522 
ticable ; but I certainly did mean to af- 
fert, what J. S. admits, that the prefent 
fituation of the labouring pcor, arifing 
from the difproportion of their wages to 
the advanced price of the neceffaries of life, 
is fuch, as ** to immenie numbers of them 
abfolutely precludes the poffibility of fav- 
ing,”” and confequently that the prefent 
moment is by no means favourable to the 
eftablifhment of fuch focieties, as the num- 
ber of thofe who would become members 
of them muft be comparatively fall, and 
there is fo much probability that of thofe 
who did enter many might afterwards be- 
come unable to continue their payments. 
But, though I conceive little fuccefs would 
attend any attempts at prefent to render 
benefit-focieties more general than they 
are, I have a high opinion of the utility 
of fuch inftitutions when they are founded 
on rational principles, and conduéted with 
"care and integrity; and if J. S. or any of 
your readers can find a fufficient number 
of perfons willing to join ina fociety of this 
to encounter, as the rates of contribution, 
both for allowances in old age, and during 
incapacities of laboyr, produced by fick- 
nefs or accidents, may be adjufted on fe- 
ture grounds from the tables ccmputed 
for this purpofe by Dr. Price, which have 
been publifhed in the laft edition of his 
Obfervations oa Reverfionary Payments, 
and the neceffary regulations can be eafily 
formed from the moft judicious rules of the 
focieties that fubfift at prefent. 
London, une 4. J: he Ge 
=a 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
SIR, ‘ 
{ AM obliged to the candour and lihe- 
rality of your correfpondent Wm. 
Eyans, for recalling my attention, in p. 
441, of your laft Number, to my tranfla- 
tion of this jambie : 
AvGgwmros ixayn MpPopacie Eke To SusTuxesy. 
J allow my reprefentation of it to be fuf- 
ficiently vague and indiftinét.; will W. 
E. excufe me, if I venture to pronounce 
his tranflation alfo deficient in perfpicuity ? 
Some fatisfa€tory illuftrations have been 
made, I recolleét, in my interleaved copy of 
my own book,‘but that is not with me, and 
Fam therefore unable to produce them. I 
regard opopecie in this fenfe, not as de- 
rized from $nyt, according to the common 
lexicons, but from ¢$aw, to /ine or appear ; 
Benefit Societies Erroneous eftimate of Population. [July t, 
whence the pofterior and prevalent word 
gaiwvo, and the Latin facies, face. The 
meaning of the verfe, therefore, is prima- 
rily and fuily this: ** Man, even on his 
Superficial appearance, is fafficient to fug- 
geft the idea of misfortune.” “ At the 
Jirft fight of man, or the very mention of 
his name, calamity is prefented to our 
view.”” Hence thofe ftanding epithets in 
the poets for our {pecies : which epithets I 
have enumerated in my Notes on Lucretius, 
Vv. 042, vi. 1. A fragment from the Pro- 
tefilaus of Euripides, preferved by Stoba- 
us, 1s equivalent to this fentence of Mex 
nander under confideration ; 
Ov Save erelas, Ovnroy ovre Sustuyen. 
‘¢ You tell us nothing ftrange, when you 
{peak of a mortal exercifed by calamity.” 
Dorchefter Goal, GiL BERT WAKEFIELD. 
JURE 3, 1800, 
=—— 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine, 
SIR, 
HE Duke de Liancourt, in his Tra- 
vels in North America, {peaking of 
the population of the United States, fup- 
poles that it is doubled every twenty years, 
and, computing on the foundation of the 
enumeration of 1791, he finds, that in 
1876 the population will amount. to 
80,000,000, when the territory of the 
United States will be peopled in the fame 
proportion that France was before the re- 
volution. This is a very eafy mode of 
determining the future fate of a count 
with refpect to the number of its inhabi- 
tants, but it is extremely erroneous, though 
it has been frequently adopted, even by 
thofe who ought to have been better ac- 
quainted with the fubje&t. Sir William 
Petty, when he wrote his Effay on the 
Growth of the City of London, in 1683, 
finding it appeared that for fome time the 
number of deaths had been double what it 
was forty years before, affumes this period 
as the rate of increafe of the population of 
Londen, which would thus continue to 
double every forty years, till its further 
progrefs became impoffible from the dif 
proportion of the inhabitants of the metro- 
polis to thofe of the country: upon this 
ground, he calculated that the growth of 
the city would be at its utmof height in 
the prefent year 1800, when its inhabitants 
would amount to upwards of five millions. 
Such a ftriking inftance of the fallacy of 
this mode of computing the future flate of 
the 
