patience and perseverance nearly equal to the extreme accuracy of his calculations, at last completed the scheme. In the year 1770, a new act of parliament, procured by advice of Dr Webster, prescribed the full form in which the fund is at present conducted. The loans granted to contributors were discontinued, as prejudicial to the parties concerned; liberty was granted to extend the capital to £100,000; the methods of recovering payments; the nomination and duties of trustees; the salaries of the collector and clerk; in short, the whole economy of the institution, were fixed and determined. A tax on the marriage of each contributor, amounting to one year's annual rate of his particular option; and, if he were forty years of age at his accession to his benefice, and had children, the sum of two years and a half of his rate, besides his ordinary dues and marriage, were added to the revenue. Further, a sum of half his usual rate was declared due to the fund, out of the ann.; or, in case of its not falling, out of his real or personal estate, on the death of a minister; and patrons were assessed -in the sum of £3. 2s. for every half year's vacancy.
A report of the state of the fund was ordered to be made annually to the General Assembly by the trustees, and this afterwards to be printed. Dr Webster, in the year 1748, had finished a series of calculations, in which he not only .ascertained the probable number of ministers that would die annually, of widows and children that would be left, of annuitants drawing whole or half annuities, and the medium of the annuities, and annual rates, but also the different annual states of the fund, in its progress to completing the capital stock. These calculations have approached the fact with astonishing precision. It would exceed our limits to insert the comparison between the calculations and the facts stated in the reports for the years 1762, 1765, and 1771), and printed again in those for 1790, &c.; but we shall only mention, that in the second of these statements, the comparison ran as follows: thirty ministers were calculated to die annually; inde for twenty-one years, from 1744 to 1765, the number by calculation is 630; the fact was 615, being only 15 of total difference. Twenty widows were calculated to be left annually in the fore mentioned period; there were left 411: the calculation was 420, and the difference 9. It was calculated, that six families of children, without a widow, would be left annually; the calculated amount for the above period, was 126, the fact 124, the difference 2. Four ministers or professors were calculated to die annually, without either widows or children; the calculated number for the first twenty-one years was 84, the fact was 82. The differences for that period, between the calculated mediums of the whole number of annuities, and of annual rates, compared each with its respective fact, was, for the number of annuities, 1s. 2d. 6-12ths, and for the rates 3s. Od. 6-12ths. On the 22nd of November, 1799, in the fifty-sixth year of the fund, and the year which completed the capital stock fixed by act of parliament, Dr Webster's calculations, after having approached the truth for a long series of years with surprising accuracy, stood in the following manner: the stock and surplus for that year were £105,504, 2s. 11d. 3-12ths, and the calculated stock was £86,448, 12s. 1Od. 8-12ths; consequently the difference was £19,055, 10s. Od. 7-12ths.
In the year 1745, when the Highland army under prince Charles Stuart, took possession of Edinburgh, Dr Webster manifested the sincerity and firmness of his principles, as well as his general vigour of character, by remaining in the city, and exerting his eloquence to support the people in their attachment to the house of Hanover. On the day afterwards appointed by the General Assembly for a thanksgiving for the victory of Culloden, (June 23, 1746,) he preached a sermon, afterwards printed, in which he made a masterly
