the name of "The Lady's Broker." The husband, knowing he could not be compelled to pay for the illegal gambling of his wife, refused to advance a farthing in liquidation of her debts. Every one, however, is not so frightened at the idea of having his name clapped on the black board as was the member in question.

It is worthy of observation, that with the single exception of the late Mr. David Ricardo, the celebrated political economist, there are no names, so far as I am aware, of any literary distinction connected with the Stock Exchange. I know several members who have written painphlets; but they have been on matters connected with their own business. Whether this absence of literary reputation on the Stock Exchange is to be ascribed to the engrossing nature of the transactions in which the members are engaged, is a point which I cannot undertake positively to determine, though I incline to the opinion that it is so in a great measure, if not wholly. As I have mentioned the name of Mr. Ricardo, I may observe that he amassed his immense fortune by a scrupulous attention to what he called his own three golden rules, the observance of which he used to press on his private friends. These were, "Never refuse an option when you can get it,"—" Cut short your losses,""Let your profits run on." By cutting short one's losses, Mr. Ricardo meant, that when a member had made a purchase of stock, and prices were falling, he ought to resell immediately. And by letting one's profits run on he meant, that when a member possessed stock, and prices were raising, he ought not to sell until prices had reached their highest, and were beginning again to fall. These are, indeed, golden rules, and may be applied with advantage to innumerable other transactions than those connected with the Stock Exchange.

PUBLIC ANNUITIES.

From the London Correspondent of the New York Courier and Enquirer.

The Americans have now a NATIONAL DEBT, and notwithstanding its undeniable disadvantages, it is not necessary to lose sight of the benefits which may also be derived from it. The science of Chemistry has taught us that nutriment may be obtained from bones; and that the very earth may be made to sustain life by suction; the science of Finance proves that we may extract benefits from our indebtedness, security from an incumbrance, and positive happiness from what is regarded by every one as a great national evil.

By authority conferred upon the national debt office of Great Britain, any applicant by purchasing an amount of consols, and transferring them to the Commissioners for the reduction of the National debt, may obtain in lieu thereof an annuity proportionate to the amount of stock given up, and the price of the stock in open market on the day of the negotiation.

For instance, suppose Peter Cautious to transfer to the commissioners the sum of one thousand pounds consols, which used to produce to his wife the sum of thirty pounds a year, and suppose the price to be 86, and her age next birthday to be sixty, the commissioners would give her an annuity of £71 10 0 per annum, until such a time as nature called her from this world. But suppose Peter to want it for himself, for the sinking of the same amount, and his age being the same as his wife's, and the price on the day being equal, the annuity would be £82 10 0; for the tables of mortality show that the life of a man is not so good as that of a woman, and therefore a higher rate of interest can be paid to the male than to the female applicant. As a short and simple method of ascertaining, in this country, the probable duration of any man's life, it is only requisite to deduct his actual age from 80 and divide the remainder by two; the product of such division being the estimated duration of his life. Thus Peter was 60, which deducted from 80 gives a remainder of 20 years, and the half of that (or 10 years) is what he may, commercially speaking, reckon on enjoying.

Among the objections to the system of government annuities is the popular supposition that "annuitants never die." This is a mistake: they do die frequently; but often not until long after the unfortunate payers of the annuities think they ought to be ashamed of being seen out of their graves.

Beyond the age of 80 this government will not grant an annuity. At that age an old lady possessing five hundred pounds a year, will probably live on for another twenty years. Having every comfort she runs no risks; the day must be of the balmiest before she opens her window; the dirty earth must be well "aired" and half "turned to dry" in the sun, before she ventures abroad; her great horror is an open door or a damp newspaper; (the former gives her the rheumatics in perspective and the latter a fit of sneezing which ends in cold;) her fires are laid ready for lighting in every room in the house, and a gust of wind, or a rain drop on the window, immediately induces her to have the fires lighted. She orders her carriage for a drive, and then countermands it if the weather is not propitious; in short, you may "catch a weasel asleep," perhaps-but never a lady-annuitant failing to look after her health.

Our secretary of the treasury might with propriety consider the feasibility of such a plan in the United States, and ascertain how far it could be brought into practice beneficially. If the British government can afford to give for money an annuity, based on the hypothesis that money is worth in England, on an average, 3 per cent. per annum, it follows, that in America, where money is worth twice as much, the treasury, instead of borrowing at six per cent. can purchase money by giving an annuity of double the amount which is paid by the English Government. In fact, the system of granting annuities, is simply the absolute purchasing of cash instead of borrowing it; the purchase money being payable by annual instalments.

Benefits to the nation are evidently conferred by this method, or else in these days of calculation of profit and loss, the present tables of life annuities would certainly be called in and others issued in their place.

The fact is, that the annuitants feel so much comfort in the knowledge that their incomes are guaranteed by the joint-endorsement of the entire nation, that they are willing to submit to a bad bargain, for the sake of perfect security. So great has been the demand for this sort of investment, that at this time one twenty-eight part of the interest on the national debt, is payable in this shape; or say £963,000 is paid annually out of the Exchequer in the shape of annuities terminable with the lives of the recipients.

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Another class of annuities is formed of those which are terminated at certain dates, and are termed "long annuities;" and such they might have been at the time of creation, but are short enough now, as the longest of them expires previous to the years 1860 and 1867. Of this class there are recipients to the amount £1,860,000, annually; and in year 1867 the minister of the day may remit taxes to that amount or add it to the sinking fund. As the total annual charge of the national debt (including the expense of working its machinery) is £27,702,880, it thus follows that the foregoing amount is a very large slice of it. Included in the annual charge is a sum of £933,585, for other annuities granted for a specific number of years. On the whole, it appears that with the deaths of the elder portion of this generation, there will expire annuities to the extent of £3,800,000; and when we talk of our own nation struggling under an increase of national debt, it will be well if we look to the facility which this system affords for honestly getting rid of a portion of it.

One very excellent theory has been broached in the States, viz: that a generation of people who have been contracting a public debt, are bound to look to its repayment by themselves. By converting a portion of it into annuities, this very question is positively met, and the nation and the creditor are quits at the same moment.

Taking the price of consols at 86 per cent. that sum of money handed to the commissioners (or else £100 consols) will purchase an annuity on the following ages of the annexed account :

Or, supposing the same, £86, to be converted into an annual payment for a fixed and definite number of years, say for 10 years, then £10 2s. 3d. per annum would be given instead of the usual annual payment of 3 per cent. on the consols; or, for 20 years £5 18s. 8d.; do. 30, £4 12s.; do. 40, £3 19s. 5d.; do. 50, £3 12s. 5d.; do. 60, £3 8s. 3d.; do. 70, £3 5s. 7d.; do. 80, £3 3s. 9d.; do. 90, £3 2s. 7d.; do. 100, £3 1s. 9d.; so that when consols are at 86 it does not matter whether £3 per cent is still paid on them, or an annuity of £3 1s. 9d. for 100 years; the odd one shilling and nine pence being equivalent to the entire capital of £86 if paid regularly for a century.

London, July, 1848.

ANGLO-KNICKERBOCKER.

AMERICAN GENIUS IN ENGLAND.

Its Trials and Triumphs.

From Hunt's Merchants' Magazine for November, 1848.

Those who have read the narrative of the sufferings of ragged and hungry Genius, as told by the sufferers themselves in Johnson's Life of Savage and in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, will listen to the following letter, addressed to a distinguished gentleman in this country, a chapter of autobiography, with like interest; for, like those narratives, it not only describes the trials, but it is written, also, with the energetic pen of Genius.

The writer is Mr. J. R. Remington, a young man, a Virginian by birth. After residing for a while in Alabama, a few years since he went to Washington, and exhibited there the models and drawings of several ingenious and (as they have since proved) valuable mechanical inventions of his own. At Washington he made little headway. One of his inventions was a bridge, constructed on a novel principle, or rather a principle newly applied, and by which bridges of timber of great length can be thrown across rivers and wide railroad cuts without intermediate support. People looked and admired; but somehow, although they saw much that was strikingly original, they could not see how the contrivances were to be made practically useful. Fulton's first steamboat drew crowds of such admirers round it when it was on the stocks.

Mr. Remington was not discouraged. We are sometimes apt to look upon the mechanical and mathematical turn of mind as naturally dry, crabbed, and cold. Yet there can be no doubt (and a multitude of brilliant examples of late years attest the fact) that the great mechanical inventor is borne up by as much of the "ardor of confident genius," the "evidence of things not seen," and feels as sensibly "the substance of things hoped for" as the great poet, or any of those whom we are more apt to class among geniuses of more exalted mood. The source of the mistake seems to be the very excess of imagination in him, and the lack of it in us; while we, having eyes, see not the end, but the means only, he is looking at the end; while we think of the dull machinery and the uncouth figures with which he works, his thoughts are running forwards and soaring upwards to results worked out complete!

Mr. Remington went to England, arriving in London early in January, 1817. He went, to use his striking language, in search of a man;" like the old philosopher, he sought but for one mind capable of sympathetic appreciation. He carried with him his plans, a teeming brain, a letter of introduction, and an empty purse.

The story of Mr. Remington's success has been told by the lips of others, as was most meet; we leave it to himself to describe his struggles and probation. His letter would be marred by any attempt on our part to add or amplify.

Stafford, Staffordshire, England, August 15, 1848.

MY DEAR SIR:-I should have written sooner, but that I had nothing pleasant to say. I reached London on the 1st of January, 1847, without money or friends, which was just the thing I desired when I left America, and just the thing, I assure you, I will never desire again. I commenced operations at once, on the supposition that, in this overgrown city, I would at least enlist one man. But Englishmen are not Americans. An Englishman will advance any amount on an absolute certainty, but not one penny where there is the slightest risk, if he get the whole world by it. I spent the first five months looking for this man with an unparalleled perseverance and industry, living for less than three pence per day. I am convinced that few persons in London know so much of that incomprehensibly large city as myself. But, alas! my wardrobe was gone to supply me with wretchedly baked corn bread, on which I lived entirely. I slept on straw, for which I paid a half penny per night. I became ragged and filthy, and could no longer go among men of business. Up to this time my spirits never sunk, nor did they then; but my sufferings were great. My limbs distorted with rheumatism, induced by cold and exposure-my face and head swelled to a most unnatural size with cold and toothache, and those who slept in the same horrid den as myself were wretched street beggars, the very cleanest of them literally alive with all manner of creeping things. But I was no beggar. I never begged, nor ever asked a favor of any man since I came to England. Ask George Bancroft, whom I called upon two or three times, if ever I asked the slightest favor, or even presumed upon the letter you gave me to him. I did write him a note, asking him to come and witness the triumph of opening the bridge at the Gardens, and delivered the note at his own house myself; and although Prince Albert came, I never got even a reply to my note. If Bancroft had come, and been the man to have only recognized me in my rags as I was, it would have saved me much subsequent suffering. I will not believe that Bancroft ever saw my note, for his deportment to me was ever kind.

The succeeding three months after the first five I will not detail, up to the time I commenced to build the bridge. I will not harrow up my feelings to write, nor pain your kind heart to read the incidents of those ninety days. My head turned grey, and I must have died but for the Jews, who did give me one shilling down for my acknowledgment for £10 on demand. Those wicked robberies have amounted to several hundred pounds, every penny of which I have had to pay subsequently; for, since my success at Stafford, not a man in England who can read, but knows my address. It cost me £10 to obtain the shilling with which I paid my admittance into the Royal Zoological Gardens, where I succeeded, after much mortification, in getting the ghost of a model made of the bridge. The model, although a bad one, astonished everybody. Every engineer of celebrity in London was called in to decide whether it was practicable to throw it across the lake. Four or five of them, at the final decision, declared that the model before them was passing strange, but that it could not be carried to a much greater