It is stated by M. Villermé, that the ordinary rate of mortality in the prisons of France, taking all together, is one in twenty-three—a rate which corresponds to the age of sixty-five in the common course of life. But in the vast majority of cases the unfortunate victims of the law are no older than from twenty-five to forty-five years of age. Taking them at the mean age of thirty-five, it follows that the suffering from imprisonment, and from the causes that lead to it, is equivalent to thirty years wear and tear of life. But this is not all; for it is found that, during imprisonment, the ordinary chances of death are exactly quadrupled. In regard to the whole population of a country, indigence may be assumed to be a fair measure of unhappiness, and wealth of happiness. If the rate of mortality in the indigent class be compared with that of the wealthy, according to M. Villermé, it will be found in some cases to be just double. Thus it is affirmed that, in some cases in France, taking equal numbers, where there are one hundred deaths in a poor arrondissement, there are only fifty in a rich; and that taking together the whole of the French population, human life is protracted twelve years and a half among the wealthy beyond its duration among the poor: consequently, in the one class, a child, newly born, has a probability of living forty-two and a half years; in the other only thirty years. In the great life-insurance establishments in England, a vast proportion of the persons who insure their lives are persons compelled to do so by their creditors; while three-fourths of those who voluntarily insure their lives are professional men, living in great towns, and experiencing the anxieties and fatigues, the hopes and disappointments of professional life. In one of these establishments in London, out of 330 deaths that happened in twenty-six years preceding the year 1831, it was found that eleven died by suicide, being one in thirty, implying the existence of an appalling amount of mental suffering. The number of persons belonging to an insurance office who perish by suicide is sure to be accurately known, death by suicide rendering the policy void. It would be most erroneous to suppose that these persons put an end to their existence under the mere influence of the mental states of disappointment and despondency. The mind reacted upon the body: produced physical disease, probably inflammation of the brain, and under the excitement of this physical disease, the acts of suicide were committed. More than one case has come to my knowledge in which inflammation of the brain having been excited by mental suffering, suicide was committed by cutting the throat. During the flow of blood, which was gradual, the brain was relieved; the mind became perfectly rational; and the patient might have been saved had a surgeon been upon the spot, or had the persons about the patient known where and how to apply the pressure of the finger to staunch the flow of