life among them. In 1821 Mr. Harrison employed him for several months in computations relative to the Superannuation Act, and in 1822 he was occupied in considerations relative to the commutation of the naval and military half-pay and pensions. The measure consequently suggested by him was finally established by negotiations with the Bank of England in 1823 for its acceptance of the charge for public pensions in consideration of the ‘dead weight’ annuity. All the calculations were made by him, and it was plainly stated in the House of Commons that in the whole establishment of the Bank of England there was not one person capable of computing the new annuity at the fractional rate of interest agreed upon. On 1 Jan. 1822 he was removed from the admiralty to the treasury, and appointed actuary and principal accountant of the check department of the national debt office, the duties of which position he performed for twenty-nine years. For many years after he had sought to impress on the government the loss which the country was sustaining by the use of erroneous tables, he was treated with neglect and contempt, and it was only by the accidental production of one of his letters before Lord Althorpe's committee of finance in March 1828 that the matter was brought forward. This letter proved that the revenue was losing 8,000l. a week, and that this loss was concealed by the method of preparing the yearly accounts. The immediate suspension of the life annuity system took place, and, remodelled upon the basis of Finlaison's tables, it was resumed in November 1829 with a saving in five years of 390,000l. In 1831 he made computations on the duration of slave and creole life, preliminary to the compensation made to the slaveowners 1 Aug. 1834. He was consulted by the ecclesiastical commissioners on the means of improving church property, on the question of church leases, and finally on the subject of church rates; he made various reports on these matters, and on one occasion was summoned to attend the cabinet to explain his views to the ministers. On the passing of the General Registration Act in 1837, his opinion was taken on the details of the working of the scheme, and he was the first witness called before the parliamentary committee on church leases in the following year. The Institution of Actuaries being formed in 1847, he was elected the first president, and retained that position until his death. In 1848 he wrote two reports on the act for lending money to Irish landlords. He retired from the public service in August 1851, and employed his remaining days in his favourite study of scripture chronology, and the universal relationship of ancient and modern weights and measures. He died at 15 Lansdowne Crescent, Notting Hill, London, 13 April 1860. He married in London, first, in 1805, Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. James Glen, she died at Brighton in 1831; secondly, in 1836, Eliza, daughter of Thomas Davis of Waltham Abbey. His son Alexander Glen Finlaison, who was born at Whitehall on 25 March 1806, was also an author and an authority on insurance statistics.
Finlaison was the author of: 1. ‘Report of the Secretary to the Supplemental Fund for the Relief of the Widows and Orphans of the Medical Officers of the Royal Navy,’ 1817. 2. ‘Tables showing the Amount of Contributions for Providing Relief in Sickness,’ 1833. 3. ‘Rules of the Equitable Friendly Institution, Northampton, with Tables,’ 1837. 4. ‘Account of some Applications of the Electric Fluid to the Useful Arts by A. Bain, with a Vindication of his Claim to be the First Inventor of the Electro-Magnetic Printing Telegraph, and also of the Electro-Magnetic Clock,’ 1843. 5. ‘Tables for the use of Friendly Societies, for the Certificate of the Actuary to the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt. Constructed from the original computations of J. Finlaison, by A. G. Finlaison,’ 1847. He also produced some lyrical poems of considerable merit.
[Times, 17 April 1860, p. 9, and 23 April, p. 9; Gent. Mag. August 1860, pp. 194–5; Assurance Mag. April 1862, pp. 147–69; Walford's Insurance Cyclopædia (1874), iii. 300–3; Macaulay's England (1858), i. 284; Southwood Smith's Philosophy of Health (1835), i. 115–47.]
FINLAY, FRANCIS DALZELL (1793–1857), Irish journalist, son of John Finlay, tenant farmer, of Newtownards, co. Down, by his wife, Jane Dalzell, was born 12 July 1793 at Newtownards, and began life as a printer's apprentice in Belfast, where he started as a master printer in 1820. The letterpress which issued from his works was distinguished by both accuracy and elegance, being far superior to any that had previously been produced in Ireland. In 1824 he founded the 'Northern Whig.' Liberalism being then a very unpopular creed in Ulster, Finlay was frequently prosecuted for press offences. On 21 July 1826 he was indicted for publishing in the 'Northern Whig' a libel tending to bring into disrepute the character of a certain 'improving' landlord. The libel consisted in a letter purporting to be by a small farmer in which the improvements alleged to have been effected by the landlord in question were denied to be improvements at all, and in which a character for litigiousness was imputed to
