers, and merchants now amount to nearly £2,850,000-an increase of nearly £2,000,000 during the past half century. Mr. Hewat pointed out that these but paved the way for the better, more comprehensive, and more acceptable schemes of provisions now to be had by means of modern life assurance in its many attractive and adaptable forms. When the Faculty was constituted fifty years ago there were fifteen Scottish insurance offices transacting life business-eleven in Edinburgh, two in Glasgow, and two in Aberdeen. Three of those fifteen offices amalgamated with other three of them, thus reducing the number to twelve. To those, however, there fall to be added six new Scottish offices founded since 1855 -the earliest of them dating from 1876-making now

This was

eighteen Scottish offices: thirteen in Edinburgh, three in Glasgow, one in Aberdeen, and one in Perth, transacting life assurance, endowment, and annuity business. The paid-up capital of the Scottish offices fifty years ago slightly exceeded £750,000, while now it somewhat exceeds £5,600,000. The life assurance and annuity funds were then a little more than £8,900,000, while now they only slightly fall short of £93,000,000. The premium income was then rather less than £1,300,000, while now it is not far short of £6,600,000. The interest income was then under £360,000, while now it exceeds £3,550,000. A truly marvellous growth during half a century-and this refers only to offices having their headquarters in Scotland, the population of which is less than five-sevenths of that of London with its suburbs. The eighteen Scottish offices are now paying in claims under life assurance and endowment policies nearly £5,500,000 per annum, and considerably over £750,000 per annum to annuitants. They also possess, among them, "other funds" belonging to the life department, amounting to upwards of £500,000 beyond the £93,000,000 already referred to. Friendly societies, widows' funds, and life assurance offices in Scotland, with funds thus reaching to the large sum of, say, £100,000,000, not only afford sufficient justification for the existence of the Faculty of Actuaries, but, were there nothing else, they also provide ample employment and a very honourable sphere of usefulness to the Fellows thereof. It must not be supposed that it was the Faculty which called the actuary into existence; it was rather the actuary who created the Faculty. If it was not the actuary who, in some primitive form, first called friendly societies, widows' funds, and life assurance offices into existence, it is undoubtedly to him that they owe, for the most part, their development, their continued existence, and their promise of lasting stability. Mr. Hewat reminded his audience that there was one great Scotsman to whom the actuarial profession was much indebted-John Napier, Baron of Merchiston, the inventor of logarithms, who was born in Merchiston Castle fifty-three years before their Scottish King James VI. ascended the English Throne as James I. of England, and who died in that same castle in the year 1617, leaving large estate. Mr. Hewat remarked that the Scottish actuary has been evolved from many useful and dignified professions. In early days the accountant, the lawyer, the banker, the insurance official, the schoolmaster, and the professional mathematician performed, among them, practically all that was then expected of or was possible to an actuary. The work and the actuary have grown up and developed together, the one acting and reacting on the other. A too common mistake has been made, for which Mr. Hewat feared the actuary himself is somewhat to blame, in narrowing or limiting his sphere. To enlarge the view and