Among those who misemployed their capacity in the formation of bubble annuity societies, was one David Cunningham, whose career, so far as it can be gathered, is a strange illustration of perverted powers. Born in the shire of Inverness, of which his father was a native, bred a presbyterian, with the confined if respectable notions of the class, and meant “to wag his pow” in a pulpit, from whence in due time he is even said to have held forth; Cunningham might have been respectable and respected, had not his zeal for proselytism with a fair daughter of his flock carried him beyond the borders of propriety. Like Adam Blair he sinned, but unlike Adam Blair he repented not, and suddenly disappearing from his native place, he left the victim of his passion to repent her misdeed, and his parents to bear the agony of an only son’s shame. As a boy he had been remarkable for acuteness and ability, had at an early period devoted himself to arithmetical studies, and, indebted to the pedlar--then the only communication between town and country--for some odd books which treated of the science of mathematics, had studied them to so much purpose that if the money had been spent on his secular which was spent on his spiritual education, he would probably have been a great mathematician and possibly a good man. Possessed of a fine person and specious address, nothing is known of him until twenty years afterwards, when he appeared in London with a tolerable supply of money, and more than a proportionate supply of audacity. Here he commenced the vocation of schoolmaster. At this time the preaching of Whitfield and Wesley was a passion. Parties of titled people were made up to hear them exhort and used up ladies of rank experienced new sensations when Wesley expounded the religion they had neglected, and Whitfield described the tortures they would endure. Among the votaries of the new apostle, who, with the restlessness of genius soon aspired to lead where hitherto he had followed, was David Cunningham. He still kept on his school and made use of his gifts in prayer, which were very remarkable, to procure introductions to the better class of London society, among whom he moved with an air of pious humility, alike distinguished for his toadying and his teaching. These he used as levers for the artful design of forming an annuity company--next to religion, annuity companies being the fashion--to be founded on a new principle for indigent persons and widows. This principle was, that it should be partly self-supporting and partly philanthropic, and that annuities bought by the poor should be aided by the charitable contributions of the rich.