In the former papers upon this subject1 which I had the honour to lay before the Institute, I described the vehement controversy carried on in earlier ages as to the propriety of allowing any interest to be taken for the use of money, and I alluded to the discussion which, after interest to a limited extent had been allowed by law, arose as to the advantages to be derived from a reduction of the legal rate.

In 1839, in the Penny Cyclopædia (article “Mortality”), I wrote as follows, referring to Mr. Gompertz's well-known hypothesis on the law of mortality:—

“We enter into some detail of it the more readily, that it is necessary as an act of justice to Mr. Gompertz, whose ideas have been adopted by a recent writer on the subject, without anything approaching to a sufficient acknowledgment.”

With respect to the inhalation of woolly matter, Mr. Leigh, a surgeon at Manchester, and Registrar of Deaths for the Deans-gate sub-district of that city, in which cotton-mills are so numerous, states, in one of his Reports to the Registrar-General, that in certain trades in Manchester almost every member above 40 is affected with emphysema of the lungs; and that persons who work in dust—as fustian-cutters, cotton-carders, and the like—are almost all affected with it, after working at their occupations for a few years.