osing insurance by neglecting them would tend greatly to make
them respected. Companies would insure at a lower rate, and all parties
would be gainers in the long run; for, if the Government obtained no
pecuniary profit, it would gain in national character by the removal of
a reproach such as no other commercial country at the present day
labours under.

There is, moreover, a moral point of view to be taken of this
question--viz., "the recklessness of human life engendered by things as
they are."

The anecdotes which one hears are of themselves sufficient to leave
little doubt on this point. Take, for instance, the following:--A vessel
having been blown up during the high pressure of a race, among the
witnesses called was one who thus replied to the questions put to him:--

EXAMINER.--"Were you on board when the accident took place?"

WITNESS.--"I guess I was, and nurthing else."

EXAMINER.--"Was the captain sober?"

WITNESS.--"Can't tell that, nohow."

EXAMINER.--"Did you not see the captain during the day?"

WITNESS.--"I guess I did."

EXAMINER.--"Then can, you not state your opinion whether he was drunk or
not?"

WITNESS.--"I guess I had not much time for observation; he was not on
board when I saw him."

EXAMINER.--"When did you see him, then?"

WITNESS.--"As I was coming down, I passed the gentleman going up."

The court, of course, was highly amused at his coolness, and called
another witness.--But let us turn from this fictitious anecdote to fact.

It was only the other day that I read in a Louisville paper of a
gentleman going into the Gait-house Hotel, and deliberately shooting at
another in the dining-saloon when full of people, missing his aim, and
the hall lodging in the back of a stranger's chair who was quietly
sitting at his dinner. Again, I read of an occurrence--at Memphis, I
think--equally outrageous. A man hard pressed by creditors, who had
assembled at his house and were urgent in their demands, called to them
to keep back, and upon their still pressing on, he seized a bowie-knife
in each hand, and rushed among them, stabbing and ripping right and
left, till checked in his mad career of assassination by a creditor, in
self-defence, burying a cleaver in his skull.

In a Natchez paper I read as follows:--"Levi Tarver, formerly a resident
of Atala county, was recently killed in Texas. Tarver interrupted a
gentleman on the highway; high words ensued, when Tarver gave the
gentleman the