Miscellanies. 203 
classed elsewhere, yet touches medical statistics on so many points, 
that it would be placed most conveniently, perhaps, in this division, 
and would constitute a third subdivision. 
Moral and Intellectual Statistics comprehend, Ist, the statistics of 
literature ; 2dly, of education; 3dly, of religious instruction and 
ecclesiastical institutions ; 4thly, of crime. Although fourteen sub- 
divisions have now been enumerated, it is probable more will be re- 
quire 
It will, of course, be one prominent object of the society to — 
a statistical library, as rapidly as its funds will admit. 
The gentlemen incorporated by the New York act, are Seuits 
Tallmadge, James M. Matthews, Edwin Williams, Talman J. Wa- 
ters, William Minot Mitchell, Samuel Cowdrey, and their associates, 
and the board of trust, for the present season, is composed of the 
same gentlemen, with the addition of Livingston Livingston, George 
Bacon, Benjamin D. Silliman, John W. Francis, Timothy Dewey, 
Reuben Ellis, and Jonathan Amory, with power to perpetuate the 
succession. 
The subject of statistical societies for the United States, was re- 
commended in this Journal, Vol. xxx1. p. 186, by Mr. Sanderson, 
as the representative of the Statistical Society of Paris, with which 
we have interchanged publications and correspondence ever since 
its institution. Although from the pressure of other duties we have 
been obliged to decline taking an active part in this subject, we are 
much gratified to find that it has been brought forward under the 
best auspices. The subject is one of extreme importance to the 
United States, in every view that can be taken of i itical, 
moral, economical, commercial : accurate facts, digested and arran- 
ged, so that the proper deductions shall of course flow from them, 
are no where so much needed as in the United States, because we 
are still in the forming stage of society—-because our interests are 
immensely diversified, and because in this republic, beyond any na- 
tion that exists, or that ever did exist—man, in high intelligence, is 
in a state of the greatest activity, with the most numerous and pow- 
erful excitements and with the feeblest restraints. Political economy 
must be founded wholly upon statistics, and there is no way to obtain 
correct results but by a patient collection of facts. 
Our able statistical writers, Seybert and Pitkin, would have deri- 
ved immense advantages from the labors of such a society, and we 
hope to see its operations and influence become co-extensive with 
