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WILLIAMS' CASE. 227
life interest of any sort, or of apportioning any burthen between
such an estate and a remainder or reversion dependant upon it (z)
The putting of a present value upon a life annuity, or upon a
certain rent for life, or upon a specified annual life income of any
description necessarily involves a consideration of the chances of
life of the individual during whose life such an annual income is
claimed; for although other matters must be taken into considera-
tion in making an estimate of its present value; such as the suffi-
ciency of the security, the probable punctuality of the annual pay-
ment, the general demand for the use of money, and the like; yet,
it would be difficult to make any calculation as to the duration of
a single life without the aid of some general observations as to the
rate of mortality, and the probable duration of such lives in like
situations. But a judicial controversy as to the present value of a
particular life interest, being, in its nature, confined to an insulated
subject, however dependant a full understanding and correct deter-
mination of it may be upon the doctrine of chances, cannot afford
the means of collecting those facts and circumstances on which that
doctrine rests, since the doctrine is itself the result of general ob-
servations upon those previously collected facts and circumstances,
in relation to the duration of human life, whilst the adjudication
must necessarily be, if it proceeds upon that doctrine at all, a mere
application of it to the peculiar case. Hence it is, that, although
judicial investigations may, in such cases, be greatly facilitated by
a just application of that doctrine, there is no allusion to any rule
for estimating the probable continuance of life to be met with, in
any of the reported adjudications, until long after the publication of
several essays upon the doctrine of chances in relation to the dura-
tion of human life.
Doctor Edmund Halley, an eminent mathematician of England,
appears to have been the first who undertook to explain the doctrine
of chances in relation to the probable duration of human life.
About the year 1690, he published his Essay on the Determination
of the Degrees of Mortality, in order to adjust the valuation of
annuities on lives, founded, as he informs us, upon a table of obser-
vations of the births and deaths in the city of Breslaw in Silesia, (a)
Soon after, the Observations on Chronology, involving similar con-
siderations as to the duration of human life, were published by Sir
___________ __
(z) Ryle v. Brown, 6 Exch. Rep. 265; Barley v. Singleton, 6 Exch. Rep. 426.—
(a) Rees' Cyclo. v. Halley.
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