85,965 pounds
in 1855, and 108,051 pounds in 1854. The revenue from cabs in the
metropolis was 82,110 pounds against 75,281 pounds, and 64,210 pounds in
1854. Of the revenue on omnibuses last year, 69,493 pounds accrued from
mileage duty, 3791 pounds from license duty, and 983 pounds from drivers'
and conductors' licenses. As regards the cab duty, 74,736 pounds accrued
from weekly duty, 5292 pounds from license duty, and 2081 pounds from
drivers' and watermen's licenses.

Speaking generally, Tennyson tells us--

"Every minute dies a man,
Every minute one is born."

In London, 169 people die daily, and a babe is born every five minutes.
The number of persons, says the Registrar-General, who died in 1856, in
116 public institutions, such as workhouses and hospitals, was 10,381.
It is really shocking to think, and a deep stigma on the people,--or on
the artificial arrangements of society, by which so much poverty is
perpetuated,--that nearly one person out of five, who died that year,
closed his days under a roof provided by law or public charity. In 1856
the police report 147 suicides. Dr. Wakley says, 4000 infants die
annually of neglect. It is calculated 500 people are drowned in the
Thames every year. In the first week of last year there were five deaths
from intemperance alone. How much wretchedness lies in these facts,--for
the deaths from actual intemperance bear but a small proportion to the
deaths induced by the immoderate use of intoxicating liquors; and of the
500 drowned, by far the larger class, we have every reason to believe,
are of the number of whom Hood wrote--

"Mad with life's history,
Glad to death's mystery
Swift to be hurled--
Anywhere, anywhere,
Out of the world!"

A meeting was held last year of the unemployed, chiefly the carpenters,
bricklayers, and bricklayers' labourers of the metropolis, in which it
was stated that their number--though very probably there may be some
exaggeration here--is 35,000. If these men are married and have
families, we get a further idea of the deep distress in this wealthy and
luxurious capital,--this capital where the gold of Australia, the jewels
of Golconda, the silks and spices of the East, come for sale, and are
lavished as freely on the most questionable purposes and persons as on
the noblest specimens of humanity and the most glorious objects for which
men care to live. Then think of the inmates of the lunatic asy