to prepare the returns actually rendered to us within any reasonable time.
Returns have been obtained, in a more or less com- plete form, from all the following departments of the civil service, viz. :—
Colonial Land and Emigration.
Charitable Donations and Bequests (Ireland). Consolidated Office of Writs.
Court of Relief of Insolvent Debtors. Exchequer.
General Register Office, England and Wales. General Register Office, Dublin.
* Namely, "Whether the deductions taken under the Act of “1834 are more than adequate to meet the charge under the
"Act for this class of Civil Servants."
We find that several of the returns are not com- plete, and we of course have been only able to deal with them as we found them. If more time could have been allowed for investigating the minute details involved in the inquiry, it is probable that some difference in the results might appear; but having regard to the very large number of cases embraced in the mass of schedules delivered to us, and to the time that would have been indispensable for the verification of each particular statement, we have been content to rely upon the deductions that we believed could safely be drawn from what was before us; and we may state our conviction that any alteration in the main conclusion we had to arrive at would not be influenced materially by the special verifications alluded to.
It is proper, however, for our own justification to say, that we have made a most laborious arrangement of the facts communicated to us; and as there are A 4
APPENDIX TO SUPPLEMENTAL REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS APPOINTED TO INQUIRE [App. I.
many collateral results which we consider it must be of great interest to the Commissioners to possess, we beg to annex several tables embracing the following results:-
First, a classification of the facts deduced from Return No. 1, which contains a list of all the per- sons now employed in the civil service; the total number given being 15,219. This return may, therefore, we think, be fairly thought to present for our purposes a sufficient view of the whole civil service of the country. The classification exhibits the num- ber of persons who were, on the 1st of January 1857, employed in the civil service at each year of age, showing the aggregate and also the average salary paid to persons of every age, and the aggregate deduction to which they would have been liable under the Act of 1834.
Separate lists are given for those persons whose salaries did not exceed 100l. per annum, and of those whose salaries did exceed that amount (App. A. and B.). At the foot of each account is stated the unimportant number of cases wherein the ages were not given in the returns. These lists have again been classified, so as to exhibit the numbers in each decade of life, with the aggregate and the average salaries applicable to the several decades (App. C. and D.).
A still further arrangement of the facts in the Return No. 1 has been made, to determine the average salary paid to the civil servants for each year of ser- vice, keeping distinct, as in the former tables, the salaries which exceed 100l. per annum from those -LL da not avgood that amount (Ann. E. and F.).
departments as new appointments. Inasmuch as their service, so far as respects superannuation claims, would, of course, date from their original appointments, they ought not properly to have been included at all in the Return No. 2, and we have consequently left them out in our classification. It is not improbable that like cases have been passed over unobserved from our not having anything to direct our minds especially to them.
There has been a considerable diversity in the manner of filling up Return No. 2 in the different departments, which has made the labour very great to reduce them to any uniform arrangement, and great care has been needed to extract from them the real facts of the cases.
From a careful classification of the Returns No. 2, it appears that during the ten years over which the Returns extend, the Government would by the aban- donment of contributions have been benefited to the extent of about 73,6201., or 7,3621. per annum, in- cluding compound interest at the rate of 3 per cent., if all the persons who left the service under the con- ditions mentioned in these Returns had been subject to the superannuation deductions of 24 or 5 per cent. respectively.
This abandonment of about 7,3627 per annum, being about 63 per cent. on the computed gross amount of annual contributions as set forth in page 14 of this report [see the fifth paragraph of the other column on this page] may therefore be added to the 106,9437., showing that the total effective contributions of the civil service might ultimately have obtained
INTO THE OPERATION OF THE SUPERANNUATION ACT.
report hereon that the result shows the mortality amongst the civil service pensioners to exceed, at all ages, that which prevails amongst the healthy classes of the community. The difference, as respects all the earlier ages at which persons have become pensioners, is so marked and considerable as to lead
we have formed a decided opinion that the deductions made from the salaries of the civil servants under the authority of the Act of 1834 were not adequate to meet the charge to which the public was liable under that Act.
In communicating this opinion, we think it right to
APPENDIX TO SUPPLEMENTAL REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS APPOINTED TO INQUIRE [App. I
A TABLE showing the Total Number of Persons embraced in the Return No. 1, whose Salaries exceeded 100%. per Annum, classified according to Age, exhibiting the Gross Amount of Salaries paid at each Age, the Number of Persons of each Age, and the Average Salary at each Age.
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