THE HE Board of the National Vaccine Establishment have the honour of submitting to your consideration a statement of their proceedings during the year 1810. They have to report to you that the surgeons of the nine stations, established in London, have vaccinated during the last year 3103 per son, and that 23.362 charges of vaccine lymph have been distributed to various applicants from all parts of the kingdom: being an excess of nearly one-third in the number of persons vaccinated, and in the number of charges of lymph distributed, above that of the preceding year. They have further to report, that no case of failure has occurred, in any individual vaccinated by the surgeons of the nine stations, since the commencement of this establishment; that the few instances of failure, submitted from other quarters to the investigation of this board in the last year, have been asserted without sufficient proof; that such reports of failure as have been received from the country have been ascertained to rest upon imperfect evidence. They have great satisfaction in being able to state the favourable result of vaccination in the Royal Military Asylum for the children of soldiers, and in the Foundling Hospital. At the establishment of the former of these charities, in the year 1803, vaccination was introduced, by order of government; and it continues to be practiced at the present time. During the whole of this period, this institution, which contains more than eleven hundred children, has lost but one of them by small pox, and that individual had not been vaccinated, in conse quence of having been declared by the mother to have passed through the small-pox in infancy. In the latter institution, no death has occurred by small-pox since the introduction of vaccination in the year 1801, from which period every child has been vaccinated on its admis sion to the charity; and in no instance has the preventive power of vaccination been discredited, although many of the children have been repeatedly inoculated with the matter of small-pox, and been subniited to the influence of its contagion. They have also the satisfaction of being able to state, that similar success has attended the practice of vaccination at the Lying-in Charity of Manchester, where, in the space of nine years, more than nine thou sand persons have been effectually vaccinated; and that, by a report received from Glasgow, it appears, that of fifteen thousand five hundred persons, who have undergone vaccine inoculation in that city, during the last ten years, no individual has been known to have been subsequently affected with small-pox. It is with a very different feeling that the Board are induced to call your attention to the number of deaths from small-pox, announced in the bills of mortality of the year 1810, amounting to 1,198; which, although great, is considerably less than it had been, previously to the adoption of that practice. The Board are persuaded that this mortality has arisen from con tagion having been propagated by inoculated persons, of the poorer class, whose prejudice against vaccination are kept alive by false and mischievous hand-bills, denouncing various imaginary and feigned diseases against all those who have undergone vaccination: and the Board have reason to believe that these bills are issued by persons, in several parts of London, who derive emolument from small-pox inocula tion. The Board have been induced, by these considerations, to address the information contained in the preceding paragraphs, to the committees of Charity-schools; and to submit to them the propriety of introducing vaccination into their respective establishments, and among the poor in general. Besides the duty of superintending the practice of vaccination in London, they have been engaged in an extensive correspondence with several vaccine establishments in the provincial towns; and they acknowledge, with pleasure, the readiness with which many of these bodies have communicated information. From these sources, they are enabled to state, that the practitioners of the highest respectability in the country have been earnestly engaged in promoting the practice of vaccination by the weight of their authority and example; that in the principal country towns, gratuitous vaccination of the poor is practiced, either at public institutions, or by private practitioners, on an extensive scale: that, among the superior classes of society in the country, vaccination is very generally adopted: that the prejudices of the lower orders, excited against the practice by interested persons, still exist, but appear to be gradually yielding to a conviction of its benefit. The information received from Scotland is of a very favourable nature, and it appears, from the reports of the College of Physicians, the College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, that the practice of vaccination is universal among the higher orders of society; and that, in the opinion of these learned bodies, the mortality from small-pox has decreased, in proportion as vaccination has advanced, in that part of the United Kingdom. The reports of the Vaccine Establishment, instituted at Dublin, under the patronage of the Lord Lieutenant, state, that vaccination continues to make progress in that city, and in Ireland generally; and that the prejudices against it are subsiding. The Board have also received very favourable accounts of the progress of vaccination in India: and they have the honour to subjoin a statement, from which it appears, that by vaccination the ravage of small-pox has been repeatedly prevented, and the disorder exterminated in the island of Ceylon. The Board, guided by the inferences which facts, reported to thei from undoubted authority, and actual observations, have furnished, declare their unabated confidence in the preventive power of vaccination, and their satisfaction with the gradual and temperate progress, by which this practice is advancing; that the local and constitutional maladies, which frequently follow the small-pox, rarely (if ever) succeeded to vaccine inoculation; that it produces neither peculiar eruptions nor new disorders of any kind; and that they are of opinion, that by perseverance in the present measures, vaccination will in a few years become generally adopted. 284 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF DISTINGUISHED PERSONS. MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF PAUL CUF FEE, THE INTERESTING NEGRO NA VIGATOR. "Let not ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor." GRAY. acquainted with their characters to speak particularly respecting them. While his children were yet young, Cuffee died, leaving his property by will among them, whom he surnamed Cuffee. At this time Paul Cuffee, the subject of the present memoir, who was born in 1759, was about fourteen years of age. Notwithstanding his Published by the Delaware Society, for youthfulness, he seems to have been the abolition of Slavery. TH HE father of the subject of this memoir, was a native of Africa, and brought as a slave into Massachusetts; he was owned by a person named Slocum, and remained in slavery a con. şiderable portion of his life. From the family to which he belonged, he acquir. ed the name of Cuffee Slocum. He was a man of an active mind, and habituated to industry. Like many of his countrymen he possessed a spirit above his condition, and although he was diligent in the business of his master, and faithful to his interest, yet he contrived, by great industry and economy, to collect money for the purchase of his personal liberty. At this time the fragments of several Indian tribes, who possessed the original right of soil, resided in the, then, province of Massachusetts. Cuffee became acquainted with a woman belonging to one of those tribes, named Moses, and married her. He continued in his habits of frugality and industry, and by the blessing of Providence on his labours, he was enabled to purchase a farm, of one hundred acres, on the West-port river in Massachusetts. From Cuffee Slocum and Moses his wife, descended several children. It appears that three of their sons are farmers, and occupy lands near their birth place, . We are not sufficiently burthened with such cares as generally require the mental vigour of manhood, His portion of his father's legacy was charged with several debts, and the care of providing for his mother, and younger brothers, rested on his shoulders. He felt the weight and impor tance of his charge, and he did not, like many other persons of a different complexion, desert his duty, but resolved, honourably, to exert all his abilities for the performance of the task committed to his hand. At this time the products of labour on the farm, were not adequate to his wishes nor necessities. He perceived that com. merce furnished to industry more ample rewards than agriculture, and he was conscious that he possessed quali ties which, under proper culture, would enable him to pursue commercial employments with fair prospects of success. At the age of sixteen years he entered as a common hand on board of a vessel destined to the Bay of Mexico, on a Whaling voyage. He was so well pleased with the result of his first enterprize, that he speedily engaged in a second of the same kind. After his second voyage, being about eighteen years of age, he thought himself suffi ciently skilled to enter into business on his own account. He laid before his elder brother a plan for opening a com mercial interopurse with the state of Connecticut. His brother was well pleased with the prospect, they pro- up all hope of commeree, and return to the unproductive labours of his farm ? He was not indolent—he felt no aversion to the toils of employment-they were agreeable, but he had proved to himself that however diligently he should cultivate his fields, they would not yield so much profit as would better the condition of himself and family. Commerce bid fair to satisfy his wishes. If he could once rightly enter on the business, by the blessing of Providence, he believed his efforts would finally succeed. What he was unable to purchase with money he resolved to acquire by labour. He saw that his own hands were formed like those of other men, and if one man could build a boat, he concluded that another with similar tools might do the same thing. He set himself earnestly to work, and with his hands formed and completed, from keel to gunnel, the much desired boat. This boat was without a deck, but he had been concerned in two whaling voyages, and was therefore perfectly skilled in the management of such machines. His cargo was carefully arranged in this precious boat. He launched into the ocean and was steering for the island of Nantucket, when the Refugee Pirates discovered, chased, and seized himself and treasures. Robbed of every thing, he returned home pennyless but not discouraged. In a short time he prevailed with his brother to join him in erecting and loading a new boat. They proceeded together for Nantucket, unhappily they struck on a bar, and nearly ruined their boat. With their own hands they repaired their vessel, and without any new disasters reached their intended port. But here new misfortunes befel him. The Refugees were acquainted with his arrival at Nantucket, and watched for an opportunity to reap, for themselves, the harvest of his voyage; they waylaid, and seized him, and after robbing him, they cruelly mal-treated his person. So many and such various untoward events would have extinguished, in the breast of almost any common adventurer, every spark of commercial enterprize Under his numerous and repeated discomfitures the courage of most persons would have failed; they would have abandoned in despair the trackless ocean for the furrowed field, or sunk the victims of misfortune. But Paul's courage was not of that yielding temper. He possessed the inflexible spirit of perseverance, and firmness of mind, which seemed to entitle him to success in an honest and honourable pursuit, and such indeed as seemed to deserve a more successful issue for his endeavours. He was always conscious that his motives to action were virtuous, and that the path which he had marked out was fair and honest, and he be Jieved that while he maintained integrity of heart and conduct, he might humbly hope for the protection of that wise and good Providence which governs the world. Under such impressions he prepared for another voyage. In an open boat, with a small cargo, he again directed his course towards the island of Nantucket. The weather was favourable, and he arrived safely at the destined port. The course of adverse events which he had experienced, had taught him the useful lesson of fortitude amidst personal and pecuniary sufferings, and he was now to learn another, not less important, but of a very different tenor. to all his attempts in trade had been unsuccessful; the current continually set against him, but now it began to change the tide of his affairs became favourable, and bore him along in a prosperous course. At Nantucket he disposed of his little cargo to considerable advantage. The profits of this voyage encouraged and enabled him to enlarge his plans. He returned to his Hither native place near West-port, (Massachusetts) and erected a covered boat of 12 tons burthen. He hired a per son to aid him as a seaman, and made many and frequent coasting voyages to different parts of the State of Connecti cut. He continued in this trade with general advantage, until he arrived at his twenty-fourth year. He now concluded to settle himself at home for some time, and enjoy the fruit of his labours in the mild pleasures of domestic life. He was about twenty-five years old, when he married a native of the soil, a descendant of the tribe to which his mother belonged. He pass ed a few years in agricultural employ. ments, during which time his family increased, and he perceived that a renewal of his trading concerns would be necessary to meet the new calls on his funds. Until the time of his father's decease, Paul had not received the benefit of literary instruction. He was so entirely untutored in books that he could not read a line, and scarcely knew the letters of the alphabet. Notwithstanding this disadvantage, be was not insensible to the blessings of literary knowledge, on the contrary he had occupied his moments of leisure in the improvement of his mind so wisely, that at the period of his marriage, he could read and write, and was so well skilled in figures that he was able to resolve all the common rules of Arithmetical calculation. His head now began to teem with projects more extensive than he had hitherto conceived, but he found himself almost entirely ignorant of that science which was indispensibly necessary to their execution. In his coasting voyages he experienced the great inconveniencies which arose from his defect in nautical knowledge. He discovered that without ample information in the science of navigation, he was, at times, even in the coasting trade, subject to defeats and |