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, 1st, the statistics of 

 literature ; 2dly, of education ; odly, of religious instruction and 

 ecclesiastical institutions ; 4thly, of crime. Although fourteen sub- 

 divisions have now been enumerated, it is probable more will be re- 

 quired. 



It will, of course, be one prominent object of the society to form 

 a statistical library, as rapidly as its funds will admit. 



The gendemen incorporated by the New York act, are James 

 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. xxxi. p. 18G, 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 it — political, social, 

 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 



