Twenty-seventh Annual Report.         5

purposes, to maintain the integrity of its fiscal
year in conformity with its charter.

Confusion was also often created among the
insuring public and its policy-holders, by the
publication, in official form, each year, of state¬
ments differing materially in amounts of assets,
insurance, receipts, disbursements, etc. ; and not
unfrequently designing persons strove to im-
l^lant distrust in the minds of those imperfectly
acquainted with insurance matters, by pointing
to what appeared to constitute glaring discre¬
pancies between the reports made to the Insu¬
rance Departments and those made by the
Company to its members. Four years ago,
Mr. Barnes, then Superintendent of the insu¬
rance Department of the State of New-York,
procured the passage by the Legislature of this
State of a special law to enable this, and other
companies similarly situated, to conform their
fiscal statements to the general insurance law
of this State; but the Company was reluctant
to incur the expense, labor, and derangement
of its internal.system, which the change would
unavoidably involve, so long as it remained pos¬
sible to conduct its business upon the old system,
with due regard to the interests of its policy¬
holders.    Toward the close of the year 1869,