being deserted in this manner by the Servants, which he had imported at a great expense; and that many others had suffered and been reduced, as he was, by the same kind of misfortune. The little Foundry lately set up near this Town for making small Iron Potts is under the direction of a few private persons, as yet very inconsiderable. As to the Foundaries which Mr. Hasenclaver has set up in the different parts of this Country, I do not mention them, as he will be able to give your Lordships a full account of them and of the progress he has already made; can only say that I think this Province is under very great obligations to him for the large sums of money he has laid out here in promoting the Cultivation of Hemp, and introducing the valuable Manufacture of Iron and Pot Ash. I have the honor to be, &c. H. MOORE. Governor Moore to Lord Hillsborough. [Lond. Doc. XLI.] FORT GEORGE, New York, 7 May, 1768. MY LORD--I have the honor to transmit to your Lordship the copy of a letter I wrote in the beginning of the last year to the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, in answer to a letter 1 received from their Lordships in consequence of the Address of the House of Commons to His Majesty concerning the Manufactures of this Country, dated March 27th, 1766. Another copy of this Address has been enclosed to me in your Lordship's Letter, marked No. 3, to which I must make the same answer, as the Progress of Manufactures in this part of the world by no means corresponds with the pompous accounts given of them in the public papers. No mention is made in the former Letter of the great quantities of Leather being tanned in this country as this branch of business has been carried on for many years; the leather is greatly inferior in quality to that made in Europe; and they are not yet arrived to the perfection of making sole leather. Your Lordship may be assured that I shall, from time to time, give every due information required in this Address, and be particularly attentive to any new establishments of which we have no instances since my last letter, except in the paper-mill begun to be erected within these few days, at a small distance from the Town. I am, &c. H. MOORE. The Compiler is indebted to FREDERIck Depryster, Esq., for the following statement in regard to the Tontine Association, of which he is now President. THE TONTINE BUILDING.. THIS edifice stands on the north-west corner of Wall and Water streets, in this city. It was commenced in, or about 1792, by an Association of merchants, and completed in, or about 1794, for the purpose of providing suitable accommodation for the common convenience, and centre for the daily intercourse, of the mercantile community. By the constitution under which such association was formed, 203 shares were subscribed for, at $200 a share, severally depending upon a life selected by each subscriber, who stated, in the memorandum accompanying such subscription, the age, sex, and parentage of the respective nominees, during whose natural existence he was to receive his equal proportion of the net income of the establish ment. Upon the death of the nominee, the subscriber's interest ceased, and his interest became thereby merged in the owners of the surviving nominees. The original shares were assignable, and held as personal estate, and the whole property was vested in five trustees, who were to be continued in the manner pointed out in the above constitution, and who were to hold the same until the number of such nominees were reduced to seven, when the holders of the shares, contingent upon these surviving nominees, become entitled to a conveyance in fee by trustees of the entire premises, to be equally divided between them. The nominee himself did not necessarily have an interest in the Association; for each subscriber, in naming some person-generally a childlooked to such as had the promise of "length of days." The plan of this Association originated from the scheme of Lorenzi Tonti, a Neapolitan, who introduced it into France in 1653, under Louis the XIV., and hence the word Tontine came to designate "a loan advanced by a number of associated capitalists for life annuities, with benefit to survivorship." There is, however, a distinction between the present plan and the scheme of Tonti. His intent was the establishment of a company who should each contribute a like amount of capital, to be loaned to a responsible party, at a certain rate of interest, which was to be divided equally between the members of the same age; but where there was a diversity of age, according to a fixed ratio, the elder received more and the younger less. As the members died off, the survivors absorbed their respective interests, and when the last survivor died the borrower took the whole capital. But in the plan of this Tontine Association, the owners of the seven surviving shares, depending upon a like number of lives, take the whole property in equal proportion to their surviving non. inees; and, as in this case, all the nominees are dead, who represented several interests from the circumstance of their selection by different subscribers, the remaining shares are now respectively represented by, and depending upon, a similar number of lives, which, in May, 1851, were reduced to sixty. The above constitution bears date on the 4th of June, 1794, but the nominations by the subscribers were not completed until March, 1795. The Association, in their preamble, named the building the Tontine Cof fee-house, and it was thereby directed to be kept and used as a coffeehouse. But on the opening of the Exchange, a little higher up in Wall street, the interests of the shareholders demanding a change in this special appropriation, they applied to the Court of Chancery for permission to let the premises for general purposes; and by its decree in 1834 the above restrictions were removed. Subsequently, doubts having arisen respecting the validity of the trusts, under which the trustees took and held the property, in consequence of the Revised Statutes on the subject, the Legislature, in 1843, passed an act confirming the same, and altered the name to the Tontine Building, and directed that the management of the affairs of the concern be by The Committee of the Tontine Building," who receive, besides their other duties, the income from the establishment, and divide the net proceeds on the second Tuesday in each month of May among the owners of the shares, depending on the nominees alive on the previous past day of the same month. This Association, on the 4th of June, 1852, will have existed fifty-eight years. In examining the statistics in reference to the successive diminution of shares by death, the interesting fact is disclosed, that the lapse of shares, from year to year, is in proportion, with slight variation, to the relative number of both males and females. The existence of so many of the nominees, after such a lapse of time, is admitted, by the compilers of annuity tables, here and abroad, to be very unusual, if not unprecedented; but it should be recollected that the nominees originally selected were children of persons in easy circumstances; and that these were not, in general, subjected to the exposure and privations incident to the masses, the average of whose lives forms the basis of the usual calculations on this subject. From an interesting article on the subject of this association, published by the Journal of Commerce about a year since, we make the following extract: "There are few, however, whose age links them to the olden time, when it was the chief centre of the commercial interests, who cannot recall scenes within its walls the like whereof we ne'er shall see again.' A public meeting convened within its roof, sent forth a decision which was almost universally respected. As a single instance of this let us turn back for forty years, when the habit of distributing expensive scarfs to bearers and others at ordinary funerals was so prevalent, that many poor families were sorely pinched to provide this necessary mark of respect for a departed relative. Some benevolent individuals, seeing the evil influence of such a fashion, called a meeting at the Coffee-house, when nearly two hundred of those whose weight of character gave force to their decisions, signed a pledge to abstain from the custom of distributing scarfs, except to the attendant ministers and physicians. This was the death-knell of the oppressive fashion. In matters of more vital moment, when great public interests were at stake, a voice has gone out from the said Coffee-house, which, like a recent echo from Castle Garden, has been heard throughout the length and breadth of the land. Some of the noblest charities, too, which the world has ever witnessed, received their first contributions beneath this time-hallowed roof. "But the history of this organization is highly instructing in another point of view. The longevity of the nominees has been remarkable, we believe, beyond any similar experiment of the kind ever witnessed It is true that the circumstances, under which their names were selected, would naturally lead us to expect for them a longer average period of existence, but this average has been so far extended as to be quite extraordinary. Of the 203, whose names were handed in about fifty-seven years ago, 60 still survive! Of these, the youngest is about 58 and the oldest 79. This is |