A plan is in preparation for the establishment of an annuity fund. It is to be named _Caisse des Placemens en Viager_. It is to be established at 440 Rue Saint Méry and 435 Rue du Renard Saint Méry. Its motto is _surety, stability, simplicity_. Those who hold shares are to enjoy a progressive annuity. This annuity is paid according to their ages, and not to their shares; hence all the holders of shares who have attained any particular age receive the same rate of interest whatever may have been the price of their shares. The _minimum_ of rate for the first age is six livres per share, and is assigned to the first class only; the primitive rate of the subsequent classes rises gradually to the twelfth, which comprehends the holders of shares who have attained their sixtieth year. By reckoning from the rate assigned to the first class, the annuity increases at fixed epochs, and rises by thirty-five gradations to the maximum of 5000 livres, which belongs to all the classes, and is paid to all holders of shares who have attained the age to which this last term of the progression relates. All the intermediate terms determine equally what is to be paid, without any distinction to the holders of shares in each class, in proportion as they arrive at the different ages which correspond to each rate of annuity. Those holders are divided into twelve classes, and each class into twelve series, each of which has a separate and distinct account. At first view this plan seems to resemble a Tontine, but it is a very different thing. A Tontine divides annually amongst the survivors the shares of those deceased, but in this fund the probabilities of human life have been calculated, and by making them agree with the decrease of the capital invested, which together with their interest serve to augment the annuities, the movement of the funds and the death of the holder of shares are so combined that every holder knows at any given point the benefits he will derive at the different periods of his life. The principle of the establishment consists “in an equality of annuities, payable to the same ages, whatever may have been the time of investment of the share, combined with an equality in the number of survivors among such holders of shares as have attained the same age, whatever may have been the time of becoming such.” The holders have been distributed into twelve classes, the first of which has been fixed at 3200. It comprises only such individuals as are under a year old, and serves as a regulation of the decreasing numbers of each subsequent class. Thus the numbers decreasing of the shares in each class are as follows: First 3200 Second 2400 Third 2242 Fourth 2102 Fifth 1940 Sixth 1792 Seventh 1648 Eighth 1438 Ninth 1200 Tenth 1020 Eleventh 838 Twelfth 656 [Sidenote: RENTE VIAGÈRE]