quently directed their anxious attention to this subject, and as recently as June last, have declared that of several scientific gentlemen then examined, (among whom was the actuary of the life office of which I am the founder,) no one, except a country clergyman, and Mr. Morgan himself, recommended the Northampton tables as a safe basis of a deferred annuity. That these committees have only tardily adopted a course which your Lordship suggested as far back as 1808, will be seen from your Lordship's judgments, which by your kind permission I was allowed to record in an appendix to my work, in 1823. In the case of Pearce v. Piper, (in the course of which Buckley v. Cater before Lord Thurlow was mentioned,) the bill stated articles of agreement, dated 25th June, 1798, for the establishment of a society under the title, "The Amicable Society of Master Bakers," for raising an annuity fund, containing provisions for the payment of annual subscriptions, &c.; and that every subscriber, who should have been a member seven years, and should have attained the age of sixty years, should be entitled to a clear annuity of 60l. for life, and the widow of every such annuitant to an annuity of 30%., or, in certain cases, 601. for her life, if she continued a widow: in giving judgment, your Lordship said, "The parties who formed this society proposed to establish, certainly, a very useful institution, to the success of which every one must wish fairly to contribute; and regret the failure, if there is in the original constitution some error fatal to its existence, arising from the desire of different individuals to have, towards the close of life, that degree of ease and comfort which a proper application of the fruit of the labors of their more early years might produce. If they cannot agree on some plan, I must refer it to the Master to make similar inquiries to those directed by Lord Thurlow, taking the assistance of a calculator; and to inform me, if this society cannot longer exist, what will be an equitable distribution of the funds subscribed. But that course is not to be taken, unless the Court shall be unable to do more justice, by securing to those who have and may become entitled to annuities the enjoyment of them." In Davis v. Fisk, also, your Lordship observed, "The hardship or injustice of the case may be urged; but many gentlemen of the bar must remember the cases of the unfortunate annuitantswidows who had subscribed small sums during a certain portion of their lives, to receive annuities after they had reached a particular age. The one case was before my Lord Thurlow, and the other before myself. That learned lord felt most acutely his inability to afford relief, by reason of the situation of the parties; and, however much he might have lamented his want of power, I am sure I suffered as much on my own account." A census Your Lordship is perfectly aware, that in almost every trade and profession, a different rate of mortality will be found to prevail; and I assert with perfect confidence, that materials may be obtained, from which to deduce the correct values in every case. of the population of the whole kingdom once in five years, carefully setting forth ages and occupations, and the bills of mortality in which the ages and trades were also distinguished, would be data enough; and these would not cost a tythe of the amount lost by the Government annually by sale of annuities, deduced from imperfect materials. The probable deterioration of the expectation of life by chronic diseases, may likewise be reduced within very narrow limits; I speak advisedly, when I say that authentic records of the treatment and duration of such maladies, in a great many thousand cases, and spreading over a long series of years, may be obtained, and reduced into a tabular form. Shall we then, in a matter of great national importance, reject our better information to act on mere approximations made before the proper data for accurate deductions could be obtained? Shall we in this one case travel backwards half a century? I humbly venture to assert that this should not be, and to hope that it will not be. Lunacy (as mania is generally called) has frequently come under your Lordship's judicial notice; and has always received your most anxious and benevolent attention. Is any prognosis of this distressing and increasing malady to be formed from observations founded on the bills of mortality, fifty years ago, at the town of Northampton? Shall we measure the probable existence of a person so afflicted, by the insufficient materials afforded by the deaths among the inhabitants of a small inland town? Is it right, in the present improved state of medical science, to estimate the chance of life in such a case by the treatment adopted more than half a century ago, when narcotic drugs and oblivious antidotes were thought the most proper, because the most stupifying, remedies? As well might we seek to drown madness in intoxication, and await the feast of reason from the orgies of Bacchus. Your Lordship's opinions, which now appear with the force of predictions, have been fully confirmed; and although their fulfilment has been shown at a time when you have thrown off the forms of state and the labors of office, those opinions are still revered, your suggestions would still be thankfully adopted, and your voice is still potential. I am, my Lord, Your Lordship's much obliged and obedient servant, Asylum Life Office, 70, Cornhill, London. March 21, 1828. то JOHN HUGHES, ESQ., M.A. ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD, ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S JUSTICES OF THE PEACE IN THE ON THE SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION PROPOSED BY THE POPULAR PARTIES. BY THE REV. JOHN PHILIPS POTTER, M. A. Omnino, qui reipublicæ præfuturi sunt duo Platonis præcepta teneant: unum ut utilitatem civium sic tueantur, ut, quæcunque agunt, ad eam referant, obliti commodorum suorum alterum, ut totum corpus reipublicæ curent: ne dum partem aliquam tuentur, reliquas deserant: ut enim tutela, sic procuratio reipublicæ ad utilitatem eorum, qui commissi sunt, non ad eorum, quibus commissa est, gerenda est: qui autem parti civium consulunt, partem negligunt, rem perniciosissimam in civitatem inducunt, seditionem atque discordiam; ex quo evenit, ut alii populares, alii studiosi optimi cujusque videantur, pauci universorum.-Cicero de Officiis, lib. i. sect. 25. SECOND EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. LONDON:-1828. MY DEAR HUGHES, THERE are few to whom I could with greater propriety address an argument in proof of the superiority of a classical education, as a discipline for the mind, because few have derived greater advantages than yourself from studying the style and matter of the great writers of antiquity-few have minds richer in "the spoils of time" -few have more philosophical views of philology, greater acuteness in logical investigation, or more skill in detecting the arts of the rhetorician-still fewer have brought the precision and system, which this discipline is pre-eminently calculated to cultivate, to bear with more effect on the business of life. Nor is the propriety less evident of addressing a defence of religious and moral principles, (I unite these, because I am sure they are so identified in the minds of the people as to be perfectly inseparable, and that to undermine the former is to destroy the latter at least is to insure an interregnum of crime for which history has no parallel,) to one who as an individual, the master of a family, a country gentleman and a magistrate, affords an example of religious conduct equally remote from the errors of the ascetic, the fanatic, and the formalist; and who is not more respected as a firm and temperate enforcer of the laws, and as a refuge to those whose crimes have arisen from distress, than as setting an example of the force of religious principle in its best practical consequences -in good will to man and a zealous promotion of his interests. Pardon me, if I so far transgress from my subject as to remind some of my readers, that it is to the claims of a duty scarcely inferior in importance to that of the senator, that we are principally indebted for the deep interest in the welfare of the lower orders which actuates the most respectable of our country gentlemen, and for that consequent respect towards the higher orders which prevails among our agricultural population, and which, as you well know, it is in the power of each country magistrate to increase, at least within the range of his influence, in a degree almost unbounded. Even in the mercantile districts I have seen that effected by an unpaid magistracy, which it would have been utterly impossible for a functionary paid by the public to have accomplished. You have often heard me mention, that in the course of the popular disturbances in the neighborhood of Manchester, my deceased grandfather strong in the authority of high character and undaunted resolution, but in person feeble and in the decline of life, rode fearlessly into the very midst of a riotous mob, and took their standard from the hand of its bearer without being either resisted or assaulted. That this boldness would not have been borne from one to whom the character of a hireling could possibly have been affixed, was proved by the fact of his colleague, who had been in the pay of government as an officer of dragoons, being with little ceremony attacked, λevou Tетршμатi, for a much less aggravated offence against the majesty of the populace. What I have said will little avail those, whose conduct has given occasion for a senseless clamor against the magistracy of the country. If there have been a few instances of magistrates who, from gross ignorance, culpable neglect, unjustifiable prejudice, or, worst of all, for their own base interests, have corrupted the greatest of blessings, let universal indignation and contempt set its brand on the individuals; but let not the body suffer in the public opinion. There have been cowards and traitors even in the British army and navy, but who, therefore, questions British courage or British honor? Or if there be a defect in the present means of insuring a sufficiency of legal knowlege to the magistrate, let our Universities supply the remedy, but let us not listen with any other feeling than suspicion and contempt to those who speak of a hired magistracy. But though the propriety of your being addressed on such subjects is abundantly evident, it by no means follows that I am the |