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 UCSB LIBRARY 
 
 SYDNEY SMITH'S 
 
 ESSAYS 
 
 V 
 
 
 
 AUTHORISED EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 ARTICLES ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE 
 " EDINBURGH REVIEW." 
 
 PACK 
 
 DR PARR ........ I 
 
 DR RENNEL ....... 6 
 
 JOHN BOWLES . . . . . . .II 
 
 DR LANGFORD ....... 14 
 
 PUBLIC CHARACTERS OF iSoi, l8o2 .... 14 
 
 ARCHDEACON NARES . . . . . .15 
 
 MATTHEW LEWIS . ...... 17 
 
 NECKER'S LAST VIEWS ...... 19 
 
 AUSTRALIA ....... 29 
 
 FIEVEE'S LETTERS ON ENGLAND ..... 38 
 
 ISLAND OF CEYLON ...... 4! 
 
 DELPHINE ........ 49 
 
 THOUGHTS ON THE RESIDENCE OF THE CLERGY . . S3 
 
 CATTEAU, TABLEAU DES ETATS DANOIS .... 55 
 
 WITTMAN'S TRAVELS ...... 70 
 
 EDGEWORTH ON BULLS ...... 75 
 
 ACCOUNT OF SIERRA LEONE ..... 78 
 
 TRIMMER AND LANCASTER ..... 83 
 
 PARNELL AND IRELAND ...... 88 
 
 TRAVELS FROM PALESTINE ..... 93 
 
 METHODISM ....... 97 
 
 INDIAN MISSIONS . . . . . . .114 
 
 LETTER ON THE CURATE'S SALARY BILL .... 138 
 
 CATHOLICS ....... 145 
 
 PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF VICE . 149 
 METHODISM . . . . . . .156 
 
 HANNAH MORE ....... 164 
 
 CHARACTERS OF FOX ...... l68 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE HISTORICAL WORK OF THE RIGHT HON. 
 
 CHARLES JAMES FOX . . . . . 173
 
 iv CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION . . . . . .187 
 
 FEMALE EDUCATION ...... 196 
 
 PUBLIC SCHOOLS ....... 2O7 
 
 DISTURBANCES AT MADRAS . . . . .213 
 
 TOLERATION ....... 224 
 
 CHARLES FOX . . . . . . .23! 
 
 BISHOP OF LINCOLN'S CHARGE ..... 244 
 
 LETTERS WRITTEN IN A MAHRATTA CAMP DURING THE YEAR 
 
 1809 ........ 251 
 
 MAD QUAKERS ....... 255 
 
 MADAME D'EPINAY ....... 262 
 
 AMERICA ........ 269 
 
 GAME LAWS ....... 282 
 
 BOTANY BAY ....... 293 
 
 CHIMNEY SWEEPERS ...... 308 
 
 MISSION TO ASHANTEE . . . . . -317 
 
 AMERICA ........ 324 
 
 POOR-LAWS ........ 332 
 
 IRELAND ........ 344 
 
 ANASTASIUS ....... 357 
 
 SPRING GUNS ....... 365 
 
 PRISONS ........ 373 
 
 MAN TRAPS AND SPRING GUNS ..... 385 
 
 SCARLETT'S POOR BILL ...... 394 
 
 PRISONS ........ 400 
 
 PERSECUTING BISHOPS . . . . . .416 
 
 BOTANY BAY ....... 428 
 
 GAME LAWS ....... 443 
 
 CRUEL TREATMENT OF UNTRIED PRISONERS . . . 452 
 
 AMERICA ........ 463 
 
 MEMOIRS OF CAPTAIN ROCK ..... 475 
 
 BENTHAM ON FALLACIES ...... 483 
 
 WATERTON ........ 500 
 
 GRANBY ........ 513 
 
 HAMILTON'S METHOD OF TEACHING LANGUAGES . . . 523 
 
 COUNSEL FOR PRISONERS ...... 539 
 
 CATHOLICS ........ 553
 
 ARTICLES 
 
 ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 
 
 THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. 
 
 DR PARR.* (E. REVIEW, 1802.) 
 
 Sfital Sermon, preached at Christ Church upon Easter-Tuesday, April 15, 1800. To 
 which are added, Notes by SAMUEL PARK, LL.D. Printed for J. Mawman in the 
 Poultry. iSoi. 
 
 WHOEVER has had the good fortune to see Dr Parr's wig, must have ob- 
 served, that while it trespasses a little on the orthodox magnitude of perukes 
 in the anterior parts, it scorns even Episcopal limits behind, and swells out 
 into boundless convexity of frizz, the fj.fya Oavfua of barbers, and the terror 
 of the literary world. After the manner of his wig, the Doctor has con- 
 structed his sermon, giving us a discourse of no common length, and sub- 
 joining an immeasurable mass of notes, which appear to concern every learned 
 thing, every learned man, and almost every unlearned man since the b<2in- 
 ning of the world. 
 
 For his 'text, Dr Parr has chosen Gal. vi. 10. As we have therefore 
 opportunity, let us do good to all men, especially to those -who are of the house- 
 hold of faith. After a short preliminary comparison between the dangers of 
 the selfish system, and the modern one of universal benevolence, he divides 
 his sermon into two parts : in the first examining how far, by the constitu- 
 tion of human nature, and the circumstances of human life, the principles of 
 particular and universal benevolence are compatible : in the last, comment- 
 ing on the nature of the charitable institution for which he is preaching. 
 
 The former part is levelled against the doctrines of Mr Godwin ; and, 
 nere, Dr Parr exposes, very strongly and happily, the folly of making uni- 
 versal benevolence the immediate motive of our actions. As we consider 
 this, though of no very difficult execution, to be by far the best part of the 
 sermon, we shall very willingly make some extracts from it. 
 
 " To me it appears, that the modern advocates for universal philanthropy 
 have fallen into the error charged upon those who are fascinated by a violent 
 and extraordinary fondness for what a celebrated author calls ' some moral 
 species.' Some men, it has been remarked, are hurried into romantic ad- 
 ventures, by their excessive admiration of fortitude. Others are actuated by 
 
 . * A great scholar, as rude and violent as most Greek scholars are, unless they happen 
 to be Bishops. He has left nothing behind him worth leaving : he was rather fitted for 
 the law than the church, and would have been a more considerable man, if he had been 
 more knocked about among his equals, He lived with country gentlemen and clergymen, 
 who flattered and feared him.
 
 2 DR PARK. 
 
 a head-strong zeal for disseminating the true religion. Hence, while the 
 only properties for which fortitude or zeal can be esteemed are scarcely dis- 
 cernible, from the enormous bulkiness to which they are swollen, the ends 
 to which alone they can be directed usefully are overlooked or defeated ; 
 the public good is impaired rather than increased ; and the claims that other 
 virtues, equally obligatory, have to our notice, are totally disregarded. Thus, 
 too, when any dazzling phantoms of universal philanthropy have seized our 
 attention, the objects that formerly engaged it shrink and fade. All con- 
 siderations of kindred, friends, and countrymen drop from the mind, during 
 the struggles it makes to grasp the collective interests of the species ; and 
 when the association that attached us to them has been dissolved, the 
 notions we have formed of their comparative insignificance will prevent them 
 from recovering, I do not say any hold whatsoever, but that strong and 
 lusting hold they once had upon our conviction and our feelings. Universal 
 benevolence, should it, from any strange combination of circumstances, ever 
 become passionate, will, like every other passion, 'justify itself :' and the 
 importunity of its demands to obtain a hearing will be proportionate to the 
 weakness of its cause. But what are the consequences ? A perpetual wrest- 
 ling for victory between the refinements of sophistry and the remonstrances 
 of indignant nature the agitations of secret distrust in opinions which gain 
 few or no proselytes, and feelings which excite little or no sympathy the 
 neglect of all the usual duties, by which social life is preserved or adorned ; 
 and in the pursuit of other duties which are unusual, and indeed imaginary, 
 a succession of airy projects, eager hopes, tumultuous efforts, and galling dis- 
 appointments, such in truth as every wise man foresaw, and a good man 
 would rarely commiserate." 
 
 In a subsequent part of his sermon, Dr Parr handles the same topic with 
 equal success. 
 
 " The stoics, it has been said, were more successful in weakening'Tthc 
 tender affections than in animating men to the stronger virtues of fortitude 
 and self-command; and possible it is, thatUhe influence of our modern 
 reformers may be greater, in furnishing their disciples with pleas for the 
 neglect of their ordinary duties, than in stimulating their endeavours for the 
 performance of those which are extraordinary, and perhaps ideal. If, indeed, 
 the representations we have lately heard of universal philanthropy served 
 only to amuse the fancy of those who approve of them, and to communicate 
 that pleasure which arises from contemplating the magnitude and grandeur 
 of a favourite subject, we might be tempted to smile at them as groundless 
 and harmless. But they tend to debase the dignity, and to weaken the effi- 
 cacy of those particular affections, fur which we have daily and hourly occa- 
 sion in the events of real life. They tempt us to substitute the ease of 
 speculation and the pride of dogmatism, for the toil of practice. To a class 
 of artificial and ostentatious sentiments they give the most dangerous triumph 
 over the genuine and salutary dictates of nature. They delude and inflame 
 our minds with pharisaical notions of superior wisdom and superior virtue ; 
 and what is the worst of all, they may be used as ' a cloke to us ' for insen- 
 sibility, where other men feel ; and for negligence, where other men act with 
 rm^rand useful, though limited, effect." 
 
 In attempting to show the connection between particular and universal 
 
 benevolence, Dr Parr does not appear to us to have taken a clear and sntU- 
 
 factory view of the subject. Nature impels us both to good and bad actions; 
 
 .~n in the former, gives us no measure by which we may prevent them
 
 DR PARR. 3 
 
 from degenerating into excess. Rapine and revenge are not less natural 
 than parental and filial affection; which latter class of feelings may them- 
 selves be a source of crimes, if they overpower (as they frequently do) the 
 sense of justice. It is not, therefore, a sufficient justification of our actions, 
 that they are natural. We must seek, from our reason, some principle which 
 will enable us to determine what impulses of nature we are to obey, and 
 what we are to resist : such is that of general utility, or, what is the same 
 tiling, of universal good ; a principle which sanctifies and limits the more 
 particular affections. The duty of a son to a parent, or a parent to a son, is 
 not an ultimate principle of morals, but depends on the principle of universal 
 good, and is only praiseworthy, because it is found to promote it. At the 
 same time, our spheres of action and intelligence are so confined, that it is 
 better, in a great majority of instances, to suffer our conduct to be guided by 
 those affections which have been long sanctioned by the approbation of man- 
 kind, than to enter into a process of reasoning, and investigate the relation 
 which every trifling event might bear to the general interests of the world. 
 In his principle of universal benevolence, Mr Godwin is unquestionably right. 
 That it is the grand principle on which all morals rest that it is the corrective 
 for the excess of all particular affections, we believe to be undeniable : and 
 lie is only erroneous in excluding the particular affections, because, in so 
 doing, he deprives us of our most powerful means of promoting his own 
 principle of universal good ; for it is as much as to say, that all the crew 
 ought to have the geturalwt&Svn of the ship so much at heart, that no sailor 
 should ever pull any particular rope, or hand any individual sail. By uni- 
 versal benevolence, we mean, and understand Dr Parr to mean, not a barren 
 affection for the species, but a desire to promote their real happiness ; and 
 of this principle he thus speaks : 
 
 " I admit, and I approve of it, as yn. emotion of which general happiness 
 is the cause, but not as a passion, of which, according to the usual order of 
 human affairs, it could often be the object. I approve of it as a disposition 
 to wish, and, as opportunity may occur, to desire and do good, rather than 
 harm, to those with whom we are quite unconnected." 
 
 It would appear, from this kind of language, that a desire of promoting 
 the universal good were a pardonable weakness, rather than 'a fundamental 
 principle of ethics ; that the particular affections were incapable of excess ; 
 and that they never wanted the corrective of a more generous and exalted 
 feeling. In a subsequent part of his sermon, Dr Parr atones a little for this 
 over-zealous depreciation of the principle of universal benevolence .; but he 
 nowhere states the particular affections to derive their value and their limits ' 
 from .their subservience to a more extensive philanthropy. He does not 
 show us that they exist only as virtues, from their instrumentality in pro- 
 moting the general good ; and that, to preserve their true character, they 
 should be frequently referred to that principle as their proper criterion. 
 
 In the latter part of his sermon, Dr Parr combats the general objections 
 of Mr Turgot to all charitable institutions, with considerable vigour and 
 success. To say that an institution is necessarily bad, because it will not 
 always be administered with the same zeal, proves a little too much j for it 
 is an objection to political and religious, as well as to charitable institutions ; 
 and, from a lively apprehension of the fluctuating characters of those who 
 govern, would leave the world without any government at all. It is better 
 there should be an asylum for the mad, and a hospital for the wounded, if 
 they were to 'squander away $oper cent, of their income, than that they should 
 be disgusted with sore limbs, and shocked by straw-crowned monarchs^in 
 the streets. All institutions of this kind must suffer the risk of being
 
 4 DR PARR. 
 
 governed by more or less of probity and talents. The good which one 
 active character effects, and the wise order which he establishes, may out- 
 live him for a long period ; and we all hate each other's crimes, by which 
 we gain nothing, so much, that in' proportion as Tpublic opinion acquires 
 ascendency in any particular country, every public institution becomes more 
 and more guaranteed from abuse. 
 
 Upon the whole, this sermon is rather the production of what is called a 
 sensible, than of a very acute man ; of a man certainly more remarkable for 
 his learning than his originality. It refutes the very refutable positions of 
 Mr Godwin, without placing the doctrine of benevolence in a clear light ; 
 and it almost leaves us to suppose, that the particular affections are them- 
 selves ultimate principles of action, instead of convenient instruments of a 
 more general principle. 
 
 The style is such, as to give a general impression of heaviness to the 
 whole sermon. The Doctor is never simple and natural for a single instant. 
 Every thing smells of the rhetorician. He never appears to forget himself, 
 or to be hurried by his subject into obvious language. Every expression 
 seems to be the result of artifice and intention ; and as to the worthy dedi- 
 catees, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, unless the sermon be done into 
 English by a person of honour, they may perhaps be flattered by the Doctor's 
 politeness, but they can never be much edified by his meaning. Dr Parr 
 seems to think, that eloquence consists not in an exuberance of beautiful 
 images not in simple and sublime conceptions not in the feelings of the 
 passions ; but in a studious arrangement jof sonorous, exotic, and sesqnipedal 
 words ; a very ancient error, which corrupts the style of young, and wearies 
 the patience of sensible men. In some of his combinations of words the 
 Doctor is singularly unhappy. We have the din of superficial cavaliers, the 
 prancings of giddy ostentation, fluttering vanity, hissing scorn, dank clod, &c, 
 &c. &c. The following intrusion of a technical word into a pathetic de- 
 scription renders the whole passage almost ludicrous. 
 
 " Within a few days, mute was the tongue that uttered these celestial 
 sounds, and the hand which signed your indenture lay cold and motionless 
 in the dark and dreary chambers of death." 
 
 In page i6,".Dr Parr, in speaking of the indentures of the Hospital, a sub- 
 ject (as we should have thought) little calculated for rhetorical panegyric, 
 says of them 
 
 " If the writer of whom I am speaking had perused, as I have, your in- 
 dentures and your rules, he would have found in them seriousness without 
 austerity, earnestness without extravagance, good sense without the trickeries 
 of art, good language without the trappings of rhetoric, and the firmness "of 
 conscious worth, rather than the prancings of giddy ostentation." 
 
 The latter member of this eloge would not be wholly unintelligible, if 
 applied to a spirited coach horse ; but we have never yet witnessed the 
 phenomenon of a prancing indenture. 
 
 It is not our intention to follow Dr Parr through the copious and varied 
 learning of his notes ; in the perusal of which we have been as much de- 
 lighted with the richness of his acquisitions, the vigour of his understanding, 
 and the genuine goodness of his heart, as we have been amused with the 
 ludicrous self-importance, and the miraculous simplicity of his character. 
 We would rather recommend it to the Doctor to publish an annual list of 
 worthies as a kind of stimulus to literary men ; to be included in which, will 
 unquestionably be considered as great an honour, as for a commoner to be 
 elevated to the peerage. A line of Greek, a line of Latin, or no line at
 
 DR PARR. 5 
 
 all, subsequent to each name, will distinguish, with sufficient accuracy, the 
 shades of merit, and the degree of immortality conferred. 
 
 Why should Dr Parr confine this eulogomania to the literary characters 
 of this island alone ? In the university of Benares, in. the lettered kingdom 
 of Ava, among the Mandarins at Pekin, there must, doubtless, be many 
 men who have the eloquence of "Bdppovos,* the feeling of Ta/Xw/)07, and 
 the judgment of "tticrjpos, of whom Dr Parr might be happy to say, that they 
 have profundity without obscurity perspicuity without prolixity orna- 
 ment without glare terseness without barrenness penetration without 
 subtlety comprehensiveness without digression and a great number of 
 other things without a great number of other tilings. 
 
 In spite of 32 pages of very close printing, in defence of the University of 
 Oxford, is it, or is it not true, that very many of its professors enjoy ample 
 salaries, without reading any lectures at all ? The character of particular 
 colleges will certainly vary with the character of their governors ; but the 
 University of Oxford so far differs from Dr Parr in the commendation he 
 has bestowed upon its state of public education, that they have, since the 
 publication of his book, we believe, and forty years after Mr Gibbon's resi- 
 lence, completely abolished their very ludicrous and disgraceful exercises 
 for degrees, and have substituted in their place a system of exertion, and a 
 scale of academical honours, calculated (we are willing to hope) to produce 
 the happiest effects. 
 
 We were very sorry, in reading Dr Parr's note on the Universities, to 
 meet with the following passage : 
 
 " 111 would it become me tamely and silently to acquiesce in the strictures 
 of this formidable accuser upon a seminary to which I owe many obliga- 
 tions, though I left it, as must not be dissembled, before the usual time, 
 and, in truth, had been almost compelled to leave it, not by the want of a 
 proper education, for I had arrived at the first place in the first form of 
 Harrow School, when I was not quite fourteen not by the want of useful 
 tutors, for mine were eminently able, and to me had been uniformly kind 
 not by the want of ambition, for I had begun to look up ardently and 
 anxiously to academical distinctions not by the want of attachment to the 
 place, for I regarded it then, as I continue to regard it now, with the fondest 
 and most unfeigned affection but by another want, which it were neces- 
 sary to name, and for the supply of which, after some hesitation, I deter- 
 mined to provide by patient toil and resolute self-denial, when I had not 
 completed my twentieth year. I ceased, therefore, to reside, with an aching 
 heart : I looked back with mingled feelings of regret and humiliation to ad- 
 vantages of which I could no longer partake, and honours to which I could 
 no longer aspire. " 
 
 To those who know the truly honourable and respectable character of Dr 
 Parr, the vast extent of his learning, and the unadulterated benevolence of 
 his nature, such an account cannot but be very affecting, in spite of the bad 
 taste in which it is communicated. How painful to reflect, that a truly 
 devout and attentive minister, a strenuous defender of the church establish- 
 ment, and by far the most learned man of his day, should be permitted to 
 languish on a little paltry curacy in Warwickshire ! 
 
 - Dii meliora, &c. &c.f 
 
 j.fr ffffiw, Oav/Ji.d.fa 'Bdp'povov, 
 
 See Lucian in Vita Dsemonact. vol. ii. p. 394. (Dr Parr's note.) 
 t The courtly phrase was, that Dr Parr was not a producible man. The same phrasa 
 was used for the neglect of Paley
 
 DR KENNEL. 
 
 DR RENNEL. (E. REVIEW, 1802.) 
 
 Discourses on Various Subjects. By THOMAS RENNEL, D.D., Master of the Temple. 
 Rivington, London. 
 
 WE have no modern sermons in the English language that can be considered 
 as very eloquent. The merits of Blair (by far the most popular writer of 
 sermons within the last century) are plain good sense, a happy application 
 of scriptural quotation, and a clear harmonious style, richly tinged with 
 scriptural language. He generally leaves his readers pleased with his judg- 
 ment, and his just observations on human conduct, without ever rising so 
 high as to touch the great passions, or kindle any enthusiasm in favour of 
 virtue. For eloquence we must ascend as high as the days of Barrow and 
 Jeremy Taylor 1 and even there, while we are delighted with their energy, 
 their copiousness, and their fancy, we are in danger of being suffocated by a 
 redundance which abhors all discrimination ; which compares till it per- 
 plexes, and illustrates till it confounds. 
 
 To the Oases of Tillotson, Sherlock, and Atterbury, we must wade through 
 many a barren page, in which the weaiy Christian can descry nothing all 
 around him but a dreary expanse of trite sentiments and languid words. 
 
 The great object of modern sermons is to hazard nothing : their charac- 
 teristic is, decent debility ; which alike guards their authors from ludicrous 
 errors, and precludes them from striking beauties. Every man of sense, in 
 taking up an English sermon, expects to find it a tedious essay, full of com- 
 mon-place morality ; and if the fulfilment of such expectations be meri- 
 torious, the clergy have certainly the merit of not disappointing their readers. 
 Yet it is curious to consider, how a body of men so well educated, and so 
 magnificently endowed as the English clergy, should distinguish themselves 
 so little in a species of composition to which it is their peculiar duty, as well 
 as their ordinary habit, to attend. To solve this difficulty, it should be re- 
 membered, that the eloquence of the Bar and of the Senate force themselves 
 into notice, power, and wealth that the penalty which an individual client 
 pays for choosing a bad advocate, is the loss of his cause that a prime 
 minister must infallibly suffer in the estimation of the public, who neglects 
 to conciliate eloquent men, and trusts the defence of his measures to those 
 who have not adequate talents for that purpose : whereas, the only evil 
 which accrues from the promotion of a clergyman to the pulpit, which he 
 has no ability to fill as he ought, is the fatigue of the audience, and the 
 discredit of that species of public instruction ; an evil so general, that no 
 individual patron would dream of sacrificing to it his particular interest. 
 The clergy are generally appointed to their situations by those who have no 
 interest that they should please the audience before whom they speak ; 
 while the very reverse is the case in the eloquence of the Bar, and of 
 Parliament. We by no means would be understood to say, that the clergy 
 should owe their promotion principally to their eloquence, or that eloquence 
 ever could, consistently with the constitution of the English Church, be 
 made a common cause of preferment. In pointing out the total want of 
 connection between the privilege of preaching, and the power of preaching 
 well, we are giving no opinion as to whether it might, or might not, be 
 remedied ; but merely stating a fact. Pulpit discourses have insensibly 
 dwindled from speaking to reading ; a practice, of itself, sufficient to stifle 
 every germ of eloquence. It is only by the fresh feelings of the heart, that 
 mankind can be very powerfully affected. What can be more ludicrous, 
 than an orator delivering stale indignation, and fervour of a week old ;
 
 DR RENNEL. / 
 
 turning over whole pages ot violent passions, written out in German text j 
 reading the tropes and apostrophes into which he is hurried by the ardour 
 of his mind ; and so affected at a preconcerted line and page, that he is 
 unable to proceed any further ! 
 
 The prejudices of the English nation have proceeded a good deal from 
 their hatred to the French ; and, because that country is the native soil of 
 elegance, animation, and grace, a certain patriotic solidity, and loyal awk- 
 wardness, have become the characteristics of this ; so that an adventurous 
 preacher is afraid of violating the ancient tranquillity of the pulpit ; and the 
 audience are commonly apt to consider the man who tires them less than 
 usual, as a trifler, or a charlatan. 
 
 Of British education, the study of eloquence makes little or no part. The 
 exterior graces of a speaker are despised ; and debating societies (admirable 
 institutions, under proper regulations) would hardly be tolerated either at 
 Oxford or Cambridge. It is commonly answered to any animadversions 
 upon the eloquence of the English pulpit, that a clergyman is to recommend 
 himself, not by his eloquence, but by the purity of his life, and the sound- 
 ness of his doctrine ; an objection good enough, if any connection could be 
 pointed out between eloquence, heresy, and dissipation : but if it is possible 
 for a man to live well, preach well, and teach well, at the same time, such 
 objections, resting only upon a supposed incompatibility of these good 
 qualities, are duller than the dulness they defend. 
 
 The clergy are apt to shelter themselves under the plea, that subjects so 
 exhausted are utterly incapable of novelty ; and, in the very strictest sense 
 of the word novelty, meaning that which was never said before, at any time, 
 or in any place, this may be true enough of the first principles of morals ; 
 but the modes of expanding, illustrating, and enforcing a particular theme 
 are capable of infinite variety ; and, if they were not, this might be a very 
 good reason for preaching common-place sermons, but is a very bad one for 
 publishing them. 
 
 We had great hopes, that Dr Rennel's Sermons would have proved an 
 exception to the character we have given of sermons in general ; and we 
 have read through his present volume with a conviction rather that he has 
 misapplied, than that he wants, talents for pulpit eloquence. The subjects 
 of his sermons, fourteen hi number, are, I. The consequences of the vice of 
 gaming : 2. On old age : 3. Benevolence exclusively an evangelical virtue : 
 4. The services rendered to the English nation by the Church of England, a 
 motive for liberality to the orphan children of indigent ministers : 5. On the 
 grounds and regulation of national joy : 6. On the connection of the duties of 
 loving the brotherhood, fearing God, and honouring the King : 7. On the 
 guilt of blood-thirstiness : 8. On atonement : 9. A visitation sermon : 10. 
 ( '.reat Britain's naval strength, and insular situation, a cause of gratitude to 
 Almighty God : n. Ignorance productive of atheism, anarchy, and super- 
 stition : 12, 13, 14. On the sting of death, the strength of sin, and the victory 
 over them both by Jesus Christ. 
 
 Dr Rennel's first sermon, upon the consequences of gaming, is admirable 
 for its strength of language, its sound good sense, and the vigour with which 
 it combats that detestable vice. From, this sermon we shall, with great 
 pleasure, make an extract of some length. 
 
 " Further, to this sordid habit the gamester joins a disposition to FRAUD, 
 and that of the meanest cast. To those who soberly and fairly appreciate 
 the real nature of human actions, nothing appears more inconsistent than 
 that societies of men, who have incorporated themselves for the express 
 purpose of gaming, should disclaim fraud or indirection, or affect to drive
 
 8 DR RENNEL, 
 
 from their assemblies those among their associates whose crimes would reflect 
 disgrace on them. Surely this, to a considerate mind, is as solemn and 
 refined a banter as can well be exhibited : for when we take into view the 
 vast latitude allowed by the most upright gamesters, when we reflect that, 
 according to their precious casuistry, every advantage may be legitimately 
 taken of the young, the unwary, and the inebriated, which superior coolness, 
 skill, address, and activity can supply, we must look upon pretences to 
 honesty as a most shameless aggravation of their crimes. Even if it were 
 possible that, in his own practices, a man might be a FAIR GAMESTER, yet, 
 for the result of the extended frauds committed by his fellows, he stands 
 deeply accountable to God, his country, and his conscience. To a system 
 necessarily implicated with fraud ; to associations of men, a large majority 
 of whom subsist by fraud ; to habits calculated to poison the source and 
 principle of all integrity, he gives efficacy, countenance, and concurrence. 
 Even his virtues he suffers to be subsidiary to the cause of vice. He sees 
 with calmness, depredation committed daily and hourly in his company, 
 perhaps under his very roof. Yet men of this description declaim (so 
 desperately deceitful is the heart of man) against the very knaves they 
 cherish and protect, and whom, perhaps, with some poor sophistical refuge 
 for a worn out conscience, they even imitate. To such, let the Scripture 
 speak with emphatical decision When thou sawest a thief, then thou con- 
 sentedst with him. " 
 
 The reader will easily observe, in this quotation, a command of language, 
 and a power of style, very superior to what is met with in the great mass of 
 sermons. We shall make one more extract. 
 
 " But in addition to fraud, and all its train of crimes, propensities and 
 habits of a very different complexion enter into the composition of a game- 
 ster : a most ungovernable FEROCITY OF DISPOSITION, however for a time 
 disguised and latent, is invariably the result of his system of conduct. 
 Jealousy, rage, and revenge, exist among gamesters in their worst and most 
 frantic excesses, and end frequently in consequences of the most atrocious 
 violence and outrage. By perpetual agitation the malignant passions spurn 
 and overwhelm every boundary which discretion and conscience can oppose. 
 From what source are we to trace a very large number of those murders, 
 sanctioned or palliated indeed by custom, but which stand at the tribunal 
 of God precisely upon the same grounds with every other species of 
 murder? From the gaming-table, from the nocturnal receptacles of dis- 
 traction and frenzy, the duellist rushes with his hand lifted up against his 
 brother's life ! Those who are as yet on the threshold of these habits should 
 be warned, that however calm their natural temperament, however meek 
 end placable their disposition, yet that, by the events which every moment 
 arise, they stand exposed to the ungovernable fury of themselves and 
 others. In the midst of fraud, protected by menace on the one hand, and 
 on the other, of despair ; irritated by a recollection of the meanness of the 
 artifices and the baseness of the hands by which utter and remediless ruin 
 has been inflicted ; in the midst of these feelings of horror and distraction it 
 is, that the voice of brethren's blood 'crietA unto God from the ground' 1 
 ' and ncnv art than cursed from the earth, -which hath opened her mouth to 
 receive thy brothel's blood from thy /uind.' Not only THOU who actually 
 sheddest that blood, but THOU who art the artificer of death thou who 
 jukninisterest incentives to these habits who disseminatcst the practice of 
 them improvest the skill in them sharpenest the propensity to them at 
 THY hands will it be required, surely, at the tribunal of God in the next
 
 DR RENNEL. 9 
 
 world, and perhaps, in most instances, in his distributive and awful dispen- 
 sations towards thee and thine here on earth." 
 
 Having paid this tribute of praise to Dr Rcnnel's first sermon, we are 
 sorry so soon to change our eulogium into censure, and to blame him 
 for having selected for publication so many sermons touching directly and 
 indirectly upon the French Revolution. We confess ourselves long since 
 wearied with this kind of discourses, bespattered with blood and brains, and 
 ringing eternal changes upon atheism, cannibalism, and apostasy. Upon 
 the enormities of .the French Revolution there can be but one opinion ; but 
 the subject is not fit for the pulpit. The public are disgusted with it to 
 satiety ; and we can never help remembering, that this politico-orthodox 
 rage in the mouth of a preacher may be profitable as well as sincere. Upon 
 such subjects as the murder of the Queen of France, and the great events of 
 these days, it is not possible to endure the draggling and daubing of such a 
 ponderous limner as Dr Rennel, after the ethereal touches of Mr Burke. In 
 events so truly horrid in themselves, the field is so easy for a declaimer, that 
 we set little value upon the declamation ; and the mind, on such occasions, 
 so easily outruns ordinary description, that we are apt to feel more, before 
 a mediocre oration begins, than it even aims at inspiring. 
 
 We 'are surprised that Dr Rennel, from among the great number of sub- 
 jects which he must have discussed in the pulpit (the interest in which must 
 be permanent and universal) should have published such an empty and 
 frivolous sermon as that upon the victory of Lord Nelson ; a sermon good 
 enough for the garrulity of joy, when the phrases, and the exultation of the 
 Porcupine, or the True Briton, may pass for eloquence and sense ; but 
 utterly unworthy of the works of a man who aims at a place among the 
 great teachers of morality and religion. 
 
 Dr Rennel is apt to put on the appearance of a holy bully, an evangelical 
 swaggerer, as if he could carry his point against infidelity by big words and 
 strong abuse, and kick and cuff men into Christians. It is a very easy thing 
 to talk about the shallow impostures, and the silly ignorant sophisms of 
 Voltaire, Rousseau, Condorcet, D'Alembert, and Volney, and to say that 
 Hume is not worth answering. This affectation of contempt will not do. 
 While these pernicious writers have power to allure from the Church great 
 numbers of proselytes, it is better to study them diligently, and to reply to 
 them satisfactorily, than to veil insolence, want of power, or want of in- 
 dustry, by a pretended contempt ; which may leave infidels and wavering 
 Christians to suppose that such writers are abused, because they are feared ; 
 and not answered, because they are unanswerable. While every body was 
 abusing and despising Mr Godwin, and while Mr Godwin was, among a cer- 
 tain description of understandings, increasing every day in popularity, Mr 
 Malthus* took the trouble of refuting him ; and we hear no more of Mr 
 Godwin. We recommend this example to the consideration of Dr Rennel, 
 who seems to think it more useful, and more pleasant, to rail than to fight. 
 
 After the world had returned to its sober senses upon the merits of the 
 ancient philosophy, it is amusing enough to see a few bad heads bawling for 
 the restoration of exploded errors and past infatuation. We have some 
 dozen of plethoric phrases about Aristotle, who is, in the estimation of the 
 Doctor, ct rex et sutor bonus, and every thing else ; and to the neglect of 
 whose works he seems to attribute every moral and physical evil under which 
 the world has groaned for the last century. Dr Rennel's admiration of the 
 
 ! * I cannot read the name of Malthus without adding my tribute of affection for the 
 memory of one of the best men that ever lived. He loved philosophical truth more than 
 any man I ever knew, was full of practical wisdom, r.nd never indulged in contemp- 
 tuous feelings against his inferiors in understanding.
 
 10 DR RENNEL. 
 
 ancients is so great, that he considers the works of Homer to be the region 
 and depository of natural law, and natural religion.* Now, if, by natural 
 religion, is meant the will of God collected from his works, and tie necessity 
 man is under of obeying it ; it is rather extraordinary that Homer should be 
 so good a natural theologian, when the divinities he has painted are certainly 
 a more drunken, quarrelsome, adulterous, intriguing, lascivious set of beings, 
 than are to be met with hi the most profligate court in Europe. There is, 
 every now and then, some plain coarse morality in Homer ; but the most 
 bloody revenge, and the most savage cruelty in warfare, the ravishing of 
 women, and the sale of men, c. c. &c., are circumstances which the old 
 bard seems to relate as the ordinary events of his times, without ever dream- 
 ing that there could be much harm in them ; and if it be urged that Homer 
 took his ideas of right and wrong from a barbarous age, that is just saying, 
 in other words, that Homer had very imperfect ideas of natural law. 
 
 Having exhausted all his powers of eulogium upon the times that are 
 gone, Dr Rennel indemnifies himself by the very novel practice of declaim- 
 ing against the present age. It is an evil age an adulterous age an ignor- 
 ant age an apostate age and a foppish age. Of the propriety of the last 
 epithet, our readers may perhaps be more convinced, by calling to mind a 
 class of fops not usually designated by that epithet men clothed in profound 
 black, with, large canes, and strange amorphous hats of big speech, and 
 imperative presence talkers about Plato great affecters of senility 
 despisers of women, and all the graces of life fierce foes to common sense 
 abusive of the living, and approving no one who has not been dead for at 
 least a century. Such fops, as vain, and as shallow as their fraternity in 
 Bond Street, differ from these only as Gorgonius differed from Rufillus. 
 
 In the ninth Discourse (p. 226), we read of St Paul, that he had "an 
 heroic zeal, directed, rather than bounded, by the nicest discretion a con- 
 scious and commanding dignity, softened by the meekest and most profound 
 humility." This is intended for a fine piece of writing ; but it is without 
 meaning : for, if words have any limits, it is a contradiction in tertns to say 
 of the same person, at the same time, that he is nicely discreet, and heroically 
 zealous ; or that he is profoundly humble, and imperatively dignified : and 
 if Dr Rennel means, that St Paul displayed these qualities at different times, 
 then could not any one of them direct or soften the other. 
 
 Sermons are so seldom examined with any considerable degree of critical 
 vigilance, that we are apt to discover in them sometimes a great laxity of 
 assertion ; such as the following : 
 
 "Labour to be undergone, afflictions to be borne, contradictions to be 
 endured, danger to be braved, interest to be despised in the best and most 
 flourishing ages of the church, are the perpetual badges of far the greater 
 part of those who take up their cross and follow Christ." 
 
 This passage, at first, struck us to be untrue ; and we could not imme- 
 diately recollect the afflictions Dr Rennel alluded to, till it occurred to us, 
 that he must undoubtedly mean the eight hundred and fifty actions which, 
 in the course of eighteen months, have been brought against the clergy for 
 non-residence. 
 
 Upon the danger to be apprehended from Roman Catholics in this 
 country, Dr Rennel is laughable. We should as soon dream that the wars 
 of York and Lancaster would break out afresh, as that the Protestant reli- 
 gion in England has any thing to apprehend from the machinations of 
 Catholics. To such a scheme as that of Catholic emancipation, which has 
 
 * Page 318.
 
 JOHN BOWLES. H 
 
 for its object to restore their natural rights to thiee or four millions of 
 men, and to allay the fury of religious hatred, Dr Rennel is, as might be 
 expected, a very strenuous antagonist. Time, which lifts up the veil of 
 political mystery, will inform us if the Doctor has taken that side of the 
 question which may be as lucrative to himself as it is inimical to human 
 happiness, and repugnant to enlightened policy. 
 
 Of Dr Rennel's talents as a reasoner, we certainly have formed no very 
 high opinion. Unless dogmatical assertion, and the practice (but too com- 
 mon among theological writers) of taking the thing to be proved, for part 
 of the proof, can be considered as evidence of a logical understanding, the 
 specimens of argument Dr Rennel has afforded us are very insignificant. 
 For putting obvious truths into vehement language ; for expanding and 
 adorning moral instruction ; this gentleman certainly possesses considerable 
 talents : and if he will moderate his insolence, steer clear of theological 
 metaphysics, and consider rather those great laws of Christian practice, 
 which must interest mankind through all ages, than the petty questions 
 which are important to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the tune being, 
 he may live beyond his own days, and become a star of the third or fourth 
 magnitude in the English Church. 
 
 JOHN BOWLES. (E. REVIEW, 1802.) 
 
 Re_flec lions at the Conclusion cf the War: Being a Sequel to Reflections on the Poli- 
 tical and Moral State of Society at the Close of the Eighteenth Century. The Third 
 Edition, with Additions. By JOHN BOWLES, Esq. 
 
 IF this peace be, as Mr Bowles asserts,* the death-warrant of the liberty 
 and power of Great Britain, we will venture to assert, that it is also the 
 death-warrant of Mr Bowles's literary reputation ; and that the people of 
 this island, if they verify his predictions, and cease to read his books, what- 
 ever they may lose in political greatness, will evince no small improvement 
 in critical acumen. There is a political as well as a bodily hypochondriasis ; 
 and there are empirics always on the watch to make their prey, either of the 
 one or of the other. Dr Solomon, Dr Brodum, and Mr Bowles, have all 
 commanded their share of the public attention : but the two former gentle- 
 men continue to flourish with unuimiuished splendour ; while the patients 
 of the latter are fast dwindling away, and his drugs falling into disuse and 
 contempt. 
 
 The truth is, if Mr Bowles had begun His literary career at a period when 
 superior discrimination and profound thought, not vulgar violence and the 
 eternal repetition of rabble-rousing words, were necessary to literary reputa- 
 tion, he would never have emerged from that obscurity to which he will 
 soon return. The intemperate passions of the public, not his own talents, 
 have given him some temporary reputation ; and now, when men hope and 
 fear with less eagerness than they have been lately accustomed to do, Mr 
 Bowles will be compelled to descend from that moderate eminence, where 
 no man of real genius would ever have condescended to remain. 
 
 The pamphlet is written in the genuine spirit of the Windham and Burke 
 School ; though Mr Bowles cannot be called a servile copyist of either of 
 these gentlemen, as he has rejected the logic of the one, and the eloquence 
 
 * It is impossible to conceive the mischievous power of the corrupt alarmists of those 
 days, and the desjjotic manner in which they exercised their authority. They were fair 
 objects for the Edinburgh Review.
 
 12 JOHN BOWLES. 
 
 of the other, and imitated them only in their headstrong violence, and exag- 
 gerated abuse. There are some men who continue to astonish and please 
 the world, even in the support of a bad cause. They are mighty in their 
 fallacies, and beautiful in their errors. Mr Bowles sees only one half of the 
 precedent ; and thinks, in order to be famous, that he has nothing to do but 
 to be in the wrong. 
 
 War, eternal war, till the wrongs of Europe are avenged, and the Bour- 
 bons restored, is the master-principle of Mr Bowles's political opinions, and 
 the object for which he declaims through the whole of the present pamphlet. 
 
 The first apprehensions which Mr Bowles seems to entertain, are of the 
 boundless ambition and perfidious character of the First Consul, and of that 
 military despotism he has established, which is not only impelled by the love 
 of conquest, but interested, for its own preservation, to desire the overthrow 
 of other states. Yet the author informs us, immediately after, that the life 
 of Buonaparte is exposed to more dangers than that of any other individual 
 in Europe, who is not actually in the last stage of an incurable disease ; and 
 that his death, whenever it happens, must involve the dissolution of that 
 machine of government, of which he must be considered not only as the sole 
 director, but the main spring. Confusion of thought, we are told, is one of 
 the truest indications of terror ; and the panic of this alarmist is so very 
 great, that he cannot listen to the consolation which he himself affords : for 
 it appears, upon summing up these perils, that we are in the utmost danger 
 of being destroyed by a. despot, whose system of government, as dreadful as 
 himself, cannot survive him, and who, in all human probability, will be shot 
 or hanged, before he can execute any one of his projects against us. 
 
 We have a 'good deal of flourishing, in the beginning of the pamphlet, 
 about the effect of the moral sense upon the stability of governments : that 
 is, as Mr Bowles explains it, the power which all old governments derive 
 from the opinion entertained by the people of the justice of their rights. If 
 this sense of ancient right be (as is here confidently asserted) strong enough 
 ultimately to restore the Bourbons, why are we to fight for that which \vill 
 be done without any fighting at all ? And, if it be strong enough to restore, 
 why was it weak enough to render restoration necessary ? 
 
 To notice every singular train of reasoning into which Mr Bowies falls, is 
 not possible ; and, in the copious choice of evils, we shall, from feelings of 
 mercy, take the least. 
 
 It must not be forgotten, he observes, that " those rights of government, 
 which because they are ancient, are recognised by the moral sense as law- 
 ful, are the only ones which are compatible with civil liberty." So that all 
 questions of right and wrong, between the governors and the governed, are 
 determinable by chronology alone. Every political institution is favourable 
 to liberty, not according to its spirit, but in proportion to the antiquity of its 
 date ; and the slaves of Great Britain are groaning under the trial by jury, 
 while the freemen of Asia exult in the bold privilege transmitted to them by 
 their fathers, of being trampled to death by elephants. 
 
 In the 8th page, Mr Bowles thinks that France, if she remain without a 
 king, will conquer all Europe : and, in the igthipage, that she will be an 
 object of Divine vengeance till she takes one. In the same page, all the 
 miseries of France are stated to be a judgment of heaven for their cruelty to 
 the king ; and, in the 33d page, they are discovered to proceed from the 
 perfidy of the same king to this country in the American contest. So that 
 certain misfortunes proceed from the maltreatment of a person, who had 
 himself occasioned these identical misfortunes before he was maltreated 
 and while Providence is compelling the French, by every species of afflic- 
 tion, to resume monarchical government, they are to acquire such extract-
 
 JOHN BOWLES. 13 
 
 dinary vigour, from not acting as Providence would wish, that they arc to 
 trample on every nation which co-operates with the Divine intention. 
 
 In the 6oth page, Mr Bowles explains what is meant by Jacobinism ; and 
 as a concluding proof of the justice with which the character is drawn, 
 triumphantly quotes the case of a certain R. Mountain, who was tried for 
 damning all kings and all governments upon earth ; for, adds R. Mountain, 
 "I am a Jacobin." Nobody can more thoroughly detest and despise that 
 restless spirit of political innovation, which, we suppose, is meant by the 
 name of Jacobinism, than we ourselves do ; but we were highly amused with 
 this proof, ab ebriis sutoribus, of the prostration of Europe, the last hour of 
 human felicity, the perdition of man, discovered in the crapulous eructations 
 of a drunken cobbler. 
 
 This species of evidence might certainly have escaped a common observer : 
 But this is not all ; there are other proofs of treason and sedition, equally 
 remote, sagacious, and profound. Many good subjects are not very much 
 pleased with the idea of the Whig Club dining together ; but Mr Bowles has 
 the merit of first calling the public attention to the alarming practice of sing- 
 ing after dinner at these political meetings. He speaks with a proper horror 
 of tavern dinners, 
 
 " where conviviality is made a stimidus to disaffection where, wine 
 serves only to inflame disloyalty where toasts are converted into a vehicle 
 of sedition and where the powers of harmony are called forth in the cause 
 of Discord by those hireling singers, who are equally ready to invoke the 
 Divine favour on the head of their King, or to strain their venal throats in 
 chanting the triumphs of his bitterest enemies. " 
 
 All complaint is futile, which is not followed up by appropriate remedies. 
 If Parliament, or Catarrh, do not save us, Dignum and Sedgwick will 
 quaver away the King, shake down the House of Lords, and warble us into 
 all the horrors of republican government. When, in addition to these 
 dangers, we reflect also upon those with which our national happiness is 
 menaced, by the present thinness of ladies' petticoats (p. 78.), temerity may 
 hope our salvation, but how can reason promise it ? 
 
 One solitary gleam of comfort, indeed, beams upon us in reading the solemn 
 devotion of this modem Curtius to the cause of his King and country : 
 
 "My attachment to the British monarchy, and to the reigning family, is 
 rooted in my ' heart's core.' My anxiety for the British throne, pending 
 the dangers to which, in common with every other throne, it has lately been 
 exposed, has embittered my choicest comforts. And I most solemnly vow, 
 before Almighty God, to devote myself, to the end of my days, to the main- 
 tenance of that throne. " 
 
 Whether this patriotism be original, or whether it be copied from the 
 Upholsterer in Foote's Farces, who sits up whole nights watching over the 
 British constitution, we shall not stop to inquire ; because, when the practi- 
 cal effect of sentiments is good, we would not diminish their merits by 
 investigating their origin. We seriously commend in Mr Bowles this future 
 dedication of his life to the service of his King and country ; and consider it 
 as a virtual promise that lie will write no more in their defence. No wise 
 or good man has ever thought of either, but with admiration and respect. 
 That they should be exposed to that ridicule, by the forward imbecility of 
 friendship, from which they appear to be protected by intrinsic worth, is so 
 painful a consideration, that the very thought of it, we are persuaded, will 
 induce Mr Bowles to desist from writing on political subjects.
 
 DR LANGFORD PUBLIC CHARACTERS. 
 
 DR LANGFORD. (E. REVIEW, 1802.) 
 
 Anniversary Sennon of the Royal Humane Society. By W. LANGFORD, D.D. Printed 
 for F. and C. Rivington. 
 
 AN accident, which happened to the gentleman engaged in reviewing this 
 sermon, proves, in the most striking manner, the importance of this charity 
 for restoring to life persons in whom the vital power is suspended. He was 
 discovered, with Dr Langford's * discourse lying open before him, in a state 
 of the most profound sleep ; from which he could not, by any means, be 
 awakened for a great length of. time. By attending, however, to the rules 
 prescribed by the Humane Society, flinging in the smoke of tobacco, apply- 
 ing hot flannels, and carefully removing the discourse itself to a great 
 distance, the critic was restored to his disconsolate brothers. 
 
 The only account he could give of himself was, that he remembers read- 
 ing on, regularly, till he came to the following pathetic description of a 
 drowned tradesman j beyond which, he recollects nothing : 
 
 " But to the individual himself, as a man, let us add the interruption to 
 all the temporal business in which his interest was engaged. To him in- 
 deed, now apparently lost, the world is as nothing ; but it seldom happens, 
 that man can live for himself alone : society parcels out its concerns in 
 various connections ; and from one head issue waters which run down in 
 many channels. The spring being suddenly cut off, what confusion must 
 follow in the streams which have flowed from its source ? It may be, thai 
 all the expectations reasonably raised of approaching prosperity, to those 
 who have embarked in the same occupation, may at once disappear ; and 
 the important interchange of commercial faith be broken off, before it could 
 be brought to any advantageous conclusion." 
 
 This extract will suffice for the style of the sermon. The charity itself is 
 above all praise. 
 
 PUBLIC CHARACTERS OF 1801, 1802. (E. REVIEW, 1802.) 
 
 Pvblic CAaractfrs of 1801 1802. Richard Phillips, St Paul's, i vol. 8vo. 
 
 THE design of this book appeared to us so extremely reprehensible, and so 
 capable, even in the hands of a blockhead, of giving pain to families and 
 individuals, that we considered it as a fair object of literary police, and had 
 prepared for it a very severe chastisement. Upon the perusal of the book, 
 however, we were entirely disarmed. It appears to have been written by 
 some very innocent scribbler, who feels himself under the necessity of dining, 
 and who preserves, throughout the whole of the work, that degree of good 
 humour, which the terror of indictment by our Lord the King is so well 
 calculated to inspire. It is of some importance, too, that grown-up country 
 gentlemen should be habituated to read printed books ; and such may read 
 a story book about their living friends, who would read nothing else. 
 
 We suppose the booksellers have authors at two different prices. Those 
 who do write grammatically, and those who do not ; and that they have not 
 thought fit to put any 6f their best hands upon this work. 'Whether or 
 not there may be any improvement on this point in the next volume, we 
 
 To this exceedingly foolish man, the first years of Etonian Education were intruMed. 
 How is it possible to inilict a greater misfortune on a country, tliau to fill up such an 
 office with such an officer ?
 
 ARCHDEACON NARES. 15 
 
 request the biographer will at least give us some means of ascertaining 
 when he is comical, and when serious. In the life of Dr Rennel, we find 
 this passage : 
 
 "Dr Rennel might well look forward to the highest dignities in the 
 establishment ; but, if our information be right, and we have no reason to 
 question it, this is what he by no means either expects or courts. There is 
 a primitive simplicity in this excellent man, which much resembles that of 
 the first prelates of the Christian church, who were with great difficulty 
 prevailed upon to undertake the episcopal office." 
 
 ARCHDEACON NARES.* (E. REVIEW, 1802.) 
 
 A Thanksgiving for Plenty, and Warning against Avarice. A Sermon. By the 
 Reverend ROBERT NARES, Archdeacon of Stafford, and Canon Residentiary of Lich- 
 field. London: Printed for the Author, and sold by Rivingtons, St Paul's Church- 
 yard. 
 
 FOR the swarm of ephemeral sermons which issue from the press, we are 
 principally indebted to the vanity of popular preachers, who are puffed up 
 by female praises into a belief, that what may be delivered, with great pro- 
 priety, hi a chapel full of visitors and friends, is fit for the deliberate 
 attention of the public, who cannot be influenced by the decency of a 
 clergyman's private life, flattered by the sedulous politeness of his manners, 
 or misled by the fallacious circumstances of voice and action. A clergyman 
 cannot be always considered as reprehensible for preaching an indifferent 
 sermon ; because, to the active piety, and correct life, which the profession 
 requires, many an excellent man may not unite talents for that species of 
 composition : but every man who prints, imagines he gives to the world 
 something which they had not before, either in matter or style ; that he has 
 brought forth new truths, or adorned old ones ; and when, in lieu of novelty 
 and ornament, we can discover nothing but trite imbecility, the law must 
 take its course, and the delinquent suffer that mortification from which vanity 
 can rarely be expected to escape, when it chooses dulness for the minister 
 of its gratifications. 
 
 The learned author, after observing that a large army praying would be 
 a much finer spectacle than a large army fighting, and after entertaining us 
 with the old anecdote of Xerxes, and the flood of tears, proceeds to express 
 his sentiments on the late scarcity, and the present abundance : then, stating 
 the manner hi which the Jews were governed by the immediate interference 
 of God, and informing us, that other people expect not, nor are taught to 
 look for, maraculous interference, to punish or reward them, he proceeds 
 to talk of the visitation of Providence, for the purposes of trial, warning, 
 and correction, as if it were a truth of which he had never doubted. 
 
 Still, however, he contends, though the Deity does interfere, it would be 
 presumptuous and impious to pronounce the purposes for which he interferes ; 
 and then adds, that it has pleased God, within these few years, to give us a 
 most awful lesson of the vanity of agriculture and importation without piety, 
 and that he has proved this to the conviction of every thinking mind. 
 
 "Though he interpose not (says Mr Nares) by positive miracle, he in- 
 fluences by means unknown to all but himself, and directs the winds, the 
 tain, and glorious beams of heaven to execute his judgment, or fulfil his 
 
 * This was another gentleman of the alarmist tribe.
 
 16 A&CODEACOJi JfARES. 
 
 merciful designs." Now, either the wind, the rain, and the beams, are here 
 represented to act, as they do in the ordinary course of nature, or they are 
 not If they are, how can their operations be considered as a judgment on 
 sins : and if they are not, what are their extraordinary operations, but posi- 
 tive miracles? So that the Archdeacon, after denying that anybody knows 
 when, Aau', and why the Creator works a miracle, proceeds to specify the 
 titru, iusfntmatf, and object of a miraculous scarcity ; and then, assuring us 
 that the elements were employed to execute the judgments of Providence, 
 denies that this is any proof of a positive miracle. 
 
 Having given us this specimen of his talents for theological metaphysics, 
 Mr Nares commences his attack upon the farmers ; accuses them of cruelty 
 and avarice ; raises the old cry of monopoly ; and expresses some doubts, 
 in a note, whether the better way would not be, to subject their granaries 
 to the control of an exciseman ; and to levy heavy penalties upon those, in 
 whose possession com, beyond a certain quantity to be fixed by law, should 
 be found. This style of reasoning is pardonable enough in those who argue 
 from the belly rather than the brains ; but in a well fed and well educated 
 clergyman, who has never been disturbed by hunger from the free exercise 
 of cultivated talents, it merits the severest reprehension. The farmer has it 
 not in his power to raise the price of com ; he never has fixed, and never 
 can fix it. He is unquestionably justified in receiving any price he can 
 obtain : for it happens very beautifully, that the effect of his efforts to better 
 his fortune, is as beneficial to the public, as if their motive had not been 
 selfish. The poor are not to be supported, in time of famine, by abatement- 
 of price on the part of the farmer, but by the subscription of residentiary 
 canons, archdeacons, and all men rich in public or private property ; and to 
 these subscriptions the farmer should contribute according to the amount of 
 his fortune. To insist that he should take a less price when he can obtain 
 a greater, is to insist upon laying on that order of men the whole burden of 
 supporting the poor ; a convenient system enough in the eyes of a rich 
 ecclesiastic ; and objectionable only, because it is impracticable, pernicious, 
 and unjust* 
 
 The question of the corn trade has divided society into two parts those 
 who have any talents for reasoning, and those who have not. We owe 
 an apology to our readers, for taking any notice of errors that have been 
 so frequently, and so unanswerably exposed ; but when they are echoed 
 from the beach and the pulpit, the dignity of the teacher may perhaps 
 communicate some degree of importance to the silliest and most extravagant 
 doctrines. 
 
 No reasoning can be more radically erroneous than that upon which the 
 whole of Mr Nares's sermon is founded. The most benevolent, the most 
 Christian, and the most profitable conduct the farmer can pursue, is, to sell 
 his commodities for the highest price he can possibly obtain. This advice, 
 we think, is not in any great danger of being rejected : we wish we were 
 equally sure of success in counselhng the Reverend Mr Nares to attend, in 
 future, to practical, rather than theoretical questions about provisions. He 
 may be a very hospitable archdeacon ; but nothing short dispositive miracle 
 can make him an acute reasoner. 
 
 * If it is pleasant to notice the intellectual growth of an individual, it is stfll more 
 pleasant to see the public growing wiser. This absurdity of attributing the high price 
 of corn to the combinations of farmers, was the common nonsense talked in the days 01 
 my youth. I remember when ten judges out of twelve laid down this doctrine in their 
 Charges to the various grand juries on the circuits. The lowest attorney's clerk is now 
 better instructed.
 
 MA TTHE IV LE WIS. iy 
 
 MATTHEW LEWIS. (E. REVIEW, 1803.) 
 
 , King of Cai'.Ue, A Tr:--:-y in F..- Acts. By M. G. LEWIS. Price as. 6d, 
 
 ALFONSO, king of Castile, had, many years previous to the supposed epoch 
 of the play, left his minister and general Orsino to perish in prison, from a 
 false accusation of treason. Caesario, son to Orsino (who by accident had 
 liberated Amelrosa, daughter of Alfonso, from the Moors, and who is mar- 
 ried to her, unknown to the father), becomes a great favourite with the King, 
 and avails himself of the command of the armies with which he is intrusted, 
 to gratify his revenge for his father's misfortunes, to forward his own ambi- 
 tious views, and to lay a plot by which he may deprive Alfonso of his throne 
 and his life. Marquis Guzman, poisoned by his wife Ottilia, hi love with 
 Caesario, confesses to the King that the papers upon which the suspicion of 
 Orsini's guilt was founded, were forged by him : and the King, learning 
 from his daughter Amelrosa that Orsino is still alive, repairs to his retreat 
 in the forest, is received with the most implacable hauteur and resentment, 
 and in vain implores forgiveness of his injured minister. To the same 
 forest, Csesario, informed of the existence of his father, repairs, and reveals 
 his intended plot against the King. Orsino, convinced of Alfonso's goodness 
 to his subjects, Jthough incapable of forgiving him for his unintentional in- 
 juries to himself, in vain dissuades his son from the conspiracy ; and at last, 
 ignorant of their marriage, acquaints Amelrosa with the plot formed by her 
 husband against her father. Amelrosa, already poisoned by Ottilia, in vain 
 attempts to prevent Caesario from blowing up a mine laid under the royal 
 palace ; information of which she had received from Ottilia, stabbed by 
 Caesario to avoid her importunity. In the mean time, the King had been 
 removed from the palace by Orsino, to his ancient retreat in the forest : the 
 people rise against the usurper Csesario ; a battle takes place : Orsino stabs 
 his ovm son, at the moment the King is hi his son's power ; falls down from 
 the wounds he has received hi battle ; and dies in the usual dramatic style, 
 repeating twenty-two hexameter verses. Mr Lewis says in his preface, 
 
 " To the assertion, that my play is stupid, I have nothing to object ; if it 
 be found so, even let it be so said ; but if (as was -moAfalsdy asserted of 
 Adelmom) any anonymous writer should advance that this Tragedy is im~ 
 moral, I expect him to prove his assertion by quoting the objectionable 
 passages. This I demand as an act ol justice." 
 
 We confess ourselves to have been highly delighted with these symptoms 
 of returning, or perhaps nascent purity in the mind of Mr Lewis ; a delight 
 somewhat impaired, to be sure, at the opening of the play, by the following 
 explanation which Ottilia gives of her early rising. 
 
 " ACT I. SCKNB I.TkefaZace-znriim.~Daj-lrreaJk. 
 " OTTILIA entert tx a nigJit-dress : her hear/fact dukretUed. 
 
 " OTTIL. Dews of the morn, descend ! Breathe, summer gales : 
 My flushed cheeks woo ye ! Play, sweet wantons, play 
 'Mid my loose tresses, fan my panting breast, 
 Quench my blood's burning fever ! Vain, rain prayer ! 
 Not Winter throned 'midst Alpine snows, whose will 
 Can with one breath, one touch, congeal whole realms, 
 And blanch whole seas : not that fiend's self could ease 
 This heart, this gulf of flames, this purple kingdom, 
 Where passion rules and rages ! " 
 
 Ottilia at last becomes quite furious, from the conviction that Csesario has 
 ;eping with a second lady, called Estella ; whereas he has really been
 
 i x MA TTHE W LE WIS. 
 
 sleeping with a third lady, called Amelrosa. Passing across the stage, this 
 gallant gentleman takes an opportunity of mentioning to the audience, that 
 he has been passing his time very agreeably, meets Ottilia, quarrels, makes 
 it up ; and so end the first two or three scenes. 
 
 Mr Lewis will excuse us for the liberty we take in commenting on a few 
 passages in his play which appear to us rather exceptionable. The only 
 information which Caesario, imagining his father to have been dead for many 
 years, receives of his existence, is in the following short speech of Melchior: 
 
 " MBLCH. The Count San Lucar, long thought dead, but saved, 
 It seems, by Amelrosa's care. Time presses 
 I must away : farewell." 
 
 To this laconic, but important information, Caesario makes no reply ; but 
 merely desires Melchior to meet him at one o'clock, under the Royal Tower, 
 and for some other purposes. 
 
 In the few cases which have fallen under our observation, of fathers re- 
 stored to life after a supposed death of twenty years, the parties concerned 
 have, on the first information, appeared a little surprised, and generally 
 asked a few questions ; though we do not go the length of saying it is natural 
 so to do. This same Caesario (whose love of his lather is a principal cause 
 of his conspiracy against the King) begins criticising the old warrior, upon 
 his first seeing him again, much as a virtuoso would criticise an ancient statue 
 that wanted an arm or a leg. 
 
 ORSINO enters from the cave. 
 " CESARIO. Now by my life 
 A noble ruin." 
 
 Amelrosa, who imagines her father to have banished her from his presence 
 for ever, in the first transports of joy for pardon, obtained by earnest inter- 
 cessions, thus exclaims : 
 
 " Lend thy doves, dear Venus, 
 That I may send them where Csesario strays : 
 And while he smooths their silver wings, and gives them 
 For drink the honey of his lips, I '11 bid them 
 Coo in his ear, his Amelrosa 's happy I " 
 
 What judge of human feelings does not recognise in these images of silver 
 wings, doves and honey, the genuine language of the passions ? 
 
 If Mr Lewis is really in earnest in pointing out the coincidence between 
 his own dramatic sentiments and the gospel of St Matthew, such a reference 
 (wide as we know this assertion to be) evinces a want of judgment, of which 
 we did not think him capable. If it proceeded from irreligious levity, wejpity 
 the man who has bad taste enough not to prefer honest dulness to such paltry 
 celebrity. 
 
 We beg leave to submit to Mr Lewis, if Alfonso, considering the great 
 interest he has in the decision, might not interfere a little in the long argu- 
 ment carried on between Cresario and Orsino, upon the propriety of putting 
 him to death. To have expressed any decisive opinion upon the subject, 
 might perhaps have been incorrect ; but a few gentle hints as to that side of 
 the question to which he leaned, might be fairly allowed to be no very un- 
 natural incident. 
 
 This tragedy delights in explosions. Alfonso's empire is destroyed by a 
 blast of gunpowder, and restored by a clap of thunder. After the death of 
 Caesario, and a short exhortation to that purpose by Orsino, all the conspira- 
 tors fall down in a thunder-clap, ask pardon of the king, and are forgiven. 
 This mixture of physical and moral power is beautiful J How interesting a
 
 NECKER'S LAST VIEWS. 19 
 
 water-spout would appear among Mr Lewis's kings and queens ! We 
 anxiously look forward, in his next tragedy, to a fall of snow three or four 
 feet deep ; or expect that a plot shall gradually unfold itself by means of a 
 general thaw. 
 
 All is not so bad in this play. There is some strong painting, which 
 shows, every now and then, the hand of a master. The agitation which 
 Cassario exhibits upon his first joining the conspirators in the cave, previous 
 to the blowing up of the mine, and immediately after stabbing Ottilia, is 
 very fine. 
 
 " CJESARIO. Ay, shout, shout, 
 And kneeling greet your blood-anointed king, 
 This steel his sceptre ! Tremble, dwarfs in guilt, 
 And own your master ! Thou art proof, Henriquez, 
 'Gainst pity ; I once saw thee stab in battle 
 A page who clasped thy knees : And Melchior there 
 Made quick work with a brother whom he hated. 
 But what did / this night ? Hear, hear, and reverence ! 
 There was a breast, on which my head had rested 
 'A thousand times ; a breast which loved me fondly 
 As heaven loves martyred saints, and yet this breast 
 I stabbed, knaves stabbed it to the heart ! Wine ! wine there ! 
 For my soul 's joyous ! " p. 86. 
 
 The resistance which Amelrosa opposes to the firing of the mine, is well 
 wrought out ; and there is some good poetry scattered up and down the 
 play, of which we should very willingly make extracts, if our limits would 
 permit. The ill success which it has justly experienced, is owing, we have 
 no doubt, to the want of nature in the characters, and of probability and 
 good arrangement in the incidents, objections of some force. 
 
 NECKER'S LAST VIEWS. (E. REVIEW, 1803.) 
 Demieres Vues de Polittqites, et de Finance. Par M. NECKER. An 10. 1802. 
 
 IF power could be measured by territory, or counted by population, the in- 
 veteracy, and the disproportion which exists between France and England, 
 must occasion to every friend of the latter country the most serious and well- 
 founded apprehensions. Fortunately however for us, the question of power 
 is not only what is the amount of population ? but, how is that population 
 governed ? How far is a confidence in the stability of political institutions 
 established by an experience of their wisdom ? Are the various interests of 
 society adjusted and protected by a system of laws thoroughly tried, gradually 
 ameliorated, and purely administered ? What is the degree of general pros- 
 perity evinced by that most perfect of all criteria, general credit ? These are 
 the considerations to which an enlightened politician, who speculates on the 
 future destiny of nations, will direct his attention, more than to the august 
 and imposing exterior of territorial dominion, or to those brilliant moments, 
 when a nation, under the influence of great passions, rises above its neigh- 
 bours, and above itself, in military renown. 
 
 If it be visionary to suppose the grandeur and safety of the two nations as 
 compatible and co-existent, we have the important (though the cruel) con- 
 solation of reflecting, that the French have yet to put together the very ele- 
 ments of a civil and political constitution ; that they have to experience all 
 the danger and all the inconvenience which result from the rashness and the 
 imperfect views of legislators, who have every thing to conjecture, and every
 
 ;- NECKER 'S LAST VIEWS. 
 
 thing to create ; that they must submit to the confusion of repeated change, 
 or the greater evil of obstinate perseverance in error; that they must live for 
 a century in that state of perilous uncertainty in which every revolutionised 
 nation remains, before rational liberty becomes feeling and habit, as well as 
 law, and is written in the hearts of men as plainly as in the letter of the 
 statute ; and that the opportunity of beginning this immense edifice of human 
 happiness is so far from being presented to them at present, that it is ex- 
 tremely problematical whether or not they are to be bandied from one vulgar 
 usurper to another, and remain for a century subjugated to the rigour of a 
 military government, at once the scorn and the scourge of Europe.* 
 
 To the more pleasing supposition, that the First Consul will make use of 
 his power to give his country a free constitution, we are indebted for the 
 work of M. Necker now before us, a work of which good temper is the 
 characteristic excellence: it every where preserves that cool impartiality which 
 it is so difficult to retain in the discussion of subjects connected with recent 
 and important events : modestly proposes the results of reflections ; and, 
 neither deceived nor wearied by theories, examines the best of all that man- 
 kind have said or done for the attainment of rational liberty. 
 
 The principal object of M. Necker's book is to examine this question, 
 " An opportunity of election supposed, and her present circumstances con- 
 sidered what is the best form of government which France is capable of 
 receiving ? " and he answers his own query, by giving the preference to a 
 Republic One and Indivisible. 
 
 The work is divided into four parts. 
 
 1. An Examination of the present constitution of France. 
 
 2. On the best form of a Republic One and Indivisible. 
 
 3. On the best form of a Monarchical Government. 
 
 4. Thoughts upon Finance. 
 
 From the misfortune which has hitherto attended all discussions of present 
 constitutions in France, M. Necker has not escaped. The subject has proved 
 too rapid for the author ; and its existence has ceased before its properties 
 were examined. This part of the work, therefore, we shall entirely pass 
 over : because, to discuss a mere name, is an idle waste of time ; and no 
 man pretends that the present constitution of France can, with propriety, be 
 considered as any thing more. We shall proceed to a description of that 
 form of a republican government which appears to M. Necker best calculated 
 to promote the happiness of that country. 
 
 Every department is to be divided into five parts, each of which is to 
 send one member. Upon the eve of an election, aU persons paying 200 
 livres of government taxes in direct contribution, are to assemble together, 
 and choose 100 members from their own number, who form what M. Necker 
 calls a Chamber of Indication. This Chamber of Indication is to present 
 five candidates, of whom the people are to elect one : and the right of voting 
 in this latter election is given to every body engaged in a wholesale or retail 
 business ; to all superintendents of manufactures and trades ; to all com- 
 missioned and non-commissioned officers and soldiers who have received 
 their discharge ; and to all citizens paying, in direct contribution, to the 
 amount of twelve livres. Votes are not to be given in one spot, but before 
 the chief magistrate of each commune where the voter resides, and there in- 
 serted in registers j from a comparison of which, the successful candidate is 
 to be determined. The municipal officers are to enjoy the right of recom* 
 mending one of these candidates to the people, who are free to adopt their 
 recommendation or not, as they may think proper. The right of voting is 
 
 * All this is, unfortunately, as true now as it was when written thirty years ago.
 
 NECKER'S LAST VIEWS. 21 
 
 confined to qualified single men of twenty-five years of age ; married men of 
 the same description may vote at any age. 
 
 To this plan of election we cannot help thinking there are many great and 
 insuperable objections. The first and infallible consequence of it would 
 be, a devolution of the whole elective franchise upon the Chamber of Indi- 
 cation, and a complete exclusion of the people from any share in the privi- 
 lege ; for the Chamber, bound to return five candidates, would take care to 
 return four out of the five so thoroughly objectionable, that the people would 
 be compelled to choose the fifth. Such has been the constant effect oi' all 
 elections so constituted in Great Britain, where the power of conferring the 
 office has always been found to be vested in those who named the candi- 
 dates, not in those who selected an individual from the candidates named. 
 
 But if such were not the consequences of a double election ; and if it were 
 so well constituted, as to retain that character which the Legislature meant 
 to impress upon it, there are other reasons which would induce us to pro- 
 nounce it a very pernicious institution. The only foundation of political 
 liberty is the spirit of the people : and the only circumstance which makes a 
 lively impression upon their senses, and powerfully reminds them of their 
 importance, their power, and their rights, is the periodical choice of their 
 representatives. How easily that spirit may be totally extinguished, and of 
 the degree of abject fear and slavery to which the human race may be re- 
 duced for ages, every man of reflection is sufficiently aware ; and he knows 
 that the preservation of that feeling is, of all other objects of political science, 
 the most delicate and the most difficult. It appears to us, that a people who 
 did not choose their representatives, but only those who chose their repre- 
 sentatives, would very soon become indifferent to their elections altogether. 
 To deprive them of their power of nominating their own candidate, would 
 be still worse. The eagerness of the people to vote, is kept alive by theil 
 occasional expulsion of a candidate who has rendered himself objectionable, 
 or the adoption of one who knows how to render himself agreeable, to them. 
 They are proud of being solicited personally by a man of family or wealth. 
 The uproar even, and the confusion and the clamour of a popular election 
 in England, have their use : they give a stamp to the names, Liberty, Con- 
 stitution, and People : they infuse sentiments which nothing but violent pas- 
 sions and gross objects of sense could infuse ; and which would never exist, 
 perhaps, if the sober constituents were to sneak, one by one, into a notary's 
 office to deliver their votes for a representative, or were to form the first link 
 in that long chain of causes and effects, which in this compound kind of 
 elections, ends with choosing a member of Parliament. 
 
 "Above all things (says M. Necker) languor is the most deadly to a 
 republican government ; for when such a political association is animated 
 neither by a kind of instinctive affection for its beauty, nor by the continual 
 homage of reflection to the happy union of order and liberty, the public 
 spirit is half lost, and with it the republic. The rapid brilliancy of despotism 
 is preferred to a mere complicated machine, from which every symptom of 
 life and organisation is fled." 
 
 Sickness, absence, and nonage, would (even under the supposition of 
 universal suffrage) reduce the voters of any country to one fourth of its 
 population. A qualification much lower than that of the payment of twelve 
 livres in direct contribution, would reduce that fourth one half, and leave 
 the number of voters in France three millions and a half, which, divided by 
 600, gives between five and six thousand constituents for each representative; 
 a number not amounting to a third part of the voters for many counties in 
 England, and which certainly is not so unwieldy a,s to make it necessary to
 
 NECKER 'S LAST VIEWS. 
 
 have recourse to the complex mechanism of double elections. Besides, too, 
 if it could be believed that the peril were considerable, of gathering men 
 together in such masses, \ve have no hesitation in saying that it would be 
 infinitely preferable to thin their numbers by increasing the value of the 
 qualification, than to obviate the apprehended bad effects, by complicating 
 the system of election. 
 
 M. Necker (much as he has seen and observed) is clearly deficient in that 
 kind of experience which is gained by living under free governments : he 
 mistakes the riots of a free, for the insurrection of an enslaved, people ; and 
 appears to be impressed with the most tremendous notions of an English 
 election. The difference is, that the tranquillity of an arbitrary government 
 is rarely disturbed, but from the most serious provocations, not to be ex- 
 piated by any ordinary vengeance. The excesses of a free people are less 
 important, because their resentments are less serious ; and they can commit 
 a great deal of apparent disorder with very little real mischief. An English 
 mob, which, to a foreigner, might convey the belief of an impending mas- 
 sacre, is often contented by the demolition of a few windows. 
 
 The idea of diminishing the number of constituents, rather by extending 
 the period of nonage to twenty-five years, than by increasing the value of 
 the qualification, appears to us to be new and ingenious. No person con- 
 siders himself as so completely deprived of a share in the government, who 
 is to enjoy it when he becomes older, as he would do, were that privilege 
 deferred till he became richer ; time comes to all, wealth to few. 
 
 This assembly of representatives, as M. Necker has constituted it, appears 
 to us to be in extreme danger of turning out to be a mere collection of country 
 gentlemen. Every thing is determined by territorial extent and population ; 
 and as the voters in towns must, in any single division, be almost always 
 inferior to the country voters, the candidates will be returned in virtue of 
 large landed property ; and that infinite advantage which is derived to a 
 popular assembly, from the variety of characters of which it is con; 
 would be entirely lost under the system of M. Necker. The sea-ports, the 
 universities, the great commercial towns, should all have their separate 
 organs in the parliament of a great country. There should be some means 
 of bringing in active, able, young men, who would submit to the labour of 
 business, from the stimulus of honour and wealth. Others should be there, 
 expressly to speak the sentiments, and defend the interests, of the executive. 
 Every popular assembly must be grossly imperfect, that is not composed of 
 such heterogeneous materials as these. Our own parliament may perhaps 
 contain within itself too many of that species of representatives, who could 
 never have arrived at the dignity under a pure and perfect system of election ; 
 but, for all the practical purposes of government, amidst a great majority 
 fairly elected by the people, we should always wish to see a certain number 
 of the legislative body representing interests very distinct from those of the 
 people. 
 
 The legislative part of his constitution M. Necker manages in the follow- 
 ing manner. There are two councils, the great and the little. The great 
 council is composed of five members from each department, elected in the 
 manner we have just described, and amounting to the number of six hundred. 
 The assembly is re-elected every five years. No qualification * of property 
 is necessary to its members, who receive each a salary of 12,000 livres. No 
 one is eligible to the assembly before the age of twenty-five years. The 
 little national council consists of one hundred members, or from that number 
 
 * Nothing can be more absurd than our qualification for parliament ; it is nothing but 
 a foolish and expensive lie on parchment.
 
 NECKER' S LAST VIEWS. 23 
 
 to one hundred and twenty ; one for each department. It is re-elected 
 every ten years ; its members must be thirty years of age ; and they receive 
 the same salary as the members of the great council. For the election of 
 the little council, each of the five Chambers of Indication, in every depart- 
 ment, gives in the name of one candidate ; and, from the five so named, 
 the same voters who choose the great council select one. 
 
 The municipal officers enjoy, in this election, the same right of recom- 
 mending one of the candidates to the people ; a privilege which they would 
 certainly exercise indirectly, without a law, wherever they could exercise it 
 with any effect, and the influence of which the sanction of the law would at 
 all times rather diminish than increase. 
 
 The grand national council commences all deliberations which concern 
 public order, and the interest of the state, with the exception of those only 
 which belong to finance. Nevertheless, the executive and the little council 
 have it in their power to propose any law for the consideration of the grand 
 council. When a law has passed the two councils, and received the sanction 
 of the executive senate, it becomes binding upon the people. If the execu- 
 tive senate disapprove of any law presented to them for their adoption, they 
 are to send it back to the two councils for their reconsideration ; but if it pass 
 these two bodies again, with the approbation of two thirds of the members 
 of each assembly, the executive has no longer the power of withholding its 
 assent. All measures of finance are to initiate with government. 
 
 We believe M. Necker to be right in his idea of not exacting any qualifi- 
 cation of property in his legislative assemblies. When men are left to 
 choose their own governors, they are guided in their choice by some one of 
 those motives which has always commanded their homage and admiration : 
 if they do not choose wealth, they choose birth or talents, or military 
 fame : and of all these species of pre-eminence, a large popular assembly 
 should be constituted. In England, the laws, requiring that members of 
 parliament should be possessed of certain property, are (except in the in- 
 stance of members for counties) practically repealed. 
 
 In the salaries of the members of the two councils, with the exception of 
 the expense, there is, perhaps, no great balance of good or harm. To some 
 men it would be an inducement to become senators ; to others, induced by 
 more honourable motives, it would afford the means of supporting that 
 situation without disgrace. Twenty-five years of age is certainly too late a 
 period for the members of the great council. Of what astonishing displays 
 of eloquence and talent should we have been deprived in this country under 
 the adoption of a similar rule ! 
 
 The institution of two assemblies constitutes a check upon the passion 
 and precipitation by which the resolutions of any single popular assembly 
 may occasionally be governed. The chances, that one will correct the other, 
 do not depend solely upon their dividuality, but upon the different ingredi- 
 ents of which they are composed, and that difference of system and spirit, 
 which results from a difference of conformation. Perhaps M. Necker has 
 not sufficiently attended to this consideration. The difference between his 
 two assemblies is not very material ; and the same popular fury which 
 marked the proceedings of the one, would not be very sure of meeting with 
 an adequate corrective in the dignified coolness and wholesome gravity of 
 the other. 
 
 All power which is tacitly allowed to devolve upon the executive part oi'a 
 government, from the experience that it is most conveniently placed there, is 
 both safer, and less likely to be complained of, than that which is conferred 
 upon it by law. If M. Necker had placed some agents of the executive 
 m the great council, all measures of finance would, in fact, have originated
 
 ?4 NECKER'S LAST VIEWS. 
 
 in then, without any exclusive right to such initiation ; but the ri^it of 
 initiation, from M. Necker's contrivance, is likely to excite that discontent 
 in the people, which alone can render it dangerous and objectionable. 
 
 In this plan of a republic, every thing seems to depend upon the purity 
 and the moderation of its governors. The executive has no connection with 
 the great council ; the members of the great' council have no motive of hope, 
 or interest, to consult the wishes of the executive. The assembly, which is 
 to give example to the nation, and enjoy its confidence, is composed of six 
 hundred men, whose passions have no other control than that pure love of 
 the public, which it is hoped they may possess, and that cool investigation 
 of interests, which it is hoped they may pursue. 
 
 Of the effects of such a constitution, every thing must be conjectured ; for 
 experience enables us to make no assertion respecting it. There is only one 
 government in the modem world, which, : from the effects it has produced, and 
 the time it has endured, can with justice be called good and free. Its con- 
 stitution, in books, contains the description of a legislative assembly, similar 
 to that of M. Necker's. Happily, perhaps, for the people, the share they 
 have really enjoyed in its election, is much less ample than that allotted to 
 them in this republic of the closet. How long a really popular assembly 
 would tolerate any rival and co-existing power in the state -for what period 
 the feeble executive, and the untitled, unblazoned peers of a republic, could 
 stand against it whether any institutions compatible with the essence and 
 meaning of a republic, could prevent it from absorbing all the dignity, the 
 popularity, and the power of the state, are questions that we leave for the 
 resolution of wiser heads ; with the sincerest joy that we have only a theo- 
 retical interest in stating them.* 
 
 The executive senate is to consist of seven ; and the right of presenting 
 the candidates, and selecting from the candidates alternately from one as- 
 sembly to the other, i.e. on a vacancy, the great council present three can- 
 didates to the little council, who select one from that number ; and, on the 
 next vacancy, by the inversion of this process, the little council present, and 
 the great council select ; and so alternately. The members of the execu- 
 tive must be thirty-five years of age. Their measures are determined by a 
 majority. The president, called the Consul, has a casting vote ; his salary 
 is fixed at 300,000 livres : that of all the other senators at 60,000 livres. 
 The office of consul is annual. Every senator enjoys it in his turn. Every 
 year one senator goes out, unless re-elected ; which he may be once, and 
 even twice, if he unite three fourths of the votes of each council in his 
 favour. The executive shall name to all civil and military offices, except 
 to those of mayors and municipalities. Political negotiations, and con- 
 nections with foreign countries, fall under the direction of the executive. 
 Declarations of war or peace, when presented by the executive to the legis- 
 lative body, are to be adopted, the first by a majority of three fifths, the 
 last by a simple majority. The parade, honours, and ceremonies of the 
 executive, devolve upon the consul alone. The members of the senate, 
 upon going out of office, become members of the little council, to the 
 number of seven. Upon the vacation of an eighth senator, the oldest ex- 
 senator in the little council resigns his seat to make room for him. All 
 responsibility rests upon the consul alone, who has a right to stop the pro- 
 ceedings of a majority of the executive senate, by declaring them unconsti- 
 tutional ; and if the majority persevere, in spite of this declaration, the 
 dispute is referred to and decided by a secret committee of the little council. 
 
 M. Necker takes along with him the same mistake through the whole of 
 
 * That interest is at present not quite so theoretical as it WAS.
 
 NECKER' S LAST VIEWS. 2$ 
 
 his constitution, by conferring the choice of candidates on one body, and 
 the election of the member on another : so that though the alternation 
 would take place between the two councils, it would turn out to be in an 
 order directly opposite to that which was' intended. 
 
 We perfectly acquiesce in the reasons M. Necker has alleged for the 
 preference given to an executive, constituted of many individuals, rather 
 than of one. The prize of supreme power is too tempting to admit of fair 
 play in the game of ambition ; and it is wise to lessen its value by dividing 
 it : at least it is wise to do so, under a form of government that cannot 
 admit the better expedient of rendering the executive hereditary ; an ex- 
 pedient (gross and absurd as it seems to be) the best calculated, perhaps, to 
 obviate the effects of ambition upon the stability of governments, by narrow- 
 ing the field on which , it acts, and the object for which it contends. The 
 Americanslhave determined otherwise, and adopted an elective presidency : 
 but there are innumerable circumstances, as M. Necker very justly observes, 
 which render the example of America inapplicable to other governments. 
 America is a federative republic, and the extensive jurisdiction of the indi- 
 vidual States exonerates the President from so great a portion of the cares 
 of domestic government, that he may almost be considered as a mere 
 minister of foreign affairs. America presents such an immediate, and such 
 a seducing.species of provision to all its inhabitants, that it has no idle dis- 
 contented populace ; its population amounts only to six millions, and it is 
 not condensed in such masses as the population of Europe. After all, an 
 experiment of twenty years is never to be cited in politics ; nothing can be 
 built upon such a slender inference. Even if America were to remain sta- 
 tionary, she might find that she had presented too fascinating and irresistible 
 an object to human ambition : of course, that peril is increased by every 
 augmentation of a people, who are hastening on, with rapid and irresistible 
 pace, to the highest eminences of human grandeur. Some contest for 
 power there must be in every free state ; but the contest for vicarial and 
 deputed power, as it implies the presence of a moderator and a master, is 
 more prudent than the struggle for that which is original and supreme. 
 
 The difficulty of reconciling the responsibility of the executive with its 
 dignity, : M. Necker foresees ; and states, but does not remedy. An irre- 
 sponsible executive, the jealousy of a republic would never tolerate ; and 
 its amenability to punishment, by degrading it in the eyes of the people, 
 diminishes its power. 
 
 All the leading features of civil liberty are copied from the constitution of 
 this country, with hardly any variation. 
 
 Having thus finished his project of a republic, M. Necker proposes the 
 government of this country as the best model of a temperate and hereditary 
 monarchy ; pointing out such alterations in it as the genius of the French 
 people, the particular circumstances in which they are placed, or the abuses 
 which have crept into our policy, may require. From one or the other of 
 these motives he re-establishes the salique law ; * forms his elections after 
 the same manner as that previously described in his scheme of a republic ; 
 and excludes the clergy from the House of Peers. This latter assembly M. 
 Necker composes of 250 hereditary peers, chosen from the best families in 
 France, and of 50 assistant peers enjoying that dignity for life only, and 
 nominated by the Crown. The number of hereditary peers is limited as 
 above ; the peerage goes only in the male line ; and upon each peer is per- 
 petually entailed landed property to the amount of 30,000 livres. This 
 partial creation of peers for life only, appears to remedy a very material 
 
 * A most sensible and valuable law, banishing gallantry and chivalry from Cabinets, 
 and preventing the amiable antics of grave statesmen.
 
 26 NECKER.'S LAST VIEWS. 
 
 defect in the English constitution. An hereditary legislative aristocracy not 
 only adds to the dignity of the throne,fand establishes that gradation of ranks 
 which is perhaps absolutely necessary to its security, but it transacts a con- 
 siderable share of the business of the nation, as well in the framing of laws 
 as in the discharge of its juridical functions. But men of rank and wealth, 
 though they are interested by a splendid debate, will not submit to the 
 drudgery of business, much less can they be supposed conversant in all the 
 niceties of law questions. It is therefore necessary to add to their number 
 a certain portion of novi homines, men of established character for talents, 
 and upon whom the previous teuor of their lives has necessarily impressed 
 the habits of business. The evil of this is that the title descends to their 
 posterity, without the talents and the utility that procured it ; and the 
 dignity of the peerage is impaired by the increase of its numbers : not only 
 so, but as the peerage is the reward of military, as well as the earnest of civil 
 services, and as the annuity commonly granted with it is only for one or two 
 lives, we are in some danger of seeing a race of nobles wholly dependent 
 upon the Crown for their support, and sacrificing their political freedom to 
 their necessities. These evils are effectually, as it should seem, obviated 
 by the creation of a certain * number of peers for life only ; and the increase 
 of power which it seems to give to the Crown, is very fairly counteracted 
 by the exclusion of the episcopacy, and the limitation of the hereditary 
 peerage. As the weight of business in the Upper House would principally 
 devolve upon the created peers, and as they would hardly arrive at that 
 dignity without having previously acquired great civil or military reputation, 
 the consideration they would enjoy would be little inferior to that of the 
 fither part of the aristocracy. When the noblesse of nature are fairly opposed 
 to the noblesse created by political institutions, there is little fear that the 
 former should suffer by the comparison. 
 
 If the clergy are suffered to sit in the Lower House, the exclusion of the 
 episcopacy from the Upper House is of less importance : but, in some part 
 of the legislative bodies, the interests of the church ought unquestionably to 
 be represented. This consideration M. Necker wholly passes over.f 
 
 Though this gentleman considers an hereditary monarchy as preferable in 
 the abstract, he deems it impossible that such a government could be estab- 
 lished in France, under her present circumstances, from the impracticability 
 of establishing with it an hereditary aristocracy : because the property, and 
 the force of opinion, which constituted their real power, is no more, and 
 cannot be restored. Though we entirely agree with M. Necker, that an 
 hereditary aristocracy is a necessary part of temperate monarchy, and that 
 the latter must exist upon the base of the former, or not at all we are by 
 no means converts to the very decided opinion he has expressed of the im- 
 possibility of restoring them both to France. 
 
 We are surprised that M. Necker should attempt to build any strong 
 argument upon the durability of opinions in nations that are about to undergo, 
 or that have recently undergone, great political changes. What opinion was 
 there in favour of a republic in 1 780 ? Or against it in 1 794 ? Or, what 
 opinion is there now in favour of it in 1802? Is not the tide of opinions, 
 at this moment, in France, setting back with a strength equal to its flow ? 
 
 *The most useless and offensive tumour in the body politic, is the titled son of a great 
 man whose merit has placed him in the peerage. The name, face, and perhaps the pen- 
 sion, remain. The daemon is gone : or there is a slight flavour from the cask, but it is 
 empty. 
 
 t The parochial clergy are as much unrepresented in the English Parliament as they 
 are in the parliament of Brobdingnag. The bishops make just v.'liat laws they please, and 
 ihe bearing they may have on the happiness of the clergy at large never for vue moment 
 comes into the serious consideration of Parliament.
 
 NECKER' S LAST VIEWS. 27 
 
 and is there not reason to presume, that, for some time to come, their 
 ancient institutions maybe adored with as much fury as they were destroyed? 
 If opinion can revive in favour of kings (and M. Necker allows it may), why 
 not in favour of nobles ? It is true their property is in the hands of other 
 persons ; and the whole of that species of proprietors will exert themselves 
 to the utmost to prevent a restoration so pernicious to their interests. The 
 obstacle is certainly of a very formidable nature. But why this weight of 
 property, so weak a weapon of defence to its ancient, should he deemed so 
 irresistible in the hands of \\.spresent t possessors, we are at a loss to conceive ; 
 unless, indeed, it be supposed, that antiquity of possession diminishes the 
 sense of right and the vigour of retention ; and that men will struggle harder 
 to keep what they have acquired only yesterday, than that which they have 
 possessed, by themselves or their ancestors, for six centuries. 
 
 In France, the inferiority of the price of revolutionary lands, to others, is 
 immense. Of the former species, church land is considerably dearer than 
 the forfeited estates of emigrants. Whence the difference of price, but from 
 the estimated difference of security ? Can any fact display, more strongly, 
 the state of public opinion with regard to the probability of a future restora- 
 tion of these estates, either partial or total? and can any circumstance 
 facilitate the execution of such a project, more than the general belief that 
 it will be executed? M. Necker allows, that the impediments to the forma- 
 tion of a republic are very serious ; but thinks they would all yield to the 
 talents and activity of Bonaparte, if he were to dedicate himself to the 
 superintendence of such a government during the period of its infancy : of 
 course, therefore, he is to suppose the same power dedicated to the forma- 
 tion of an hereditary monarchy : or his parallel of difficulties is unjust, and 
 his preference irrational. Bonaparte could represent the person of a mon- 
 arch, during his life, as well as he could represent the executive of a repub- 
 lic ; and if he could overcome the turbulence of electors, to whom freedom 
 was new, he could appease the jealousy that his generals would entertain 
 of the returning nobles. Indeed, without such powerful intervention, this 
 latter objection does not appear to us to be by any means insuperable. If 
 the history of our own restoration were to be acted over again in France, 
 and royalty and aristocracy brought back by the military successor of Bona 
 parte, it certainly could not be done without a very liberal distribution c f 
 favours among the great leaders of the army. 
 
 Jealousy of the executive is one feature of a republic ; in consequence, 
 that government is clogged with a multiplicity of safeguards and restrictions, 
 which render it unfit for investigating complicated details, and managing 
 extensive relations with vigour, consistency, and despatch. A republic, 
 therefore, is better fitted for a little stage than a large one. 
 
 A love of equality is another very strong principle in a republic : there- 
 fore it does not tolerate hereditary honour or wealth ; and all the effect 
 produced upon the minds of the people by this factitious power is lost, and 
 the government weakened : but, in proportion as the government is less 
 able to command, the people should be more willing to obey ; therefore a 
 republic is better suited to a moral than an immoral people. 
 
 A people who have recently experienced great evils from the privileged 
 orders and from monarchs, love republican forms so much, that the warmth 
 of their inclination supplies, in some degree, the defect of their institutions. 
 Immediately, therefore, upon the destruction of despotism, a republic may be 
 preferable to a limited monarchy. 
 
 And yet, though narrowness of territory, purity of morals, and recent 
 escape from despotism, appear to be the circumstances which most strongly 
 recommend a republic, M. Necker proposes it to the most numerous and
 
 28 NECKEKS LAST VIEWS. 
 
 the most profligate people in Europe, who are disgusted with the very name 
 of liberty, from the incredible evils they have suffered in pursuit of it. 
 
 Whatever be the species of free government adopted by France, she can 
 adopt none without the greatest peril. The miserable dilemma in which 
 men living under bad governments are placed, is, that, without a radical 
 revolution, they may never be able to gain liberty at all ; and, with it, the 
 attainment of liberty appears to be attended with almost insuperable diffi- 
 culties. To call upon a nation, on a sudden, totally destitute of such know- 
 ledge and experience, to perform all the manifold functions of a free consti- 
 tution, is to intrust valuable, delicate, and abstruse mechanism, to the 
 rudest skill and the grossest ignorance. Public acts may confer liberty ; 
 but experience only can teach a people to use it ; and, till they have gained 
 that experience, they are liable to tumult, to jealousy, to collision of powers, 
 and to every evil to which men are exposed, who are desirous of preserving 
 a great good, without knowing how to set about it. In an old-established 
 system of liberty, like our own, the encroachments which one department 
 of the State makes on any other are slow, and hardly intentional ; the 
 political feelings, and the constitutional knowledge, which every Englishman 
 possesses, creates a public voice, which tends to secure the tranquillity of 
 the whole. Amid the crude sentiments and new-bom precedents of sudden 
 liberty, the Crown might destroy the Commons, or the Commons the 
 Crown, almost before the people had formed any opinion of the nature of 
 their contention. A nation grown free in a single day is a child born with 
 the limbs and the vigour of a man, who would take a drawn sword for his 
 rattle, and set the house in a blaze, that he might chuckle over the splendour. 
 
 Why can factious eloquence produce such limited effects in this country? 
 Partly because we are accustomed to it, and know how to appreciate it. 
 We are acquainted with popular assemblies ; and the language of our Par- 
 liament produces the effect it ought upon public opinion, because long 
 experience enables us to conjecture the real motives by which men are actu- 
 ated ; to separate the vehemence of party spirit from the language of prin- 
 ciple and truth ; and to discover whom we can trust, and whom we cannot. 
 The want of all this, and of much more than this, must retard, for a very 
 long period, the practical enjoyment of liberty in France, and present very 
 serious obstacles to her prosperity ; obstacles little dreamed of by men who 
 seem to measure the happiness and future grandeur of France by degrees of 
 longitude and latitude, and who believe she might acquire liberty with as 
 much facility as she could acquire Switzerland or Naples. 
 
 M. Necker's observations on the finances of France, and on finance in 
 general, are useful, entertaining, and not above the capacity of every reader. 
 France, he says, at the beginning of 1781, had 438 millions of revenue; 
 and, at present, 540 millions. The State paid, in 1781, about 215 millions 
 in pensions, the interest of perpetual debts, and debts for life. It pays, at 
 present, 80 millions in interests and pensions, and owes about 12 millions 
 for anticipations on the public revenue. A considerable share of the increase 
 of the revenue is raised upon the conquered countries ; and the people are 
 liberated from tithes, corvees, and the tax on salt. This, certainly, is a 
 magnificent picture of finance. The best-informed people at Paris, who 
 would be very glad to consider it as a copy from life, dare not contend that 
 it is so. At least, we sincerely ask pardon of M. Necker, if our information 
 as to this point be not correct : but we believe he is generally considered to 
 have been misled by the public financial reports. 
 
 In addition to the obvious causes which keep the interest of money so 
 high in France, M. Necker states one which we shall present to out 
 readers :
 
 AUSTRALIA. 29 
 
 "There is one means for the establishment of credit," he says, "equally 
 important with the others which I have stated a sentiment of respect for 
 morals, sufficiently diffused to overawe the government, and intimidate it 
 from treating with bad faith any solemn engagements contracted in the 
 name of the state. // is this respect for morals which seems at present 
 to have disappeared ; a respect which the Revolution has destroyed, and 
 which is unquestionably one of the firmest supports of national faith." 
 
 The terrorists of this country are so extremely alarmed at the power of 
 Bonaparte, that they ascribe to him resources, which M. Necker very justly 
 observes to be incompatible despotism and credit. Now, clearly, if he be 
 so omnipotent in France as he is represented to be, there is an end of all 
 credit ; for nobody will trust him whom nobody can compel to pay ; and if 
 he establishes a credit, he loses all that temporary vigour which is derived 
 from a revolutionary government. Either the despotism or the credit of 
 France directed against this country would be highly formidable ; but, both 
 together, can never he directed at the same time. 
 
 In this part of his work, M. Necker very justly points out one of the 
 most capital defects of Mr Pitt's administration ; who always supposed that 
 the power of France was to cease with her credit, and measured the period 
 of her existence by the depreciation of her assignats. Whereas, France was 
 never more powerful than when she was totally unable to borrow a single 
 shilling in the whole circumference of Europe, and when her assignats were 
 not worth the paper on which they were stamped. 
 
 Such are the principal contents of M. Necker's very respectable work. 
 Whether, in the course of that work, his political notions appear to be 
 derived from a successful study of the passions of mankind, and whether his 
 plan for the establishment of a republican government in France, for the 
 ninth or tenth time, evinces a more sanguine, or a more sagacious mind, 
 than the rest of the world, we would rather our readers should decide for 
 themselves, than expose ourselves to any imputation of arrogance by decid- 
 ing for them. But when we consider the pacific and impartial disposition 
 which characterises the Last Fieu's on Politics and Finance, the serene 
 benevolence which it always displays, and the pure morals which it always 
 inculcates, we cannot help entertaining a high respect for its venerable 
 author, and feeling a fervent wish that the last views of every public man 
 may proceed from a heart r.s upright, and be directed to objects as good. 
 
 AUSTRALIA. (E. REVIEW, 1803.) 
 
 Account of the English Colony ofXnv South Wales. By Lieutenant-Colonel COLLINS, 
 of the Royal Marines. Vol.11. 410. Cadcll and Davies, London. 
 
 To introduce an European population, and, consequently, the arts and 
 civilisation of Europe into such an untrodden country as New Holland, is 
 to confer a lasting and important benefit upon the world. If man be 
 destined for perpetual activity, and if the proper objects of that activity be 
 the subjugation of physical difficulties, and of his own dangerous passions, 
 how absurd are those systems which proscribe the acquisitions of science 
 and the restraints of law, and would arrest the progress of man in the rudest 
 and earliest stages of his existence ! Indeed, opinions so very extravagant 
 in their nature must be attributed rather to the wantonness of paradox, than 
 to sober reflection, and extended inquiry. 
 
 To suppose the savage state permanent, we must suppose the numbers of
 
 3 o AUSTRALIA. 
 
 those who compose it to be stationary, and the various passions by which 
 men have actually emerged from it to be extinct ; and this is to suppose 
 man a very different being from what he really is. To prove such a per- 
 manence beneficial (if it were possible), we must have recourse to matter of 
 fact, and judge of the rude state of society, not from the praises of tranquil 
 literati, but from the narratives of those who have seen it through a nearer 
 and better medium than that of imagination. There is an argument, how- 
 ever, for the continuation of evil, drawn from the ignorance of good ; by 
 which it is contended, that to teach men their situation can be better, is to 
 teach them that it is bad, and to destroy that happiness which always 
 results from an ignorance that any greater happiness is within our reach. 
 All pains and pleasures are clearly by comparison ; but the most deplorable 
 savage enjoys a sufficient contrast of good, to know that the grosser evils 
 from which civilisation rescues him are evils. A New Hollander seldom 
 passes a year without suffering from famine ; the small-pox falls upon him 
 like a plague ; he dreads those calamities, though he does not know how 
 to avert them ; but, doubtless, would find his happiness increased if they 
 were averted. To deny this, is to suppose that men are reconciled to evils, 
 because they are inevitable ; and yet hurricanes, earthquakes, bodily decay, 
 and death, stand highest in the catalogue of human calamities. 
 
 Where civilisation gives birth to new comparisons unfavourable to savage 
 life, with the information that a greater good is possible, it generally con- 
 nects the means of attaining it. The savage no sooner becomes ashamed of 
 his nakedness, than the loom is ready to clothe him ; the forge prepares for 
 him more perfect tools, when he is disgusted with the awkwardness of his 
 o\vn : his weakness is strengthened, and his wants supplied, as soon as they 
 are discovered ; and the use of the discovery is, that it enables him to derive 
 from comparison the best proofs of present happiness. A man born blind 
 is ignorant of the pleasures of which he is deprived. After the restoration 
 of his sight, his happiness will be increased from two causes ; from the 
 delight he experiences at the novel accession of power, and from the contrast 
 he will always be enabled to make between his two situations, long after the 
 pleasure of novelty has ceased. For these reasons, it is humane to restore 
 him to sight 
 
 But, however beneficial to the general interests of mankind the civilisa- 
 tion of barbarous countries may be considered to be, in this particular 
 instance of it, the interest of Great Britain would seem to have been very 
 little consulted. With fanciful schemes of universal good we have no busi- 
 ness to meddle. Why we are to erect penitentiary-houses and prisons at 
 the distance of half the diameter of the globe, and to incur the enormous 
 expense of feeding and transporting their inhabitants to and at such a dis- 
 tance, it is extremely difficult to discover. It certainly is not from any 
 deficiency of barren islands near our own coast, nor of uncultivated wastes 
 in the interior ; and if we were sufficiently fortunate to be wanting in such 
 species of accommodation, we might discover in Canada, or the West 
 Indies, or on the coast of Africa, a climate malignant enough, or a soil 
 sufficiently sterile, to revenge all the injuries which have been inflicted on 
 society by pickpockets, larcenists, and petty felons. Upon the foundation 
 of a new colony, and especially one peopled by criminals, there is a disposi- 
 tion in Government (where any circumstance in the commission of the crime 
 affords the least pretence for the commutation) to convert capital punishments 
 into transportation ; and by these means to hold forth a very dangerous, 
 though certainly a very unintentional encouragement to offences. And when 
 the history of the colony has been attentively perused in the parish of St 
 Giles, the ancient avocation of picking pockets will certainly not become
 
 AUSTRALIA. 31 
 
 more discreditable from the knowledge that it may eventually lead to the 
 possession of a farm of a thousand acres on the river Ilawkesbury. Since 
 the benevolent Howard attacked our prisons, incarceration has become not 
 only healthy but elegant ; and a county-jail is precisely the place to which 
 any pauper might wish to retire, to gratify his taste for magnificence as well 
 as for comfort. Upon the same principle, there is some risk that transpor- 
 tation will be considered as one of the surest roads to honour and to wealth ; 
 and that no felon will hear a verdict of "not guilty" without considering 
 himself as cut off in the fairest career of prosperity. It is foolishly believed 
 that the colony of Botany Bay unites our moral and commercial interests, 
 and that we shall receive hereafter an ample equivalent in bales of goods, 
 for all the vices we export. Unfortunately, the expense we have incurred 
 in founding the colony, will not retard the natural progress of its emancipa- 
 tion, or prevent the attacks of other nations, who will be as desirous of 
 reaping the fruit, as if they had sown the seed. It is a colony, besides, begun 
 under every possible disadvantage ; it is too distant to be long governed, 
 or well defended ; it is undertaken, not by the voluntary association of indi- 
 viduals, but by Government, and by means of compulsory labour. A nation 
 must, indeed, be redundant in capital, that will expend it where the hopes 
 of a just return are so very small. 
 
 It may be a curious consideration, to reflect what we are to do with this 
 colony when it comes to years of discretion. Are we to spend another 
 hundred millions of money in discovering its strength, and to humble our- 
 selves again before a fresh set of Washingtons and Franklins ? The moment 
 after we have suffered such serious mischief from the escape of the old tiger, 
 we are breeding up a young cub, whom ve cannot render less ferocious, or 
 more secure. If we are gradually to manumit the colony, as it is more and 
 more capable of protecting itself, the degrees of emancipation, and the 
 periods at which they are to lake place, will be judged of very differently 
 by the two nations. But we confess ourselves not to be so sanguine as to 
 suppose, that a spirited and commercial people would, in spite of the example 
 of America, ever consent to abandon their sovereignty over an important 
 colony, without a straggle. Endless blood and treasure will be exhausted 
 to support a tax on kangaroos' skins ; faithful Commons will go on voting 
 fresh supplies to support a just and necessary war ; and Newgate, then 
 become a quarter of the world, will evince a heroism, not unworthy of the 
 great characters by whom she was originally peopled. 
 
 The experiment, however, is not less interesting in a moral, because it is 
 objectionable in a commercial point of view. It is an object of the highest 
 curiosity, thus to have the growth of a nation subjected to our examination ; 
 to trace it by such faithful records, from the first day of its existence ; and 
 to gather that knowledge of the progress of human affairs, from actual ex- 
 perience, which is considered to be only accessible to the conjectural reflec- 
 tions of enlightened minds. 
 
 Human nature, under very old governments, is so trimmed, and pruned, 
 and ornamented, and led into such a variety of factitious shapes, that we are 
 almost ignorant of the appearance it would assume, if it were left more to 
 itself. From such an experiment as that now before us, we shall be better 
 able to appreciate what circumstances of our situation are owing to those 
 permanent laws by which all men are influenced, and what to the accidental 
 positions in which we have been placed. Now circumstances will throw 
 new light upon the effects of our religious, political, and economical institu- 
 tions, if we cause them to be adopted as models in our rising empire ; and 
 if we do not, we shall estimate the effects of their presence, by observing 
 those which are produced by their non-existence.
 
 3 * AUSTRALIA. 
 
 The history of the colony is at present, however, in its least interesting 
 state, on account of the great preponderance of depraved inhabitants, whose 
 crimes and irregularities give a monotony to the narrative, which it cannot 
 lose, till the respectable part of the community come to bear a greater pro- 
 portion to the criminal. 
 
 These Memoirs of Colonel Collins resume the history of the colony from 
 the period at which he concluded it in his former volume, September 1 796, 
 and continue it down to August iSoi. They are written in the style of a 
 journal, which, though not the most agreeable mode of conveying informa- 
 tion, is certainly the most authentic, and contrives to banish the suspicion 
 (and most probably the reality) of the interference of a bookmaker a species 
 of gentlemen who are now almost become necessary to deliver naval and 
 military authors in their literary labours, though they do not always atone, 
 by orthography and grammar, for the sacrifice of truth and simplicity. Mr 
 Collins's book is written with great plainness and candour : he appears to 
 be a man always meaning well ; of good, plain common sense ; and com- 
 posed of those well-wearing materials, which adapt a person for situations 
 where genius and refinement would only prove a source of misery and of 
 error. 
 
 \Ye shall proceed to lay before our readers an analysis of the most im- 
 portant matter contained in this volume. 
 
 The natives in the vicinity of Port Jackson stand extremely low in point 
 of civilisation, when compared with many other savages, with whom the 
 discoveries of Captain Cook have made us acquainted. Their notions of 
 religion exceed even that degree of absurdity which we are led to expect 
 in the creed of a barbarous people. In politics, they appear to have scarcely 
 advanced beyond family government. Huts they have none ; and, in all 
 their economical inventions, there is a rudeness and deficiency of ingenuity, 
 unpleasant, when contrasted with the instances of dexterity with which the 
 descriptions and importations of our navigators have rendered us so familiar. 
 Their numbers appear to us to be very small : a fact, at once, indicative 
 either of the ferocity of manners in any people, or, more probably, of the 
 sterility of their country : but which, in the present instance, proceeds from 
 both these causes. 
 
 " Gaining every day (says Mr Collins) some further knowledge of the in- 
 human habits and customs of these people, their being so thinly scattered 
 through the country ceased to be a matter of surprise. It was almost 
 daily seen, that from some trifling cause or other, they were continually 
 living in a state of warfare : to this must be added their brutal treatment of 
 their women, who are themselves equally destructive to the measure] of 
 population, by the horrid and cruel custom of endeavouring to cause a mis- 
 carriage, which their female acquaintance effect by pressing the body in 
 such a way, as to destroy the infant in the womb ; which violence not 
 unfrequently occasions the death of the unnatural mother also. To this 
 they have recourse to avoid the trouble of carrying the infant about when 
 bom, which, when it is very young, or at the breast, is the duty of the 
 woman. The operation for this destructive purpose is termed Mee-bra. 
 The burying an infant (when at the breast) with the mother, if she should 
 die, is another shocking cause of the thinness of population among them. 
 The fact that such an operation as the Mee-bra was practised by these 
 wretched people, was communicated by one of the natives to the principal 
 surgeon of the settlement." (pp. 124, 125.) 
 
 It is remarkable, that the same paucity of numbers has been observed in 
 every part of New Holland which has hitherto been explored ; and yet
 
 AUSTRALIA. 33 
 
 there is not the smallest reason to conjecture that the population of it has 
 been very recent ; nor do the people bear any marks of descent from the 
 inhabitants of the numerous islands by which this great continent is sur- 
 rounded. The force of population can only be resisted by some great 
 physical evils ; and many of the causes of this scarcity of human beings 
 which Mr Collins refers to the ferocity of the natives, are ultimately referable 
 to the difficulty of support We have always considered this phenomenon 
 as a symptom extremely unfavourable to the future destinies of this country. 
 It is easy to launch out into eulogiums of the fertility of nature in particular 
 spots ; but the most probable reason why a country that has been long 
 inhabited, is not well inhabited, is, that it is not calculated to support many 
 inhabitants without great labour. It is difficult to suppose any other causes 
 powerful enough to resist the impetuous tendency of man to obey that 
 mandate for increase and multiplication, which has certainly been better 
 observed than any other declaration of the Divine will ever revealed to us. 
 
 There appears to be some tendency to civilisation, and some tolerable 
 notions of justice, in a practice very similar to our custom of duelling ; for 
 duelling, though barbarous in civilised, is a highly civilised institution among 
 barbarous people ; and when compared to assassination, is a prodigious 
 victor}' gained over human passions. AVhoever kills another in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Botany Bay, is compelled to appear at an appointed day before 
 the friends of the deceased, and to sustain the attacks of their missile weapons. 
 If he is killed, he is deemed to have met with a deserved death ; if not, he 
 is considered to have expiated the crime for the commission of which he was 
 exposed to the danger. There is in this institution a command over present 
 impulses, a prevention of secrecy in the gratification of revenge, and a whole- 
 some correction of that passion, by the effects of public observation, which 
 evince such a superiority to the mere animal passions of ordinary savages, 
 and form such a contrast to the rest of the history of this people, that it may 
 be considered as altogether an anomalous and inexplicable fact. The natives 
 differ very much in the progress they have made in the arts of economy. 
 Those to the north of Port Jackson evince a considerable degree of ingenuity 
 and contrivance in the structure of their houses, which are rendered quite 
 impervious to the weather, while the inhabitants at Port Jackson have no 
 houses at all. At Port Dalrymple, in Van Dicmen's Land, there was every 
 reason to believe the natives were unacquainted with the use of canoes ; a fact 
 extremely embarrassing to those who indulge themselves in speculating on 
 the genealogy of nations ; because it reduces them to the necessity of sup- 
 posing that the progenitors of this insular people swam over from the main 
 land, or that they were aboriginal ; a species of dilemma, which effectually 
 bars all conjecture upon the intermixture of nations. It is painful to learn 
 that the natives have begun to plunder and rob in so very alarming a manner, 
 that it has been repeatedly found necessary to fire upon them ; and many 
 have, in consequence, fallen victims to their rashness. 
 
 The soil is found to produce coal in vast abundance, salt, lime, very fine 
 iron ore, timber fit for all purposes, excellent flax, and a tree, the bark of 
 which is admirably adapted for cordage. The discovery of coal (which, by 
 the by, we do not believe was ever before discovered so near the Line) is 
 probably rather a disadvantage than an advantage ; because, as it lies ex- 
 tremely favourable for sea carriage, it may prove to be a cheaper fuel than 
 wood, and thus operate as a discouragement to the clearing of lands. The 
 soil upon the sea-coast has not been found to be very productive, though it 
 improves in partial spots in the interior. The climate is healthy, in spite 
 of the prodigious heat of the summer months, at which period, the thermo- 
 meter has been observed to stand in the shade at 107, and the leaves of 
 
 c
 
 34 A USTRALIA. 
 
 garden vegetables to fall into dust as if they had been consumed with fire. 
 But one of the most insuperable defects in New Holland, considered as the 
 future country of a great people, is, the want of large rivers penetrating very 
 far into the interior, and navigable for small craft. The Hawkesbury, the 
 largest river yet discovered, is not accessible to boats for more than twenty 
 miles. This same river occasionally rises above its natural level, to the 
 astonishing height of fifty feet ; and has swept away, more than once, the 
 labours and the hopes of the new people exiled to its banks. 
 
 The laborious acquisition of any good we have long enjoyed is apt to be 
 forgotten. We walk and talk, and run and read, without remembering the 
 long and severe labour dedicated to the cultivation of these powers, the 
 formidable obstacles opposed to our progress, or the infinite satisfaction 
 with which we overcame them. He who lives among a civilised people 
 may estimate the labour by which society has been brought into such a state, 
 by reading in these annals of Botany Bay, the account of a whole nation 
 exerting itself to new-floor the government-house, repair the hospital, or 
 build a wooden receptacle for stores. Yet the time may come, when some 
 Botany Bay Tacitus shall record the crimes of an emperor lineally descended 
 from a London pickpocket, or paint the valour with which he has led his 
 New Hollanders into the heart of China. At that period, when the Grand 
 Lahma is sending to supplicate alliance ; when the spice islands are pur- 
 chasing peace with nutmegs ; when enormous tributes of green tea and 
 nankeen are wafted into Port Jackson, and landed on the quays of Sydney, 
 who will ever remember that the sawing of a few planks, and the knocking 
 together of a few nails, were such a serious trial of the energies and re- 
 sources of the nation ? 
 
 The Government of the colony, after enjoying some Iktle respite from 
 this kind of labour, has begun to turn its attention to the coarsest and most 
 necessary species of manufactures, for which their wool appears to be 
 extremely well adapted. The state of stock in the whole settlement, in June 
 1801, was about 7000 sheep, 1300 head of cattle, 250 horses, and 5000 hogs. 
 There were under cultivation at the same time, between 9 and 10,000 acres 
 of corn. Three years and a half before this, in December 1797, the numbers 
 were as follows : Sheep, 2500 ; cattle, 350 ; horses, IOO ; hogs, 4300 ; acres 
 of land hi cultivation, 4000. The temptation to salt pork, and to sell it for 
 government store, is probably the reason why the breed of hogs has been so 
 much kept under. The increase of cultivated lands between the two periods 
 is prodigious. It appears (p. 319) that the whole number of convicts im- 
 ported between January 1788 and June 1801 (a period of thirteen years and 
 a half), has been about 5000, of whom 1157 were females. The total 
 amount of the population on the continent, as well as at Norfolk Island, 
 amounted, June 1801, to 6500 persons ; of these, 766 were children bom at 
 Port Jackson. In the returns from Norfolk Island, children are not dis- 
 criminated from adults. Let us add to the imported population of 5000 
 convicts, 500 free people, which (if we consider that a regiment of soldiers 
 has been kept up there) is certainly a very small allowance ; then, in thirteen 
 years and a half, the imported population has increased only by two- 
 thirteenths. If we suppose that something more than a fifth of the free 
 people were women, this will make the total of women 1270 ; of whom we 
 may fairly presume that 800 were capable of child-bearing ; and if we sup- 
 pose the children of Norfolk Island to bear the same proportion to the 
 adults as at Port Jackson, their total number at both settlements will be 
 913 ; a state of infantine population which certainly does not justify the 
 very high eulogiums which have been made on the fertility of the female sex 
 in the climate of New Holland.
 
 A USTRALIA. 35 
 
 The Governor, who appears on all occasions to be an extremely well- 
 disposed man, is* not quite so conversant in the best writings on political 
 economy as we could wish : and indeed (though such knowledge would be 
 extremely serviceable to the interests which this Romulus of the Southern 
 Pole is superintending), it is rather unfair to exact from a superintendent of 
 pickpockets, that he should be a philosopher. In the i8th page we have 
 the following information respecting the price of labour : 
 
 " Some representations having been made to the Governor from the sett- 
 lers in different parts of the colony, purporting that the wages demanded by 
 the free labouring people, whom they had occasion to hire, was so exorbi- 
 tant as to run away with the greatest part of the profit of their farms, it was 
 recommended to them to appoint quarterly meetings among themselves, to 
 be held in each district, for the purpose of settling the rate of wages to 
 labourers in every different kind of work ; that; to this end, a written agree- 
 ment should be entered into, and subscribed by each settler, a breach of 
 which should be punished by a penalty, to be fixed by the general opinion, 
 and made recoverable in a court of civil judicature. It was recommended 
 to them to apply this forfeiture to the common benefit ; and they were to 
 transmit to the head-quarters a copy of their agreement, with the rate of 
 wages which they should from time to tune establish, for the Governor's 
 information, holding their first meeting as early as possible." 
 
 And again, at p. 24, the following arrangements on that head are 
 enacted : 
 
 " In pursuance of the order which was issued in January last, recommend- 
 ing .the settlers to appoint meetings, at which they should fix the rate of 
 wages that it might be proper to pay for the different kinds of labour which 
 their farms should require, the settlers had submitted to the Governor the 
 several resolutions that they had entered into, by which he was enabled to 
 fix a rate that he conceived to be fair and equitable between the farmer and 
 the labourer. 
 
 "The following prices of labour were now established, viz. : 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Felling Forest timber, per acre . . .090 
 
 Ditto in brush ground, ditto . . . o 10 6 
 
 Burning off open ground, ditto . .15 
 
 Ditto brush ground, ditto . . I 10 o 
 
 Breaking up new ground, ditto .140 
 
 Chipping fresh ground, ditto . o 12 3 
 
 Chipping in wheat, ditto . . .070 
 Breaking up stubble or com ground, ijd. per rod, or 
 
 per acre . . . . . . o 16 8 
 
 Planting Indian com, per acre . . . .070 
 
 Hilling ditto, ditto . . . .070 
 
 Reaping wheat, ditto . . . .0100 
 
 Thrashing ditto, per bushel, per acre . . .009 
 
 Pulling and husking Indian corn, per bushel . .006 
 
 Splitting paling of seven feet long, per hundred .030 
 
 Ditto of five feet long, ditto . . . .016 
 
 Sawing plank, ditto . . . .070 
 
 Ditching per rod, three feet wide and three feet deep o o 10 
 
 Carriage of wheat, per bushel, per mile . .002 
 
 Ditto Indian corn, neat . . o o 3 
 
 Yearly wages for labour, with board . . .1000
 
 AUSTRALIA. 
 
 "Wages per week, with provisions, consisting of 4 lib. 
 
 of salt pork, or 6 lib. of fresh, and 21 lib. of wheat 
 
 with vegetables 
 A day's wages with board 
 . Ditto without board 
 A government-man allowed to officers or set lers in 
 
 d. 
 
 their own time . . . .0010 
 
 Price of an axe . . . .020 
 
 New steeling ditto . . . .006 
 
 A new hoe . . . . .019 
 
 A sickle . . . . .016 
 
 Hiie of a boat to carry grain, per day . . .050 
 
 " The settlers were reminded, that, in order to prevent any kind of dis- 
 pute between the master and servant, when they should have occasion to 
 hire a man for any length of time, they would find it most convenient to 
 engage him for a quarter, half-year, or year, and to make their agreement 
 in writing ; on which, should any dispute arise, an appeal to the magistrates 
 would settle it." 
 
 This is all very bad ; and if the Governor had cherished the intention of 
 destroying the colony, he could have done nothing more detrimental to its 
 interests. The high price of labour is the very corner-stone on which the 
 prosperity of a new colony depends. It enables the poor man to live with 
 ease ; and is the strongest incitement to population, by rendering children 
 rather a source of riches than of poverty. If the same difficulty of subsist- 
 ence existed in new countries as in old, it is plain that the progress of popu- 
 lation would be equally slow in each. The very circumstances which cause 
 the difference are, that, in the latter, there is a competition among the 
 labourers to be employed ; and, in the former, a competition among the 
 occupiers of land to obtain labourers. In the one, land is scarce, and men 
 plenty ; in the other, men are scarce, and land is plenty. To disturb this 
 natural order of things (a practice injurious at all times) must be particu- 
 larly so where the predominant disposition of the colonists is an aversion to 
 labour, produced by a long course of dissolute habits. In such cases the 
 high prices of labour, which tlie Governor was so desirous of abating, bid 
 fair not only to increase the agricultural prosperity, but to effect the moral 
 reformation of the colony. We observe the same unfortunate ignorance of 
 the elementary principles of commerce in the attempts of the Governor to 
 reduce the prices of the European commodities, by bulletins and authorita- 
 tive interference, as if there were any other mode of lowering the price of an 
 article (while the demand continues the same) but by increasing its quantity. 
 The avaricious love of gain, which is so feelingly deplored, appears to us a 
 principle which, in able, hands, might be guided to the most salutary pur- 
 poses. The object is to encourage the love of labour, which is best 
 encouraged by the love of money. We have very great doubts on the policy 
 of reserving the best timber on the estates as government timber. Such a 
 reservation would probably operate as a check upon the clearing of lands, 
 without attaining the object desired ; for the timber, instead of being imme- 
 diately cleared, would be slowly destroyed, by the neglect or malice of the 
 settlers whose lands it encumbered. Timber is such a drug in new coun- 
 tries, that it is at any time to be purchased for little more than the labour 
 of cutting. To secure , a supply of it by vexatious and invidious laws, is 
 surely a work of supererogation and danger. The greatest evil which the 
 Government has yet had to contend with is, the inordinate xise of spirituous
 
 AUSTRALIA. 37 
 
 liquors ; a passion which puts the interests of agriculture at variance with 
 those of morals : for a dram-drinker will consume as much corn, in the form 
 of alcohol, in one day, as would supply him with bread for three ; and thus, 
 by his vices, opens an admirable market to the industry of a new settlement. 
 The only mode, we believe, of encountering this evil, is by deriving from it 
 such a revenue as will not admit of smuggling. Beyond this it is almost 
 invincible by authority ; and is probably to be cured only by the progressive 
 refinement of manners. 
 
 To evince the increasing commerce of the settlement, a list is subjoined of 
 140 ships, which have arrived there since its first foundation, forty only of 
 which were from England. The colony at Norfolk Island is represented to 
 be in a very deplorable situation, and will most probably be abandoned for 
 one about to be formed on Van Diemen's Land,* though the capital defect 
 of the former settlement has been partly obviated, by a discovery of the 
 harbour for small craft. 
 
 The most important and curious information contained in this volume, is 
 the discovery of straits which separate Van Diemen's Land (hitherto con- 
 sidered as its southern extremity) from New Holland. For this discovery 
 w are indebted to Mr Bass, a surgeon, after whom the straits have been 
 named, and who was led to a suspicion of their existence by a prodigious 
 swell which he observed to set in from the westward, at the mouth of the 
 opening which he had reached on a voyage of discovery, prosecuted in a 
 common whale-boat. To verify this suspicion, he proceeded afterwards in 
 a vessel of 25 tons, accompanied by Mr Flinders, a naval gentleman ; and, 
 entering the straits between the latitudes of 39 and 40 south, actually cir- 
 cumnavigated Van Diemen's Land. Mr Bass's ideas of the importance of 
 this discovery, we shall give from his narrative, as reported by Mr Collins. 
 
 " The most prominent advantage which seemed likely to accrue to the 
 settlement from this discovery was, the expediting of the passage from the 
 Cape of Good Hope to Port Jackson : for, although a line drawn from the 
 Cape to 44 of south latitude, and to the longitude of the South Cape of Van 
 Diemen's Land, would not sensibly differ from one drawn to the latitude of 
 40 to the same longitude ; yet it must be allowed, that a ship will be four 
 degrees nearer to Port Jackson in the latter situation than it would be in the 
 former. But there is, perhaps, a greater advantage to be gained by making 
 a passage through the strait, than the mere saving of four degrees of latitude 
 along the coast. The major part of the ships that have arrived at Port 
 Jackson have met with N.E. winds, on opening the sea round the South 
 Cape and Cape Pillar ; and have been so much retarded by them, that a 
 fourteen days' passage to the port is reckoned to be a fair one, although the 
 difference of latitude is but ten degrees, and the most prevailing winds at 
 the latter place are from S.E. to S. in summer, and from W.S.W. to S. in 
 winter. If, by going through Bass Strait, these N.E. winds can be 
 avoided, which in many cases would probably be the case, there is no doubt 
 but a \veek or more would be gained by it ; and the expense, with the wear 
 and tear of a ship for one week, are objects to most owners, more especially 
 when freighted with convicts by the run. 
 
 "This strait likewise presents another advantage. From the prevalence 
 of the N.E. and easterly winds off the South Cape, many suppose that a 
 passage may be made from thence to the westward, either to the Cape of 
 
 * It is singular that Government are not more desirous of pushing their settlements 
 lather to the north than the south of Port Jackson. The soil and climate would prob- 
 ably improve, in the latitude nearer the equator ; and settlements iu that position would 
 be more contiguous to our Indian colonies.
 
 38 J, FIEVEE. 
 
 Good Hope, or to India ; but the fear of the great unknown bight between 
 the South Cape and the S.W. Cape of Lewert's Land, lying in about 
 35 south and 113 east, has hitherto prevented the trial being made. Now, 
 the strait removes a part of this danger, by presenting a certain place of 
 retreat, should a gale oppose itself to the ship in the first part of the essay : 
 and should the wind come at S.W. she need not fear making a good stretch 
 to the W.N.W., which course, if made good, is within a few degrees of 
 going clear of all. There is, besides, King George the Third's Sound, dis- 
 covered by Captain Vancouver, situate in the latitude of 35 30' south, and 
 longitude 1 1 8 12' east ; and it is to be hoped, that a few years will disclose 
 many others upon the coast, as well as the confirmation or futility of the 
 conjecture, that a still larger than Bass Strait dismembers New Holland." 
 (pp. 192, 193.) 
 
 We learn from a note subjoined to this passage, that, in order to verify or 
 refute this conjecture, of the existence of other important inlets on the west 
 coast of New Holland, "Captain Flinders has sailed with two ships under 
 his command, and is said to be accompanied by several professional men of 
 considerable ability. 
 
 Such are the most important contents of Mr Collins's book, the style of 
 which we very much approve, because it appears to be written by himself ; 
 and we must repeat again, that nothing can be more injurious to the opinion 
 the public will form of the authenticity of a book of this kind, than the sus- 
 picion that it has been tricked out and embellished by other hands. Such 
 men, to be sure, have existed as Julius Caesar ; but, in general, a correct and 
 elegant style is hardly attainable by those who have passed their lives in 
 action : and no one has such a pedantic love of good writing, as to prefer 
 mendacious finery to rough and ungrammatical truth. The events which 
 Mr Collins's book records, we have read with great interest. There is a 
 charm in thus seeing villages, and churches, and farms, rising from a wilder- 
 ness, where civilised man has never set his foot since the creation of the 
 world. The contrast between fertility and barrenness, population and soli- 
 tude, activity and indolence, fill the mind with the pleasing images of 
 happiness and increase. Man seems to move in his proper sphere, while he 
 is thus dedicating the powers of ihis mind and body to reap those rewards 
 which the bountiful Author of all things has assigned to his industry. 
 Neither is it any common enjoyment, to turn for a while from the memory 
 of those distractions which have so recently ngitated the Old World ; and 
 to reflect, that its very horrors and crimes may have thus prepared a long 
 sera, of opulence and peace for a people yet involved in the womb of time. 
 
 J. FIEVfiE. (E. REVIEW, 1803.) 
 Lettres sur FAngleterre. Par J. FIEV^K. 1802. 
 
 OF all the species of travels, that which has moral observation for its object 
 is the most liable to error, and has the greatest difficulties to overcome, before 
 it can arrive at excellence. Stones, and roots, and leaves, are subjects which 
 may exercise the understanding without rousing the passions. A mineralo- 
 gical traveller will hardly fall foul upon the granite and the feldspar of other 
 countries than his own ; a botanist will not conceal its non-descripts ; and 
 an agricultural tourist will faithfully detail the average crop per acie ; but 
 the traveller who observes on the manners, habits, and institutions of other 
 countries, must have emancipated his mind from the extensive and powerful
 
 y. FIEVEE. 39 
 
 dominion of association, must have extinguished the agreeable and deceitful 
 feelings of national vanity, and cultivated that patient humility which builds 
 general inferences only upon the repetition of individual facts. Every thing 
 he sees shocks some passion or flatters it ; and he is perpetually seduced to 
 distort facts, so as to render them agreeable to his system and his feelings ! 
 Books of travels are now published in such vast abundance, that it may not 
 be useless, perhaps, to state a few of the reasons why their value so com- 
 monly happens to be in the inverse ratio of their number. 
 
 1st. Travels are bad, from a want of opportunity for observation in those 
 who write them. If the sides of a building are to be measured, and the 
 number of its windows to be counted, a very short space of time may suffice 
 for these operations ; but to gain such a knowledge of their prevalent 
 opinions and propensities, as will enable a stranger to comprehend (what is 
 commonly called) the genius of a people, requires a long residence among 
 them, a familiar acquaintance with their language, and an easy circulation 
 among their various societies. The society into which a transient stranger 
 gains the most easy access in any country, is not often that which ought to 
 stamp the national character ; and no criterion can be more fallible, in a 
 people so reserved and inaccessible as the British, who (even when they open 
 their doors to letters of introduction) cannot for years overcome the awk- 
 ward timidity of their nature. The same expressions are of so different a 
 value in different countries, the same actions proceed from such different 
 causes, and produce such different effects, that a judgment of foreign 
 nations, founded on rapid observation, is almost certainly a mere tissue of 
 ludicrous and disgraceful mistakes ; and yet a residence of a month or two 
 seems to entitle a traveller to present the world with a picture of manners in 
 London, Paris, or Vienna, and even to dogmatise upon the political, reli- 
 gious, and legal institutions, as if it were one and the same thing to speak of 
 abstract effects of such institutions, and of their effects combined with all the 
 peculiar circumstances in which any nation may be placed. 
 
 2dly. An affectation of quickness in observation, an intuitive glance that 
 requires only a moment, and a part, to judge of a perpetuity and a ivtole. 
 The late Mr Petion, who was sent over into this country to acquire a know- 
 ledge of our criminal law, is said to have declared himself thoroughly in- 
 formed upon the subject, after remaining precisely two and thirty minutes in 
 the Old Bailey. 
 
 3dly. The tendency to found observation on a system, rather than a sys- 
 tem upon observation. The fact is, there are very few original eyes and ears. 
 The great mass see and hear as they are directed by others, and bring back 
 from a residence in foreign countries nothing but the vague and customary 
 notions concerning it, which are carried and brought back for half a century, 
 without verification or change. The most ordinary shape in which this ten- 
 dency to prejudge makes its appearance among travellers, is by a disposition 
 to exalt, or, a still more absurd disposition, to depreciate their native country. 
 They are incapable of considering a foreign people but under one single point 
 of view the relation in which they stand to their own ; and the whole nar- 
 rative is frequently nothing more than a mere triumph of national vanity, or 
 the ostentation of superiority to so common a failing. 
 
 But we are wasting our time in giving a theory of the faults of travellers, 
 when we have such ample means of exemplifying them all from the publica- 
 tion now before us, in which Mr Jacob Fievee, with the most surprising 
 talents for doing wrong, has contrived to condense and agglomerate every 
 species of absurdity that has hitherto been made known, and even to launch 
 out occasionally into new regions of nonsense, with a boldness which well 
 entitles him to the merit of originality in folly, and discovery hi impertinence.
 
 40 ?. FIEVEE. 
 
 "We consider Mr Fievee's book as extremely valuable in one point of view. 
 It affords a sort of limit or mind-mark, beyond which we conceive it to be 
 impossible in future that pertness and petulance should pass. It is well to 
 be acquainted with the boundaries of our nature on both sides ; and to Mr 
 Fievee we are indebted for tliis valuable approach to pessimism. The height 
 of knowledge no man has yet scanned ; but we have now pretty well fathomed 
 the gulf of ignorance. 
 
 \Ye must, however, do justice to Mr Fievee when he deserves it. He 
 evinces, in his preface, a lurking uneasiness at the apprehension of exciting 
 war between the two countries, from the anger to which his letters will give 
 birth in England. He pretends to deny that they will occasion a war ; but it 
 is very easy to see he is not convinced by his own arguments ; and we confess 
 ourselves extremely pleased by this amiable solicitude at the probable effusion 
 of human blood. We hope Mr Fievee is deceived by his philanthropy, and 
 that no such unhappy consequences will ensue, as he really believes, though 
 he affects to deny them. We dare to say the dignity of this country will be 
 satisfied, if the publication in question'is disowned by the French government, 
 or, at most, if the author is given up. At all events, we have no scruple to 
 say, that to sacrifice 20,000 lives, and a hundred millions of money, to resent 
 Mr Fievee's book, would be an unjustifiable waste of blood and treasure ; 
 and that to take him off privately by assassination would be an undertaking 
 hardly compatible with the dignity of a great empire. 
 
 To show, however, the magnitude of the provocation, we shall specify a 
 few of the charges which he makes against the English. That they do not 
 understand fireworks as well as the French ; that they charge a shilling for 
 admission to the exhibition ; that they have the misfortune of being incom- 
 moded by a certain disgraceful privilege, called the liberty of the press ; 
 that the opera band plays out of tune ; that the English are so fond of drink- 
 ing, that they get drunk with a certain air called the gas of Paradise ; that 
 the privilege of electing members of Parliament is so burthensome, that cities 
 sometimes petition to be exempted from it ; that the great obstacle to a Par- 
 liamentary reform is the mob ; that women sometimes have titles distinct 
 from those of their husbands, although, in England, any body can sell his 
 wife at market, with a rope about her neck. To these complaints he adds 
 that the English are so far from enjoying that equality of which their par- 
 tisans boast, that none but the servants of the higher nobility can carry canes 
 behind a carriage ; that the power which the French Kings had of pardon- 
 ing before trial, is much the same thing as the^English mode of pardoning after 
 trial ; that he should conceive it to be a good reason for rejecting any mea- 
 sure in France, that it was imitated from the English, who have no family 
 affections, and who love money so much, that their first question, in an in- 
 quiry concerning the character of any man is, as to his degree of fortune. 
 Lastly, Mr Fievee alleges against the English, that they have great pleasure 
 in contemplating the spectacle of men deprived of their reason. And indeed 
 we must have the candour to allow, that the hospitality which Mr Fievee 
 experienced seems to afford some pretext for this assertion. 
 
 One of the principal objects of Mr Fievee's book, is to combat the Anglo- 
 mania, which has raged so long among his countrymen, and which prevailed 
 at Paris to such an excess, that even Mr Necker, a foreigner (incredible as 
 it may seem), after having been twice minister of France retained a consider- 
 able share of admiration for the English government. This is quite inex- 
 plicable. P>ut this is nothing to the treason of the Encyclopedists, who, 
 instead of attributing the merit of the experimental philosophy and the rea- 
 soning by induction to a Frenchman, have shown themselves so lost to all 
 sense of the duty which they owed their country, that_they have attributed
 
 ISLAND OF CEYLON. 4 i 
 
 it to ah Englishman,* of the name of Bacon, and this for no better reason 
 than that he really was the author of it. The whole of this passage is written 
 so entirely in the genius of Mr Fievee, and so completely exemplifies that 
 very caricature species of Frenchmen from which our gross and popular 
 notions of the whole people are taken, that we shall give the passage at full 
 length, cautiously abstaining from the sin of translating it. 
 
 " Quand je reproche aux philosophes d'avoir vantt 1'Angleterre, par 
 haine pour les institutions qui soutenoient la France, je ne hasarde rien, et 
 je fournirai une nouvelle preuve de cette assertion, en citant les encyclope- 
 distes, chefs avoues de la philosophic modeme. 
 
 " Comment nous ont-ils presente 1'Encyclopedie ? Comme un monument 
 immortel, comme le depot precieux de toutes les connoissances humaines. 
 Sous quel patronage 1'ont-ils eleve ce monument immortel? Est-ce sous 
 1'egide des ecrivains dont la France s'honoroit ? Non, ils ont choisi pour 
 maitre et pour idole, un Anglais, Bacon ; ils lui ont fait dire tout ce qu'ils 
 ont voulu, parce que cet auteur, extraordinairement volumineux, n'etoit pas 
 connu en France, et ne Test guere en Angleterre que de quelques homines 
 studieux ; mais les philosophes sentoient que leur succes, pour introduire 
 des nouveautes, tenoit a faire croire qu'elles n'&oient pas neztvcs pour les 
 grands esprits ; et comme les grands esprits Frangais, trop connus, ne ce 
 pretoient pas a un pareil dessein, les philosophes ont eu recours a 1" Angle- 
 terre. Ainsi, un ouvrage fait en France, et offert a 1'admiration de 1'Europe 
 comme 1'ouvrage par excellence, fut mis par des Francais sous la protection 
 du genie Anglais. O honte ! Et les philosophes se sont dit patriotes, et 
 la France, pour prix de sa degradation, leur a eleve des statues ! Le siecle 
 qui commence, plus juste, parce qu ; il a le sentiment de la veritable grandeur, 
 laissera ces statues et 1'Encyclopedie s'ensevelir sous la meme potissiere." 
 
 When to this are added the commendations that have been bestowed on 
 Newton, the magnitude and the originality of the discoveries which have 
 been attributed to him, the admiration which the works of Locke have ex- 
 cited, and the homage that has been paid to Milton and Shakspeare, the 
 treason which lurks at the bottom of it all will not escape the penetrating 
 glance of Mr Fievee ; and he will discern that same cause, from which every 
 good Frenchman knows the defeat of Aboukir and of the first of June to 
 have proceeded the monster Pitt, and his English guineas. 
 
 ISLAND OF CEYLON. (E. REVIEW, 1803.) 
 
 An Account of the Island of Ceylon. By ROBERT PERCIVAL, Esq., of his Majesty's 
 Nineteenth Regiment of Foot. London: C. and R. Baldwin. 
 
 IT is now little more than half a century since the English first began to 
 establish themselves in any force upon the peninsula of India ; and we at 
 present possess, in that country, a more extensive territory, and a more 
 numerous population, than any European power can boast of at home. In 
 no instance has the genius of the English, and their courage, shone forth 
 more conspicuously than in their contest with the French for the empire of 
 India. The numbers on both sides were always inconsiderable ; but the 
 two nations were fairly matched against each other, in the cabinet and the 
 
 * "Gaul was conquered by a person of the name of Julius Casar," is the first phraso 
 in one of Mr Newberr/s little books. /
 
 4^ ISLAND OF CEYLON. 
 
 field ; the struggle was long and obstinate ; and, at the conclusion, the 
 French remained masters of a dismantled town, and the English of the 
 grandest and most extensive colony that the world has ever seen. To attri- 
 bute this success to the superior genius of Clive, is not to diminish the repu- 
 tation it confers on his country, which reputation must of course be elevated 
 by the number of great men to which it gives birth. But the French were 
 by no means deficient in casualties of genius at that period, unless Bussy is 
 to be considered as a man of common stature of mind, or Dupleix to be 
 classed with the vulgar herd of politicians. Neither was Clive (though he 
 clearly stands forward as the most prominent figure in the group) without 
 the aid of some military men of very considerable talents. Clive extended 
 our Indian empire ; but General Lawrence preserved it to be extended ; and 
 the former caught, perhaps, from the latter, that military spirit by which he 
 soon became a greater soldier than him, without whom he never would have 
 been a soldier at all. 
 
 Gratifying as these reflections upon our prowess in India are to national 
 pride, they bring with them the painful reflection, that so considerable a 
 portion of our strength and wealth is vested upon such precarious founda- 
 tions, and at such an immense distance from the parent country. The glit- 
 tering fragments of the Portuguese empire, scattered up and down the East, 
 should teach us the instability of such dominion. We are (it is true) better 
 capable of preserving what we have obtained than any other nation which 
 has ever colonized in Southern Asia ; but the object of ambition is so 
 tempting, and the perils to which it is exposed so numerous, that no calcu- 
 lating mind can found any durable conclusions upon this branch of our 
 commerce, and this source of our strength. 
 
 In the acquisition of Ceylon, we have obtained the greatest of all our 
 wants a good harbour. For it is a very singular fact, that, in the whole 
 peninsula of India, Bombay is alone capable of affording a safe retreat to 
 ships during the period of the monsoons. 
 
 The geographical figure of our possessions in Ceylon is whimsical enough ; 
 we possess the whole of the sea-coast, and enclose in a periphery the unfor- 
 tunate King of Candia, whose rugged and mountainous dominions may be 
 compared to a coarse mass of iron, set in a circle of silver. The Popilian 
 ring, in which this votary of Buddha has been so long held by the Portu- 
 guese and Dutch, has infused the most vigilant jealousy into the government, 
 and rendered it as difficult to enter the kingdom of Candia, as if it were 
 Paradise or China ; and yet, once there, always there ; for the difficulty of 
 departing is just as great as the difficulty of arriving ; and his Candian 
 Excellency, who has used every device in his power to keep them out, is 
 seized with such an affection for those who baffle his defensive artifices, that 
 he can on no account suffer them to depart. He has been known to detain 
 a string of four or five Dutch embassies, till various members of the legation 
 died of old age at his court, while they were expecting an answer to their 
 questions, and a return to their presents :* and his Majesty once exasperated 
 a little French ambassador to such a degree, by the various pretences under 
 which he kept him at his court, that this lively member of the Corps 
 Diplomatique, one day, in a furious passion, attacked six or seven of his 
 Majesty's largest elephants sword in hand, and would, in all probability, 
 have reduced them to mince-meat, if the poor beasts had not been saved 
 from the unequal combat. 
 
 The best and most ample account of Ceylon is contained in the narrative 
 of Robert Knox, who, in the middle of the I7th century, was taken prisoner 
 
 * Knox's Ceylon.
 
 ISLAND OF CEYLON. 
 
 43 
 
 there (while refitting his ship) at the age of nineteen, and remained nineteen 
 years on the island, in slavery to the King of Candia. During this period, 
 he learnt the language, and acquired a thorough knowledge of the people. 
 The account he has given of them is extremely entertaining, and written in 
 a very simple and unaffected style : so much so, indeed, that he presents his 
 reader with a very grave account of the noise the devil makes in the woods 
 of Candia, and of the frequent opportunities he has had of hearing him. 
 
 Mr Percival does not pretend to deal with the devil ; but appears to have 
 used the fair and natural resources of observation and good sense, to put 
 together an interesting description of Ceylon. There is nothing in the book 
 very animated, or very profound, but it is without pretensions ; and if it 
 does not excite attention by any unusual powers of description, it never 
 disgusts by credulity, wearies by prolixity, or offends by affectation. It is 
 such an account as a plain military man of diligence and common sense 
 might be expected to compose ; and narratives like these we must not de- 
 spise. To military men we have been, and must be, indebted for our first 
 acquaintance with the interior of many countries. Conquest has explored 
 more than ever curiosity has done ; and the path for science has been com- 
 monly opened by the sword. 
 
 We shall proceed to give a very summary abstract of the principal con- 
 tents of Mr Percival's book. 
 
 The immense accessions of territory which the English have acquired in 
 the East Indies since the American War, rendered it absolutely necessary that 
 some effort should be made to obtain possession of a station where ships 
 might remain in safety during the violent storms incidental to that climate. 
 As the whole of that large tract which we possess along the Coromandel coast 
 presents nothing but open roads, all vessels are obliged, on the approach of 
 the monsoons, to stand out in the open seas ; and there are many parts of 
 the coast that can be approached only during a few months of the year. 
 As the harbour of Trincomalee, which is equally secure at all seasons, 
 afforded the means of obviating these disadvantages, it is evident that, on 
 the first rupture with the Dutch, our countrymen would attempt to gain 
 possession of it. A body of troops was, in consequence, detached in the 
 year 1 795, for the conquest of Ceylon, which (in consequence of the indisci- 
 pline which political dissension had introduced among the Dutch troops) 
 was effected almost without opposition. 
 
 Ceylon is now inhabited by the English ; the remains of the Dutch, and 
 Portuguese, the Cinglese or natives, subject to the dominion of the Euro- 
 peans ; the Candians subject to the king of their own name ; and the Vad- 
 dahs, or wild men, subject to no power. A Ceylonese Dutchman is a 
 coarse, grotesque species of animal, whose native apathy and phlegm it 
 animated only by the insolence of a colonial tyrant : his principal amuse- 
 ment appears to consist in smoking ; but his pipe, according to Mr Percival's 
 account, is so seldom out of his mouth, that his smoking appears to be 
 almost as much a necessary function of animal life as his breathing. His 
 day is eked out with gin, ceremonious visits, and prodigious quantities of 
 gross food, dripping with oil and butter ; his mind, just able to reach from 
 one meal to another, is incapable of further exertion ; and, after the panting 
 and deglutition of a long protracted dinner, reposes on the sweet expectation, 
 that, in a few hours, the carnivorous toil will be renewed. He lives only 
 to digest, and, while the organs of gluttony perform their office, he has not 
 a wish beyond ; and is the happy man which Horace describes : 
 
 -in seipso totus, tens, atque roiundus. 
 
 The descendants of the Portuguese differ materially from the Moors,
 
 44 ISLAND OF CEYLON. 
 
 Malabars, and other Mahometans. Their great object is, to show the world 
 they are Europeans and Christians. Unfortunately, their ideas of Chris- 
 tianity are so imperfect, that the only mode they can hit upon of displaying 
 their faith, is by wearing hats and breeches, and by these habiliments they 
 consider themselves as showing a proper degree of contempt, on various parts 
 of the body, towards Mahomet and Buddha. They are lazy, treacherous, 
 effeminate, and passionate to excess ; and are, in fact, a locomotive and 
 animated farrago of the bad qualities of all tongues, people, and nations, on 
 the face of the earth. 
 
 The Malays, whom we forgot before to enumerate, form a very consider- 
 able portion of the inhabitants of Ceylon. Their original empire lies in the 
 peninsula of Malacca, from whence they have extended themselves over Java, 
 Sumatra, the Moluccas, and a vast number of other islands in the peninsula 
 of India. It has been many years customary for the Dutch to bring them to 
 Ceylon, for the purpose of carrying on various branches of trade and manu- 
 facture, and in order also to employ them as soldiers and servants. The 
 Malays are the most vindictive and ferocious of living beings. They set 
 little or no value on their own existence, in the prosecution of their odious 
 passions ; and having thus broken the great tie which renders man a being 
 capable of being governed, and fit for society, they are a constant source of 
 terror to all those who have any kind of connection or relation with them. 
 A Malay servant, from the apprehension excited by his vindictive disposition, 
 often becomes the master of his master. It is as dangerous to dismiss him 
 as to punish him ; and the rightful despot, in order to avoid assassination, 
 is almost compelled to exchange characters with his slave. It is singular, 
 however, that the Malay, incapable of submission on any other occasion, 
 and ever ready to avenge insult with death, submits to the severest military 
 discipline with the utmost resignation and meekness. The truth is, 
 obedience to his officers forms part of his religious creed ; and the same 
 man who would repay the most insignificant insult with death, will submit 
 to be lacerated at the halbert with the patience of a martyr. This is truly 
 a tremendous people ! When assassins and blood-hounds will fall into rank 
 and file, and the most furious savages submit (with no diminution of their 
 ferocity) to the science and discipline of war, they only want a Malay 
 Bonaparte to lead them to the conquest of the world. Our curiosity has 
 always been very highly excited by the accounts of this singular people ; 
 and we cannot help thinking, that, one day or another, when they are more 
 full of opium than usual, they will run a muck from Cape Comorin to 
 the Caspian. 
 
 Mr Fercival does not consider the Ccylonese as descended from the con- 
 tinentals of the peninsula, but rather from the inhabitants of the Maldive 
 Islands, whom they very much resemble in complexion, features, language, 
 and manners. 
 
 "The Ceylonese (says Mr Percival) are courteous and polite in their 
 demeanour, even to a degree far exceeding their civilization. In several 
 qualities they are greatly superior to all other Indians who have fallen within 
 the sphere of my observation. I have already exempted them from the 
 censure of stealing and lying, which seem to be almost inherent in the 
 nature of an Indian. They are mild, and by no means captious or passionate 
 in their intercourse with each other ; though, when once their anger is 
 roused, it is proportionably furious and lasting. Their hatred is indeed 
 mortal, and they will frequently destroy themselves to obtain the destruction 
 of the detested object. One instance will serve to show the extent to 
 which this passion is carried. If a Ceylonese cannot obtain money due to
 
 
 ISLAND OF CEYLON. 4<t 
 
 him by another, he goes to his debtor, and threatens to kill himself if he 
 is not instantly paid. This threat, which is sometimes put in execution, 
 reduces the debtor, if it be in his power, to immediate compliance with the 
 demand : as by their law, if any man causes the loss of another man's life, 
 his. own is the forfeit. ' An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,' is a 
 proverbial expression continually in their mouths. This is, on other occa- 
 sions, a very common mode of revenge among them ; and a Ceylonese has 
 often been known to contrive to kill himself in the company of his enemy 
 that the latter might suffer for it. 
 
 "This dreadful spirit of revenge, so inconsistent with the usually mild 
 and humane sentiments of the Ceylonese, and much more congenial to the 
 bloody temper of a Malay, still continues to be fostered by the sacred cus- 
 toms of the Candians. Among the Cinglese, however, it has been greatly 
 mitigated by their intercourse with Europeans. The desperate mode of 
 obtaining revenge which I have just described has been given up, from 
 having been disappointed of its object ; as, in all those parts under our 
 dominion, the European modes of investigating and punishing crimes are 
 enforced. A case of this nature occurred at Caltura in 1 799. A Cinglese 
 peasant happening to have a suit or controversy with another, watched an 
 opportunity of going to bathe in company with him, and drowned himself, 
 with the view of having his adversary put to death. The latter was upon 
 this taken up, and sent to Columbo to take his trial for making away with 
 the deceased, upon the principle of having been the last seen in his company. 
 There was, however, nothing more than presumptive proof against the 
 culprit, and he was of course acquitted. This decision, however, did not 
 by any means tally with the sentiments of the Cinglese, who are as much 
 inclined to continue their ancient barbarous practice as their brethren the 
 Candians, although they are deprived of the power." (pp. 70 72.) 
 
 The warlike habits of the Candians make them look with contempt on 
 the Cinglese, who are almost entirely unacquainted with the management of 
 arms. They have the habit and character of mountaineers warlike, hardy, 
 enterprising, and obstinate. They have, at various times, proved themselves 
 very formidable enemies to the Dutch ; and, in that kind of desultory war- 
 fare, which is the only one their rugged country will admit of, have cut off 
 large parties of the troops of both these nations. The King of Candia, as 
 we have before mentioned, possesses only the middle of the island, which 
 nature, and his Candian Majesty, have rendered as inaccessible as possible. 
 It is traversable only by narrow wood-paths, known to nobody but the 
 natives, strictly watched in peace and war, and where the best troops hi the 
 world might be shot in any quantities by the Candian marksmen, without 
 the smallest possibility of resisting their enemies ; because there would not 
 be the smallest possibility of finding them. The King of Candia is of course 
 despotic ; and the history of his life and reign presents the same monotonous 
 ostentation, and baby-like caprice, which characterise Oriental governments. 
 In public audiences he appears like a great fool, squatting on his hams ; 
 far surpassing gingerbread in splendour ; and, after asking some such idiotical 
 question, as whether Europe is in Asia or Africa, retires with a flourish of 
 trumpets very much out of tune. For his private amusement, he rides on 
 the nose of an elephant, plays with his jewels, sprinkles his courtiers with 
 rose-water, and feeds his gold and silver fish. If his tea is not sweet enough, 
 he impales his footman ; and smites off the heads of half a dozen of his 
 noblemen, if he has a pain in his own. 
 
 ui<Tirep yap (says Aristotle) rf\e<a6fv fieXrtarov rwv fwwv avOpurot effTi, 
 VDJJ.OV KCLI 5iKi]t Xfipiffrov TTO.VTUV. Polit.
 
 46 ISLAND OF CEYLON. 
 
 The only exportable articles of any importance which Ceylon produces, 
 are pearls, cinnamon, and elephants. Mr Percival has presented us with an 
 extremely interesting account of the pearl fishery, held in Condatchy Bite, 
 near the island of Manaar, in the straits which separate Ceylon from the 
 maul land. 
 
 " There is perhaps no spectacle which the island of Ceylon affords more 
 striking to an European, than the bay of Condatchy, during the season of 
 the pearl fishery. This desert and barren spot is at that time converted into 
 a scene which exceeds, in novelty and variety, almost any thing I ever 
 witnessed. Several thousands of people of different colours, countries, 
 castes, and occupations, continually passing and repassing in a busy crowd ; 
 the vast numbers of small tents and huts erected on the shore, with the bazaar 
 or market-place before each ; the multitude of boats returning in the after- 
 noon from the pearl banks, some of them laden with riches ; the anxious 
 expecting countenances of the boat-owners, while the boats are approaching 
 the shore, and the eagerness and avidity with which they run to them when 
 arrived, in hopes of a rich cargo ; the vast numbers of jewellers, brokers, 
 merchants, of all colours and all descriptions, both natives and foreigners, 
 who are occupied in some way or other with the pearls, some separating and 
 assorting them, others weighing and ascertaining their number and value, 
 while others are hawking them about, or drilling and boring them for future 
 use ; all these circumstances tend to impress the mind with the value and 
 importance of that object which can of itself create this scene. 
 
 " The bay of Condatchy is the most central rendezvous for the boats 
 employed in the fishery. The banks where it is carried on extend several 
 miles along the coast from Manaar southward off Arippo, Condatchy, and 
 Pomparipo. The principal bank is opposite to Condatchy, and lies out at 
 sea about twenty miles. The first step, previous to the commencement of 
 the fishery, is to have the different oyster banks surveyed, the state of the 
 oysters ascertained, and a report made on the subject to government. If it 
 has been found that the quantity is sufficient, and that they are arrived at a 
 proper degree of maturity, the particular banks to be fished that year are 
 put up for sale to the highest bidder, and are usually purchased by a black 
 merchant. This, however, is not always the course pursued : government 
 sometimes judges it more advantageous to fish the banks on its own account, 
 and to dispose of the pearls afterwards to the merchants. When this plan 
 is adopted, boats are hired for the season on account of government, from 
 different quarters ; the price varies considerably according to circumstances, 
 but is usually from five to eight hundred pagodas for each boat. There are, 
 however, no stated prices, and the best bargain possible is made for each 
 boat separately. The Dutch generally followed this last system ; the banks 
 were fished on government account, and the pearls disposed of hi different 
 parts of India or sent to Europe. When this plan was pursued, the Governor 
 and Council of Ceylon claimed a certain per centage on the value of the 
 pearls : or, if the fishing of the banks was disposed of by public sale, they 
 bargained for a stipulated sum to themselves over and above what was paid 
 on account of government. The pretence on which they founded their 
 claims for this perquisite, was their trouble in surveying and valuing the 
 banks." (pp. 59 61.) 
 
 The banks are divided into six or seven portions, in order to give the 
 oysters time to grow, which are supposed to attain their maturity in about 
 seven years. The period allowed to the merchant to complete his fishery 
 is about six weeks, during which period all the boats go out and return 
 together, and are subject to very rigorous laws. The dexterity of the divers
 
 ISLAND OF CEYLON. 47 
 
 is very'striking : they are as adroit in the use of their feet as their hands ; 
 and can pick up the smallest object under water with their toes. Their 
 descent is aided by a great stone, which they slip from their feet when they 
 arrive at the bottom, where they can remain about two minutes. There are 
 instances, however, of divers who have so much of the aquatic in their 
 nature, as to remain under water for five or six minutes. Their great enemy 
 is the ground shark ; for the rule of eat and be eaten, which Dr Darwin 
 called the great law of nature, obtains in as much force fathoms deep be- 
 neath the waves as above them: this animal is as fond of the legs of Hindoos, 
 as Hindoos are of the pearls of oysters; and as one appetite appears to him 
 much more natural, and less capricious than the other, he never fails to 
 indulge it. Where fortune has so much to do with peril and profit, of course 
 there is no deficiency of conjurors, who, by divers enigmatical grimaces, en- 
 deavour to ostracise this sub-marine invader. If they are successful, they 
 are well paid in pearls ; and when a shark indulges himself with the leg of 
 a Hindoo, there is a witch who lives at Colang, on the Malabar coast, who 
 always bears the blame. 
 
 A common mode of theft practised by the common people engaged in the 
 pearl fishery, is by swallowing the pearls. Whenever any one is suspected 
 of having swallowed these precious pills of Cleopatra, the police apothecaries 
 are instantly sent for ; a brisk cathartic is immediately despatched after the 
 truant pearl, with the strictest orders to apprehend it, in whatever corner of 
 the viscera it may be found lurking. Oyster lotteries are carried on here to 
 a great extent. They consist in purchasing a quantity of the oysters un- 
 opened, and running the chance of either finding or not finding pearls in 
 them. The European gentlemen and officers who attend the pearl fishery 
 through duty or curiosity are particularly fond of these lotteries, and fre- 
 quently make purchases of this sort. The whole of this account is very well 
 written, and has afforded us a great degree of amusement. By what curious 
 links, and fantastical relations, are mankind connected together ! At the 
 distance of half the globe, a Hindoo gains his support by groping at the 
 bottom of the sea for the morbid concretion of a shell-fish, to decorate the 
 throat of a London alderman's wife. It is said that the great Linnaeus had 
 discovered the secret of infecting oysters with this perligenous disease ; what 
 is become of the secret we do not know, as the only interest we take iu 
 oysters is of a much more vulgar, though perhaps a more humane nature. 
 
 The principal woods of cinnamon lie in the neighbourhood of Columbo. 
 They reach to within half a mile of the fort, and fill the whole surrounding 
 prospect. The grand garden near the town is so extensive, as to occupy a 
 track of country from ten to fifteen miles in length. 
 
 " Nature has here concentrated both the beauty and the riches of the 
 island. Nothing can be more delightful to the eye, than the prospect which 
 stretches around Columbo. The low cinnamon trees which cover the plain 
 allow the view to reach the groves of evergreens, interspersed with tall 
 clumps, and bounded every where with extensive ranges of cocoa nut and 
 other large trees. The whole is diversified with small lakes and green 
 marshes, skirted all round with rice and pasture fields. In one part, the 
 intertwining cinnamon trees appear completely to clothe the face of the plain ; 
 in another, the openings made by the intersecting footpaths just serve to 
 show that the thick underwood has been penetrated. One large road, which 
 goes out at the west gate of the fort, and returns by the gate on the south, 
 makes a winding circuit of seven miles among the woods. It is here that 
 the officers and gentlemen belonging to the garrison of Columbo take their 
 morning ride, and enjoy one of the finest scenes in nature." (pp. 336, 337.)
 
 43 ISLAND OF CEYLOX. 
 
 As this spice constitutes the wealth of Ceylon, great pains ave taken to 
 ascertain its qualities, and propagate its choicest kinds. The prime sort is 
 obtained from the Lauras Cinnamomum. The leaf resembles the laurel in 
 shape, but is not of so deep a green. When chewed it has the smell and 
 taste of cloves. There are several different species of cinnamon tree on the 
 island ; but four sorts only are cultivated and barked. The picture which 
 we have just quoted from Mr Percival of a morning ride in a cinnamon wood 
 is so enchanting, that we are extremely sorry the addition of aromatic odours 
 cannot with veracity be made to it. The cinnamon has, unfortunately, no 
 smell at all but to the nostrils of the poet. Mr Percival gives us a very 
 interesting account of the process of making up cinnamon for the market, in 
 which we are sorry our limits will not permit us to follow him. The different 
 qualities of the cinnamon bundles can only be estimated by the taste j an 
 office which devolves upon the medical men of the settlement, who are em- 
 ployed for several days together in chequing cinnamon, the acrid juice of 
 which excoriates the mouth, and puts them to the most dreadful tortures. 
 
 The island of Ceylon is completely divided into two parts by a very high 
 range of mountains, on the two sides of which the climate and the seasons 
 are entirely different. These mountains also terminate completely the effect 
 of the monsoons, which set in periodically from opposite sides of them. On 
 the west side, the rains prevail in the months of May, June, and July, the 
 season when they are felt on the Malabar coast. This monsoon is usually 
 extremely violent during its continuance. The northern parts of the island 
 are very little affected. In the months of October and November, when the 
 opposite monsoon sets in on the Coromandel coast, the north of the island is 
 attacked ; and scarcely any impression reaches the southern parts. The 
 heat during the day is nearly the same throughout the year : the rainy season 
 renders the nights much cooler. The climate, upon the whole, is much more 
 temperate than on the continent of India. The temperate and healthy climate 
 of Ceylon is, however, confined to the sea-coast. In the interior of the 
 country, the obstructions which the thick woods oppose to the free circula- 
 tion of air, render the heat almost insupportable, and generate a low and 
 malignant fever, known to Europeans by the name of the Jungle fever. 
 The chief harbours of Ceylon are Trincomalee, Point de Galle, and at cer- 
 tain seasons of the year, Columbo. The former of these, from its nature 
 nnd situation, is that which stamps Ceylon one of our most valuable acquisi- 
 tions in the East Indies. As soon as the monsoons commence, every vessel 
 caught by them in any other part of the Bay of Bengal is obliged to put to 
 sea immediately, in order to avoid destruction. At these seasons, Trin- 
 comalee alone, of all the parts on this side of the peninsula, is capable of 
 affording to vessels a safe retreat ; which a vessel from Madras may reach 
 in two days. These circumstances render the value of Trincomalee much 
 greater than that of the whole island ; the revenue of which will certainly 
 be hardly sufficient to defray the expense of the establishments kept up there. 
 The agriculture of Ceylon is, in fact, in such an imperfect state, and the 
 natives have so little availed themselves of its natural fertility, that great 
 part of the provisions necessary for its support are imported from Bengal. 
 
 Ceylon produces the elephant, the buffalo, tiger, elk, wild-hog, rabbit, 
 hare, flying-fox, and musk-rat. Many articles are rendered entirely useless 
 by the smell of musk, which this latter animal communicates in merely run- 
 ning over them. Mr Percival asserts (and the fact has been confirmed to 
 us by the most respectable authority), that if it even pass over a bottle of 
 wine, however well corked and sealed up, the wine becomes so strongly 
 tainted with musk, that it cannot be used ; and a whole cask may be ren- 
 dered useless in the same manner. Among the great variety of birds, we
 
 DELPHIXE. 
 
 49 
 
 Were struck with Mr Percival's account of the honey-bird, into whose body 
 the soul of a common informer appears to have migrated. It makes a loud 
 and shrill noise, to attract the notice of anybody whom it may perceive ; 
 and thus inducing him to follow the course it points out, leads him to the 
 tree where the bees have concealed their treasure ; after the apiary has been 
 robbed, this feathered scoundrel gleans his reward from the hive. The list 
 of Ceylonese snakes is hideous ; and we become reconciled to the crude and 
 cloudy land in which'we live, from reflecting, that the indiscriminate activity 
 of the sun generates what is loathsome, as well as what is lovely ; that the 
 asp reposes under the rose ; and the scorpion crawls under the fragrant 
 flower, and the luscious fruit. 
 
 The usual stories are repeated here, of the immense size and voracious 
 appetite of a certain species of serpent. The best history of this kind we 
 ever remember to have read, was of a serpent killed near one of our settle- 
 ments, in the East Indies ; in whose body they found the chaplain of the 
 
 garrison, all in black, the Rev. Mr (somebody or other, whose name 
 
 we have forgotten), and who, after having been missing for above a week, 
 was discovered in this very inconvenient situation. The dominions of the 
 King of Candia are partly defended by leeches, which abound in the woods, 
 and from which our soldiers suffered in the most dreadful manner. The 
 Ceylonese, in compensation for their animated plagues, are endowed with 
 two vegetable blessings, the cocoa nut tree, and the talipot tree. The latter 
 affords a prodigious leaf, impenetrable to sun or rain, and large enough to 
 shelter ten men. It is a natural umbrella, and is of as eminent service in 
 that country as a great-coat tree would be in this. A leaf of the talipot tree 
 is a tent to the soldier, a parasol to the traveller, and a book to the scholar.* 
 The cocoa tree affords bread, milk, oil, wine, spirits, vinegar, yeast, sugar, 
 cloth, paper, huts, and ships. 
 
 We could with great pleasure proceed to give a further abstract of this 
 very agreeable and interesting publication, which we very strongly recom- 
 mend to the public. It is written with great modesty, entirely without 
 pretensions, and abounds with curious and important information. Mr 
 Percival will accept our best thanks for the amusement he has afforded us. 
 When we can praise with such justice, we are always happy to do it ; and 
 regret that the rigid and independent honesty which we have made the very 
 basis of our literary undertaking should so frequently compel us to speak of 
 the authors who come before us, in a style so different from that in which 
 we have vindicated the merits of Mr Perctval. 
 
 DELPHINE. (E. REVIEW, 1803.) 
 DelpJtine. By MADAME DK STAKL HOLSTEIN. London : Mawman. 6 vols. tamo. 
 
 THIS dismal trash, which has nearly dislocated the jaws of every critic 
 among us with gaping, has so alarmed Bonaparte, that he has seized the 
 whole impression, sent Madame de Stael out of Paris, and, for aught we 
 know, sleeps in a nightcap of steel, and dagger-proof blankets. To us it 
 appears rather an attack upon the Ten Commandents, than the government 
 of Bonaparte, and calculated not so much to enforce the rights of the Bour- 
 bons, as the benefits of adultery, murder, and a great number of other vices, 
 Which have been somehow or other strangely neglected in this country, and 
 
 * All books arc written upon it in Ceylon.
 
 50 DELPHINE. 
 
 too much so (according to the apparent opinion of Madame de Stael) even 
 in France. 
 
 It happens, however, fortunately enough, that her book is as dull as it 
 could have been if her intentions had been good ; for wit, dexterity, and 
 the pleasant energies of the mind, seldom rank themselves on the side of 
 virtue and social order ; while vice is spiritual, eloquent, and alert, ever 
 choice in expression, happy in allusion, and judicious in arrangement. 
 
 The story is simply this. Delphine, a rich young widow, presents her 
 cousin Matilda de Vernon with a considerable estate, in order to enable her 
 to marry Leonce Mondeville. To this action she is excited by the arts and 
 the intrigues of Madame de Vemon, an hackneyed Parisian lady, who hopes, 
 by this marriage, to be able to discharge her numerous and pressing debts. 
 Leonce, who, like all other heroes of novels, has fine limbs, and fine qualities, 
 comes to Paris dislikes Matilda falls in love with Delphine, Delphine 
 with him ; and they are upon the eve of jilting poor Matilda, when, from 
 some false reports spread abroad respecting the character of Delphine (which 
 are aggravated by her own imprudences, and by the artifices of Madame de 
 Vernon), Leonce, not in a fit of honesty, but of revenge, marries the lady 
 whom he came to marry. Soon after, Madame de Vernon dies discovers 
 the artifices by which she had prevented the union of Leonce and Delphine 
 and then, after this catastrophe, which ought to have terminated the 
 novel, come two long volumes of complaint and despair. Delphine becomes 
 a nun runs away from the nunnery with Leonce, who is taken by some 
 French soldiers, upon the supposition that he has been serving in the French 
 emigrant army against his country is shot, and upon his dead body falls 
 Delphine, as dead as he. 
 
 Making every allowance for reading this book in a translation, and in a 
 very bad translation, we cannot but deem it a heavy performance. The 
 incidents are vulgar ; the characters vulgar too, except those of Delphine 
 and Madame de Vemon. Madame de Stael has not the artifice to hide 
 what is coming. In travelling through a flat country, or a fiat book, we 
 see our road before us for half the distance we are going. There are no 
 agreeable sinuosities, and no speculations whether we are 1 to ascend next, 
 or descend ; what new sight we are to enjoy, or to which side we are to 
 bend. Leonce is robbed and half murdered ; the apothecary of the place 
 is certain he will not live j we were absolutely certain that he would live, 
 and could predict to an hour the time of his recovery. In the same manner 
 we could have prophesied every event of the book a whole volume before 
 its occurrence. 
 
 This novel is a perfect Alexandrian. The last two volumes are redundant, 
 and drag their wounded length : it should certainly have terminated where 
 the interest ceases, at the death of Madame de Vernon ; but, instead of 
 this, the scene-shifters come and pick up the dead bodies, wash the stage, 
 sweep it, and do every thing which the timely fall of the curtain should 
 have excluded from the sight, and left to the imagination of the audience. 
 *We humbly apprehend, that young gentlemen do not in general make their 
 tutors the confidants of their passion ; at least we can find no rule of that 
 kind laid down either by Miss Hamilton or Miss Edgeworth, in their 
 treatises on education. The tutor of Leonce is Mr Barton, a grave old 
 gentleman, in a peruke and snuff-coloured clothes. Instead of writing to 
 this solemn personage about second causes, the ten categories, and the 
 eternal fitness of things, the young lover raves to him, for whole pages, 
 about the white neck and auburn hair of his Delphine ; and, shame to tell 1 
 the liquorish old pedagogue seems to think these amorous ebullitions the 
 pleasantest sort of writing in usum Delphini that he has yet met with,
 
 DELPHINE. 51 
 
 By altering one word, and making only one false quantity,* we shall 
 change the rule of Horace to 
 
 " Nec/e&ris intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus 
 Incident." 
 
 Delphine and Leonce have eight very bad typhus fevers between them, 
 6esides Aeemoploe, kanorr/iage, ddiquium animi, singultus, hysteria, and 
 fceminei uhtlatiis, or screams innumerable. Now, that there should be a 
 reasonable allowance of sickness in every novel, we are willing to admit, 
 and will cheerfully permit the heroine to be once given over, and at the 
 point of death ; but we cannot consent that the interest which ought to be 
 excited by the feelings of the mind should be transferred to the sufferings of 
 the body, and a crisis of perspiration be substituted for a crisis of passion. 
 Let us see difficulties overcome, if our approbation is required ; we cannot 
 grant it to such cheap and sterile artifices as these. 
 
 The characters in this novel are all said to be drawn from real life ; and 
 the persons for whom they are intended are loudly whispered at Paris. 
 Most of them we have forgotten ; but Delphine is said to be intended for the 
 authoress, and Madame de Vernon (by a slight sexual metamorphosis) for 
 Talleyrand, minister of the French republic for foreign affairs. As this 
 lady (once the friend of the authoress) may probably exercise a considerable 
 influence over the destinies of this country, we shall endeavour to make our 
 readers a little better acquainted with her ; but we must first remind them 
 that she was once a bishop, a higher dignity in the church than was ever 
 attained by any of her sex since the days of Pope Joan ; and that, though 
 she swindles Delphine out of her estate with a considerable degree of 
 address, her dexterity sometimes fails her, as in the memorable instance 
 of the American commissioners. Madame de Stae'l gives the following 
 description of this pastoral metropolitan female : 
 
 " Though she is at least forty, she still appears charming even among the 
 young and beautiful, of her own sex. The paleness of her complexion, the 
 slight relaxation of her features, indicate the languor of indisposition, and 
 not the decay of years ; the easy negligence of her dress accords with this 
 impression. Every one concludes, that when her health is recovered, and 
 she dresses with more care, she must be completely beautiful ; this change, 
 however, never happens, but it is always expected ; and that is sufficient to 
 make the imagination still add something more to the natural effect of her 
 charms." (Vol. i. p. 21.) 
 
 Nothing can be more execrable than the manner in which this book is 
 translated. The bookseller has employed one of our countrymen for that 
 purpose, who appears to have been very lately caught. The contrast 
 between the passionate exclamations of Madame de Stae'l, and the barbarous 
 vulgarities of poor Sawny, produces a mighty ludicrous effect. One of the 
 heroes, a man of high fastidious temper, exclaims in a letter to Delphine, 
 "I cannot endure this Paris; I have met TW//& ever so many people whom 
 my soul abhors. " And the accomplished and enraptured Leonce terminates 
 one of his letters thus: " Adieu ! Adieu t , 'my dearest Detyhinc. I -will give 
 you a call to-morrow." We doubt if Grub Street ever imported from 
 Caledonia a more abominable translator. 
 
 We admit the character of Madame de Vernon to be drawn with con- 
 
 * Perhaps a fault of all others which the English are least disposed to pardon. A young 
 jnan, who, on a public occasion, makes a false quantity at the outset of life, can seldom 
 pr never get over it.
 
 52 DELPHINE. 
 
 sidemble skill. There are occasional traits of eloquence and pathos in this 
 novel, and very many of those observations upon manners and character 
 which are totally out of the reach of all who have not lived long in the 
 world, and observed it well. 
 
 The immorality of any book (in our estimation) is to be determined by 
 the general impressions it leaves on those minds whose principles, not yet 
 ossijL-J, are capable of affording a less powerful defence to its influence. 
 The most dangerous effect that any fictitious character can produce, is when 
 two or three of its popular vices are varnished over with every thing that 
 is captivating and gracious in the exterior, and ennobled by association with 
 splendid virtues : this apology will be more sure of its effect, if the faults are 
 not against nature, but against society. The aversion to murder and cruelty 
 could not perhaps be so overcome ; but a regard to the sanctity of marriage 
 vows, to the sacred and sensitive delicacy of the female character, and to 
 numberless restrictions important to the well-being of our species, may 
 easily be relaxed by this subtle and voluptuous confusion of good and evil. 
 It is in vain to say the fable evinces, in the last act, that vice is productive 
 of misery. We may decorate a villain with graces and felicities for nine 
 volumes, and hang him in the last page. This is not teaching virtue, but 
 gilding the gallows, and raising up splendid associations in favour of being 
 hanged. In such an union of the amiable and the vicious (especially if the 
 vices are such, to the commission of which there is no want of natural dis- 
 position), the vice will not degrade the man, but the man will ennoble the 
 vice. We shall wish to be him we admire, in spite of his vices, and, if the 
 novel be well written, even in consequence of his vice. There exists, through 
 the whole of this novel, a show of exquisite sensibility to the evils which 
 individuals suffer by the inflexible rules of virtue prescribed by society, and 
 an eager disposition to apologise for particular transgressions. Such doc- 
 trine is not confined to Madame de Stael ; an Arcadian cant is gaining fast 
 upon Spartan gravity ; and the happiness diffused, and the beautiful order 
 established in society, by this unbending discipline, is wholly swallowed up 
 in compassion for the unfortunate' and interesting individual. Either the 
 exceptions or the rule must be given up : every highwayman who thrusts 
 his pistol into a chaise window has met with unforeseen misfortunes ; and 
 every loose matron who flies into the arms of her Grevillc was compelled to 
 marry an old man whom she detested, by an avaricious and unfeeling 
 father. The passions want not accelerating, but retarding machinery. 
 This fatal and foolish sophistry has power enough over every heart, not to 
 need the aid of fine composition, and well-contrived incident auxiliaries 
 which Madame de Stael intended to bring forward in the cause, though she 
 has fortunately not succeeded. 
 
 M. de Serbellone is received as a guest into the house of M. d'Ervins, 
 whose wife he debauches as a recompense for his hospitality. Is it pos- 
 sible to be disgusted with ingratitude and injustice, when united to such an 
 assemblage of talents and virtues as this man of paper possesses ? Was 
 there ever a more delightful fascinating adulteress than Madame d'Ervins 
 is intended to be ? or a povcro cornuto less capable of exciting compassion 
 than her husband ? The morality of all this is the old morality of Farquhar, 
 Vanburgh, and Congreve that every witty man may transgress the seventh 
 commandment, which was never meant for the protection of husbands who 
 labour under the incapacity of making repartees. In Matilda, religion is 
 always as unamiable as dissimulation is graceful in Madame de Vernon, and 
 imprudence generous in Delphine. This said Delphine, with her fine 
 auburn hair, and her beautiful blue or green eyes (we forget which), cheats 
 her cousin Matilda out of her lover, alienates the affections of her husband,
 
 RESIDENCE OF THE CLERGY. 53 
 
 and keeps a sort of assignation house for Serbellone and his chere amie, 
 justifying herself by the most touching complaints against the rigour of the 
 world, and using the customary phrases, union of souls, married hi the eye of 
 heaven, &c. &c. &c., and such like diction, the types of which Mr Lane 
 of the Minerva Press very prudently keeps ready composed, in order to 
 
 facilitate the printing of the Adventures of Captain C and Miss F , 
 
 and other interesting stories, of which he, the said inimitable Mr Lane of 
 the Minerva Press, well knows these sentiments must make a part. 
 Another perilous absurdity which this useful production tends to cherish is 
 the common notion, that contempt of rule and order is a proof of greatness 
 of mind. Delphine is every where a great spirit, straggling with the shackles 
 imposed upon her in common with the little world around her ; and it is 
 managed so, that her contempt of restrictions shall always appear to flow 
 from the extent, variety, and splendour of her talents. The vulgarity of 
 this heroism ought in some degree to diminish its value. Mr Colquhoun, 
 in his Police of the Metropolis, reckons up above 40,00x3 heroines of this 
 species, most of whom, we dare to say, have at one time or another reasoned 
 like the sentimental Delphine about the judgments of the world. 
 
 To conclude Our general opinion of this book is, that it is calculated to 
 shed a mild lustre over adultery ; by gentle;and convenient gradation, to 
 destroy the modesty;and the caution of women ; to facilitate the acquisition 
 of easy vices, and encumber the difficulty of virtue. What. a wretched 
 qualification of this censure to add, that the badness of the principles is 
 alone corrected by the badness of the style, and that this celebrated lady 
 would have been very guilty, if she had not been very dull ! 
 
 THOUGHTS ON THE RESIDENCE OF THE CLERGY. 
 (E. REVIEW. 1803.) 
 
 Thoughts on the Residence of the Clergy. By JOHN STURGES, LL.D. 
 
 THIS pamphlet is the production of a gentleman who has acquired a right 
 to teach the duties of the clerical character by fulfilling them ; and who has 
 exercised that right, in the present instance, with honour to himself, and 
 benefit to the public. From the particular character of understanding 
 evinced in this work we should conceive Dr Sturges to possess a very 
 powerful claim to be heard on all questions referable to the decision of 
 practicable good sense. He has availed himself of his experience to observe, 
 and of his observation to judge well : he neither loves his profession too 
 little, nor too much ; is alive to its interests, without being insensible to 
 those of the community at large ; and treats of those points where his 
 previous habits might render a little intemperance venial, as well as prob- 
 able, with the most perfect good humour and moderation. 
 
 As exceptions to the general and indisputable principle of residence, Dr 
 Sturges urges the smallness of some livings ; the probability that their in- 
 cumbents be engaged in the task of education, or in ecclesiastical duty, iu 
 situations where their talents may be more appropriately and importantly 
 employed. Dr Sturges is also of opinion, that the power of enforcing resi- 
 dence, under certain limits, should be invested in the bishops ; and that the 
 acts prohibiting the clergy to hold or cultivate land should be in a great 
 measure repealed. 
 
 We sincerely hope that the two cases suggested by Dr Sturges, of the 
 clergyman who may keep a school, or be engaged in the duty of some
 
 54 RESIDENCE OF THE CLERGY. 
 
 parish not his own, will be attended to in the construction of the approach- 
 ing bill, and admitted as pleas for non-residence. It certainly is better that 
 a clergyman should do the duty of his own benefice, rather than of any 
 other. But the injury done to the community is not commensurate with the 
 vexation imposed upon the individual. Such a measure is either too harsh, 
 not to become obsolete ; or, by harassing the clergy with a very severe 
 restriction, to gain a very disproportionate good to the community, would 
 bring the profession into disrepute, and have a tendency to introduce a class 
 of men into the Church, of less liberal manners, education, and connection ; 
 points of the utmost importance, in our present state of religion and wealth. 
 Nothing has enabled men to 'do wrong with impunity, so much, as the 
 extreme severity of the penalties with which the law has threatened them. 
 The only method to insure success to the bill for enforcing ecclesiastical 
 residence, is to consult the convenience of the clergy in its construction, as 
 far as is possibly consistent with the object desired, and even to sacrifice 
 something that ought to be done, in order that much may be done. Upon 
 this principle, the clergyman should not be confined to his parsonage-house, 
 but to the precincts of his parish. Some advantage would certainly attend 
 the residence of the clergy in their official mansions ; but, as we have before 
 observed, the good one party would obtain bears no sort of proportion to 
 the evil the other would suffer. 
 
 Upon the propriety of investing the Bench of Bishops with a power of 
 enforcing residence, we confess ourselves to entertain very serious doubts, 
 A bishop has frequently a very temporary interest in his diocese : he has 
 favours to ask ; and he must grant them. Leave of absence will be granted 
 to powerful intercession ; and refused, upon stronger pleas, to men without 
 friends. Bishops are frequently men advanced in years, or immersed in 
 study. A single person who compels many others to do their duty, has 
 much odium to bear, and much activity to exert. A bishop is subject to 
 caprice, and enmity, and passion in common with other individuals ; there 
 is some danger also that his power over the clergy may be converted to a 
 political purpose. From innumerable causes, which might be reasoned 
 upon to great length, we are apprehensive the object of the Legislature will 
 be entirely frustrated in a few years, if it be committed to episcopal super- 
 intendence and care ; though, upon the first view of the subject, no other 
 scheme can appear so natural and so wise. 
 
 Dr Sturges observes, that after all the conceivable justifications. of non- 
 residence are enumerated in the Act, many others must from time to time 
 occur, and indicate the propriety of vesting somewhere a discretionary power. 
 If this be true of the penalties by which the clergy are governed, it is 
 equally true of all other penal laws ; and the law should extend to every 
 offence the contingency of discretionary omission. The objection to this 
 system is, that it trusts too much to the sagacity and the probity of the 
 judge, and exposes a country to the partial, lax, and corrupt administration 
 of its laws. It is certainly inconvenient, in many cases, to have no other 
 guide to resort to but the unaccommodating mandates of an act of Parlia- 
 ment : yet, of the two inconveniences, it is the least. It is some palliation 
 of the evils of discretionary power, that it should be exercised (as by the 
 Court of Chancery) in the face of day, and that the moderator of law should 
 himself be moderated by the force of precedent and opinion. A bishop 
 will exercise his discretionary power in the dark ; he is at full liberty to de- 
 part to-morrow from the precedent he has established to-day ; and to apply 
 the same decisions to different, or different decisions to the same circum- 
 stances, as his humour or interest may dictate. Such power may be exer- 
 cised well under one judge of extraordinary integrity ; but it is not very
 
 TAB LEA U DBS A TA TS DANOIS. 55 
 
 probable he will find a proper successor. To suppose a series of men so 
 much superior to temptation, and to construct a system of church govern- 
 ment upon such a supposition, is to build upon sand, with materials not 
 more durable than the foundation. 
 
 Sir William Scott has made it very clear, by his excellent speech, that it 
 is not possible, in the present state of the revenues of the English Church, 
 to apply a radical cure to the evil of non-residence. It is there stated, that 
 out of 11,700 livings, there are 6000 under %oper annum ; many of those 
 j 2O 3> an d some as low as 2 or 5 per annum. In such a state of 
 endowment, all idea of rigid residence is out of the question. Emoluments 
 which a footman would spurn can hardly recompense a scholar and a gentle- 
 man. A mere palliation is all that can be applied ; and these are the 
 ingredients of which we wish such a palliation should be composed : 
 
 1. Let the clergyman have full liberty of farming, and be put in this 
 respect exactly upon a footing with laymen. 
 
 2. Power to reside in any other house in the parish, as well as the par- 
 sonage-house, and to be absent five months in the year. 
 
 3. Schoolmasters, and ministers bond fide discharging ministerial func- 
 tions in another parish, exempt from residence. 
 
 4. Penalties in proportion to the value of livings, and number of times the 
 offence has been committed. 
 
 5. Common informers to sue as at present ; though probably it might be 
 right to make the name of one parishioner a necessary addition ; and a 
 proof of non-residence might be made to operate as a nonsuit in an action 
 for tithes. 
 
 6. No action for non-residence to lie where the benefice was less than 
 80 per annum ; and the powers of bishops to remain precisely as they are. 
 
 These indulgences would leave the clergy without excuse, would reduce 
 the informations to a salutary number, and diminish the odium consequent 
 upon them, by directing their effects against men who regard church prefer- 
 ment merely as a source of revenue, not as an obligation to the discharge of 
 important duties. 
 
 We venture to prognosticate, that a bill of greater severity either will not 
 pass the House of Commons, or will fail of its object. Considering the 
 times and circumstances, we are convinced we have stated the greatest 
 quantum of attainable good ; which of course will not be attained, by the 
 customary error of attending to what is desirable to be done, rather than to 
 what it is practicable to do. 
 
 CATTEAU, TABLEAU DES ^TATS DANOIS. 
 (E. REVIEW, 1803.) 
 
 Tableaux des tats Danois. Par JEAN PIERRB CATTBAU. 3 tomes. 1802. a Paris. 
 
 THE object of this book is to exhibit a picture of the kingdom of Denmark, 
 under all its social relations, of politics, statistics, science, morals, manners, 
 and every thing which can influence its character and importance, as a free 
 and independent collection of human beings. 
 
 This book is, upon the whole, executed with great diligence and good 
 sense. Some subjects of importance are passed over, indeed, with too 
 much haste ; but if the publication had exceeded its present magnitude, it 
 would soon have degenerated into a mere book of reference, impossible to 
 be read, and fit only, like a dictionary, for the purposes of occasional appeal : 
 it would not have been a picture presenting us with an interesting epitome
 
 56 TAB LEA U DES ETA TS DANOIS. 
 
 of the whole ; but a typographical plan, detailing, with minute and fatiguing 
 precision, every trifling circumstance, and every subordinate feature. We 
 should be far from objecting to a much more extended and elaborate per- 
 formance than the present ; because those who read, and those who write, 
 are now so numerous, that there is room enough for varieties and modifica- 
 tions of the same subject : but information of this nature, conveyed in a 
 form and in a size adapted to continuous reading, gains in surface what it 
 loses in depth, and gives general notions to many, though it cannot afford 
 all the knowledge which a few have it in their ; power to acquire, from the 
 habits of more patient labour, and more profound research. 
 
 This work, though written at a period when enthusiasm or disgust had 
 thrown most men's minds off their balance, is remarkable, upon the whole, 
 for sobriety and moderation. The observations, though seldom either 
 strikingly ingenious or profound, are just, temperate, and always benevolent. 
 \Ve are so far from perceiving any thing like extravagance in Mr Catteau, 
 that Jwe are inclined to think he is occasionally too cautious for the 
 interests of truth ; that he manages the court of Denmark with too much 
 delicacy ; and [exposes, by distant and scarcely perceptible touches, that 
 which it was his duty to have brought out boldly and strongly. The most 
 disagreeable circumstance in the style of the book is the author's compliance 
 with that irresistible avidity of his country to declaim upon commonplace 
 subjects. He 'goes on, mingling bucolic details and sentimental effusions, 
 melting and measuring, crying and calculating, in a manner which is very 
 bad, if it is poetry, and worse, if it is prose. In speaking of the mode of 
 cultivating potatoes, he cannot avoid calling the potatoe a modest vegetable ; 
 and when he comes to the exportation of horses from the duchy of Holstein, 
 *ve learn that ' ' these animals are dragged from the bosom of their peaceable 
 and modest country, to hear, in foreign regions, the sound of the warlike 
 trumpet ; to carry the combatant amid the hostile ranks ; to [increase the 
 clat of some pompous procession ; or drag, in gilded car, some favourite of 
 fortune." 
 
 We are sorry to be compelled to notice these untimely effusions, especially 
 as they may lead to a suspicion of the fidelity of the work ; of which fidelity, 
 from actual examination of many of the authorities referred to, we have not 
 the most remote doubt. Mr Catteau is to be depended upon as securely as 
 any writer, going over such various and extensive ground, can ever be de- 
 pended upon. He is occasionally guilty of some trifling inaccuracies ; but 
 what he advances is commonly derived from the most indisputable authori- 
 ties ; and he has condensed together a mass of information, which will 
 render his book the most accessible and valuable road of knowledge to those 
 who are desirous of making any researches respecting the kingdom of 
 Denmark. 
 
 Denmark, since the days of Piracy, has hardly been heard of out of the 
 Baltic. Margaret, by the Union of Calmar, laid the foundation of a mon- 
 archy, which (could it have been preserved by hands as strong as those 
 which created it) would have exercised a powerful influence upon the 
 destinies of Europe, and have strangled, perhaps, in the cradle, the infant 
 force of Russia. Denmark, reduced to her ancient bounds by the patriotism 
 and talents of Gustavus Vasa, has never since been able to emerge into no- 
 tice by her own natural resources, or the genius of her ministers and her 
 monarchs. During that period, Sweden has more than once threatened to 
 give laws to Europe ; and, headed by Charles and Gustavus, has broke out 
 into chivalrous enterprises, with an heroic valour, which merited wiser 
 objects, and greater ultimate success. The spirit of the Danish nation has, 
 for the last two or three centuries, been as little carried to literature or to
 
 TAB LEA U DES E TA TS DANOIS. 5 7 
 
 science as to war. They have written as little as they have'done. With 
 the exception of Tycho Brahe, and a volume of shells, there is hardly a 
 Danish book, or a Danish writer, known five miles from the Great Belt. 
 It is not sufficient to say, that there are many authors read and admired in 
 Denmark : there are none that have passed the Sound, none that have had 
 energy enough to force themselves into the circulation of Europe, to extort 
 universal admiration, and live, without the aid of municipal praise, and local 
 approbation. From the period, however, of the first of the Bernstorffs, 
 Denmark has made a great spring, and has advanced more within the last 
 twenty or thirty years, than for the three preceding centuries. The peasants 
 are now emancipated ; the laws of commerce, foreign and interior, are 
 simplified and expanded ; the transport of corn and cattle is made free ; a 
 considerable degree of liberty is granted to the press ; and slavery is to 
 cease this very year in their West Indian possessions. If Ernest Bernstorff 
 was the author of some less considerable measures, they are to be attributed 
 more to the times than to the defects of his understanding, or of his heart. 
 To this great minister succeeded the favourite Struensee, and to him Ove 
 Guldberg : the first, with views of improvements, not destitute of liberality 
 or genius, but little guided by judgment, or marked by moderation ; the 
 latter, devoid of that energy and firmness which were necessary to execute 
 the good he intended. In 1 788, when the King became incapable of busi- 
 ness, .and the Cro \\-n-prince assumed the government, Count Andrew 
 Bernstorff, nephew of Ernest, was called to the ministry ; and, while some 
 nations were shrinking from the very name of innovation, and others over- 
 turning every establishment, and violating every principle, Bernstorff 
 steadily pursued, and ultimately effected, the gradual and bloodless amelio- 
 ration of his country. His name will ever form a splendid epoch in the 
 history of Denmark. The" spirit of economical research and improvement 
 \\ Inch emanated from him still remains ; while the personal character of the 
 prince of Denmark, and the zeal with which he seconded the projects of his 
 favourite minister, seem to afford a guarantee for the continuation of the same 
 system of administration. 
 
 In his analysis of the present state of Denmark, Mr Catteau, after a slight 
 historical sketch of that country, divides his subject into sixteen sections. 
 
 I. Geographical and physical qualities of the Danish territory : 2. Form 
 of government : 3. Administration : 4. Institutions relative to government 
 and administration : 5. Civil and criminal laws, and judiciary institutions : 
 6. Military system, land army, and marine : 7. Finance : 8. Population : 
 9. Productive industry, comprehending agriculture, the fisheries, and the 
 extraction of mineral substances: 10. Manufacturing industry: II. Com- 
 merce, interior and exterior, including the state of the great roads, the 
 canals of navigation, the maritime insurances, the bank, &c. &c. : 12. Estab- 
 lishments of charity and public utility : 13. Religion : 14. Education : 
 15. Language, character, manners, and customs : 1 6. Sciences and arts. 
 This division we shall follow. 
 
 From the southern limits of Holstein to the southern extremity of Norway, 
 the Danish dominions extend to 30x3 miles * in length, and are, upon an 
 average, from about 50 to 60 in breadth ; the whole forms an area of about 
 8000 square miles. The western coast of Jutland, from Riba to Lemvig, is 
 
 * The mile alluded to here, and through the whole of the book, is the Danish mile, 15 
 to a degree, or 4000 toises in round numbers : the ancient mile of Norway is much more 
 considerable. It may be as well to mention here, that the Danes reckon their money 
 by rixdollars, mark?, and schellings. A rixdollar contains 6 marks, and a mark 16 
 schellings ; 20 schellings are equal to one livre ; consequently the pound sterling is equal 
 to 4 r. 4 m. 14 sch., or nearly 5 rixdollars.
 
 5$ TABLEA C DES ETA 7'S DAA'OIS. 
 
 principally alluvial, and presents much greater advantages to the cultivator 
 than he has yet drawn from it. The eastern coast is also extremely favour- 
 able to vegetation. A sandy and barren ridge, stretching from north to 
 south, between the two coasts, is unfavourable to even- species of culture, 
 and hardly capable of supporting the wild and stunted shrubs which languish 
 upon its surface. Towards the north, where the Jutland peninsula terminates 
 in the Baltic, even' thing assumes an aspect of barrenness and desolation. 
 It is Arabia, without its sun or its verdant islands ; but not without its 
 tempests or sands, which sometimes overwhelm what little feeble agriculture 
 they may encounter, and convert the habitual wretchedness of the Jutlanders 
 into severe and cruel misfortune. The Danish government has attempted 
 to remedy this evil, in some measure, by encouraging the cultivation of 
 those kinds of shrubs which grow on the sea-shore, and by their roots give 
 tenacity and aggregation to the sand. The Elymus Arenaria, though found 
 to be the most useful for that purpose, is still inadequate to the prevention 
 of the calamity.* 
 
 The Danish isles are of a green and pleasant aspect. The hills are turfed 
 up to the top, or covered with trees ; the valleys animated by the 
 of clear streams ; and the whole strikingly contrasted with the 
 sterility, or imposing grandeur, of the scenes on the opposite coast of Jut- 
 land. All the seas of Denmark are well stored with fish ; and a vast number 
 of deep friths and inlets afford a cheap and valuable communication with 
 the interior of the country. 
 
 The Danish rivers are neither numerous nor considerable. The climate, 
 generally speaking, is moist and subject to thick fogs, which almost obscure 
 the horizon. Upon a mean of twenty-six years, it has rained for a hundred 
 and thirty days every year, and thundered for thirteen. Their summer 
 begins with June, and ends with September. A calm serene sky, and an 
 atmosphere free from vapours, is very rarely the lot of the inhabitants of 
 Denmark ; but the humidity with which the air is impregnated is highly 
 favourable to vegetation ; and all kinds of corn and grass are cultivated 
 there with great success. To the south of Denmark are the countries of 
 Sleswick and Holstein. Nature has divided these countries into two parts ; 
 the one of which is called Gcetsland, the other Marschland. Geetsland is 
 the elevated ground situated along the Baltic, The soil resembles that of 
 Denmark. The division of Marschland forms a band or stripe, which extends 
 from the Elbe to the frontiers of Jutland, an diluvium gained and preserved 
 from the sea, by a labour which, though vigilant and severe, is repaid by the 
 most ample profits. The sea, however, in all these alluvial countries, seldom 
 forgets his original rights. Marschland, in the midst of all its tranquillity, fat. 
 and silence, was invaded by this element in [the year 1634, with the loss of 
 whole villages, many thousands of horned cattle, and 1500 human beings. 
 
 Nature is as wild and grand in Norway as she is productive in Marsch- 
 land. Cataracts amid the dark pines ; tie eternal snow of the mountains ; 
 seas that bid adieu to the land, and stretch out to the end of the world ; an 
 endless succession of the great and the terrible, leave the eye and the mind 
 without repose. The climate of Norway is extremely favourable to the 
 longevity of the human race, and sufficiently so to the life of many animals 
 domesticated by man. The horses are of a good breed ; the homed cattle 
 excellent, though smalL Crops of grain are extremely precarious, and often 
 perish before they come to maturity, f 
 
 * There is a Danish work, by Professor Vibore, upon those plants which grow in sand. 
 It has been very actively distributed in Jutland, by the Danish administration, and might 
 be of considerable service in Norfolk, and other parts of Great Britain. 
 
 t We shall take little notice of Iceland in th' review, from the attention we mean to
 
 TAB LEA U DES E TA TS DANOIS. 59 
 
 In 1660, the very year in which this happier country was laying the 
 foundations of rational liberty by the wise restrictions imposed upon its 
 returning Monarch, the people of Denmark, by a solemn act, surrendered 
 their natural rights into the hands of their Sovereign, endowed him with 
 absolute power, and, in express words, declared him, for all his political 
 acts, accountable only to Him to whom all kings and governors are account- 
 able. This revolution, similar to that effected by the King and people at 
 Stockholm in 1772, was not a change from liberty to slavery; but from 
 a worse sort of slavery to a better ; from the control of an insolent and 
 venal senate, to that of one man ; it was a change which simplified their 
 degradation, and, by lessening the number of their tyrants, put their servitude 
 more out of sight. There ceased immediately to be an arbitrary monarch 
 in every parish, and the distance of the oppressor either operated as a 
 diminution of the oppression, or was thought to do so. The same spirit, to 
 be sure, which urged them to victory over one evil might have led them on 
 a little further, to the subjugation of both ; and they might have limited the 
 King, by the same powers which enabled them to dissolve the senate. But 
 Europe, at that period, knew no more of liberty than of Galvanism ; and 
 the peasants of Denmark no more dreamt of becoming free, than the inhabit- 
 ants of Paris do at this moment. 
 
 At present, Denmark is in theory one of the most arbitrary governments 
 on the face of the earth. It has remained so ever since the revolution to 
 which we have just alluded ; in all which period the Danes have not, by 
 any important act of rebellion, evinced an impatience of their yoke, or any 
 sense that the enormous power delegated to their monarchs has been im- 
 properly exercised. In fact, the Danish government enjoys great reputation 
 for its forbearance and mildness ; and sanctifies, in a certain degree, its 
 execrable constitution, by the moderation with which it is administered. 
 We regret extremely that Mr Catteau has given us, upon this curious subject 
 of the Danish government, such a timid and sterile dissertation. Many 
 governments are despotic in law, which are not despotic in fact ; not because 
 they are restrained by their own moderation, but because, in spite of their 
 theoretical omnipotence, they are compelled, in many important points, to 
 respect either public opinion or the opinion of other balancing powers, which 
 without the express recognition of law, have gradually sprung up in the state. 
 Russia, and Imperial Rome, had its praetorian guards. Turkey has its 
 uhlema. Public opinion almost always makes some exceptions to its blind 
 and slavish submission ; and in bowing its neck to the foot of a sultan, 
 stipulates how hard he shall tread. The very fact of enjoying a mild 
 government for a century and a half must, in their own estimation, have 
 given the Danes a sort of right to a mild government. Ancient possession 
 is a good title in all cases ; and the King of Denmark may have completely 
 lost the power of doing many just and many unjust actions, from never 
 having exercised it in particular instances. What he has not done for so 
 long a period, he may not dare to do now ; and he may in vain produce 
 constitutional parchments, abrogated by the general feelings of those whom 
 they were intended to control. Instead of any information of this kind, the 
 author of the Tableau has given us at full length the constitutional act of 
 1660, and has afforded us no other knowledge than we could procure from 
 the most vulgar histories ; as if state papers were the best place to look for 
 constitutions, and as if the rights of king and people were really adjusted, 
 by the form and solemnity of covenant and pacts ; by oaths of allegiance, 
 or oaths of coronation. 
 
 pay to that subject in the review of "Voyage en Iceland, fait par ordre de sa Majeste" 
 Danoise," 5 vols. 1802.
 
 60 TABLEAU DES ETA TS DAXC1S. 
 
 The King has his privy council, to which he names whom he pleases, 
 with the exception of the heir-apparent, and the princes of the blood, who 
 sit there of right. It is customary, also, that the heads of colleges should 
 sit there. These colleges are the offices in which the various business of the 
 state is carried on. The chancelry of Denmark interprets all laws which 
 concern privileges in litigation, and the different degrees of authority be- 
 longing to various public bodies. It watches over the interests of church 
 and poor : issues patents, edicts, grants, letters of naturalization, legitimacy, 
 and nobility. The archives of the state are also under its custody. The 
 German chancelry has the same powers and privileges in Sleswick and 
 Holstein, which are fiefs of the empire. There is a college for foreign 
 affairs ; two colleges of finance ; and a college of economy and commerce ; 
 which, divided into four parts, directs its attention to four objects : I. 
 Manufacturing industry : 2. Commerce : 3. Productions : 4. Possessions in 
 the East Indies. All projects and speculations, relative to any of these 
 objects, are referred to this college ; and every encouragement given to the 
 prosecution of such as it may chance to approve. There are two other 
 colleges, which respectively manage the army and navy. The total number 
 is nine. 
 
 The Court of Denmark is on a footing of great simplicity. The pomp 
 introduced by Christian IV., who modelled his establishments after those 
 of Louis XIV., has been laid aside, and a degree of economy adopted, much 
 more congenial to the manners of the people, and the resources of the 
 country. The hereditary nobility of Denmark may be divided into those 
 of the ancient, those of the modern fiefs, and the personal nobility. The 
 first class are only distinguished from the second, by the more extensive 
 privileges annexed to their fiefs ; as it has been the policy of the Court of 
 Denmark, in latter times, not to grant such immunities to the possessors of 
 noble lands as had been accorded to them at earlier periods. Both of 
 these classes, however, derive their nobility from their estates, which are 
 inalienable, and descend according to the laws of primogeniture. In the 
 third class, nobility derives from the person, and not from the estate. To 
 prevent the female noblesse from marrying beneath their rank, and to pre- 
 serve the dignity of their order, nine or ten Protestant nunneries have been 
 from time to time endowed, in each of which about twelve noble women are 
 accommodated, who, not bound by any vow, find in these societies an econo- 
 mical and elegant retirement. The nobility of Norway have no fiefs. The 
 nobility of Holstein and Sleswick derive their nobility from their fiefs, and 
 are possessed of very extensive privileges. Every thing which concerns 
 their common interest is discussed in a convention held periodically in the 
 town of Keil ; during the vacations of the convention, there is a permanent 
 deputation resident in the same town. Interests so well watched by the 
 nobles themselves, are necessarily respected by the Court of Denmark. 
 The same institution of free nunneries for the female nobility prevails in 
 these provinces. Societies of this sort might perhaps be extended to other 
 classes, and to other countries, with some utility. The only objection to a 
 nunnery is, that those who change their minds cannot change their situation. 
 That a number of unmarried females should collect together into one mass, 
 and subject themselves to some few rales of convenience, is a system which 
 might afford great resources and accommodation to a number of helpless 
 individuals, without proving injurious to the community; unless, indeed, 
 any very timid statesman shall be alarmed at the progress of celibacy, and 
 imagine that the increase and multiplication of the human race may become 
 a mere antiquated habit. 
 
 The lowest cpurts in Denmark are composed of a judge and a secretary
 
 TABLE A U DES ETA TS DANOIS. 61 
 
 Iwth chosen by the landed proprietors within the jurisdiction, but confirmed 
 by the King, in whose name all their proceedings are carried on. Thesa 
 courts have their sessions once a week in Denmark, and are attended by 
 four or five burgesses or farmers, in the capacity of assessors, who occasion- 
 ally give their advice upon subjects of which their particular experience may 
 entitle them to judge. From this jurisdiction there is appeal to a higher 
 court, held every month in different places in Denmark, by judges paid by 
 the Crown. The last appeal for Norway and Denmark is to the Hoiestt 
 Rett, or supreme court, fixed at Copenhagen, which is occupied for nine 
 months in the year, and composed half of noble, half of plebeian judges. 
 This is the only tribunal in which the advocates plead viv& voce; in all the 
 others litigation is carried on by writing. The King takes no cognizance of 
 pecuniary suits determined by this court, but reserves to himself a revision of 
 all its sentences which affect the life or honour of the subject. It has always 
 been the policy of the Court of Denmark to render justice as cheap as pos- 
 sible. We should have been glad to have learnt from Mr Catteau, whether 
 or not the cheapness of justice operates as an encouragement to litigation ; 
 and whether (which we believe is most commonly the case) the quality of 
 Danish justice is not in the ratio of the price. But this gentleman, as we 
 have before remarked, is so taken up by the formal part of institutions, that 
 he has neither leisure nor inclination to say much of their spirit. The 
 Tribunal of Conciliation, established since 1795, is composed of the most 
 intelligent and respectable men in the vicinage, and its sessions are private. 
 It is competent to determine upon a great number of civil questions ; and if 
 both parties agree to the arrangement proposed by the court, its decree is 
 registered and has legal authority. If the parties cannot be brought to 
 agreement by the amicable interference of the mediators, they are at full 
 liberty to prosecute their suit in a court of justice. All the proceedings of 
 the Tribunal of Conciliation are upon unstamped paper, and they cannot be 
 protracted longer than fifteen days in the country, and eight days in the 
 towns, unless both parties consent to a longer delay. The expenses, which 
 do not exceed three shillings, are not payable but in case of reconciliation. 
 During the three years preceding this institution, there came before the 
 courts of law, 25,521 causes; and, for the three years following, 9653, 
 making the astonishing difference of fifteen thousand eight hundred and sixty- 
 three lawsuits. The idea of this court was taken from the Dutch, among 
 whom it likewise produced the most happy effects. And when we consider 
 what an important point it is, that there should be time for disputants to 
 cool, the strong probability there is, that four or five impartial men from 
 the vicinage will take a right view of the case, and the reluctance that any 
 man must feel to embark his reputation and property in opposition to their 
 opinion, we cannot entertain a doubt of the beauty and importance of the 
 invention. It is hardly possible that it should be bad justice which satisfies 
 both parties, and this species of mediation has no validity but upon such 
 condition. It is curious, too, to remark, how much the progress of rancour 
 obstructs the natural sense of justice ; it appears that plaintiff and defendant 
 were both satisfied in 15,868 causes : if all these causes had come on to a 
 regular hearing, and the parties been inflamed by the expense and the pub- 
 licity of the quarrel, we doubt if there would have been one single man out 
 of the whole number who would have acknowledged that his cause was 
 justly given against him. 
 
 There are some provisions in the criminal law of Denmark, for the per- 
 sonal liberty of the subject, which cannot be of much importance, so long as 
 the dispensing power is vested in the Crown ; however, though they are not 
 much, they are better than nothing; and have probably some effect in
 
 62 TAB LEA U DES E TA TS DA NO IS. 
 
 offences merely criminal, where the passions and interests of the governors 
 do not interfere. Mr Catteau considers the law which admits the accused 
 to bail, upon finding proper security, to be unjust, because the poor cannot 
 avail themselves of it. But this is bad reasoning ; for every country has a 
 right to impose such restrictions and liens upon the accused, that they shall 
 be forthcoming for trial ; at the same time, those restrictions are not to be 
 more severe than the necessity of the ease requires. The primary and most 
 obvious method of security is imprisonment. Whoever can point out any 
 other method of effecting the same object, less oppressive to himself and as 
 satisfactory to the justice of the country, has a right to require that it be 
 adopted ; whoever cannot, must remain in prison. It is a principle that 
 should never be lost sight of, that an accused person is presumed to be inno- 
 cent ; and that no other vexation should be imposed upon him than what is 
 absolutely necessary for the purposes of future investigation. The imprison- 
 ment of a poor man, because he cannot find bail, is not a gratuitous vexa- 
 tion, but a necessary severity ; justified only, because no other, nor milder 
 mode of security can, in that particular instance, be produced. 
 
 Inquisitorial and penal torture is, in some instances, allowed by the la\vs 
 of Denmark : the former, after having been abolished, was re-established in 
 1771. The corporations have been gradually and covertly attacked in Den- 
 mark, as they have been in Great Britain. The peasants, who had before 
 been attached to the soil, were gradually enfranchised between 1788 and 
 1800; so that, on the first day of the latter year, there did not remain a 
 single slave in the Danish dominions ; or, to speak more correctly, slavery 
 was equalised among all ranks of people. We need not descant on the im- 
 mense importance of this revolution ; and if Mr Catteau had been of the 
 same opinion, we should have been spared two pages of very bad declama- 
 tion ; beginning, in the true French style, with " oh toi," and going on with 
 what might be expected to follow such a beginning. 
 
 The great mass of territorial proprietors in Denmark are the signiors, pos- 
 sessing fiefs with very extensive privileges and valuable exemptions {from 
 taxes. Many persons hold land under these proprietors, with interests in 
 the land of very different descriptions. There are some cultivators who 
 possess freeholds, .but the number of these is very inconsiderable. The 
 greater number of farmers are what the French call Metayers, put in by the 
 landlord, furnished with stock and seed at his expense, and repaying him in 
 product, labour, or any other manner agreed on in the contract. This is 
 the first, or lowest .->tage of tenantry, and is the surest sign of a poor country. 
 The feudal system never took root very deeply in Norway : the greater part 
 of the lands are freehold, and cultivated by their owners. Those which are 
 held under the few privileged fiefs which still exist in Norway, are subjected 
 to less galling conditions than farms of a similar tenure in Denmark. Mar- 
 riage is a mere civil contract among the privileged orders : the presence of 
 a priest is necessary for its celebration among the lower orders. In every 
 large town there are two public tutors appointed, who, in conjunction with 
 the magistrates, watch over the interests of wards, at the same time that they 
 occupy themselves with the care of the education of children within the limits 
 of their jurisdiction. Natural children are perhaps more favoured in Den- 
 mark, than perhaps in any other kingdom of Europe ; they have half the 
 portion which the law allots to legitimate children, and the whole if there 
 are no legitimate. 
 
 A very curious circumstance took place in the kingdom of Denmark, in 
 the middle of the last century, relative to the infliction of capital punish- 
 ments upon malefactors. They were attended from the prison to the place 
 pf execution by priests, accompanied by a very numerous procession, singing
 
 TABLEAU DES ETATS DA NO IS. 63 
 
 psalms, &c. &c. : which ended, a long discourse was addressed by the priest 
 to the culprit, who was hung as soon as he had heard it. This spectacle, 
 and all the pious cares bestowed upon the criminals, so far seduced the 
 imaginations of the common people, that many of them committed murder 
 purposely to enjoy such inestimable advantages, and the government was 
 positively obliged to make -hanging dull as well as deadly, before it ceased 
 to be an object of popular ambition. 
 
 In 1796, the Danish land forces amounted to 74,654, of which 50,880 
 were militia.* Amongst the troops on the Norway establishment is a regi- 
 ment of skaters. The pay of a colonel in the Danish service is about 1 740 
 rixdollars per annum, with some perquisites ; that of a private 6 schellings 
 a day. The entry into the Danish states from the German side is naturally 
 strong. The passage between Lubeck and Hamburg is only eight miles, 
 and the country intersected by marshes, rivers and lakes. The straits of 
 the Baltic afford considerable security to the Danish isles ; and there are very 
 few points in which an army could penetrate through the Norway mountains 
 to overrun that country. The principal fortresses of Denmark are Copen- 
 hagen, Rendsbhurg, Gluchstadt, and Frederickshall. In 1801, the Danish 
 navy consisted of 3 ships of 80 guns, 1 2 of 74, 2 of 70, 3 of 64, and 2 of 60 ; 
 4 frigates of 40, 3 of 36, 3 of 24, and a number of small vessels ; in all, 22 
 of the line, and 10 frigates, f 
 
 The revenues of Denmark are derived from the interest of a capital formed 
 by the sale of crown lands ; from a share in the tithes ; from the rights of 
 fishing and hunting let to farm ; from licences granted to the farmers to distil 
 their own spirits ; from the mint, post, turnpikes, lotteries, and the passage 
 of the Sound. About the year 1750, the number of vessels which passed 
 die Sound both ways was annually from 4000 to 5000 ; in 1752, the number 
 of 6000 was considered as very extraordinary. They have increased since 
 in the following ratio : 
 
 7,736 
 9,047 
 11,166 
 
 9,734 
 12,113 
 9,048 
 
 In 1770, the Sound duties amounted to 459,890 rixdollars ; and they 
 have probably been, increased since- that period to about half a million. To 
 these sources of revenue ara to be added, a capitation tax, a land tax, a tax 
 on rank, a tax on places, pensions, and the clergy ; the stamps, customs, 
 and excise ; constituting a revenue of 7,270, 172 rixdollars. J The following 
 is a table of the expenses of the Danish Government : 
 
 * The militia is not embodied in regiments by itself, but divided among the various 
 regiments of the line. 
 
 t In 1791, the Swedish army amounted to 47,000 men ; regulars and militia ; their navy 
 to not more than 16 ships of the line ; before the war it was about equal to the Danish 
 navy- The author of Voyage des deux Fraitfais places the regular troops of Russia at 
 250,000 mentexclusive of guards and garrisons ; and her navy, as it existed in 1791, at 30 
 frigates, and 50 sail of the line, of which 8 were of no guns. This is a brief picture of the 
 forces of the Baltic powers. 
 
 \ Upon the subject of the Danish revenues, see Toze's Introduction to the Statistics, 
 edited and improved by Heinze, 1799, torn. xi. From this work Mr Catteau has taken 
 information concerning the Danish revenues. See also the igth cap. vol. ii. of Voyage 
 des deux Franfais, which is admirable for extent and precision of information. In 
 general, indeed, this work cannot be too much attended to by those who wish to become 
 acquainted with the statistics of the north of Europe, 
 
 1770 
 
 
 
 
 
 1777 
 1783 
 
 
 
 
 
 1790 
 1796 
 1800 
 
 
 * 
 
 

 
 64 TABLE A U DES TA TS DANQIS. 
 
 The court 
 
 The minor branches of the Royal family 
 
 Civil servants . - . 
 
 Secret service money and pensions 
 
 Army . . 
 
 Navy . . . 
 
 East India colonies . 
 
 Bounties to commerce and manufac ures 
 
 Annuities 
 
 Buildings and repairs . 
 
 Interest of the public debt . 
 
 Sulking fund " . . 
 
 Total 
 
 Rixdollara. 
 
 250,000 
 
 l8o,OOO 
 
 707,500 
 
 231,000 
 
 2,080,000 
 
 I,2OO,ooo 
 
 l8o,OOO 
 
 300,000 
 
 27,000 
 
 I2O,OOO 
 
 I,IOO,OOO 
 
 150,000 
 
 6,525,500 
 
 The state of the Danish debt does not appear to be well ascertained. 
 Voyage dcs deux Fraitfais makes it amount to 13,645,046 rixdollars. Catteau 
 seems to think it must have been above 20,000,000 rixdollars at that period. 
 The Danish government has had great recourse to the usual expedient of 
 issuing paper money. So easy a method of getting rich has of course been 
 abused ; and the paper was, in the year 1790, at a discount of 8, 9, and 10 
 per cent. There is, in general, a great want of specie in Denmark ; for, 
 though all the Sound duties are paid in gold and silver, the government is 
 forced to export a considerable quantity of the precious metals, for the pay- 
 ment of its foreign debts and agents ; and, in spite of the rigid prohibitions 
 to the contrary, the Jews, who swarm at Copenhagen, export Danish ducats 
 to a large value. The Court of Denmark has no great credit out of its own 
 dominions, and has always experienced a considerable difficulty in raising 
 its loans in Switzerland, Genoa, and Holland, the usual markets it has 
 resorted to for that purpose. 
 
 In the census taken in 1769, the return was as follows ; 
 In Denmark " 
 Norway . 
 Iceland ' . 
 
 Ferro Isles 
 
 Sleswick . 
 
 Holstein . 
 
 Oldenbourg and Delmenhurst 
 
 785,690 
 722,141 
 
 46,201 
 4,754 
 243,605 
 134,665 
 
 79,071 
 
 2,016,127 
 
 This census was taken during the summer, a season in which great num. 
 bers of sailors are absent from their families ; and as it does not include the 
 army, the total ought, perhaps, to be raised to 2,225,000. The present 
 population of the Danish states, calculating from the tables of life and 
 death, should be about two millions and a half; the census lately taken has not 
 yet been published. From registers kept for a number of years, it appears 
 that the number of marriages were, to the whole population, as i to 125 ; and 
 the number of births to the whole population were as I to 32 or 33 ; of deaths, 
 as I to 38. In 1797, in the diocese of Vibourg, out of 8600 children, So were 
 bastard : in the diocese of Fionia, 280 out of 1146. Out of 1356, dead in 
 the first of these dioceses, 100 had attained the age of 80, and one of roo. 
 In 1769, the population of the towns was 144, 105 ; in 1787, it was 142,880.
 
 TABLEA U DES ETA TS DANOIS. 65 
 
 In the first o these years, the population of the country was 641,485 ; and 
 in the later, 667, 165. The population of Copenhagen consisted, in the year 
 1799. f 4 2 > 1 4 2 males, and 41,476 females. The deaths exceeded the 
 births, says Mr Catteau ; and, to prove it, he exhibits a table of deaths and 
 births for six years. Upon calculating this table, however, it appears, that 
 the sum of the births, at Copenhagen, during that period, exceeds the sum 
 of the deaths by 491, or nearly 82 per annum ; about -j-sVu of the whole 
 population of the city. The whole kingdom increases y^nn or nearly yj-y 
 in a year.* There is no city in Denmark Proper, except Copenhagen, 
 which has a population of more than 5000 souls. The density of population 
 in Denmark Proper is about 1300 to the square mile.t The proportion of 
 births and deaths in the duchies, is the same as in Denmark ; that of mar- 
 riages as I to 115. Altona, the second city in the Danish dominions, has a 
 population of 20,000. The density of population in Marschland is 6000 per 
 square mile. The paucity of inhabitants in Norway is not merely referable 
 to the difficulties of subsistence, but to the administrative system established 
 there, and to the bad state of its civil and economical laws. It has been 
 more than once exposed to the horrors of famine, by the monopoly of the 
 commerce of grain established there, from which, however, it has at length 
 been delivered. The proportion of births to the living, is as I to 35 ; that 
 of deaths to the living, as I to 49. % So that the whole Danish dominions 
 increase, every year, by about -5^3- ; and Norway, which has the worst 
 climate and soil, by about f ^ > exceeding the common increase by nearly 
 , J- T of the whole population. Out of 26,197 persons who died in Denmark 
 in 1799, there were 165 between So and 100 ; and out of 18,354 who died 
 in Norway the same year, there were 208 individuals of the same advanced 
 age. The country population is to the town population in the ratio of 13 
 to 137. In some parts of Nordland and Finmarken, the population is as 
 low as 15 to the square mile. 
 
 'Within the last twenty or thirty years, the Danes have done a great deal 
 for the improvement of their country. The peasants, as we have before 
 mentioned, are freed from the soil. The greater part of the clerical, and 
 much of the lay tithes are redeemed, and the corvees and other servile 
 tenures begin to be commuted for money. A bank of credit is established 
 at Copenhagen, for the loan of money to persons engaged in speculations of 
 agriculture and mining. The interest is 4 per cent., and the money is repaid 
 by instalments in the course of from 21 to 28 years. In the course of 12 
 years, the bank has lent about three millions of rixdollars. The external 
 and domestic commerce of grain is now placed upon the most liberal foot- 
 ing. . The culture of potatoes (ce fruit modesle) has at length found its way 
 into Denmark, after meeting with the same objections which it experienced 
 at its first introduction from every nation in Europe. Hops are a good 
 deal attended to in Fionia, though enough are not yet grown for the supply 
 of the country. Tobacco is cultivated in the environs of Fredericia, in Jut- 
 land, by the industrious descendants of a French colony planted there by 
 Frederick IV. Very little hemp and flax is grown in the Danish dominions. 
 They had veterinary schools previous to the present establishment of them 
 in Great Britain. Indeed, there was a greater necessity for them in Den- 
 mark ; as no country in Europe has suffered so severely from diseases 
 among its animals. The decay of the woods begins to be very perceptible ; 
 and great quantities, both for fuel and construction, are annually imported 
 
 * The average time in which old countries double their population is stated by Adam 
 Smith to be about 300 years. 
 I 1 The same rule is used here as in p. 57. 
 } This proportion is a very remarkable proof of the longevity of the Norwegians.
 
 66 TABLEA U DES ETA TS DANOIS. 
 
 from the other countries bordering the Baltic. They have pit-coal ; but, 
 either from its inferior quality, or their little skill in working it, they are 
 forced to purchase to a considerable amount from England. The Danes 
 have been almost driven out of the herring market by the Swedes. Their 
 principal export of this kind is dried fish ; though, at Altona, their fisheries 
 are carried on with more appearance of enterprise than elsewhere. The 
 districts of Hedemarken, Hodeland, Toten, and Romerige, are the parts of 
 Norway most celebrated for the cultivation of grain, which principally con- 
 sists of oats. The distress in Norway is sometimes so great, that the inhabi- 
 tants are compelled to make bread of various sorts of lichens mingled with 
 their grain. It has lately been discovered that the Lichen rangiferous, or 
 reindeer's moss, is extremely well calculated for that purpose. The Norway 
 fisheries bring to the amount of a million and a half of rixdollars annually 
 into the country. The most remarkable mines in Norway are, the gold 
 mines of Edsvold, the silver mines of Konigsberg, the copper mines of 
 Rseraas, and the iron mines of Arendal and Kragerse, the cobalt mines of 
 Possum, and the black-lead mines of Englidal. The Court of Denmark is 
 not yet cured of the folly of entering into commercial speculations on its 
 own account. From the year 1769 to 1792, 78,000 rixdollars per annum 
 have been lost on the royal mines alone. Norway produces marble of differ- 
 ent colours, very beautiful granites, mill and whet-stones, and alum. 
 
 The principal manufactures of Denmark are those of cloth, cotton-printing, 
 sugar-refining, and porcelain ; of which latter manufactures, carried on by 
 the Crown, the patient proprietors hope that the profits may at some future 
 period equal the expenses. The manufactories for large and small arms are 
 at Frederickwaerk and Elsineur ; and, at the gates of Copenhagen, there 
 has lately been erected a cotton-spinning-mill, upon the construction so well 
 known in England. At Tendern, in Sleswick, there is a manufacture of 
 lace ; and very considerable glass manufactories in several parts of Norway. 
 All the manufacturing arts have evidently travelled from Lubeck and Ham- 
 burg ; the greater part of the manufacturers are of German parentage ; and 
 vast numbers of manufacturing Germans are to be met with, not only in 
 Denmark, but throughout Sweden and Russia. 
 
 The Holstein Canal, uniting the Baltic and the North Sea, is extremely 
 favourable to the interior commerce of Denmark, by rendering unnecessary 
 the long and dangerous voyage round the peninsula of Jutland. In the year 
 1 785, there passed through this canal 409 Danish, and 44 foreign ships. In 
 the year 1798, 1086 Danish, and 1164 foreign. This canal is so advan- 
 tageous, and the passage round Jutland so very bad, that goods, before the 
 creation of the canal, were very often sent by land from Lubeck to Ham- 
 burg. The amount of cargoes despatched from Copenhagen for Iceland, 
 between the years 1764 and 1784, was 2,560,000 nxdollars ; that of the 
 returns, 4,665,000. The commerce with the isles of Foeroe is quite incon- 
 siderable. The exports from Greenland, in the year 1787, amounted to 
 168,475 rixdollars ; its imports to 74,427. None of these possessions are 
 suffered to trade with foreign nations but through the intervention of the 
 mother-country. The cargoes despatched to the Danish West Indies consist 
 of all sorts of provisions, of iron, of copper, of various Danish manufactures, 
 and of some East India goods. The returns are made in sugar, rum, cotton, 
 indigo, tobacco, and coffee. There are about 75 vessels employed in this 
 commerce, from the burden of 40 to 200 tons. 
 
 If the slave trade, in pursuance of the laws to that effect, ceases in the 
 Danish colonies, the establishments on the coast of Africa will become rather 
 a burthen than a profit. What measures have been taken to insure the 
 abolition, and whether or not the philanthropy of the mother-country is
 
 TABLE A U DES E TA TS DANOIS. 67 
 
 likely to be defeated by the interested views of the colonists, are delicate 
 points, which Mr Catteau, who often seems to think more of himself than 
 of his reader, passes over with his usual timidity and caution. The present 
 year is the period at which all further importation of negroes ought to cease ; 
 and if this wise and noble law be really carried into execution, the Danes 
 will enjoy the glory of having been the first to erase this foulest blot in t'.e 
 morality of Europe, and to abolish a wicked and absurd traffic, which pur- 
 chases its luxuries at the price of impending massacre, and present oppres- 
 sion. Deferred revenge is always put out to compound interest, and exacts 
 its dues with more than Judaical rigour. The Africans have begun with the 
 ?rench : 
 
 Jam firoximus ardet 
 
 Ucalegon. 
 
 Tea, rhubarb, and porcelain are the principal articles brought from China. 
 The factories in the East Indies send home cotton cloths, silk, sugar, rice, 
 pepper, ginger, indigo, opium, and arrack. Their most important East 
 Indian settlement is Fredericksnager.* Denmark, after having been long 
 overshadowed by the active industry of the Hanseatic towns, and embarrassed 
 by its ignorance of the true principles of commerce, has at length established 
 important commercial connections with all the nations, of Europe, and has 
 regulated those connections by very liberal and enlightened principles. The 
 regulations for the customs, published in 1791, are a very remarkable proof 
 of this assertion. Every thing is there arranged upon the most just and 
 simple principles : and the whole code evidences the striking progress of 
 mercantile knowledge in that country. In looking over the particulars of 
 the Danish commerce, we were struck with the immense increase of their 
 freightage during the wars of this country ; a circumstance which should 
 certainly have rendered them rather less disposed to complain of the vexa- 
 tions imposed upon the neutral powers during such periods, t In the first 
 six months of the year 1796, 5032 lasts of Danish shipping were taken up 
 by strangers for American voyages only. The commercial tonnage of 
 Denmark is put at about 85,000 lasts. 
 
 There appears to exist in the kingdom of Denmark, according to the 
 account of Mr Catteau, a laudable spirit of religious toleration ; such as, in 
 some instances, we might copy, with great advantage, in this island. It is 
 not, for instance, necessary in Denmark, that a man should be a Lutheran 
 before he can be the mayor of a town ; and, incredible as it may seem to 
 some people, there are many officers and magistrates who are found capable 
 of civil trusts, though they do not take the sacraments exactly in the forms 
 prescribed by the established church. There is no doubt, however, of the 
 existence of this very extraordinary fact ; and, if Mr Catteau's authority is 
 called in question, we are ready to corroborate it by the testimony of more 
 than one dozen German statists. The Danish Church consists of 13 bishops, 
 227 arch-priests, and 2462 priests. The principal part of the benefices are, 
 in Norway, in the gift of the Crown. In some parts of Denmark, the pro- 
 
 ?rietors of the privileged lands are the patrons ; in other parts, the parishes, 
 he revenues of the clergy are from the same sources as our own clergy. 
 The sum of the church revenues is computed to be 1,391,895 rixdollars ; 
 which is little more than 500 for each clergyman. The Court of Denmark 
 
 * We should very willingly have gone through every branch of the Danish commerce, if 
 we had not been apprehensive of extending this article too far. Mr Catteau gives no 
 general tables of the Danish exports and imports. A German work places them,. for tho 
 year 1768, as follows : Exports, 3,067,051 rixdollars ; imports, 3,215,085. Ur. Kundr*, 
 far Gatspari. 
 
 \ To say nothing of the increased sale of Norway timber, out of 86,000 lasts exported 
 from Norway, 1799, 76,000 came to Great Britain.
 
 68 TABLE A U DES E TA TS DANOIS. 
 
 is so liberal upon the subject of sectaries, that the whole Royal Family and 
 the Bishop of Seland assisted at the worship of the Calvinsts in 1789, when 
 they celebrated, in the most public manner, the centenary of the foundation 
 of their church.* In spite of this tolerant spirit, it is computed that there 
 are not more than 1800 Calvinists in the whole Danish dominions. At 
 Christianfield, on the frontiers of Sleswick and Jutland, there is a colony of 
 Northern Quakers, or Hernhutes, of which Mr Catteau has given a very 
 agreeable account. They appear to be characterised by the same neatness, 
 order, industry, and absurdity as their brethren in this country '; taking the 
 utmost care of the sick and destitute, and thoroughly persuaded that by these 
 good deeds, aided by long pockets and slouched hats, they are acting up to 
 the true spirit of the Gospel. The Greenlanders were converted to Christianity 
 by a Norwegian priest, named John Egede. He was so eminently success- 
 ful in the object of his mission, and contrived to make himself so very much 
 beloved, that his memory is still held among them in the highest veneration ; 
 and they actually date their chronology from the year of his arrival, as we 
 do ours from the birth of our Saviour. 
 
 There are, in the University of Copenhagen, seven professors of Theology, 
 two of Civil Law, two of Mathematics, one of Latin and Rhetoric, one of 
 Greek, one of Oriental Languages, one of History, five of Medicine, one of 
 Agriculture, and one of Statistics. They enjoy a salary of from 1000 to 
 1 500 rixdollars, and are well lodged in the University. The University of 
 Copenhagen is extremely rich, and enjoys an income of 3,000,000 rixdollars. 
 Even Mr Catteau admits that it has need of reform. In fact, the reputation 
 of universities is almost always short-lived, or else it survives their merit. 
 If they are endowed, professors become fat-witted, and never imagine that 
 the arts and sciences are any thing else but incomes. If universities, 
 slenderly endowed, are rendered famous by the accidental occurrence of a 
 few great teachers, the number of scholars attracted there by the reputation 
 of the place makes the situation of a professor worth intriguing for. The 
 learned pate is not fond of ducking to the golden fool. He who has the 
 best talents for getting the office has most commonly the least for filling it ; 
 and men are made moral and mathematical teachers by the same trick and 
 filthiness with which they are made tide-waiters and clerks of the kitchen. 
 
 The number of students in the University of Copenhagen is about 700 : 
 they come not only from Denmark, but from Norway and Iceland : the 
 latter are distinguished as well for the regularity of their manners as for the 
 intensity of their application ; the instruments of which application are 
 furnished to them by a library containing 60,000 volumes. The Danes 
 have primary schools established in the towns, but which have need of 
 much reform before they can answer all the beneficial ends of such an insti- 
 tution. We should have been happy to have learned from Mr Catteau the 
 degree of information diffused among the lower orders in the Danish do- 
 minions ; but upon this subject he is silent. In the University of Keil 
 there is an institution for the instruction of schoolmasters ; and in the list of 
 students in the same university we were a good deal amused to find only 
 one student dedicating himself to Belles Lettres. 
 
 The people of Holstein and Sleswick are Dutch in their manners, character, 
 and appearance. Their language is in general the Low German ; though 
 the better sort of people in the towns begin to speak High German, t In 
 Jutland and the Isles, the Danish language is spoken : within half a century 
 
 * The Jews, however, are still prohibited from entering the kingdom of Norway. 
 
 t Mr Catteau' s description of Heligoland is entertaining. In an island containing a 
 population of 2003, there is neither horse, cart, nor plough. We could not have imagined 
 the possibility of such a fact in any part of Europe.
 
 TAB LEA U DES ETA TS DANOIS. 69 
 
 this language has been cultivated with some attention : before that period, 
 the Danish writers preferred to make use of the Latin or the German lan- 
 guage. It is in the island of Finland that it is spoken with the greatest 
 purity. The Danish character is not agreeable. It is marked by silence, 
 phlegm, and reserve. A Dane is the excess and extravagance of a Dutch- 
 man ; more breeched, more ponderous, and more saturnine. He is not often 
 a bad member of society in the great points of morals, and seldom a good 
 one in the lighter requisites of manners. His understanding is alive only 
 to the useful and the profitable : he never lives for what is merely gracious, 
 courteous, and ornamental. His faculties seem to be drenched and slack- 
 ened by the etenial fogs in which he resides ; he is never alert, elastic, nor 
 serene. His state of animal spirits is so low, that what in other countries 
 would be deemed dejection, proceeding from casual misfortune, is the 
 habitual tenour and complexion of his mind. In all the operations of his 
 understanding he must have time. He is capable of undertaking great 
 journeys ; but he travels only a foot pace, and never leaps nor runs. He 
 loves arithmetic better than lyric poetry, and affects Cocker rather than 
 Pindar. He is slow to speak of fountains and amorous maidens : but can 
 take a spell at porisms as well as another ; and will make profound and 
 extensive combinations of thought, if you pay him for it, and do not insist 
 that he shall either be brisk or brief. There is something, on the contrary, 
 extremely pleasing in the Norwegian style of character. The Norwegian 
 expresses firmness and elevation in all that he says and does. In comparison 
 with the Danes, he has always been a free man ; and you read his history 
 in his looks. He is not apt, to be sure, to forgive his enemies ; but he docs 
 not deserve any, for he is hospitable in the extreme, and prevents the needy 
 in their wants. It is not possible for a writer of this country to speak ill 
 of the Norwegians ; for, of all strangers, the people of Norway love and 
 admire the British the most. In reading Mr Catteau's account of the con- 
 gealed and blighted Laplanders, we were struck with the infinite delight 
 they must have in dying ; the only circumstance in which they can enjoy 
 any superiority over the rest of mankind ; or which tends, in their instance, 
 to verify the theory of the equality of human condition. 
 
 If we pass over Tycho Brahe, and the well-known history of the Scaldes, 
 of the Chronicles of Isleif, Sffimunder, Hiinfronde, Snorro, Sturleson, and 
 other Islandic worthies, the list of Danish literati will best prove that they 
 have no literati at all. Are there twenty persons in Great Britain who have 
 ever heard of Longomontanus, Nicholas Stenonis, Sperling Laurenberg, 
 Huitfeild, Gramn, Holberg, Langebeck, Carstens, Suhm, Kofod, Anger? 
 or of the living Wad, Fabricius, Hanch, Tode, and Zoega ? We do not 
 deny merit to these various personages ; many of them may be much ad- 
 mired by those who are more conversant in Danish literature than we can 
 pretend to be : but they are certainly not names on which the learned fame 
 of any country can be built very high. They have no classical celebrity 
 and diffusion : they are not an universal language : they have not enlarged 
 their original dominion, and become the authors of Europe, instead of the 
 authors of Denmark. It would be loss of time to speak of the fine arts in 
 Denmark : they hardly exist. 
 
 We have been compelled to pass over many parts of Mr Catteau's book 
 more precipitately than we could have wished ; but we hope we have said 
 and exhibited enough of it, to satisfy the public that it is, upon the whole, 
 a very valuable publication. The two great requisites for his undertaking, 
 moderation and industry, we are convinced this gentleman possesses in an 
 eminent degree. He represents every thing without prejudice, and he re- 
 presents every thing authentically. The same cool and judicious disposition,
 
 70 IFITTAfAN'S TRAVELS. 
 
 ivhich clears him from the spirit of party, makes him perhaps cautious in 
 excess. We are convinced that every thing he says is true ; but we have 
 been sometimes induced to suspect that we do not see the whole truth. 
 After all, perhaps, he has told as much truth as he could do, compatibly 
 with the opportunity of telling any. A person more disposed to touch upon 
 critical and offensive subjects might not have submitted as diligently to the 
 investigation of truth, with which passion was not concerned. How few 
 writers are, at the same time, laborious, impartial, and intrepid ! 
 
 We cannot conclude this article without expressing the high sense we 
 entertain of the importance of such researches as those in which Mr Catteau 
 has been engaged. They must form the basis of all interior regulations, 
 and ought principally to influence the conduct of every country in its rela- 
 tions towards foreign powers. As they contain the best estimate of tht 
 wealth and happiness of a people, they bring theory to the strictest test ; 
 and measure, better than all reasoning, the wisdom with which laws are 
 made, and the mildness with which they are administered. If such judicious 
 and elaborate surveys of the state of this and other countries in Europe had 
 been made from time to time for the last two centuries, they would have 
 quickened and matured the progress of knowledge, and the art of governing, 
 by throwing light on the spirit and tendency of laws ; they would have 
 checked the spirit of officious interference in legislation ; have softened per- 
 secution, and expanded narrow conceptions of national policy. The happi- 
 ness of a nation would have been proclaimed by the fulness of its gamers, 
 and the multitudes of its sheep and oxen ; and rulers might sometimes have 
 sacrificed their schemes of ambition, or their unfeeling splendour, at the 
 detail of silent fields, empty harbours, and famished peasants. 
 
 WITTMAN'S TRAVELS. (E. REVIEW, 1803.) 
 
 Traveltttt Turkty, AsiaMinor, and Syria,&c., and into Egyft. By WILLIAM WITT- 
 MAN, M.D. 1803. London : Phillips. 
 
 DR WITTMAN was sent abroad with the military mission to Turkey, towards 
 the spring of 1799, and remained attached to it during its residence in the 
 neighbourhood of Constantinople, its march through the Desert, and its 
 short operations in Egypt. The military mission, consisting of General 
 Koehler, and some officers and privates of the artillery and engineers, 
 amounting on the whole to seventy, were assembled at Constantinople, 
 June, 1799, which they left in the same month of the following year, joined 
 the Grand Vizier at Jaffa in July, and entered Egypt with the Turks in 
 April, 1801. After the military operations were concluded there, Dr 
 Wittman returned home by Constantinople, Vienna, &c. 
 
 The travels are written in the shape of a journal, which begins and con- 
 cludes with the events which we just mentioned. It is obvious that the 
 route described by Dr Wittman is not new : he could make no cursory and 
 superficial observations upon the people whom he saw, or the countries 
 through which he passed, with which the public are not already familiar. 
 If his travels were to possess any merit at all, they were to derive that merit 
 from accurate physical researches, from copious information on the state of 
 medicine, surgery, and disease in Turkey ; and above all, perhaps, from 
 gratifying the rational curiosity which all inquiring minds must feel upon the 
 nature of the plague, and the indications of cure. Dr Wittman, too, was 
 passing over the same ground trodden by Bonaparte in his Syrian expedi
 
 WITTMAN'S TRAVELS. 71 
 
 tion, and had an ample opportunity of inquiring its probable object, and the 
 probable success which (but for the heroic defence of Acre) might have 
 attended it ; he was on the theatre of Bonaparte's imputed crimes, as well 
 as his notorious defeat ; and might have brought us back, not anile conjec- 
 ture, but sound evidence of events which must determine his character, who 
 may determine our fate. We should have been happy also to have found 
 in the Travels of Dr Wittman a full account of the tactics and manoeuvres 
 of the Turkish army ; and this it would not have been difficult to have ob- 
 tained through the medium of his military companions. Such appear to us 
 to be the subjects, from an able discussion of which Dr Wittman might 
 have derived considerable reputation, by gratifying the ardour of temporary 
 curiosity, and adding to the stock of permanent knowledge. 
 
 Upon opening Dr Wittman's book, we turned, with a considerable degree 
 of interest, to the subject of Jaffa ; and, to do justice to the Doctor, we 
 shall quote all that he has said upon the subject of Bonaparte's conduct at 
 this place. 
 
 " After a breach had been effected, the French troops stormed and carried 
 the place. It was probably owing to the obstinate defence made by the 
 Turks, that the French Commander-in-Chief was induced to give orders for 
 the horrid massacre which succeeded. Four thousand of the wretched in- 
 habitants who had surrendered, and who had in vain implored the mercy of 
 their conquerors, were, together with a part of the late Turkish garrison of 
 El-Arish (amounting, it has been said, to five or six hundred) dragged out 
 in cold blood, four days after the French had obtained possession of Jaffa, 
 to the sand hills, about a league distant, in the way to Gaza, and there most 
 inhumanly put to death. I have seen the skeletons of these unfortunate 
 victims which lie scattered over the hills ; a modem Golgotha, which re- 
 mains a lasting disgrace to a nation calling itself civilised. It would give 
 pleasure to the author of this work, as well as to every liberal mind, to hear 
 these facts contradicted on substantial evidence. Indeed, I am sorry to 
 add, that the charge of cruelty against the French generally does not rest 
 here. It having been reported, that, previously to the retreat of the French 
 army from Syria, their Commander-in-Chief had ordered all the French sick 
 at Jaffa to be poisoned, I was led to make the inquiry to which every one 
 who should have visited the spot would naturally have been directed, re- 
 specting an act of such singular, and, it should seem, wanton inhumanity. 
 It concerns me to have to state, not only that such a circumstance was posi- 
 tively asserted to have happened, but that, while in Egypt, an individual 
 was pointed out to us, as having been the executioner of these diabolical 
 commands." (p. 128.) 
 
 Now, in this passage, Dr Wittman offers no other evidence whatever of 
 the massacre, than that he had seen the skeletons scattered over the hills, 
 and that the fact was universally believed. But how does Dr Wittman 
 know what skeletons those were which he saw ? An oriental camp, affected 
 by the plague, leaves as many skeletons behind it as a massacre. And 
 though the Turks bury their dead, the Doctor complains of the very little 
 depth at which they are interred ; so that jackals, high winds, and a sandy 
 soil might, with great facility, undo the work of Turkish sextons. Let any 
 one read Dr Wittman's account of the camp near Jaffa, where the Turks 
 remained so long in company with the military mission, and he will im- 
 mediately perceive that, a year after their departure, it might have been 
 mistaken, with great ease, for the scene of a massacre. The spot which Dr 
 Wittman saw might have been the spot where a battle had been fought. 
 In the turbulent state of Syria, and amidst the variety of its barbarous in
 
 72 WITTMAN' S TRAVELS. 
 
 habitants, can it be imagined that every bloody battle, with its precise limits 
 and circumscription, is accurately committed to tradition, and faithfully 
 reported to inquirers ? Besides, why scattered among hills ? If 5000 men 
 were marched out to a convenient spot and massacred, their remains would 
 be heaped up in a small space, a mountain of the murdered, a vast ridge of 
 bones and rottenness. As the Doctor has described the bones' scenery, it 
 has much more the appearance of a battle and pursuit than of a massacre. 
 After all, this gentleman lay eight months under the walls of Jaffa ; whence 
 conies it he has given us no better evidence ? Were 5000 men murdered in 
 cold blood by a division of the French army, a year before, and did no man 
 remain in Jaffa, who said, I saw it done I was present when they were 
 marched out I went the next day, and saw the scarcely dead bodies of the 
 victims ? If Dr Wittman received any such evidence, why did he not bring 
 it forward? If he never inquired for such evidence, how is he qualified to 
 write upon the subject? If he inquired for it and could not find it, Irow is 
 the fact credible ? 
 
 This author cannot make the same excuses as Sir Robert Wilson, for the 
 suppression of his evidence ; as there could be no probability that Bonaparte 
 would wreak his vengeance upon Soliman Aga, Mustapha Cawn, Sidi 
 Mahomet, or any given Turks upon whose positive evidence Dr Wittman 
 might have rested his accusation. Two such wicked acts as the poisoning 
 and the massacre have not been committed within the memory of man ; 
 within the same memory, no such extraordinary person has appeared, as he 
 who is said to have committed them ; and yet, though their commission 
 must have been public, no one has yet said, Vidi ego. The accusation still 
 rests upon hearsay. 
 
 At the same time, widely disseminated as this accusation has been over 
 Europe, it is extraordinary that it has not been contradicted in print ; and, 
 though Sir Robert Wilson's book must have been read in France, that no 
 officer of the division of Bon has come forward in vindication of a criminal 
 who could repay incredulity so well. General Andreossi, who was with the 
 First Consul in Syria, treats the. accusations as contemptible falsehoods. 
 But though we are convinced he is a man of character, his evidence has 
 certainly less weight, as he may have been speaking in the mask of diplo- 
 macy. As to the general circulation of the report, he must think much 
 higher of the sagacity of multitudes than we do, who would convert this into 
 a reason of belief. Whoever thinks it so easy to get a truth in the midst of 
 passion, should read the various histories of the recent rebellion in Ireland ; 
 or he may, if he chooses, believe, with thousands of worthy Frenchmen, 
 that the infernale was planned by Mr Pitt and Lord Melville. As for us 
 we will state what appears to us to be the truth, should it even chance tu 
 justify a man in whose lifetime Europe can know neither happiness nor peace. 
 
 The story of the poisoning is given by Dr Wittman precisely in the same 
 desultory manner as that of the massacre. " An individual was pointed out 
 to us as the executioner of these diabolical commands." By how many 
 persons was he pointed out as the executioner? by persons of what autho- 
 rity? and of what credibility? Was it asserted from personal knowledge, 
 or merely from rumour? Whence comes it that such an agent, after the 
 flight of his employer, was not driven away by the general indignation of 
 the army? If Dr Wittman had combined this species of information with 
 his stories, his conduct would have been more just, and his accusations would 
 have carried greater weight. At present, when he, who had the opportunity 
 of telling us so much, has told us so little, we are rather less inclined to 
 believe than we were before. We do not say, these accusations are not 
 true, but that Dr Wittman has not proved them to be true.
 
 WITTMAN'S TRAVELS, 73 
 
 Dr Wittman did not see more than two cases of plague : he has given 
 them both at full length. The symptoms were thirst, headache, vertigo, 
 pains in the limbs, bilious vomitings, and painful tumours in the groins. 
 The means of cure adopted were, to evacuate the primce vice ; to give 
 diluting and refreshing drinks ; to expel the redundant bile by emetics; and 
 to assuage the pain in the groin by fomentations and anodynes ; both cases 
 proved fatal. In one of the cases, the friction with warm oil was tried in 
 vain ; but it was thought useful in the prevention of plague : the immediate 
 effect produced was, to throw the person rubbed into a very copious perspira- 
 tion. A patient in typhus, who was given over, recovered after this disci- 
 pline was administered. 
 
 The boldness and enterprise of medical men is quite as striking as the 
 courage displayed in battle, and evinces how much the power of encountering 
 danger depends upon habit. Many a military veteran would tremble to 
 feed upon pus ; to sleep in sheets running with water ; or to draw up the 
 breath of feverish patients. Dr White might not, perhaps, have marched 
 up to a battery with great alacrity ; but Dr White, in the year 1801, inocu- 
 lated himself in the arms with recent matter taken from the bubo of a pesti- 
 ferous patient, and rubbed the same matter upon different parts of his body. 
 With somewhat less of courage, and more of injustice, he wrapt his Arab 
 servant in the bed of a person just dead of the plague. The Doctor died ; 
 and the Doctor's man (perhaps to prove his master's theory, that the plague 
 was not contagious) ran away. The bravery of our naval officers never pro- 
 duced any thing superior to this therapeutic heroism of the Doctor's. 
 
 Dr Wittman has a chapter which he calls An Historical Journal of the 
 Plague ; but the information which it contains amounts to nothing at all. 
 He confesses that he has had no experience in the complaint ; that he 
 has no remedy to offer for its cure, and no theory for its cause.* The treat- 
 ment of the minor plague of Egypt, Ophthalmia, was precise';? the method 
 common in this country ; and was generally attended with success, where 
 the remedies were applied in time. 
 
 Nothing can be conceived more dreadful than was the situation of the 
 military mission in the Turkish camp ; exposed to a mutinous Turkish sol- 
 diery, to infection, famine, and a scene of the most abominable filth and 
 putrefaction ; and this they endured for a year and a half, with the patience 
 of apostles of peace, rather than war. Their occupation was to teach 
 diseased barbarians who despised them, and thought it no small favour that 
 they should be permitted to exist in their neighbourhood. They had to 
 witness the cruelties of despotism, and the passions of armed and ignorant 
 multitudes; and all this embellished with the fair probability of being swept 
 off, in some grand engagement, by the superior tactics and activity of the 
 enemy to whom the Turks were opposed. To the filth, irregularity, and 
 tumult of a Turkish camp, as it appeared to the British officers in 1800, it 
 is curious to oppose the picture of one drawn by Busbequius in the middle 
 of the sixteenth century: "Turcre in proximis campis tendcbant; cum vero 
 in eo loco tribus mensibus vixerim, fuit mihi facultas videndorum ipsorum 
 castrorum, et cognoscendce aliqua ex parte disciplince ; qua de re nisi pauca 
 attingam, habeas fortasse quod me accuses. Sumpto habitu Christianis 
 hominibus in illis locis usitato, cum uno aut altero comite quacunque vagabar 
 ignotus : primuin videbam summo ordine cujusque corporis milites suis locis 
 distributes, et, quod vix credat, qui nostratis militia? consuetudinem novit, 
 summum erat ubique silentium, surama quies, rixa nulla, nullum cujusquam 
 
 * One fact mentioned by Dr Wittman appears to be curious I that Constantinople was 
 nearly free from plague during the interniption of its communication with Egypt.
 
 74 WITTMAN'S TRAVELS. 
 
 insolens factum : sed ne nox quidem aut vitulatio per lasciviam aut ehrie- 
 tatem emissa. Ad hac summa mundiiies, nulla sterquilinia, nulla purga- 
 menta, nihil quod oculos aut nares offenderet. Quicquid est hujusmodi, aut 
 defodiunt Turcoe, aut procul a conspectu submovent. Sed nee ullas com- 
 potationes aut convivia, nullum aleae genus, magnum nostratis militias flagi- 
 tium, videre erat : nulla lusoriarum chartarum, neque tesserarum damna 
 noruntTurcae." Augeri Busbequii, Epist. 3. p. 187. Hanovia. 1622. There 
 is at present, in the Turkish army, a curious mixture of the severest des- 
 potism in the commander, and the most rebellious insolence in the soldier. 
 When the soldier misbehaves, the Vizier cuts his head off, and places it 
 under his arm. When the soldier is dissatisfied with the Vizier, he fires his 
 ball through his tent, and admonishes him, by these messengers, to a more 
 pleasant exercise of his authority. That such severe punishments should 
 not confer a more powerful authority, and give birth to a better discipline, 
 is less extraordinary, if we reflect, that we hear only that the punishments 
 are severe, not that they are steady, and that they are just ; for if the Turkish 
 soldiers were always punished with the same severity when they were in 
 fault, and never but then, it is not in human nature to suppose that the 
 Turkish army would long remain in as contemptible a state as it now is. 
 But the governed soon leam to distinguish between systematic energy and 
 the excesses of casual and capricious cruelty ; the one awes them into sub- 
 mission, the other rouses them to revenge. 
 
 Dr Wittman, in his chapter on the Turkish army, attributes much of its 
 degradation to the altered state of the corps of Janissaries ; the original con- 
 stitution of which corps was certainly both curious and wise. The children 
 of Christians made prisoners in the predatory incursions of the Turks, or 
 procured in any other manner, were exposed in the public markets at Con- 
 stantinople. Any farmer or artificer was at liberty to take one into his 
 service, contracting with government to produce him again when he should 
 be wanted ; and in the mean time to feed and clothe him, and to educate 
 him to such works of labour as are calculated to strengthen the body. As 
 the Janissaries were killed off, the government drew upon this stock of hardy 
 orphans for its levies ; who, instead of hanging upon weeping parents at 
 theur departure, came eagerly to the camp, as the situation which they had 
 always been taught to look upon as the theatre of their future glory, and 
 towards which all their passions and affections had been bent from their 
 earliest years. Arrived at the camp, they received at first low pay, and per- 
 formed menial offices for the little division of Janissaries to which they were 
 attached : "Ad Gianizaros rescriptus primo meret menstruo stipendio, paulo 
 plus minus, unius ducati cum dimidio. Id enim militi novitio, et nidi satis 
 esse censenL Sed tamen ne .quid victus necessitati desit, cum ea decuria, 
 in cujus contubemium adscitus est, gratis cibum capit, eft conditione, ut in 
 culina reliquoque ministerio ei decurias serviat ; usum armorum adeptus 
 tyro, necdum tamen suis contubemalibus honore neque stipendio par, unam 
 in soli;virtute, se illis aequandi, spem habet : utpote si militise qua; prima se 
 obtulerit, tale specimen sui dederit, ut dignus judicetur, qui tyrocinio 
 exemptus, honoris gradu et stipendii magnitudine, reliquis Gianizaris par 
 habeatur. Qua quidem spe plerique tyrones impulsi, multa prseclare audent, 
 et fortitudine cum veteranis certant." Busbequius, De Re Mil. cont. Turc. 
 Ins tit. Comilium* The same author observes, that there was no rank or 
 dignity in the Turkish army, to which a common Janissary might not arrive, 
 by his courage or his capacity. This last is a most powerful motive to 
 
 * This is a very spirited appeal to his countrymen on the tremendous power of the 
 Turks ; and, with the substitution of France for Turkey, is so applicable to the present 
 times, that it might be spoken in Parliament with great effect.
 
 EDGEWORTH ON BULLS. 75 
 
 exertion, and is perhaps one leading cause of the superiority of the French 
 arms. Ancient governments promote, from numberless causes, which ought 
 to have no concern with promotion : revolutionary governments, and mili- 
 tary despotisms, can make generals of persons who are fit for generals : to 
 enable them to be unjust in all other instances, they are forced to be just in 
 this. What, in fact, are the sultans and pachas of Parfs, but Janissaries 
 raised from the ranks ? At present, the Janissaries are procured from the 
 lowest of the people, and the spirit of the corps is evaporated. The low 
 state of their armies is in some degree imputable to this : but the principal 
 reason why the Turks are no longer as powerful as they were is, that they 
 are no longer enthusiasts, and that war is now become more a business of 
 science than of personal courage. 
 
 The person of the greatest abilities in the Turkish empire is the Capitan 
 Pacha ; he has disciplined some ships and regiments in the European fashion, 
 and would, if he were well seconded, bring about some important reforms 
 in the Turkish empire. But what has become of all the reforms of the 
 famous Gazzi Hassan ? The blaze of partial talents is soon extinguished. 
 Never was there so great a prospect of improvement as that afforded by the 
 exertions of this celebrated man, who, in spite of the ridicule thrown upon 
 him by Baron de Tott, was such a man as the Turks cannot expect to see 
 again once in a century. He had the whole power of the Turkish empire 
 at his disposal for fifteen years ; and, after repeated efforts to improve the 
 army, abandoned the scheme as totally impracticable. The celebrated Bon- 
 neval, in his time, and De Tott since, made the same attempt, with the same 
 success. They are not to be taught ; and six months after his death, every 
 thing the present Capitan Pacha has done will be immediately pulled to 
 pieces. The present Grand Vizier is a man of no ability. There are some 
 very entertaining instances of his gross ignorance cited in the I33d page of 
 the Travels. Upon the news being communicated to him that the earth was 
 round, he observed that this could not be the case ; for the people and the 
 objects on the other side, would in that case fall off ; and that the earth 
 could not move round the sun ; for if so, a ship bound from Jaffa to Con- 
 stantinople, instead of proceeding to the capital, would be carried to Lon- 
 don, or elsewhere. We .cannot end this article without confessing with 
 great pleasure the entertainment we have received from the work which 
 occasions it. It is an excellent lounging-book, full of pleasant details, never 
 wearying by prolixity, or offending by presumption, and is apparently the 
 production of a respectable worthy man. So far we can conscientiously 
 recommend it to the public ; for any thing else, 
 
 Non cuivis homini contingit adire, &c. &C. &C. 
 
 EDGEWORTH ON BULLS. (E. REVIEW, 1803.) 
 
 Essay on. Irish Bulls. By RICHARD LOVEL EDGEWORTH, and MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 London, 1802. 
 
 WE hardly knowwhat to say about this rambling scrambling book ; but that 
 we are quite sure the author, when he began any sentence in it, had not the 
 smallest suspicion of what it was about to contain. We say the author, be- 
 cause, in spite of the mixture of sexes in the title-page, we are strongly inclined 
 to suspect that the male contributions exceed the female in a very great^degree. 
 The Essay on Bulls is written much with the same mind, and in the same
 
 76 EDGEWORTH ON BULLS. 
 
 manner, as a schoolboy takes a walk : he moves on for ten yards on the 
 straight road, with surprising perseverance ; then sets out after a butterfly, 
 looks for a bird's nest, or jumps backwards and forwards over a ditch. In 
 the same manner, this nimble and digressive gentleman is away after every 
 object which crosses his mind. If you leave him at the end of a comma, in 
 a steady pursuit of his subject, you arc sure to find him, before the next full 
 stop, a hundred yards to the right or left, frisking, capering, and grinning in 
 a high paroxysm of merriment and agility. Mr Edge worth seems to possess 
 the sentiments of an accomplished gentleman, the information of a scholar, 
 and the vivacity of a first-rate harlequin. He is fuddled with animal spirits, 
 giddy with constitutional joy ; in such a state he must have written on, or 
 burst. A discharge of ink was an evacuation absolutely necessary, to avoid 
 fatal and plethoric congestion. 
 
 The object of the book is to prove that the practice of making bulls is not 
 more imputable to the Irish than to any other people ; and the manner in 
 which he sets about it, is to quote examples of bulls produced in other coun- 
 tries. But this is surely a singular way of reasoning the question : for there 
 are goitres out of the Valais, extortioners who do not worship Moses, oat 
 cakes south of the Tweed, and balm beyond the precincts of Gilead. If 
 nothing can be said to exist pre-eminently and emphatically in one country, 
 which exists at all in another, then Frenchmen are not gay, nor Spaniards 
 grave, nor are gentlemen of the Milesian race remarkable for their disinter- 
 ested contempt of wealth in their connubial relations. It is probable there 
 is some foundation for a character so generally diffused ; though it is also 
 probable that such foundation is extremely enlarged by fame. If there 
 were no foundation for the common opinion, we must suppose national 
 characters formed by chance ; and that the Irish might, by accident, have 
 been laughed at as bashful and sheepish ; which is impossible. The author 
 puzzles himself a good deal about the nature of bulls, without coming to any 
 decision about the matter. Though the question is not a very easy one, we 
 shall venture to say, that a bull is an apparent congruity and real incon- 
 gruity of ideas suddenly discovered. And if this account of bulls be just, 
 they are (as might have been supposed) the very reverse of wit ; for as wit 
 discovers real relations that are not apparent, bulls admit apparent relations 
 that are not real. The pleasure arising from wit proceeds from our surprise 
 at suddenly discovering two things to be similar in which we suspected no 
 similarity. The pleasure arising from bulls proceeds from our discovering 
 t\vo things to be dissimilar in which a resemblance might have been sus- 
 pected. The same doctrine will apply to wit and to bulls in action. Prac- 
 tical wit discovers connection or relation between actions, in which duller 
 understandings discover none ; and practical bulls originate from an apparent 
 relation between two actions, which more correct understandings immediately 
 perceive to have no relation at all. 
 
 Louis XIV., being extremely harassed by the repeated solicitations of a 
 veteran officer for promotion, said one day, loud enough to be heard, " That 
 gentleman is the most troublesome officer I have in my service." " That is 
 precisely the charge ( c aid the old man) which your Majesty's enemies bring 
 against me." 
 
 " An English gentleman (says Mr Edgeworth, in a story cited from Joe 
 Millar) was writing a letter in a coffee-house ; and perceiving that an Irish- 
 man stationed behind him was taking that liberty wliich ParmeJiio used with 
 his friend Alexander, instead of putting his seal upon the lips of the curious 
 impertinent, the English gentleman thought proper to reprove the Hibernian, 
 if not with delicacy, at least with poetical justice. He concluded writing
 
 EDGEWORTH ON BULLS. 77 
 
 his letter in these words : ' I would say more, but a damned tall Irishman 
 is reading over my shoulder every word I write.' 
 
 " ' You lie, you scoundrel,' said the self-convicted Hibernian." (p. 29.) 
 
 The pleasure derived from the first of these stories proceeds from the dis- 
 covery of the relation that subsists between the object he had in view, and 
 the assent of the officer to an observation so unfriendly to that end. In the 
 first rapid glance which the mind throws upon his words, he appears, by 
 his acquiescence, to be pleading against himself. There seems to be no 
 relation between what he says and what he wishes to effect by speaking. 
 
 In the second story, the pleasure is directly the reverse. The lie given 
 was apparently the readiest means of proving his innocence, and really the 
 most effectual way of establishing his guilt. There seems for a moment to 
 be a strong relation between the means and the object ; while, in fact, no 
 irrelation can be so complete. 
 
 What connection is there between pelting stones at monkeys and gather- 
 ing cocoa-nuts from lofty trees ? Apparently none. But monkeys sit upon 
 cocoa-nut trees ; monkeys are imitative animals ; and if you pelt a monkey 
 with a stone, he pelts you with a cocoa-nut in return. This scheme of 
 gathering cocoa-nuts is very witty, and would be more so, if it did not 
 appear useful : for the idea of utility is always inimical to the idea of wit.* 
 There appears, on the contrary, to be sonic relation between the revenge of 
 the Irish rebels against a banker, and the means which they took to gratify 
 it, by burning all his notes wherever they found them ; whereas, they could 
 not have rendered him a more essential service. In both these cases of 
 bulls, the one verbal, the other practical, there is an apparent congruity and 
 real incongruity of ideas. In both the cases of wit, there is an apparent 
 incongruity and a real relation. 
 
 It is clear that a bull cannot depend upon mere incongruity alone ; for if 
 a man were to say that he would ride to London upon a cocked hat, or that 
 he would cut his throat with a pound of pickled salmon, this, though com- 
 pletely incongruous, would not be to make bulls, but to talk nonsense. The 
 stronger the apparent connection, and the more complete the real discon- 
 nection of the ideas, the greater the surprise and the better the bull. The 
 less apparent, and the more complete the relations established by wit, the 
 higher gratification does it afford. A great deal of the pleasure experienced 
 from bwlls proceeds from the sense of superiority in ourselves. Bulls which 
 we invented, or knew to be invented, might please, but in a less degree, for 
 want of this additional zest. 
 
 As there must be apparent connection, and real incongruity, it is seldom 
 that a man of sense and education finds any form of words by which he is 
 conscious that he might have been deceived into a bull. To conceive how 
 the person has been deceived, he must suppose a degree of information very 
 different from, and a species of character very heterogeneous to, his own ; 
 
 * It must be observed, that all the great passions, ana'many other feelings, extinguish 
 the relish for wit. Thus lympha. pndica Deum vidit et erubuit, would be witty, were 
 it not bordering on the sublime. The resemblance between the sandal tree imparting 
 {while it falls) its aromatic flavour to the edge of the axe, and the benevolent man reward- 
 ing evil with good, would be witty, did it not excite virtuous emotions. There are many 
 mechanical contrivances which excite sensations very similar to wit ; but the attention is 
 absorbed by their utility. Some of Merlin's machines, which have no utility at all, are 
 quite similar to wit. A small model of a steam engine, or mere squirt, is wit to a child. 
 A man speculates on the causes of the first, or on its consequences, and so loses the feelings 
 of wit : with the latter, he is too familiar to be surprised. In short, the essence of every 
 species of wit is surprise ; which, vi termini, must be sudden ; and the sensations whicn 
 wit has a tendercy to excite, are impaired or destroyed, as often as they are mingled 
 with much thought or passion.
 
 78 ACCOUNT OF SIERRA LEONE. 
 
 a" process which diminishes surprise, and consequently pleasure. In the 
 above-mentioned story of the Irishman overlooking the man writing, no 
 person of ordinary sagacity can suppose himself betrayed into such a mis- 
 take ; but he can easily represent to himself a kind of character that might 
 have been so betrayed. There are some bulls so extremely fallacious, that 
 any man may imagine himself to have been betrayed into them ; but these 
 are rare : and, in general, it is a poor contemptible species of amusement ; 
 a delight in which evinces a very bad taste in wit. 
 
 Whether the Irish make more bulls than their neighbours is, as we have 
 before remarked, not a point of much importance ; but it is of considerable 
 importance that the character of a nation should not be degraded ; and Mr 
 Edgeworth has great merit in his very benevolent intention of doing justice 
 to the excellent qualities of the Irish. It is not possible to read his book, 
 without feeling a strong and a new disposition in their favour. Whether the 
 imitation of the Irish manner be accurate in his little stories we cannot de- 
 termine ; but we feel the same confidence in the accuracy of the imitation, 
 that is often felt in the resemblance of a portrait of which we have never 
 seen the original. It is no very high compliment to Mr Edgeworth's 
 creative powers, to say, he could not have formed any thing, which was not 
 real, so like reality ; but such a remark only robs Peter to pay Paul ; anil 
 gives every thing to his powers of observation, which it takes from those of 
 his imagination. In truth, nothing can be better than his imitation of the 
 Irish manner : It is first-rate painting. 
 
 Edgeworth and Co. have another faculty in great perfection. They are 
 eminently masters of the pathos. The Firm drew tears from us in the stories 
 of little Dominick, and of the Irish beggar who killed his sweetheart : Never 
 was any grief more natural or simple. The first, however, ends in a very 
 foolish way ; 
 
 -formosa siipcrne 
 
 Desinit inpiscem. 
 
 We are extremely glad that our avocations did not call us from Bath to 
 London, on the day that the Bath coach conversation tcok place. We 
 except from this wish the story with which the conversation terminates ; for 
 as soon as Mr Edgeworth enters upon a story he excels. 
 
 We must confess we have been much more pleased with Mr Edgeworth 
 in his laughing and hi his pathetic, than in his grave and reasoning moods. 
 He meant, perhaps, that we should ; and it certainly is not very necessaiy 
 that a writer should be profound on the subject of bulls. Whatever be the 
 deficiencies of the book, they are, in our estimation, amply atoned for by 
 its merits ; by none more, than that lively feeling of compassion which per- 
 vades it for the distresses of the wild, kind-hearted, blundering poor of 
 Ireland. 
 
 ACCOUNT OF SIERRA LEONE. (E. REVIEW, 1804.) 
 
 << Account of Native Africans in Hie Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone. To which is 
 added An Account of the present State oj Medicine among them. By THOMAS 
 WINTERBOTTOM, Physician to the Colony of Sierra Leone. Hatchard, Piccadilly 
 Voll. 
 
 IT appears from the Preface of this book, that the original design of Dr 
 Winterbottom was to write only on the medical knowledge of the Africans 
 in the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone ; but as he had lived among them 
 some time in quality of physician to the colony, and had made many obser- 
 vations on the genius and manners of the various African nations which
 
 ACCOUNT OF SIERRA LEONE. 79 
 
 surround it, it was thought fit (i.e. profitable) that he should write one 
 volume for general, and one for therapeutic readers. The latter has not yet 
 come to our hands. The former we have read with pleasure. It is very 
 sensibly and agreeably drawn up ; and the only circumstance we regret is, 
 that, upon the whole, it must be rather considered as a compilation from 
 previous writers, than as the result of the author's experience : not that ho 
 is exactly on a footing with mere compilers ; because every account which 
 he quotes of scenes to which he is familiar, he sanctions by his authority ; 
 and, with the mass of borrowed, there is a certain portion of original matter. 
 It appears also, that a brother of the author, in company with a Mr Watt, 
 penetrated above 400 miles into a part of Africa totally unknown to Euro- 
 peans ; but there are very few observations quoted from the journal kept 
 in this excursion ; and the mention of it served for little more than to excite 
 a curiosity which is not gratified by further communication. 
 
 By the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone, Mr Winterbottom means the 
 windward coast, or that portion of the western shore [of Africa which 
 extends from the river Senegal to the latitude of nearly five degrees north, 
 where the coast quits its easterly direction, and runs away to the south, or a 
 little to the east of south. 
 
 The whole of this coast is inhabited by a great number of independent 
 nations, divided by different shades of barbarism, and disputed limits of 
 territory, plunged in the darkest ignorance and superstition, and preyed upon 
 by the homicide merchants of Europe. The most curious passage in this 
 seciion of the work, is an extract which Mr Winterbottom has given us from 
 a report made to a Committee of the House of Commons by the Directors 
 of the Sierra Leone Company ; and which (as we conjecture, from Dr 
 Winterbottom's mode of expressing himself, it has never been printed) we 
 shall extract from his book. 
 
 " A remarkable proof (say the Directors) exists in the neighbourhood of 
 Sierra Leone, of the very great advantages of a pennanent, though very im- 
 perfect, system of government, and of the abolition of those African laws 
 which make slavery the punishment of almost every offence. Not more 
 than seventy years ago, a small number of Mahommedans established them- 
 selves in a country about forty miles to the northward of Sierra Leone, 
 called from them the Mandingo country. As is the practice of the profes- 
 sors of that religion, they formed schools in which the Arabic language and 
 the doctrines of Mahomet were taught : and the customs of Mahommedans, 
 particularly that of not selling any of their own religion for slaves, were 
 adopted ; laws founded on the Koran were introduced ; those practices 
 which chiefly contribute to depopulate were eradicated ; and, in spite of 
 many intestine convulsions, a great comparative idea of civilisation, unity, 
 and security, was introduced : population, in consequence, was rapidly 
 increased ; and the whole power of that part of the country in which they 
 are settled has gradually fallen into their hands. Those who have been 
 taught in their schools are succeeding to wealth and power in the neighbour- 
 ing countries, and carry with them a considerable portion of their religion 
 and laws ; other chiefs are adopting the names assumed by these Mahom- 
 medans, on account of the respect with which it is attended ; and the religion 
 of Islem seems to diffuse itself peaceably over the whole district in which the 
 colony is situated, carrying with it those advantages which seem ever to have 
 attended its victory over African superstition." 
 
 Agriculture, though in a rude infant state, is practised all along this coast 
 of Africa. All the lands must be strictly appropriated in a country, and the 
 greater part cultivated, before any can be cultivated well. Where land is
 
 So ACCOUNT OF SIERRA LEONE. 
 
 of little value, it is cheaper and better to till it slightly than perfectly ; or 
 rather, perfection, under such circumstances, consists in idleness and 
 neglect. The great impediment to be removed from the fresh land which 
 the Africans mean to cultivate, are those troublesome weeds called trees ; 
 which are first cut down, and then with the grass, set fire to at a particulur 
 season of the year. This operation is performed when the Pleiades, the only 
 stars they observe, are in a certain position with respect to the setting sun. 
 At that season the fires are seen rolling in every direction over the parched 
 and inflammable herbage ; and the blazing provinces are discerned at an 
 immense distance in the night by ships approaching the coast. At this period 
 of arson, it is not safe to travel without a tinder-box ; for, if a traveller is 
 surprised by the pursuit of the flame, his only safety consists in propagating 
 the same evil before, by which he is menaced behind ; and, in trudging on 
 amidst the fiery hyphen, multiplying destruction in order to avoid it. The 
 Foolahs, who seem to have made the greatest advances in agriculture, are, 
 however, still ignorant of the use of the plough, though Dr "Winterbottom is 
 quite persuaded they might easily be taught to use cattle for that purpose. 
 
 " There came (says the Doctor) during my residence at the colony, a 
 chief of considerable importance, from the river Gambia, attracted by curi- 
 osity, and a desire of information. The man, whose appearance instantly 
 announced a mind of no common cast, was so much struck with what he 
 saw there, that before he went away he engaged in his service two of the 
 most ingenious mechanics in the colony, one of whom, a carpenter, among 
 other things, was to make a plough, and the other was to teach his people 
 the art of training oxen for the draught, and fixing them to the yoke. For 
 a further account of this person, see the Report of the Directors of the Sierra 
 Leone Company. London, 1795." 
 
 It is curious to remark, that where any instance of civilisation and refine- 
 ment is discovered in the manners of a barbarous people, it exists in a much 
 higher degree than the same virtue in nations generally refined. There are 
 many single points of barbarous courtesy much more rigidly adhered to than 
 the rules of European politeness would require. We liave often remarked 
 this in the voyages of Captain Cook, among the islands of the Indian 
 Archipelago ; and there is a very remarkable instance of it among the 
 natives of this coast. The houses (says Dr Winterbottom) have seldom any 
 other opening than the door, of which there are usually two opposite to 
 each other. These serve the purpose of keeping up a current of air ; they 
 also admit the light j and afford an exit to the smoke of the fire, which is 
 made in the middle of the floor. The entrance of a house is seldom closed 
 by any thing but a mat, which is occasionally let down, and is a sufficient 
 barrier against all intruders. The most intimate friend will not presume to 
 lift the mat and enter, unless his salutation is returned. Nay, when the 
 door is thus slightly closed, a woman, by pronouncing the word Mooradee 
 (I am busy), can prevent her husband from entering, even though he is as- 
 sured she is entertaining her gallant. His only remedy is to wait for their 
 coming out. 
 
 The explanation of these insulated pieces of superlative refinement among 
 savages, frequently is, that they are not mere ceremonies, but religious 
 observances ; for the faith of barbarous people commonly regulates all the 
 frivolous minutiae of life, as well as its important duties : indeed, generally 
 considers the first as of greater consequence than the last. And it must be 
 a general fact, at all times, that gross ignorance more tenaciously adheres to 
 a custom once adopted, because it respects that custom as an ultimate rule,
 
 ACCOUNT OF SIERRA LEONE. 81 
 
 and does not discern cases of exception by appealing to any higher rule upon 
 which the first is found. 
 
 The Africans are very litigious ; and display, in their law-suits or 
 palavers, a most forensic exuberance of images, and loquacity of speech. 
 Their criminal causes are frequently terminated by selling one of the parties 
 into slavery ; and the Christians are always ready to purchase either the 
 plaintiff or defendant, or both ; together with all the witnesses, and any 
 other human creature who is of a dusky colour, and worships the great idol 
 Boo-Boo-Boo, with eleven heads. 
 
 No great division of labour can of course be expected in such a state of 
 society. Every man is a city in himself, and is his own tailor, hairdresser, 
 shoemaker, and every thing else. Among the Foolahs, however, some 
 progress has been made in the division of employments. The tanner and 
 the blacksmith are distinct trades ; and the ingenuity which they evince in 
 overcoming obstacles, by means so inadequate to those which Europeans 
 possess, may convince us what a stock of good qualities human nature has 
 in store for cases of emergency. They put to sea canoes of ten tons' 
 burthen, hollowed from a single tree ; and although they are ignorant of the 
 use of the potter's wheel, make earthen pots fit for every domestic use. Dr 
 'Winterbottom thinks they may have learnt their pottery from Europeans ; 
 but if this is true, it is rather singular they were not instructed by the same 
 masters in the use of the potter's most convenient and most prominent 
 instrument. The common dress of the men consists in a shirt, trowsers, 
 woollen cap or hat, which they buy of Europeans. Those who can afford 
 it, are fond of decorating themselves in all the second-hand splendour they 
 can purchase at the same market ; and Monmouth Street embarks its 
 decayed finery for the coast of Africa, where Soosoo rakes and loungers are 
 joyfully vested in the habiliments of their Bond Street predecessors. The 
 dress of the Pagan African is never thought complete, unless a variety of 
 gree-grees, or amulets, be superadded ; these are to guard against every 
 possible accident ; but, as Dr Winterbottom observes, are such very cumber- 
 some protectors, that in all real dangers they are commonly thrown away. 
 The Mahommedan religion is inimical to dancing, singing, and all the 
 lighter species of amusement. Riding on horseback is the only exercise of 
 those Africans who have adopted this dull faith. Sedentary amusements, 
 such as reading and writing, which flatter the literary pride with which they 
 are puffed up, are most congenial to their habits. The collation of manu- 
 scripts, which they perform with industry and accuracy, takes up much of 
 their time. The Pagan African, on the contrary, is commonly a merry, 
 dancing animal, given to every species of antic and apish amusement ; and 
 as he is unacquainted with the future and promised delights of the Arabian 
 prophet, he enjoys the bad music, and Imperfect beauty of this world, with 
 a most eager and undisturbed relish. 
 
 There is something so natural, and so closely derived from human govern- 
 ments, in the notion of die immediate interference of Providence, that man- 
 kind are only weaned from it by centuries of contradiction and discussion. 
 In all cases, where crime is alleged, the accused is obliged to prove his 
 innocence by submitting to an ordeal. If he is burnt by red-hot iron, or 
 scalded by boiling oil, he is immediately hurried to the gallows, with a zeal 
 proportioned to the force and perspicuity of the evidence. In the neighbour- 
 hood of Sierra Leone, a curious species of pharmaceutical tyranny is resorted 
 to for the purpose of or.teal The bark of a particular tree, of purgative 
 and emetic qualities, is intused into a large quantity of water, of which the 
 prisoner is to drink about six calibashes quite full. If this judicial and 
 inquisitive drink take a superior direction, and return by the aperture through
 
 8a ACCOUNT OF SIERRA LEONE. 
 
 which it is admitted, all is well ; but if the least honourable and elegant of 
 its powers predominate over the other, and it evince a disposition to 
 descend, all opportunity of changing its line of egress is prevented, by the 
 immediate elevation of the accused person to the gibbet. 
 
 The desire of penetrating into futurity, and the belief that some persons 
 are capable of doing it, is as difficult to eradicate from the human mind, as 
 is the belief in an immediate Providence ; and consequently, the Africans not 
 only have their ordeal, but their conjurors and magicians, who are appealed 
 to in all the difficulties and uncertainties of life, and who always, of course, 
 preserve their authority, though they are perpetually showing, by the clearest 
 evidence of facts, upon what sort of foundation it rests. But the most 
 singular circumstance in the history of barbarians is, that tendency to form 
 interior societies, comprehending a vast number of members, and rivalling 
 the government in their influence upon public opinion. Such is the Areoy 
 Society at Otaheite, and such the Society of the Purra in Africa. Every 
 person, on entering into this Society, lays aside his former name, and takes 
 a new one. They have a superior, whose commands are received with the 
 most profound veneration. When the Purra comes into a town, which is 
 always at night, it is accompanied with the most horrid screams, howlings, 
 and every kind of awful noise. The inhabitants, who are not members, are 
 obliged to secure themselves within doors. Should any one be discovered 
 without, or peeping to see what was going forwards, he would infallibly be 
 put to death. Mere seclusion of females is not considered by the Society 
 as a sufficient guarantee against their curiosity ; but all the time the Purra 
 remains in town, the women are obliged to clap their hands, to show they 
 are not attempting any private Indulgence of espionnage. Like the Secret 
 Tribunal which formerly existed in Germany, it punishes the guilty and 
 disobedient, in so secret a manner, that the perpetrators are never known, 
 and, from the dread of the Tribunal, not often inquired for. The natives 
 about Sierra Leone speak of the Purra men with horror, and firmly believe 
 that they have all strict and incessant intercourse with the devil. 
 
 This account of Africa is terminated by a single chapter on Sierra Leone ; 
 a subject on which we cannot help regretting that Dr Winterbottom has not 
 been a little more diffuse. It would derive a peculiar interest from the 
 present state of St Domingo, as the perils with which West India property 
 is now threatened must naturally augment curiosity respecting the possibility 
 of a pacific change of that system ; and we should have read with pleasure 
 and instruction the observations of so intelligent and entertaining a writer 
 as Dr Winterbottom, who is extensively acquainted with the subjects on 
 which he writes, and has a talent of selecting important matter, and adorning 
 it. Dr Winterbottom says he has been in Africa some years, and we do 
 not doubt the fact ; he might, however, have written this book without 
 giving himself that trouble j and the only difference between him and a 
 mere compiler is, that he sanctions his quotations by authority, and em- 
 bellishes them by his ingenuity. The medical volume we have not yet 
 seen, but this fast volume may be safely purchased.
 
 TRIMMER AND LANCASTER. 83 
 
 TRIMMER AND LANCASTER.* (E. REVIEW, 1806.) 
 
 A Comparative View of the New Plan of Education promulgated by Mr Joieph, 
 Lancaster, in his Tracts concerning the Instruction of the Children of the Labour- 
 ing Part of the Community : and of the Sy stein of Christian Education founded, 
 by our pious Forefathers for_ the Initiation of the Young Members of the Estab- 
 lished Church in the Principles of the Reformed Religion. By Mrs TRIMMER. 
 1805. 
 
 THIS is a book written by a lady who has gained considerable reputation at 
 the corner of St Paul's Churchyard ; who flames hi the van of Mr Newberry's 
 shop ; and is, upon the whole, dearer to mothers and aunts than any other 
 author who pours the milk of science into the mouths of babes and sucklings. 
 Tired at last of scribbling for children, and getting ripe in ambition, she 
 has now written a book for grown-up people, and selected for her antagonist 
 as stiff a controversialist as the whole field of dispute could well have supplied. 
 Her opponent is Mr Lancaster, a Quaker, who has lately given to the 
 world new and striking lights upon the subject of Education, and come 
 forward to the notice of his country by spreading order, knowledge, and 
 innocence among the lowest of mankind. 
 
 Mr Lancaster, she says, wants method in his book ; and therefore her 
 answer to him is without any arrangement. The same excuse must suffice for 
 the desultory observations we shall make upon this lady's publication. 
 
 The first sensation of disgust we experienced at Mrs Trimmer's book, was 
 from the patronising and protecting air with which she speaks of some small 
 part of Mr Lancaster's plan. She seems to suppose, because she has dedi- 
 cated her mind to the subject, that her opinion must necessarily be valuable 
 upon it j forgetting it to be barely possible, that her application may have 
 made her more wrong, instead of more right. If she can make out of her 
 case, that Mr Lancaster is doing mischief in so important a point as that of 
 national education, she has a right, in common with every one else, to lay 
 her complaint before the public ; but a right to publish praises must be 
 earned by something more difficult than the writing sixpenny books for 
 children. They may be very good ; though we never remember to have seen 
 any one of them ; but if they be no more remarkable for judgment and discre- 
 tion than parts of the work before us, there are many thriving children quite 
 capable of repaying the obligations they owe to their amiable instructress, 
 and of teaching, with grateful retaliation, "the old idea how to shoot." 
 
 In remarking upon the work before us, we shall exactly follow the plan 
 of the authoress, and prefix, as she does, the titles of those subjects on which 
 her observations are made ; doing her the justice to presume, that her 
 quotations are fairly taken from Mr Lancaster's book. 
 
 I. Mr Lancaster's Preface. Mrs Trimmer here contends, in opposition 
 to Mr Lancaster, that ever since the establishment of the Protestant Church, 
 the education of the poor has been a national concern in this country ; and 
 the only argument she produces hi support of this extravagant assertion, is 
 an appeal to the Act of Uniformity. If there are millions of Englishmen 
 who cannot spell their own names, or read a sign-post which bids them turn 
 to the right or left, is it any answer to this deplorable ignorance to say, there 
 is an Act of Parliament for public instruction ? to showthe very line and 
 
 * Lancaster invented the new method of education. The Church was sorely vexed 
 at its success, endeavoured to set up Dr Bell as the discoverer, and to run down poor 
 Lancaster. George the Third was irritated by this shabby conduct, and always protected 
 Lancaster. He was delighted with this Review, and made Sir Herbert Taylor read it a 
 
 lecond time to him.
 
 84 TRIMMER AND LANCASTER, 
 
 chapter where the King, Lords, and Commons, in Parliament assembled, 
 ordained the universality of reading and writing, when, centuries afterwards, 
 the ploughman is no more capable of the one or the other than the beast 
 which he drives? In point of fact, there is no Protestant country in the 
 world where the education of the poor has been so grossly and infamously 
 neglected as in England. Mr Lancaster has the very high merit of calling 
 the public attention to this evil, and of calling it in the best way, by new 
 and active remedies ; and this uncandid and feeble lady, instead of using 
 the influence she has obtained over the anility of these realms, to join that 
 useful remonstrance which Mr Lancaster has begun, pretends to deny that 
 the evil exists ; and when you ask where are the schools, rods, pedagogues, 
 primers, histories of Jack the Giant-killer, and all the usual apparatus for 
 education, the only things she can produce is the Act of Uniformity atid 
 Common Prayer. 
 
 2. The Principles on which Mr Lancaster's Institution is conducted. 
 "Happily for mankind," says Mr Lancaster, "it is possible to combine 
 precept and practice together in the education of youth : that public spirit, 
 or general opinion, which gives such strength to vice, may be rendered 
 serviceable to the cause of virtue ; and in thus directing it, the whole secret, 
 the beauty, and simplicity of national education consists. Suppose, for 
 instance, it be required to train a youth to strict veracity. He has learned 
 to read at school : he there reads the declaration of the Divine will respect- 
 ing liars : he is there informed of the pernicious effects that practice produces 
 on society at large : and he is enjoined, for the fear of God, for the appro- 
 bation of his friends, and for the good of his schoolfellows, never to tell an 
 untruth. This is a most excellent precept ; but let it be taught, and yet, if 
 the contrary practice be treated with indifference by parents, teachers, or 
 associates, it will either weaken or destroy all the good that can be derived 
 from it. But if the parents or teachers tenderly nip the rising shoots of 
 vice ; if the associates of youth pour contempt on the liar ; he will soon 
 hide his head with shame, and most likely leave off" the practice." (pp. 
 24, 25.) 
 
 The objection which Mrs Trimmer makes to this passage is, that it is 
 exalting the fear of man above the fear of God. This observation is as mis- 
 chievous as it is unfounded. Undoubtedly, the fear of God ought to be the 
 paramount principle from the very beginning of life, if it were possible to 
 make it so ; but it is a feeling which can only be built up by degrees. The 
 awe and respect which a child entertains for its parent and instructor, is the 
 first scaffolding upon which the sacred edifice of religion is reared. A child 
 begins to pray, to act, and to abstain, not to please God, but to please the 
 parent, who tells him that such is the will of God. The religious principle 
 gains ground from the power of association and the improvement of reason ; 
 but without the fear of man the desire of pleasing, and the dread of offend- 
 ing those with whom he lives, it would be extremely difficult, if not im- 
 possible, to cherish it at all in the mind of children. If you tell (says Mr 
 Lancaster) a child not to swear, because it is forbidden by God, and he 
 finds every body whom he lives with addicted to that vice, the mere precept 
 will soon be obliterated ; which would acquire its just influence if aided by 
 the effect of example. Mr Lancaster does not say that the fear of man ever 
 ought to be a stronger motive than the fear of God, or that, in a thoroughly 
 formed character, it ever is : he merely says, that the fear of man may be 
 made the most powerful mean to raise up the fear of God ; and nothing, in, 
 our opinion, can be more plain, more sensible, or better expressed, than his 
 opinions upon these subjects. In corroboration of this sentiment, Mr Lan- 
 caster tells the following story ;
 
 TRIMMER AND LANCASTER. 85 
 
 "A benevolent friend of mine (says he), who resides at a village neaf 
 London, where he has a school of the class called Sunday Schools, recom- 
 mended several lads to me for education. He is a pious man, and these 
 children had the advantage of good precepts under his instruction in an 
 eminent degree, but had reduced them to very little practice. As they 
 came to my school from some distance, they were permitted to bring their 
 dinners ; and, in the interval between morning and afternoon school hours, 
 spent their time with a number of lads under similar circumstances in a 
 play-ground adjoining the school-room. In this play-ground the boys 
 usually enjoy an hour's recreation ; tops, balls, races, or what best suits 
 their inclination or the season of the year ; but with this charge, ' Let all 
 be kept in innocence.' These lads thought themselves very happy at play 
 with their new associates ; but on a sudden they were seized and overcome 
 by numbers, were brought into school just as people in the street would 
 seize a pick-pocket, and bring him to the police office. Happening at that 
 time to be within, I inquired, ' Well, boys, what is all this bustle about ? ' 
 ' Why, Sir (was the general reply), these lads have been swearing.' 
 This was announced with as much emphasis and solemnity as a judge 
 would use in passing sentence upon a criminal. The culprits were, as may 
 be supposed, in much terror. After the examination of witnesses and proof 
 of the facts, they received admonition as to the offence ; and, on promise 
 of better behaviour, were dismissed. No more was ever heard of their 
 swearing ; yet it was observable, that they were better acquainted with the 
 theory cf Christianity, and could give a more rational answer to questions 
 from the Scripture, than several of the boys who had thus treated them, on 
 comparison, as constables luoitld do a thief. I call this (adds Mr Lancaster) 
 practical religious instruction, and could, if needful, give many such anec- 
 dotes." (pp. 26,27.) 
 
 All that Mrs Trimmer has to observe against this very striking illustration 
 of Mr Lancaster's doctrine is, that the monitors behaved to the swearers in 
 a very rude and unchristianlike manner. She begins with being cruel, and 
 ends with being silly. Her first observation is calculated to raise the posse 
 eomitatns against Mr Lancaster, to get him stoned for impiety ; and then, 
 when he produces the most forcible example of the effect of opinion to en- 
 courage religious precept, she says such a method of preventing swearing is 
 too rude for the Gospel. True, modest, unobtrusive religion charitable, 
 forgiving, indulgent Christianity, is the greatest ornament and the greatest 
 blessing that can dwell in the mind of man. But if there be one character 
 more base, more infamous, and more shocking than another, it is he who, 
 for the sake of some paltry distinction in the world, is ever ready to accuse 
 conspicuous persons of irrcligion to turn common informer for the Church 
 and to convert the most beautiful feelings of the human heart to the de- 
 struction of the good and great, by fixing upon talents the indelible stigma 
 of irreligion. It matters not how trifling and how insignificant the accuser ; 
 cry out that the Church is in danger, and your object is accomplished ; lurk 
 in the walk of hypocrisy, to accuse your enemy of the crime of atheism, and 
 his min is quite certain ; acquitted or condemned, is the same thing ; it is 
 only sufficient that he be accused, in order that his destruction be accom- 
 plished. If we could satisfy ourselves that such were the real views of Mrs 
 Trimmer, and that she were capable of such baseness, we would have 
 drawn blood from her at every line, and left her in a state of martyrdom 
 more piteous than that of St Uba. Let her attribute the milk and mildness 
 she meets with in this review of her book, to the conviction we entertain, 
 that she knew no better that she really did understand Mr Lancaster as
 
 86 TRIMMER AND LANCASTER. 
 
 she pretends to understand him and that if she had been aware of the 
 extent of the mischief she was doing, she would have tossed the manuscript 
 spelling-book in which she was engaged into the fire, rather than have 
 done it. As a proof that we are in earnest in speaking of Mrs Trimmer's 
 simplicity, we must state the objections she makes to one of Mr Lancaster's 
 punishments. "When I meet," says Mr Lancaster, "with a slovenly boy, 
 I put a label upon his breast ; I walk him round the school with a tin or a 
 paper crown upon his head." "Surely," says Mrs Trimmer (in reply to 
 this), "surely it should be remembered, that the Saviour of the world was 
 crowned with thorns in derision, and tJuit this is a reason why crowning is 
 an improper punishment for a sloveitly boy 1 1 1" 
 
 Rewards and Punishments. Mrs Trimmer objects to the fear of ridicule 
 being made an instrument of education, because it may be hereafter em- 
 ployed to shame a boy out of his religion. She might, for the same reason, 
 object to the cultivation of the reasoning faculty, because a boy may here- 
 after be reasoned out of his religion : she surely does not mean to say that 
 she would make boys insensible to ridicule, the fear of which is one curb 
 upon the follies and eccentricities of human nature. Such an object it 
 would be impossible to effect, even if it were useful. Put a hundred boys 
 together, and the fear of being laughed at will always be a strong influencing 
 motive with every individual among them. If a master can turn this prin- 
 ciple to his own use, and get boys to laugh at vice, instead of the old plan 
 of laughing at virtue, is he not doing a very new, a very difficult, and a very 
 laudable tiling ? 
 
 When Mr Lancaster finds a little boy with a very dirty face, he sends for 
 a little girl, and makes her wash off the dirt before the whole school ; and 
 she is directed to accompany her ablutions with a gentle box of the ear. To 
 us, this punishment appears well adapted to the offence ; and in this, as in 
 most other instances of Mr Lancaster's interference in scholastic discipline, 
 we are struck with his good sense, and delighted that arrangements appar- 
 ently so trivial, really so important, should have fallen under the attention 
 of so ingenious and so original a man. Mrs Trimmer objects to this prac- 
 tice, that it destroys female modesty, and inculcates in that sex a habit oj 
 giving boxes on the ear. 
 
 "When a boy gets into a singing tone in reading (says Mr Lancaster), 
 the best mode of cure that I have hitherto found effectual is by the force of 
 ridicule. Decorate the offender with matches, ballads (dying speeches, if 
 needful) ; and in this garb send him round the school, with some boys before 
 him crying matches, &c., exactly imitating the dismal tones with which 
 such things are hawked about London streets, as will readily recur to the 
 reader's memory. I believe many boys behave rudely to Jews more on 
 account of the manner in which they cry "old clothes," than because they 
 are Jews. I have always found excellent effects from treating boys, who 
 sing or tone in their reading, in the manner described. It is sure to turn 
 the laugh of the whole school upon the delinquent; it provokes risibility, in 
 spite of every endeavour to check it, in all but the offender. I have seldom 
 known a boy thus punished once, for whom it was needful a second time. 
 It is also very seldom that a boy deserves both a log and a shackle at the 
 same time. Most boys are wise enough wJten under one punishment, not 
 to transgress immediately, lest it should be doubled." (pp. 47, 48.) 
 
 This punishment is objected to on the part of Mrs Trimmer, because it 
 inculcates a dislike to Jews, and an indifference about dying speeches ! 
 Toys, she says, given as rewards, are worldly things; children are to be
 
 TRIMMER AND LANCASTER. 87 
 
 taught that there are eternal rewards in store for them. It is very danger- 
 ous to give prints as rewards, because prints may hereafter be the vehicle of 
 indecent ideas. It is, above all things, perilous to create an order of merit 
 in the Borough School, because it gives the boys an idea of the origin of 
 nobility, "especially in times (we use Mrs Trimmer's own words) -which fur- 
 nish instances of the extinction of a race of ancient nobility, in a neighbouring 
 nation, and the elevation of some of the lowest people to the highest stations. 
 Boys accustomed to consider themselves the nobles of the school, may, in their 
 future lives, from a conceit of their own merits (unless they have very sound 
 principles], aspire to be nobles of the land, and to take place of the hereditary 
 nobility." 
 
 We think these extracts will sufficiently satisfy every reader of common 
 sense, of the merits of this publication. For our part, when we saw these 
 ragged and interesting little nobles, shining in their tin stars, we only 
 thought it probable that the spirit of emulation would make them better 
 ushers, tradesmen, and mechanics. We did, in truth, imagine we had 
 observed, in some of their faces, a bold project for procuring better breeches 
 for keeping out the blasts of heaven, which howled through those garments 
 in every direction, and of aspiring hereafter to greater strength of seam, and 
 more perfect continuity of cloth. But for the safety of the titled orders we 
 had no fear ; nor did we once dream that the black rod which whipt these 
 dirty little dukes would one day be borne before them as the emblem of 
 legislative dignity, and the sign of noble blood. 
 
 Order. The order Mr Lancaster has displayed in his school is quite 
 astonishing. Every boy seems to be the cog of a wheel the whole school 
 a perfect machine. This is so far from being a burden or constraint to the 
 boys, that Mr Lancaster has made it quite pleasant and interesting to them, 
 by giving to it the air of military arrangement ; not foreseeing, as Mrs 
 Trimmer foresees, that, in times of public danger, this plan furnishes the 
 disaffected with the immediate means of raising an army ; for what have 
 they to do but to send for all the children educated by Mr Lancaster, from 
 the different corners of the kingdom into which they are dispersed, to 
 beg it as a particular favour of them to fall into the same order as they 
 adopted in the spelling-class twenty-five years ago ; and the rest is all 
 matter of course 
 
 Jantqite faces et taxa volant. 
 
 The main object, however, for which this book is written, is to prove that 
 the Church Establishment is in danger from the increase of Mr Lancaster's 
 institutions. Mr Lancaster is, as we have before observed, a Quaker. As 
 a Quaker, he says, I cannot teach your creeds ; but I pledge myself not to 
 teach my own. I pledge myself (and if I deceive you, desert me and give 
 me up) to confine myself to those points of Christianity in which all Chris- 
 tians agree. To which Mrs Trimmer replies, that, in the first place, he 
 cannot do this ; and, in the next place, if he did do it, it would not be 
 enough. But why, we would ask, cannot Mr Lancaster effect his first 
 object? The practical and the feeling parts of religion are much more 
 likely to attract the attention and provoke the questions of children, than its 
 speculative doctrines. A child is not very likely to put any questions at all 
 to a catechising master, and still less likely to lead him into subtle and pro- 
 found disquisition. It appears to us not only practicable, but very easy, to 
 confine the religious instruction of the poor, in the first years of life, to those 
 general feelings and principles which are suitable to the Established Church, 
 and to everj' sect ; afterwards, the discriminating tenets of each subdivision 
 of Christians may be fixed upon this general basis. To say that this is not
 
 88 PARNELL AND IRELAND. 
 
 enough, that a child should be made an Antisocinian, or an Antipclagian, 
 in his tenderest years, may be very just ; but what prevents you from mak- 
 ing him so ? Mr Lancaster, purposely and intentionally, to allay all jeal- 
 ousy, leaves him in a state as well adapted for one creed as another. 
 Begin ; make your pupil a firm advocate for the peculiar doctrines of the 
 English Church ; dig round about him, on every side, a trench that shall 
 guard him from every species of heresy. In spite of all this clamour you do 
 nothing ; you do not stir a single step ; you educate alike the swineherd 
 and his hog ; and then, when a man of real genius and enterprise rises up, 
 and says, Let me dedicate my life to this neglected object, I will do 
 every thing but that which must necessarily devolve upon you alone, you 
 refuse to do your little, and compel him, by the cry of Infidel and Atheist, 
 to leave you to your ancient repose, and not to drive you by insidious com- 
 parisons, to any system of active utility. We deny, again and again, that 
 Mr Lancaster's instruction is any kind of impediment to the propagation of 
 the doctrines of the Church ; and if Mr Lancaster were to perish with his 
 system to-morrow, these boys would positively be taught nothing ; the doc- 
 trines which Mrs Trimmer considers to be prohibited would not rush in, 
 but there would be an absolute vacuum. We will, however, say this in 
 favour of Mrs Trimmer, that if every one who has joined in her clamour, 
 had laboured one hundredth part as much as she has done in the cause of 
 national education, the clamour would be much more rational, and much 
 more consistent, than it now is. By living with a few people as active as 
 herself, she is perhaps somehow or another persuaded that there is a national 
 education going on in this country. But our principal argument is, that Mr 
 Lancaster's plan is at least better than the nothing which preceded it. The 
 authoress herself seems to be a lady of respectable opinions, and very ordin- 
 ary talents ; defending what is right without judgment, and believing what 
 is holy without charity. 
 
 PARNELL AND IRELAND.* (E. REVIEW, 1807.) 
 
 Historical Apology for the Irish Catholics. By WILLIAM PARNELL, Esquire. Fitr- 
 patrick, Dublin. 1807. 
 
 IF ever a nation exhibited symptoms of downright madness, or utter 
 stupidity, we conceive these symptoms may be easily recognised in the 
 conduct of this country upon the Catholic question. A man has a wound 
 in his great toe, and a violent and perilous fever at the same time ; and he 
 refuses to take the medicines for the fever, because it will disconcert his 
 toe ! The mournful and folly-stricken blockhead forgets that his toe cannot 
 survive him ; that if he dies, there can be no digital life apart from him : 
 yet he lingers and fondles over this last part of his body, soothing it madly 
 with little plasters, and anile fomentations, while the neglected fever rages 
 in his entrails, and burns away his whole life. If the comparatively little 
 questions of Establishment are all that this country is capable of discussing 
 or regarding, for God's sake let us remember, that the foreign conquest, 
 which destroys all, destroys this beloved toe also. Pass over freedom, in- 
 
 * I do not retract one syllable (or one iota) of what I have said or written upon the 
 Catholic question. What was wanted for Ireland was emancipation, time and justice, 
 abolition of present wrongs ; time for forgetting past v.-rongs, and that continued and 
 even justice which would make such oblivion wise. It is now only difficult to tranquillise 
 Ireland, before emancipation it was impossible. As to the danger from Catholic doc- 
 trines, I must leave such apprehensions to the respectable anility of these realms. \ 
 will not meddle with it.
 
 PARNELL AND IRELAND. 89 
 
 dustry, and science and look upon this great empire, by which we are 
 nbout to be swallowed up, only as it affects the manner of collecting tithes, 
 and of reading the liturgy still, if all goes, these must go too ; and even, 
 for their interests, it is worth while to conciliate Ireland, to avert the 
 hostility, and to employ the strength of the Catholic population. We plead 
 the question as the sincerest friends to the Establishment ; as wishing to it 
 all the prosperity and duration its warmest advocates can desire, but re- 
 membering always, what these advocates seem to forget, that the Establish- 
 ment cannot be threatened by any danger so great as the perdition of the 
 kingdom in which it is established. 
 
 \Ye are truly glad to agree so entirely with Mr Parnell upon this great 
 question ; we admire his way of thinking ; and most cordially recommend 
 his work to the attention of the public. The general conclusion which he 
 attempts to prove is this ; that religious sentiment, however perverted by 
 bigotry or fanaticism, has always a tendency to moderation ; that it seldom 
 assumes any great portion of activity or enthusiasm, except from novelty of 
 opinion, or from opposition, contumely, and persecution, when novelty 
 ceases ; that a government has little to fear from any religious sect, except 
 while that sect is new. Give a government only time, and, provided it 
 has the good sense to treat folly with forbearance, it must ultimately prevail. 
 When, therefore, a sect is found, after a lapse of years, to be ill-disposed to 
 the Government, we may be certain that Government has widened its separ- 
 ation by marked distinctions, roused its resentment by contumely, or sup- 
 ported its enthusiasm by persecution. 
 
 The particular conclusion Mr Parnell attempts to prove is, that the 
 Catholic religion in Ireland had sunk into torpor and inactivity, till 
 Government roused it with the lash : that even then, from the respect and 
 attachment which men are always inclined to show towards Government, 
 there still remained a large body of loyal Catholics ; that these only de- 
 creased in number from the rapid increase of persecution ; and that, after 
 ail, the effects which the resentment of the Roman Catholics had in creating 
 rebellions had been very much exaggerated. 
 
 In support of these two conclusions, Mr Parnell takes a survey of the 
 history of Ireland, from the conquest under Henry, to the rebellion under 
 Charles the First, passing very rapidly over the period which preceded the 
 Reformation, and dwelling principally upon the various rebellions which 
 broke out in Ireland between the Reformation and the grand rebellion in 
 the reign of Charles the First. The celebrated conquest of Ireland by 
 Henry the Second, extended only to a very few counties in Leinster ; nine- 
 tenths of the whole kingdom were left, as he found them, under the 
 dominion of their native princes. The influence of example was as strong 
 in this, as in most other instances ; and great numbers of the English 
 settlers who came over under various adventurers, resigned their pretensions to 
 superior civilisation, cast off their lower garments, and lapsed into the 
 nudity and barbarism of the Irish. The limit which divided the possessions 
 of the English settler from those of the native Irish, was called the pale ; 
 and the expressions of inhabitants -within the pale, and without the pale, 
 were the terms by which the two nations were distinguished. It is almost 
 superfluous to state, that the most bloody and pernicious warfare was carried 
 on upon the borders sometimes for something sometimes for nothing 
 most commonly for cows. The Irish, over whom the sovereigns of England 
 affected a sort of nominal dominion, were entirely governed by their own 
 laws ; and so very little connection had they with the justice of the invad- 
 ing country, that it was as lawful to kill an Irishman as it was to kill a 
 badger or a fox. The instances are innumerable, where the defendant has
 
 9? PARNELL AND IRELAND. 
 
 pleaded that the deceased was an Irishman, and that therefore defendant 
 had a right to kill him ; and upon the proof of Hibernicism, acquittal 
 followed of course. 
 
 When the English army mustered in any great strength, the Irish chief- 
 tains would do exterior homage to the English Crown ; and they very 
 frequently, by this artifice, averted from their country the miseries of in- 
 vasion : but they remained completely unsubdued, till the rebellion which 
 took place in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, of which that 'politic woman 
 availed herself to the complete subjugation of Ireland. In speaking of the 
 Irish about the reign of Elizabeth, or James the First, we must not draw 
 our comparisons from England, but from New Zealand ; they were not 
 civilised men, but savages ; and if we reason about their conduct, we must 
 reason of them as savages. 
 
 " After reading every account of Irish history (says Mr Parnell), one 
 great perplexity appears to remain : How does it happen, that, from the 
 first invasion of the English, till the reign of James I., Ireland seems not 
 to have made the smallest progress in civilisation or wealth ? 
 
 " That it was divided into a number of small principalities, which waged 
 constant war on each other, or that the appointment of the chieftains was 
 elective, do not appear sufficient reasons, although these are the only ones 
 assigned by those who have been at the trouble of considering the subject : 
 neither are the confiscations of property quite sufficient to account for the 
 effect. There have been great confiscations in other countries, and still 
 they have flourished ; the petty states of Greece were quite analogous to the 
 chiefries (as they were called) in Ireland ; and yet they seemed to flourish 
 almost in proportion to their dissensions. Poland felt the bad effects of an 
 elective monarchy more than any other country ; and yet, in point of civili- 
 sation, it maintained a very respectable rank among the nations of Europe ; 
 but Ireland never, for an instant, made any progress in improvement, till 
 the reign of James I. 
 
 " It is scarcely credible, that in a climate like that of Ireland, and at a 
 period so far advanced in civilisation as the end of Elizabeth's reign, the 
 greater part of the natives should go naked. Yet this is rendered, certain 
 by the testimony of an eyewitness, Fynes Moryson. ' In the remote parts 
 (he says) where the English laws and manners are unknown, the very chief 
 of the Irish, as well men as women, go naked in the winter time, only 
 having their privy parts covered with a rag of linen, and their bodies with a 
 loose mantle. This I speak of my own experience ; yet remember that a 
 Bohemian baron coming out of Scotland to us by the north parts of the 
 wild Irish, told me in great earnestness, that he, coming to the house of 
 O'Kane, a great lord amongst them, was met at the door by sixteen women 
 all naked, excepting their loose mantles, whereof eight or ten were very 
 fair ; with which strange sight his eyes being dazzled, they led him into the 
 house, and then sitting down by the fire, with crossed legs, like tailors, and 
 so low as could not but offend chaste eyes, desired him to set down with 
 them. Soon after, O'Kane, the lord of the country, came in all naked, 
 except a loose mantle and shoes, which he put off as soon as he came in ; 
 and, entertaining the Baron after his best manner in the Latin tongue, 
 desired him to put off his apparel, which he thought to be a burden to him, 
 and to sit naked. 
 
 " ' To conclude, men and women at night going to sleep, lie thus naked 
 in a round circle about the fire, with their feet towards it. They fold their 
 heads and their upper parts in woollen mantles, first steeped in water to keep 
 them warm ; for they say, that woollen cloth, wetted, preserves heat (as
 
 PARNELL AND IRELAND. 9 I 
 
 linen, wetted, preserves cold), when the smoke of then- bodies has warmed 
 the woollen cloth.' 
 
 " The cause of this extreme poverty, and of its long continuance, we must 
 conclude, arose from the peculiar laws of property, which were in force 
 under the Irish dynasties. These laws have been described by most writers 
 as similar to the Kentish custom of gavelkind ; and indeed so little atten- 
 tion was paid to the subject, that were it not for the researches of Sir J. 
 Davis, the knowledge of this singular usage would have been entirely lost. 
 
 "The Brehon law of property, he tells us, was similar to the custom (as 
 the English lawyers term it) of hodge-podge. When any one of the sept 
 died, his lands did not descend to his sons, but were divided among the 
 whole sept : and, for this purpose, the chief of the sept made a new division 
 of the whole lands belonging to the sept, and gave every one his part 
 according to seniority. So that no man had a property which could descend 
 to his children ; and even during his own life, his possession of any particular 
 spot was quite uncertain, being liable to be constantly shuffled and changed 
 by new partitions. The consequence of this was, that there was not a house 
 of brick or stone, among the Irish, down to the reign of Henry VII. ; not 
 even a garden or orchard, or well-fenced or improved field ; neither village 
 or town, or in any respect the least provision for posterity. This monstrous 
 custom, so opposite to the natural feelings of mankind, was probably per- 
 petuated by the policy of the chiefs. In the first place, the power of 
 partitioning being lodged in their hands, made them the most absolute of 
 tyrants, being the dispensers of the property as well as of the liberty of their 
 subjects. In the second place, it had the appearance of adding to the num- 
 ber of their savage armies ; for, where there was no improvement or tillage, 
 war was pursued as an occupation. 
 
 " In the early history of Ireland, we find several instances of chieftains 
 discountenancing tillage ; and so late as Elizabeth's reign, Moryson says, 
 that ' Sir Neal Garve restrained his people from ploughing, that they might 
 assist him to do any mischief.' " (pp. 98 IO2.) 
 
 These quotations and observations will enable us to state a few plain facts 
 for the recollection of our English readers : 1st, Ireland was never subdued 
 till the rebellion in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. 2d, For four hundred 
 years before that period, the two nations had been almost constantly at war ; 
 and, in consequence of this, a deep and irreconcileable hatred existed between 
 the people within and without the pale. 3d, The Irish, at the accession of 
 Queen Elizabeth, were unquestionably the most barbarous people in Europe. 
 So much for what had happened previous to the reign of Queen Elizabeth ; 
 and let any man, who has the most superficial knowledge of human affairs, 
 determine whether national hatred, proceeding from such powerful causes, 
 could possibly have been kept under by the defeat of one single rebellion, 
 whether it would not have been easy to have foreseen, at that period, that a 
 proud, brave, half-savage people, would cherish the memory of their wrongs 
 for centuries to come, and break forth into arms at every period when they 
 were particularly exasperated by oppression, or invited by opportunity. If 
 the Protestant religion had spread in Ireland as it did in England, and if 
 there had never been any difference of faith between the two countries, 
 can it be believed that the Irish, ill-treated, and infamously governed as they 
 have been, would never have made any efforts to shake off the yoke of 
 England ? Surely there are causes enough to account for their impatience 
 of that yoke, without endeavouring to inflame the zeal of ignorant people 
 against the Catholic religion, and to make that mode of faith responsible 
 for all the butchery whicli the Irish and English for these Last two centuries
 
 92 PARNELL AND IRELAND. 
 
 have exercised upon each other. Every body, of course, must admit, that 
 if to the causes of hatred already specified there be added the additional 
 cause of religious distinction, this last will give greater force (and what is of 
 more consequence to observe, give a name) to the whole aggregate motive. 
 But what Mr Parnell contends for, and clearly and decisively proves is, that 
 many of those sanguinary scenes attributed to the Catholic religion, are to 
 be partly imputed to causes totally disconnected from religion ; that the 
 unjust invasion, and the tyrannical, infamous policy of the English, are to 
 take their full share of blame with the sophisms and plots of Catholic 
 priests. In the reign of Henry the Eighth, Mr Pamell shows that feudal 
 submission was readily paid to him by all the Irish chiefs ; that the Refor- 
 mation was received without the slightest opposition ; and that the troubles 
 which took place at that period in Ireland are to be entirely attributed to 
 the ambition and injustice of Henry. In the reign of Queen Mary there 
 was no recrimination upon the Protestants ; a striking proof, that the bigotry 
 of the Catholic religion had not, at that period, risen to any great height in 
 Ireland. The insurrections of the various Irish princes were as numerous, 
 during this reign, as they had been in the two preceding reigns ; a circum- 
 stance rather difficult of explanation, if, as is commonly believed, the 
 Catholic religion was at that period the main-spring of men's actions. 
 
 In the reign of Elizabeth, the Catholic in the pale regularly fought against 
 the Catholic out of the pale. O'Sullivan, a bigoted Papist, reproaches them 
 with doing so. Speaking of the reign of James the First, he says, " And 
 now the eyes even of the English Irish (the Catholics of the pale) were 
 opened ; and they cursed their former folly for helping the heretic. " The 
 English Government were so sensible of the loyalty of the Irish English 
 Catholics, that they entrusted them with the most confidential services. 
 The Earl of Kildare was the principal instrument in waging war against the 
 chieftains of Leix and Offal. William O'Bourge, another Catholic, was 
 created Lord Castle Connel for his eminent services ; and MacGully 
 Patrick, a priest, was the state spy. We presume that this wise and manly 
 conduct of Queen Elizabeth was utterly unknown both to the Pastrycook 
 and the Secretary of State, who have published upon the dangers of employ- 
 ing Catholics even against foreign enemies ; and in those publications have 
 said a great deal about the wisdom of our ancestors the usual topic when- 
 ever the folly of their descendants is to be defended. To whatever other of 
 our ancestors they may allude, they may spare all compliments to this 
 illustrious Princess, who would certainly have kept the worthy confectioner 
 to the composition of tarts, and most probably furnished him with the pro- 
 ductions of the Right Honourable Secretary, as the means of conveying 
 those juicy delicacies to a hungry and discerning public. 
 
 In the next two reigns, Mr Parnell shows by what injudicious measures 
 of the English Government the spirit of Catholic opposition was gradually 
 formed ; for that it did produce powerful effects at a subsequent period, he 
 does not deny ; but contends only (as we have before stated), that these 
 effects have been much overrated, and ascribed solely to the Catholic religion 
 when other causes have at least had an equal agency in bringing them about. 
 He concludes with some general remarks on the dreadful state of Ireland, 
 and the contemptible folly and bigotry of the English ;* remarks full of 
 truth, of good sense, and of political courage. How melancholy to reflect, 
 that there would be still some chance of saving England from the general 
 wreck of empires, but that it may not be saved, because one politician will 
 
 * It would be as well, in future, to say no more of the revocation of the Edict of 
 Nantes.
 
 TRA VELS FROM PALESTINE. 93 
 
 lose two thousand a year by it, and another three thousand a third a place 
 in reversion, and a fourth a pension for his aunt ! Alas ! these are the 
 powerful causes which have always settled the destiny of great king- 
 doms, and which may level Old England, with all its boasted free- 
 dom, and boasted wisdom, to the dust. Nor is it the least singular, 
 among the political phenomena of the present day, that the sole considera- 
 tion which seems to influence the unbigoted part of the English people, in 
 this great question of Ireland, is a regard for the personal feelings of the 
 Monarch. Nothing is said or thought of the enormous risk to which Ire- 
 land is exposed, nothing of the gross injustice with which the Catholics are 
 treated, nothing of the lucrative apostasy of those from whom they ex- 
 perience this treatment : but the only concern by which we all seem to be 
 agitated is, that the King must not be vexed in his old age. We have a 
 great respect for the King ; and wish him all the happiness compatible with 
 the happiness of his people. But these are not times to pay foolish compli- 
 ments to kings, or the sons of kings, or to any body else : this journal has 
 always preserved its character for courage and honesty ; and it shall do so 
 to the last. If the people of this country are solely occupied in considering 
 what is personally agreeable to the King, without considering what is for his 
 permanent good, and for the safety of his dominions ; if all public men, 
 quitting the common vulgar scramble for emolument, do not concur in con- 
 ciliating the people of Ireland ; if the unfounded alarms, and the compara- 
 tively trifling interests of the clergy, are to supersede the great question of 
 freedom or slavery, it does appear to us quite impossible that so mean and 
 so foolish a people can escape that destruction which is ready to burst upon 
 them ; a destruction so imminent, that it can only be averted by arming all 
 in our defence who would evidently be sharers in our ruin, and by such a 
 change of system as may save us from the hazard of being ruined by the 
 ignorance and cowardice of any general, by the bigotry or the ambition of 
 any minister, or by the well-meaning scruples of any human being, let his 
 dignity be what it may. These minor and domestic dangers we must endea- 
 vour firmly and temperately to avert as we best can ; but, at all hazards, we 
 must keep out the destroyer from among us, or perish, like wise and brave 
 men in the attempt. 
 
 TRAVELS FROM PALESTINE. (E. REVIEW, 1807.) 
 
 The Travels of Bertrandon de la Drocquiere, First Esquire-Carver to Philip le Bon, 
 Duke of Burgundy, during the Years 1432, 1433. Translated from the French, by 
 THOMAS JOHNES, Esq. 
 
 IN the year 1432, many great lords in the dominions of Burgundy, holding 
 offices under Duke Philip le Bon, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Among 
 them was his first esquire-carver La Brocquiere, who, having performed 
 many devout pilgrimages in Palestine, returned sick to Jerusalem, and, dur- 
 ing his convalescence, formed the bold scheme of returning to France over 
 land. This led him to traverse the western parts of Asia and Eastern 
 Europe ; and, during the whole journey, except towards the end of it, he 
 passed through the dominions of the Musselmen. The execution of such a 
 journey, even at this day, would not be without difficulty ; and it was then 
 thought to be impossible. It was in vain that his companions attempted to 
 dissuade him ; he was obstinate ; and, setting out, overcame every obstacle ; 
 returned in the course of the year 1433, and presented himself to the Duke
 
 94 TRA VELS FROM PALESTINE. 
 
 in his Saracen dress, and on the horse which had carried him during the 
 whole of his journey. The Duke, after the fashion of great people, con- 
 ceiving that the glory of his esquire-carver was his own, caused the work to 
 be printed and published. 
 
 The following is a brief extract of this valiant person's peregrinations. 
 "After performing the customary pilgrimages, we went," says La Broc- 
 quiere, " to the mountain where Jesus fasted forty days ; to Jordan, where 
 he was baptized ; to the church of St Martha, where Lazarus was raised from 
 the dead ; to Bethlehem, where he was bora ; to the birthplace of St John 
 the Baptist ; to the house of Zechariah ; and, lastly, to the holy cross, where 
 the tree grew that formed the real cross." From Jerusalem the first gentle- 
 man-carver betook himself to Mount Sinai, paying pretty handsomely to the 
 Saracens for that privilege. These infidels do not appear to have ever 
 prevented the Christian pilgrims from indulging their curiosity and devotion 
 in visiting the most interesting evangelical objects hi the Holy Land ; but, 
 after charging a good round price for this gratification, contented themselves 
 with occasionally kicking them, and spitting upon them. In his way to 
 Mount Sinai, the esquire-carver passed through the Valley of Hebron, 
 where, he tells us, Adam was created ; and from thence to Gaza, where 
 they showed him the columns of the building which Samson pulled down, 
 though of the identity of the building the esquire seems to entertain some 
 doubts. At Gaza five of his companions fell sick, and returned to Jerusa- 
 lem. The second day's journey in the desert the carver fell ill also, 
 returned to Gaza, where he was cured by a Samaritan, and finding his 
 way back to Jerusalem, hired some pleasant lodgings on Mount Sion. 
 
 Before he proceeded on his grand expedition over land, he undertook a 
 little expedition to Nazareth, hearing, first of all, divine service at the 
 Cordeliers, and imploring, at the tomb of our Lady, her protection for his 
 journey. From Jerusalem their first stage was Acre, where they gave up 
 their intended expedition, and repaired to Baruth, whence Sir Samson de 
 Lalaing and the author sallied afresh, under better auspices, to Damascus. 
 He speaks with great pleasure of the valley where Noah built the ark, 
 through which valley he passed in his way to Damascus ; upon entering 
 which town he was knocked down by a Saracen for wearing an ugly hat, 
 as he probably would be in London for the same offence in the year 1807. 
 At Damascus, he informs us the Christians are locked up every night, 
 as they are in English workhouses, night and day, when they happen to be 
 poor. The greatest misfortune attendant upon this Damascene incarceration 
 is the extreme irregularity with which the doors are opened in the morning, 
 their janitor having no certain hour of quitting his bed. At Damascus, he 
 saw the place where St Paul had a vision. "I saw also," says he, "the 
 stone from which St George mounted his horse, when he went to combat 
 the dragon. It is two feet square ; and they say that, when formerly the 
 Saracens attempted to carry it away, in spite of all the strength they em- 
 ployed, they could not succeed. " After having seen Damascus, he returns 
 with Sir Samson to Baruth ; and communicates his intentions of returning 
 over land to France to his companions. They state to him the astonishing 
 difficulties he will have to overcome in the execution of so extraordinary a 
 project ; but the admirable carver, determined to make no bones, and to 
 cut his way through every obstacle, persists in his scheme, and bids them a 
 final adieu. He is determined, however, not to be baffled in his subordinate 
 expedition to Nazareth ; and, having now got rid of his timid companions, 
 accomplishes it with ease. We shall here present our readers with an ex- 
 tract from this part of his journal, requesting them to admire the naif 
 manner in which he speaks of the vestiges of ecclesiastical history.
 
 TRA VELS FROM PALESTINE. 95 
 
 "Acre, though in a plain of about four leagues in exlcnt, is sunounded 
 en three sides by mountains, and on the fourth by the sea. I made 
 acquaintance there with a Venetian merchant called Aubert Franc, who re- 
 ceived me well, and procured me much useful information respecting my two 
 pilgrimages, by which I profited. With the aid of his advice, I took the 
 road to Nazareth ; and, having crossed an extensive plain, came to the 
 fountain, the water of which our Lord changed into wine at the marriage of 
 Archetreclin ; it is near a village where St Peter is said to have been 
 bom. 
 
 " Nazareth is another large village, built between two mountains; but the 
 place where the angel Gabriel came to announce to the Virgin Mary that she 
 would be a mother, is in a pitiful state. The church that had been there 
 built is entirely destroyed ; and of the house wherein our Lady was when 
 the angel appeared to her, not the smallest remnant exists. 
 
 " From Nazareth I went to Mount Tabor, the place where the transfigu- 
 ration of our Lord, and many other miracles, took effect. These pasturages 
 attract the Arabs, who come thither with their beasts ; and I was forced to 
 engage four additional men as an escort, two of whom were Arabs. The 
 ascent of the mountain is rugged, because there is no road ; I performed it 
 on the back of a mule, but it took me two hours. The summit is terminated 
 by an almost circular plain of about two bow-shots in length, and one in 
 width. It was formerly inclosed with walls, the ruins of which, and the 
 ditches, are still visible : within the wall, and around it, were several 
 churches, and one especially, where, although in ruins, full pardon for vice 
 and sin is gained. 
 
 " We went to lodge at Samaria, because I wished to see the lake of 
 Tiberias, where it is said St Peter was accustomed to fish ; and by so doing, 
 some pardons may be gained, for it was the ember week of September. The 
 Moucre left me to myself the whole day. Samaria is situated on the 
 extremity of a mountain. We entered it at the close of the day, and left it 
 at midnight to visit the lake. The Moucre had proposed this hour to evade 
 the tribute exacted from all who go thither ; but the night hindered me from 
 seeing the surrounding country. 
 
 ")I went first to Joseph's Well, so called from his being cast into it by his 
 brethren. There is a handsome mosque near it, which I entered with my 
 Moucre, pretending to be a Saracen. 
 
 " Further on is a stone bridge over the Jordan, called Jacob's Bridge, on 
 account of a house hard by, said to have been the residence of that patriarch. 
 The river flows from a great lake situated at the foot of a mountain to the 
 north-west, on which Namcardin has a very handsome castle." (pp. 
 122128.) 
 
 From Damascus, to which he returns after his expedition to Nazareth, 
 the first carver of Philip le Bon sets out with the caravan for Bursa. Before 
 he begins upon his journey, he expatiates with much satisfaction upon the 
 admirable method of shoeing horses at Damascus, a panegyric which cer- 
 tainly gives us the lowest ideas of that art in the reign of Philip le Bon ; for 
 it appears that, out of fifty days, his horse was lame for twenty-one, owing 
 to this ingenious method of shoeing. As a mark of gratitude to the leader 
 of the caravan, the esquire presents him with a pot of green ginger; and the 
 caravan proceeds. Before it has advanced one day's journey, the esquire, 
 however, deviates from the road, to pay his devoirs to a miraculous image 
 of our Lady of Serdenay, which always sweats not ordinary sudorific 
 matter but an oil of great ecclesiastical efficacy. While travelling with the 
 Caravan, he learned to sit crosslegged, got drunk privately, and was nearly
 
 96 TRA VELS FROM PALESTINE. 
 
 murdered by some Saracens, who discovered that he had money. In some 
 parts of Syria, M. de la Brocquiere met with an opinion, which must have 
 been extremely favourable to the spirit of proselytism, in so very hot a 
 country an opinion that the infidels have a very bad smell, and that this is 
 only to be removed by baptism. But as the baptism was according to the 
 Greek ritual, by total immersion, Bertrandon seems to have a distant sus- 
 picion that this miracle may be resolved into the simple phenomenon of 
 washing. He speaks well of the Turks, and represents them, to our sur- 
 prise, as a very gay, laughing people. We thought Turkish gravity had 
 been almost proverbial. The natives of the countries through which he 
 passed pray (he says) for the conversion of Christians, and especially request 
 that there may be never sent among them again such another terrible man as 
 Godfrey of Boulogne. At Couhongue the caravan broke up ; and here he 
 quitted a Mameluke soldier, who had kept him company during the whole 
 of the journey, and to whose courage and fidelity Europe, Philip le Bon, and 
 Mr Johnes of Hafod, are principally indebted for the preservation of the first 
 esquire-carver. 
 
 "I bade adieu," he says, "to my Mameluke. This good man, whose 
 name was Mohammed, had done me innumerable services. He was very 
 charitable, and never refused alms when asked in the name of God. It was 
 through charity he had been so kind to me ; and I must confess that, with- 
 out his assistance, I could not have performed my journey without incurring 
 the greatest danger ; and that, had it not been for his kindness, I should 
 often have been exposed to cold and hunger, and much embarrassed with my 
 horse. 
 
 " On taking leave of him, I was desirous of showing my gratitude ; but 
 he would never accept of any thing except a piece of our fine European cloth 
 to cover his head, which seemed to please him much. He told me all the 
 occasions that had come to his knowledge, on which, if it had not been for 
 him, I should have run risks of being assassinated, and warned me to be 
 very circumspect in my connections with the Saracens, for that there were 
 among them some as wicked as the Franks. I write this to recal to my 
 reader's memory, that the person who, from his love to God, did me so many 
 and essential kindnesses, was a man not of our faith." (pp. 196, 197.) 
 
 For the rest of the journey, he travelled with the family of the leader of 
 the caravan, without any occurrence more remarkable than those we have 
 already noticed ; arrived at Constantinople, and passed through Germany 
 to the court of Philip le Bon. Here his narrative concludes. Nor does the 
 carver vouchsafe to inform us of the changes which time had made in the 
 appetite of that great prince, whether veal was now more pleasing to him 
 than lamb, if his favourite morsels were still in request, if animal succu- 
 lence were as grateful to him as before the departure of the carver, or if 
 this semisanguineous partiality had given way to a taste for cinereous and 
 torrefied meats. All these things the first esquire-carver might have said, 
 none of them he does say, nor does Mr Johnes of Hafod supply, by any 
 antiquarian conjectures of his own, the distressing silence of the original. 
 Saving such omissions, there is something pleasant in the narrative of this 
 arch-divider of fowls. He is an honest, brave, liberal man ; and tells his 
 singular story with great brevity and plainness. We are obliged to Mr 
 Johnes for the amusement he has afforded us ; and we hope he will perse- 
 vere in his gentlemanlike, honourable, and useful occupations.
 
 METHODISM. 
 
 METHODISM. (E. REVIEW, 1808.) 
 
 Causes of tne Increase of Methodism and Dissension, By ROBERT ACKLEM INGRAM, 
 B.D. Hatchard. 
 
 Tins is the production of an honest man possessed of a fair share of under- 
 standing. He cries out lustily (and not before it is time), upon the increase 
 of Methodism ; proposes various remedies for the diminution of this evil ; 
 and speaks his opinions with a freedom which does him great credit, and 
 convinces us that he is a respectable man. The clergy are accused of not 
 exerting themselves. What temporal motive, Mr Ingram asks, have they 
 for exertion ? Would a curate who had served thirty years upon a living in 
 the most exemplary manner secure to himself, by such a conduct, the slightest 
 right or title to promotion in the Church? What can you expect of a whole 
 profession, in which there is no more connection between merit and reward, 
 than between merit and beauty, or merit and strength? This is the sub- 
 stance of what Mr Ingram says upon this subject ; and he speaks the truth. 
 We regret, however, that this gentleman has thought fit to use against the 
 dissenters the exploded clamour of Jacobinism ; or that he deems it neces- 
 sary to call in to the aid of the Church the power of intolerant laws, in spite 
 of the odious and impolitic test to which the dissenters are still subjected. 
 We believe them to be very good subjects ; and we have no doubt but that 
 any further attempt upon their religious liberties, without reconciling them 
 to the Church, would have a direct tendency to render them disaffected to 
 the State. 
 
 Mr Ingram (whose book, by the bye, is very dull and tedious) has fallen 
 into the common mistake of supposing his readers to be as well acquainted 
 with his subject as he is himself ; and has talked a great deal about dis- 
 senters, without giving us any distinct notions of the spirit which pervades 
 these people the objects they have in view or the degree of talent which 
 is to be found among them. To remedy this very capital defect, we shall 
 endeavour to set before the eyes of the reader a complete section of the 
 tabernacle ; and to present him with a near view of those sectaries, who are 
 at present at work upon the destruction of the orthodox churches, and are 
 destined hereafter, perhaps, to act as conspicuous a part in public affairs, as 
 the children of Sion did in the time of Cromwell. 
 
 The sources from which we shall derive our extracts are the Evangelical 
 and Methodistical Magazines for the year 1807 ; works which are said to 
 be circulated to the amount of 18,000 or 20,000 each, every month; and 
 which contain the sentiments of Arminian and Calvinistic methodists, and 
 of the evangelical clergymen of the Church of England. We shall use the 
 general term of Methodism, to designate these three classes of fanatics, not 
 troubling ourselves to point out the finer shades and nicer discriminations 
 of lunacy, but treating them all as in one general conspiracy against common 
 sense, and rational orthodox Christianity. 
 
 In reading these very curious productions, we seemed to be in a new world, 
 and to have got among a set of beings, of whose existence we had hardly 
 before entertained the slightest conception. It has been our good fortune 
 to be acquainted with many truly religious persons, both in the Presbyterian 
 and Episcopalian churches ; and from their manly, rational, and serious char- 
 acters, our conceptions of true practical piety have been formed. To these 
 confined habits, and to our want of proper introductions among the children 
 of light and .grace, any degree of surprise is to be attributed, which may 
 be excited by the publications before us ; which, under opposite circum- 
 stances, would (we^doubt not) have proved as great a source of instruction 
 
 Q
 
 98 METHODISM. 
 
 and delight to the Edinburgh reviewers, as they are to the most melodious 
 votaries of the tabernacle. 
 
 It is not wantonly, or with the most distant intention of trifling upon serious 
 subjects, that we call the attention of the public to these sorts of publications. 
 Their circulation is so enormous, and so increasing, they contain the opinions, 
 and display the habits of so many human beings, that they cannot but be 
 objects of curiosity and importance. The common and the middling classes of 
 people are the purchasers ; and the subject is religion, though not that religion 
 certainly which is established by law, and encouraged by national provision. 
 This may lead to unpleasant consequences, or it may not ; but it carries with 
 it a sort of aspect, which ought to insure to it serious attention and reflection. 
 
 It is impossible to arrive at any knowledge of a religious sect, by merely 
 detailing the settled articles of their belief : it may be the fashion of such a 
 sect to insist upon some articles very slightly ; to bring forward others pro- 
 minently ; and to consider some portion of their formal creed as obsolete. 
 As the knowledge of the jurisprudence of any country can never be obtained 
 by the perusal of volumes which contain some statutes that are daily en- 
 forced, and others that have been silently antiquated : in the same manner, 
 the practice, the preaching, and the writing of sects, are comments absolutely 
 necessary to render the perusal of their creed of any degree of utility. 
 
 It is the practice, we believe, with the orthodox, both in the Scotch and 
 the English churches, to insist very rarely, and very discreetly, upon the 
 particular instances of the interference of Divine Providence. They do not 
 contend that the world is governed only by general laws, that a Superin- 
 tending Mind never interferes for particular purposes ; but such purposes 
 are represented to be of a nature very awful and sublime, when a guilty 
 people are to be destroyed, when an oppressed nation is to be lifted up, 
 and some remarkable change introduced into the order and arrangement of 
 the world. With this kind of theology we can have no quarrel ; we bow to 
 its truth ; we are satisfied with the moderation which it exhibits ; and we 
 have no doubt of the salutary effect which it produces upon the hum .in heart. 
 Let us now come to those special cases of the interference of Providence, as 
 they are exhibited in the publications before us. 
 
 An interference with respect to the Rev. James Moodv. 
 
 "Mr James Moody was descended from pious ancestors, who resided at 
 Paisley : his heart was devoted to music, dancing, and theatrical amuse- 
 ments : of the latter he was so fond, that he used to meet with some men of 
 a similar cast to rehearse plays, and used to entertain a hope that he should 
 make a figure upon the stage. To improve himself in music, he would rise 
 very early, even in severely cold weather, and practise on the German flute : 
 by his skill in music and singing, with his general powers of entertaining, he 
 became a desirable companion : he would sometimes venture to profane the 
 day of God, by turning it into a season of carnal pleasure ; and would join 
 in excursions on the water, to various parts of the vicinity of London. But 
 the time was approaching, when the Lord, who had designs of mercy for him, 
 and for many others by his means, was about to stop him in his vain career 
 of sin and folly. There were two professing servants in the house where he 
 lived ; one of these was a porter, who, in brushing his clothes, would say, 
 " Master James, this will never do you must be otherwise employed you 
 must be a minister of the gospel." This worthy man, earnestly wishing his 
 conversion, put into his hands that excellent book which God hath so much 
 owned, AHeinfs Alarm to the Unconverted. 
 "About this time, it pleased God to visit him with a disorder in hij
 
 METHODISM. 99 
 
 eyes, cccasioned. as it was thought, by his sitting up in the night to improve 
 himself in drawing. The apprehension of losing his sight occasioned many 
 serious reflections ; his mind was impressed with the importance and neces- 
 sity of seeking the salvation of his soul, and he was induced to attend the 
 preaching of the gospel. The first sermon that he heard with a desire to 
 profit was at Spa-fields chapel ; a place which he had formerly frequented, 
 when it was a temple of vanity and dissipation. Strong convictions of siu 
 fixed on his mind ; and he continued to attend die preached word, particu- 
 larly at Tottenham-court Chapel. Every sermon increased his sorrow and 
 grief that he had not earlier sought the Lord. It was a considerable time 
 before he found comfort from the gospel. He has stood in the free part of the 
 chapel, hearing with such emotion, that the tears have flowed from his eyes 
 in torrents ; and when he has returned home, he has continued a great part 
 of the night on his knees, praying over what he had heard. 
 
 " The change effected by the power of the Holy Spirit on his heart now 
 became visible to all. Nor did he halt between two opinions, as some per- 
 sons do ; he became at once a decided character, and gave up for ever all 
 his vain pursuits and amusements ; devoting himself with as much resolution 
 and diligence to the service of God, as he had formerly done to folly." 
 v. Mag. p. 194. 
 
 An interference respecting Cards. 
 
 " A clergyman, not far distant from the spot on which these lines were 
 written, was spending an evening not in his closet, wrestling with his 
 Divine Master for the communication of that grace which is so peculiarly 
 necessary for the faithful discharge of the ministerial function, not in his 
 study, searching the sacred oracles of divine truth for materials wherewith 
 to prepare for his public exercises and feed the flock under his care, not in 
 pastoral visits to that flock, to inquire into the state of their souls, and en- 
 deavour, by his pious and affectionate conversation, to conciliate their esteem, 
 and promote their edification, but at the card table." After stating that, 
 when it was his turn to deal, he dropt down dead, " It is worthy of remark 
 (says the writer) that within a very few years this was the third character in 
 the neighbourhood which had been summoned from the card table to the 
 bar of God." Ev. Mag. p. 262. 
 
 Interference respecting Swearing, a Bee the instrument. 
 
 " A young man is stung by a bee, upon which he buffets the bees with 
 his hat, uttering at the same time the most dreadful oaths and imprecations. 
 In the midst of his fury, one of these little combatants stung him upon the 
 tip of that unruly member (his tongue), which was then employed in blas- 
 pheming his Maker. Thus can the Lord engage one of the meanest of his 
 creatures in reproving the bold transgressor who dares to take his name in 
 vain." Ev. Mag. p. 363. 
 
 Interference with respect to David Wright, who was cured of Atheism and 
 Scrofula by one Sermon of Mr Coles. 
 
 This case is too long to quote hi the language and with the evidences of 
 the writers. The substance of it is what our title implies. David Wright 
 was a man with scrofulous legs and atheistical principles ; being with diffi- 
 culty persuaded to Itear one sermon from Mr Coles, he limped to the church 
 in extreme pain, and arrived there after great exertions j during church time 
 he was entirely con verted, walked home with the greatest ease, and never after 
 experienced the slightest return of scrofula or infidelity. Ev. Mag. p. 444.
 
 loo METHODISM. 
 
 The displeasure of Providence is expressed ai Captain Scott's 011:5 ty 
 preach in Mr Romaine's ChapcL 
 
 The sign of this displeasure is a violent storm of thunder and lightning 
 just as he came into town. Ev. Mag. p. 537. 
 
 " Interference with respect to an Innkeeper, -who was destroyed for having 
 appointed a cock-fight at the very time that the service was beginning at 
 the Methodist Chapel. 
 
 " 'Nevermind,' says the innkeeper, ' I '11 get a greater congregation than 
 the Methodist parson ; we '11 have a cock-fight.' But what is man ! how 
 insignificant his designs, how impotent his strength, how ill-fated his plans, 
 when opposed to that Being who is infinite in wisdom, boundless in power, 
 terrible in judgment, and who frequently reverses, and suddenly renders 
 abortive, the projects of the wicked ! A few days after the avowal of his 
 intention, the innkeeper sickened, &c. &c. And then the narrator goes on 
 to state, that his corpse was carried by the meeting-house, ' on the day, and 
 exactly at the time, the deceased had fixed for the cock-fight.' " Meth. Mag. 
 p. 126. 
 
 In page 167 Meth. Mag., a father, mother, three sons, and a sister, are 
 destroyed by particular interposition. 
 
 In page 222 Meth. Mag., a dancing master is destroyed for irreligion, 
 another person for swearing at a cock-fight, and a third for pretending to 
 be deaf and dumb. These are called recent and authentic accounts of God's 
 avenging providence. 
 
 So much for the miraculous interposition of Providence in cases where the 
 Methodists are concerned : we shall now proceed to a few specimens of the 
 energy of their religious feelings. 
 
 Mr Roberts' s feelings in the month of May, 1793. 
 
 " But, all this time, my soul was stayed upon God : my desires increased, 
 and my mind was kept in a sweet praying frame, a going out of myself, as 
 it were, and taking shelter in Him. Every breath I drew, ended in a 
 prayer. I felt myself helpless as an infant, dependent upon God for all 
 things. I was in a constant daily expectation of receiving all I wanted ; 
 and, on Friday, May 3 1st, under Mr Rutherford's sermon, though entirely 
 independent of it (for I could not give any account of what he had been 
 preaching about), I was given to feel that God was waiting to be very 
 gracious to me ; the spirit of prayer and supplication was given me, and 
 such an assurance that I was accepted in the Beloved, as I cannot describe, 
 but which I shall never forget." Meth. Mag. p. 35. 
 
 Mrs Elizabeth Price and her Attendants hear sacred music on a sudden. 
 
 "A few nights before her death, while some neighbours and her husband 
 were sitting up with her, a sudden and joyful sound of music was heard by 
 all present, although some of them were carnal people ; at which time she 
 thought she saw her crucified Saviour before her, speaking these words with 
 power to her soul, 'Thy sins are forgiven thee, and I love thee freely.' 
 After this she never doubted of her acceptance with God ; and on Christmas 
 day following was taken to celebrate the Redeemer's birth in the Paradise 
 of God. MICHAEL COUSIN. "Meth. Mag. p. 137.
 
 METHODISM. XOI 
 
 T. L., a Sailor on toard the Stag frigate, has a special revelation from our 
 Saviour. 
 
 " October 26th, being the Lord's day, lie had a remarkable manifestation 
 of God's love to his soul. That blessed morning he was much grieved by 
 hearing the wicked use profane language, when Jesus revealed himself to 
 him, and impressed on his mind those words, ' Follow Me. ' This was a 
 precious day to him." Meth. Mag. p. 140. 
 
 The manner in which Mr Thomas Cook was accustomed to accost S. B. 
 
 "Whenever he met me in the street, his salutation used to be, 'Have 
 you free and lively intercourse with God to-day? Are you giving your 
 whole heart to God?' I have known him on such occasions speak in so 
 pertinent a manner, that I have been astonished at his knowledge of my 
 state. Meeting me one morning, he said, ' I have been praying for you ; you 
 have had a sore conflict, though all is well now.' At another time he asked, 
 ' Have you been much exercised these few days, for I have been led to pray 
 that you might especially have suffering grace. ' " Meth. Mag. p. 247. 
 
 Mr John Kestin on his death-bed. 
 
 " 'Oh, my dear, I am now going to glory, happy, happy, happy. I am 
 going to sing praises to God and the Lamb ; I am going to Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob. I think I can see my Jesus without a glass between. I can, 
 I feel I can, discern 'my title clear to mansions in the skies.' Come, 
 Lord Jesus, cornel why are thy chariot-wheels so long delaying?'" 
 Ev. Mag. p. 124. 
 
 The Rev. Mr Mead's sorrow for his sins. 
 
 " This wrought him up to temporary desperation ; his inexpressible grief 
 poured itself forth in groans : ' Oh that I had never sinned against God ! 
 I have a hell here upon earth, and there is a hell for me in eternity !' One 
 Lord's day, very early in the morning, he was awoke by a tempest of thunder 
 and lightning ; and, imagining it to be the end of the world, his agony was 
 great, supposing the great day of divine wrath was come, and he unprepared ; 
 but happy to find it not so." Ev. Mag. p. 147. 
 
 Similar case of Mr fohn Robinson. 
 
 "About two hours before he died, he was in great agony of body and 
 mind : it appeared that the enemy was permitted to struggle with him ; and 
 being greatly agitated, he cried out, ' Ye powers of darkness begone ! ' This, 
 however, did not last long : ' the prey was taken from the mighty, and the 
 lawful captive delivered,' although he was not permitted to tell of his de- 
 liverance, but lay quite still and composed.' Ev. Mag. p. 177. 
 
 The Reverend William Tennant in a heavenly trance. 
 
 '"While I was conversing with my brother,' said he, 'on the state of 
 my soul, and the fears I had entertained for my future welfare, I found my- 
 self in an instant in another state of existence, under the direction of a 
 superior being, who ordered me to follow him. I was accordingly wafted 
 along, I know not how, till I beheld at a distance an ineffable glory, the 
 impression of which on my mind it is impossible to communicate to mortal
 
 io METHODISM. 
 
 man. I immediately reflected on my happy change ; and thought, Well, 
 blessed be God ! I am safe at last, notwithstanding all my fears. I saw an 
 innumerable host of happy beings surrounding the inexpressible glory in 
 acts of adoration and joyous -worship ; but I did not see any bodily shape 
 or representation in the glorious appearance. I heard things unutterable. 
 I heard their songs and hallelujahs of thanksgiving and praise with unspeak- 
 able rapture. I felt joy unutterable, and full of glory. I then applied to 
 my conductor and requested leave to join the happy throng."' Ev. Mag. 
 p. 251. 
 
 The following we consider to be one of the most shocking histories we 
 ever read. God only knows how many such scenes take place in the 
 gloomy annals of Methodism. 
 
 " A young man, of the name of S C , grandson to a late eminent 
 
 dissenting minister, and brought up by him, came to reside at K g, about 
 
 the year 1803. He attended at the Baptist place of worship, not only on 
 the Lord's day, but frequently at the week-day lectures and prayer-meetings. 
 He was supposed by some to be seriously inclined ; but his opinion of him- 
 self was, that he had never experienced that divine change, without which 
 no man can be saved. 
 
 " However that might be, there is reason to believe he had been for some 
 years under powerful convictions of his miserable condition as a shiner. In 
 June 1806, these convictions were observed to increase, and that in a more 
 than common degree. From that time he went into no company ; but, 
 when he was not at work, kept in his chamber, where he was employed in 
 singing plaintive hymns, and bewailing his lost and perishing state. 
 
 " He had about him several religious people ; but could not be induced 
 to open his mind to them, or to impart to any one the cause of his distress. 
 Whether this contributed to increase it or not, it did increase, till his health 
 was greatly affected by it, and he was scarcely able to work at his business. 
 
 "While he was at meeting on Lord's day, September 14th, he was 
 observed to labour under very great emotion of mind, especially when he 
 heard the following words : ' Sinner, if you die without an interest in Christ, 
 you will sink into the regions of eternal death. ' 
 
 " On the Saturday evening following, he intimated to the mistress of the 
 house where he lodged, that some awful judgment was about to come upon 
 him ; and as he should not be able to be at meeting next day, requested 
 that an attendant might be procured to stay with him. She replied that 
 she would herself stay at home, and wait upon him ; which she did. 
 
 "On the Lord's day he was in great agony of mind. His mother was 
 sent for, and some religious friends visited him ; but all was of no avail. 
 That night was a night dreadful beyond conception. The horror which he 
 endured brought on all the symptoms of raging madness. He desired the 
 attendants not to come near him, lest they should be burnt. He said that 
 ' the bed-curtains were hi flames, that he smelt the brimstone, that devils 
 were come to fetch him, that there was no hope for him, for that he had 
 sinned against light and conviction, and that he should certainly go to hell.' 
 It was with difficulty he could be kept in bed. 
 
 "An apothecary being sent for, as soon as he entered the house, and 
 heard his dreadful bowlings, he inquired if he had not been bitten by a mad 
 dog. His appearance, likewise, seemed to justify such a suspicion, his 
 countenance resembling that of a wild beast more than that of a man. 
 
 "Though he had no feverish heat, yet his pulse beat above 150 in a 
 minute. To abate the mania, a quantity of blood was taken from him, a 
 blister was applied, his head was shaved, cold water was copiously poured
 
 METHODISM. 103 
 
 over him, and fox-glove was administered. By these means his fury \\as 
 abated ; but his mental agony continued, and all the symptoms of madness 
 which his bodily strength, thus reduced, would allow, till the following 
 Thursday. On that day he seemed to have recovered his reason, and to be 
 calm in his mind. In the evening he sent for the apothecary, and wished 
 to speak with him by himself. The latter, on his coming, desired every 
 
 one to leave the room, and thus addressed him : ' C , have you not 
 
 something on your mind?' 'Ay,' answered he, 'that is it/' He then 
 acknowledged that, early in the month of June, he had gone to a fair in 
 the neighbourhood, in company with a number of wicked young men ; that 
 they drank at a public-house together till he was in a measure intoxicated ; 
 and that from thence they went into other company, where he was criminally 
 connected with a harlot. ' I have been a miserable creature,' continued he, 
 ' ever since ; but during the last three days and three nights, I have been 
 in a state of desperation." He intimated to the apothecary, that he could 
 not bear to tell this story to his minister : 'But,' said he, 'do you inform 
 him that I shall not die in despair ; for light has broken hi upon me : I 
 have been led to the great Sacrifice for sin, and I now hope in him for 
 salvation.' 
 
 " From this time his mental distress ceased, his countenance became 
 placid, and his conversation, instead of being taken up as before with fearful 
 exclamations concerning devils and the wrath to come, was now confined to 
 the dying love of Jesus ! The apothecary was of opinion, that if his strength 
 h:id not been so much exhausted, he would now have been in a state of 
 religious transport. His nervous system, however, had received such a 
 shock, that his recovery was doubtful ; and it seemed certain, that if he did 
 recover, he would sink into a state of idiocy. He survived this interview 
 but a few days." Ev. Mag. pp. 412, 413. 
 
 A religious observer stands at a turnpike gate on a Sunday, to witness 
 the profane crowd passing by ; he sees a man driving very clumsily in a gig ; 
 the inexperience of the driver provokes the following pious observations. 
 
 "'What (I said to myself) if a single untoward circumstance should 
 happen ! Should the horse take fright, or the wheel on either side get 
 entangled, or the gig upset, in either case what can preserve them? And 
 should a morning so fair and promising bring onievil before night, should 
 death on his pale horse appear, what follows?' My mind shuddered at 
 the images I had raised." Ev. Mag. pp. 558, 559. 
 
 Miss Louisa Cook's rapturous state. 
 
 " From this period she lived chiefly in retirement, either in reading the 
 sacred volume on her knees, or in pouring out her soul in prayer to God. 
 While thus employed, she was not unfrequently indulged with visits from 
 her gracious Lord ; and sometimes felt herself to be surrounded, as it were, 
 by his glorious presence. After her return to Bristol, her frame of mind 
 became so heavenly, that she seemed often to be dissolved in the love of 
 God her Saviour." Ev. Mag. pp. 576, 577. 
 
 Objection to Almanacks. 
 
 '* Let those who have been partial to such vain productions only read 
 Isaiah xlvii. 13, and Daniel ii. 27 ; and they will there see what they are to 
 be accounted of, and in what company they are to be found ; and let them 
 learn to despise their equivocal and artful insinuations, which are too fre-
 
 104 METHODISM. 
 
 quently blended with profanity ; for is it not profanity in them to attempt to 
 palm their frauds upon mankind by Scripture quotations, which they seldom 
 fail to do, especially Judges v. 20, and Job xxxviii. 31? neither of which 
 teaches nor warrants any such practice. Had Baruch or Deborah consulted 
 the stars? No such thing." Ev. Mag. p. 600. 
 
 This energy of feeling will be found occasionally to meddle with and dis- 
 turb the ordinary occupations and amusements of life, and to raise up little 
 qualms of conscience, which, instead of exciting respect, border, we fear, 
 somewhat too closely upon the ludicrous. 
 
 A Methodist Footman. 
 
 "A gentleman's servant, who has left a good place because he was 
 ordered to deny his master when actually at home, wishes something on this 
 subject may be introduced into this work, that persons who are in the habit 
 of denying themselves in the above manner may be convinced of its evil." 
 Ev. Mag. p. 72. 
 
 Doubts if it is right to take any interest for money. 
 
 " Usury. Sir, I beg the favour of you to insert the following case of 
 conscience. I frequently find in Scripture, that Usury is particularly con- 
 demned ; and that it is represented as the character of a good man, that 
 'he hath not given forth upon usury, neither hath taken any increase,' 
 Ezek. xviii. 8, &c. I wish, therefore, to know how such passages are to be 
 understood ; and whether the taking of interest for money, as is universally 
 practised among us, can be reconciled with the word and will of God ? Q." 
 Ev. Mag. p. 74. 
 
 Dancing ill suited to a creature on trial for eternity. 
 
 " If dancing be a waste of time ; if the precious hours devoted to it may 
 be better employed ; if it be a species of trifling ill suited to a creature on 
 trial for eternity, and hastening towards it on the swift wings of time ; if it 
 be incompatible with genuine repentance, true faith in Christ, supreme love 
 to God, and a state of entire devotedness to him, then is dancing a practice 
 utterly opposed to the whole spirit and temper of Christianity, and subver- 
 sive of the best interests of the rising generation." Meth. Mag. pp. 127, 
 128. 
 
 The Methodists consider themselves as constituting a chosen and separate 
 people, living in a land of atheists and voluptuaries. The expressions by 
 which they designate their own sects, are the dear people the elect the 
 people of God. The rest of mankind are carnal people the people of this 
 "world, &c. &c. The children of Israel were not more separated, through 
 the favour of God, from the Egyptians, than the Methodists are, in their 
 own estimation, from the rest of mankind. We had hitherto supposed that 
 the disciples of the Established churches in England and Scotland had been 
 Christians ; and that after baptism duly performed by the appointed minister, 
 and participation in the customary worship of these two churches, Chris- 
 tianity was the religion of which they were to be considered as members. 
 We see, however, in these publications, men of twenty or thirty years of 
 age first called to a knowledge of Christ under a sermon by the Rev. Mr 
 Venn, or first admitted into the church of Christ under a sermon by the 
 Rev. Mr Romaine. The apparent admission turns out to have been a mere
 
 METHODISM. 105 
 
 mockery ; and the pseudo-Christian to have had no religion at all, till the 
 business was really and effectually done under these sermons by Mr Venn 
 and Mr Romaine. 
 
 An a-ivful and general departure from the Christian Faith in the Church of 
 England. 
 
 " A second volume of Mr Cooper's sermons is before us, stamped with 
 the same broad seal of truth and excellence as the former. Amidst the 
 awful and general departure from the faith, as once delivered to the saints 
 in the Church of England, and sealed by the blood of our Reformers, it is 
 pleasing to observe that there is a remnant, according to the election of 
 grace, who continue rising up to testify the gospel of the grace of God, and 
 to call back their fellows to the consideration of the great and leading doc- 
 trines on which the Reformation was built, and the Church of England by 
 law established. The author of these sermons, avoiding all matters of more 
 doubtful disputation, avowedly attaches himself to the great fundamental 
 truths ; and on the two substantial pillars, the Jachin and Boaz of the living 
 temple, erects his superstructure. I. Justification by faith, without works, 
 free and full, by grace alone, through the redemption which is in Jesus 
 Christ, stands at the commencement of the first volume ; and on its side 
 rises in the beauty of holiness," &c. Ev. Mag. p. 79. 
 
 Mr Robinson called to the knowledge of Christ under Mr Venits Sermon. 
 
 " Mr Robinson was called in early life to the knowledge of Christ, under 
 a sermon at St Dunstan's by the late Rev. Mr Venn, from Ezek. xxxvi. 25, 
 26 ; the remembrance of which greatly refreshed his soul upon his death- 
 bed." Ev. Mag. p. 176. 
 
 Christianity introduced into the Parish of Launlon, near Bicester, in the 
 year 1807. 
 
 " A very general spirit of inquiry having appeared for some time in the 
 village of Launton, near Bicester, some serious persons were excited to com- 
 municate to them the word of life." Ev. Mag. p. 380. 
 
 "We learn in page 128 Meth. Mag., that twelve months had elapsed from 
 the time of Mrs Cocker's joining the people of God, before she obtained a 
 clear sense of forgiveness. 
 
 A religious Hoy sets off" every iveekfor Margate. 
 
 "Religious Passengers accommodated. To the Editor. Sir, it afforded 
 me considerable pleasure to see upon the cover of your Magazine for the 
 present month, an advertisement announcing the establishment of a packet, 
 to sail weekly between London and Margate, during the season ; which ap- 
 pears to have been set on foot for the accommodation of religious characters ; 
 and in which ' no profane conversation is to be allowed.' 
 
 "To those among the followers of a crucified Redeemer, who are in the 
 habit of visiting the Isle of Thanet in the summer, and who, for the sea air, 
 or from other considerations, prefer travelling by water, such a conveyance 
 must certainly be a desideratum, especially if they have experienced a morti- 
 fication similar to that of the writer, in the course of the last summer, when 
 shut up in a cabin with a mixed multitude, who spake almost all languages 
 but that of Canaan. Totally unconnected with the concern, and personally a
 
 io6 METHODISM. 
 
 stranger to the worthy owner, I take the liberty of recommending this vessel 
 to the notice of my fellow-Christians ; persuaded that they will think them- 
 selves bound to patronise and encourage an undertaking that has the honour 
 of the dear Redeemer for its professed object. It ought ever to be remem- 
 bered, that every talent we possess, whether large or small, is given us in 
 trust to be laid out for God ; and I have often thought that Christians act 
 inconsistently with their high profession, when they omit, even in their 
 most common and trivial expenditures, to give a decided preference to the 
 friends of their Lord. I do not, however, anticipate any such ground of 
 complaint in this instance ; but rather believe, that the religious world in 
 general will cheerfully unite with me, while I most cordially wish success to 
 the Princess of Wales Yacht, and pray that she may ever sail under the 
 divine protection and blessing ; that the humble followers of Hun who 
 spoke the Storm into a calm, when crossing the lake of Gennesareth, may 
 often feel their hearts glowing with sacred ardour while in her cabins they 
 enjoy sweet communion with their Lord and with each other ; and that 
 strangers, who may be providentially brought among them, may see so 
 much of the beauty and excellency of the religion of Jesus exemplified in 
 their conduct and conversation, that they may be constrained to say, ' We 
 will go with you, for we perceive that God is with you. Your God shall be 
 our God, and his people shall henceforth be our chosen companions and 
 associates.' I am, Mr Editor, your obliged friend and sister in the gospel, 
 E. 1."Ev. Mag. p. 268. 
 
 A religious newspaper is announced in tin Ev. M. for September. It is 
 said of common newspapers, " That they are absorbed in temporal concerns, 
 while the consideration of those which are eternal is postponed ; the business of 
 this life has superseded the claims of immortality ; and the monarchs of the 
 world have engrossed an attention which would have been more properly 
 devoted to the Saviour of the universe." It is then stated, "that the 
 columns of this paper ( The Instructor, Price f>d. ) will be supplied by pious 
 reflections ; suitable comments to improve the dispensations of Providence 
 will be introduced ; and the whole conducted with an eye to our spiritual, 
 as well as temporal welfare. The work will contain the latest news up to 
 four o'clock on the day of publication, together with the most recent reli- 
 gious occurrences. The prices of stock, and correct market-tables, will also 
 be accurately detailed." Ev. Mag. September Advertisement. The Eclectic 
 Review is also understood to be carried on upon Methodistical principles. 
 
 Nothing can evince more strongly the influence which Methodism now 
 exercises upon common life, and the fast hold it has got of the people, than 
 the advertisements which are T circulated every month in these very singular 
 publications. On the cover of a single number, for example, we have the 
 following : 
 
 " Wanted, by Mr Turner, shoemaker, a steady apprentice ; he will 
 have the privilege of attending the ministry of the gospel ; a premium ex- 
 pected, p. 3- Wanted, a serious young woman, as servant of all work, 3. 
 Wanted, a man of serious character, who can shave, 3. Wanted, a serious 
 woma'n to assist in a shop, 3. A young person in the millinery line wishes 
 to be in a serious family, 4. Wants a place, a young man who has brewed 
 in a serious family, 4. Ditto, a young woman of evangelical principles, 4. 
 Wanted, an active serious shopman, 5. To be sold, an eligible residence, 
 with 60 acres of land ; gospel preached in three places within half a mile, 
 5. A single gentleman may be accommodated with lodging in a small 
 serious family, 5. To let, a genteel first floor in an airy situation near the
 
 METHODISM. 107 
 
 Tabernacle, 6. Wanted, a governess, of evangelical principles and corres- 
 ponding character, 10." 
 
 The religious vessel we have before spoken of, is thus advertised : 
 
 "The Princess of Wales Yacht, J. Chapman, W. Bourn, master, by 
 divine permission, will leave Ralph's Quay every Friday, n." &c. &c. 
 July Ev. Mag. 
 
 After the specimens we have given of these people, any thing which is 
 said of their activity can very easily be credited. The army and navy 
 appear to be particular objects of their attention. 
 
 "British Navy. It is with peculiar pleasure we insert the following ex- 
 tract of a letter from the pious chaplain of a man-of-war, to a gentleman at 
 Gosport, intimating the power and grace of God manifested towards our 
 brave seamen. l Off Cadiz, Nov. 26, 1806. My dear friend A fleet for 
 England found us in the night, and is just going away. I have only time 
 to tell you that the work of God seems to prosper. Many are under con- 
 victions ; some, I trust, are converted. I preach every night, and am 
 obliged to have a private meeting afterwards with those who wish to speak 
 about their souls. But my own health is suffering much, nor shall I prob- 
 ably be able long to bear it. The ship is like a tabernacle ; and really there 
 
 is much external reformation. Capt. raises no objection. I have near 
 
 a hundred hearers every night at six o'clock. How unworthy am I ! 
 Pray for us.' " Ev. Mag. p. 84. 
 
 The Testimony of a profane Officer to the worth of piotis Sailors. 
 
 "Mr Editor In the mouth of two or three witnesses a truth shall be 
 established. I recently met with a pleasing confirmation of a narrative, 
 stated some time since in your Magazine. I was surprised by a visit from an 
 old acquaintance of mine the other day, who is now an officer of rank in his 
 Majesty's navy. In the course of conversation, I was shocked at the pro- 
 fane oaths that perpetually interrupted his sentences ; and took an oppor- 
 tunity to express my regret that such language should be so common among 
 so valuable a body of men. ' Sir (said he, still interspersing many solemn 
 imprecations), an officer cannot live at sea without swearing; not one of my 
 men would mind a word without an oath ; it is common sea-language. If 
 we were not to swear, the rascals would take us for lubbers, stare in our 
 faces, and leave us to do our commands ouiselves. I never knew but one 
 exception ; and that was extraordinary. I declare, believe me 'tis true 
 (suspecting that I might not credit it), there was a set of fellows called 
 Methodists, on board the Victory, Lord Nelson's ship (to be sure he was 
 rather a religious man himself !), and those men never wanted swearing at. 
 The dogs were the best seamen on board. Every man knew his duty, and 
 every man did his duty. They used to meet together and sing hymns ; and 
 nobody dared molest them. The commander would not have suffered it, 
 had they attempted it. They were allowed a mess by themselves ; and 
 never mixed with the other men. I have often heard them singing away 
 myself; and 'tis true, I assure you, but not one of them was either killed or 
 wounded at the battle of Trafalgar, though they did their duty as well as 
 any man. No, not one of the psalm-singing gentry was even hurt ; and 
 there the fellows are swimming away in the Bay of Biscay at this very time, 
 
 singing like the d . They are now under a new commander ; but still 
 
 arc allowed the same privileges, and mess by themselves. These were the 
 only fellows that I ever knew do their duty without swearing ; and I will
 
 108 METHODISM. 
 
 do them the justice to say they do it.' J. C." Ev. Mag. pp. 119, 
 1 20. 
 
 These people are spread over the face of the whole earth in the shape of 
 missionaries. Upon the subject of missions we shall say very little or no- 
 thing at present, because we reserve it for another article in a subsequent 
 Number. But we cannot help remarking the magnitude of the collections 
 made in favour of the missionaries at the Methodistical chapels, when com- 
 pared with the collections for any common object of charity in the orthodox 
 churches and chapels. 
 
 " R eligions Tract Society. A most satisfactory Report was presented by 
 the Committee ; from which it appeared, that, since the commencement of 
 the Institution in the year 1 799, upwards of Four millions of Religious 
 Tracts have been issued under the auspices of the Society ; and that con- 
 siderably more than one fourth of that number have been sold during the 
 last year." Ev. Mag. p. 284. 
 
 These tracts are dropped in villages by the Methodists, and thus every 
 chance for conversion afforded to the common people. There is a proposal 
 in one of the numbers of the volumes before us, that travellers, for every 
 pound they spend on the road, should fling one shilling's worth of these 
 tracts out of the chaise window ; thus taxing his pleasures at 5 per cent. 
 for the purposes of doing good. 
 
 " Every Christian who expects the protection and blessing of God ought 
 to take with him as many shillings' worth, at least, of cheap Tracts to throw 
 on the road and leave at inns, as he takes out pounds to expend on himself 
 and family. This is really but a trifling sacrifice. It is a highly reasonable 
 one ; and one which God will accept. " Ev. Mag. p. 405. 
 
 It is part of their policy to have a great change of Ministers. 
 
 " Same day, the Rev. W. Haward, from Hoxton Academy, was ordained 
 over the Independent church at Rendham, Suffolk. Mr Pickles, of Wai- 
 pole, began with prayer and reading : Mr Price, of Woodbridge, delivered 
 the introductory discourse, and asked the questions ; Mr Dennant, of 
 Halesworth, offered the ordination prayer ; Mr Shufflebottom of Bungay, 
 gave the charge from Acts xx. 28 ; Mr Vincent, of Deal, the general prayer ; 
 and Mr Walford, of Yarmouth, preached to the people from 2 Phil. ii. 
 \6."Ev. Mag. p. 429. 
 
 Chapels opened. "Hambledon, Bucks, Sept. 22. Eighteen months ago 
 this parish was destitute of the Gospel : the people have now one of the 
 Rev. G. Collison's students, the Rev. Mr Eastmead, settled among them. 
 Mr English, of Wooburn, and Mr Frey, preached on the occasion ; and 
 Mr Jones, of London, Mr Churchill, of Henley, Mr Redford, of Windsor, 
 and Mr Barratt, now of Petersfield, prayed." Ev. Mag. p. 533. 
 
 Methodism in his Majesty's ship Tonnant a letter from the Sail-maker. 
 
 "It is with great satisfaction that I can now inform you God has deigned, 
 in a yet greater degree, to own the weak efforts of his servant to turn many 
 from Satan to himself. Many are called here, as is plain to be seen by their 
 pensive looks and deep sighs. And if they would be obedient to the 
 heavenly call instead of grieving the Spirit of grace, I dare say we should 
 soon have near half the ship's company brought to God. I doubt not, 
 however, but, as I have cast my bread upon the waters, it will be found
 
 METHODISM. 109 
 
 after many days. Our 13 are now increased to upwards of 30. Surely the 
 Lord delighteth not in the death of him that dieth." Meth. Mag. p. 188. 
 
 It appears also, from p. 193 Meth. Mag. that the same principles prevail 
 on board his Majesty's ship Sea-horse, 44 guns. And in one part of the 
 Evan. Mag. great hopes are entertained of the 25th regiment. We believe 
 this is the number : but we quote this fact from memory. 
 
 We must remember, in addition to these trifling specimens of their active 
 disposition, that the Methodists have found a powerful party in the House 
 of Commons, who, by the neutrality which they affect, and partly adhere 
 to, are courted both by ministers and opposition ; that they have gained 
 complete possession of the India House ; and under the pretence, or per- 
 haps with the serious intention, of educating young people for India, will 
 take care to introduce (as much as they dare without provoking attention) 
 their own particular tenets. In fact, one thing must always be taken for 
 granted respecting these people, that, wherever they gain a footing, or 
 whatever be the institutions to which they give birth, proselytismivill be their 
 main object ; every thing else is a mere instrument this is their principal 
 aim. When every proselyte is not only an addition to their temporal power, 
 but when the act of conversion which gains a vote, saves (as they suppose) 
 a soul from destruction, it is quite needless to state, that every faculty of 
 their minds will be dedicated to this most important of all temporal and 
 eternal concerns. 
 
 Their attack upon the Church is not merely confined to publications ; it 
 is generally understood that they have a very considerable fund for the pur- 
 chase of livings, to which, of course, ministers of their own profession are 
 always presented. 
 
 Upon the foregoing facts, and upon the spirit evinced by these extracts, 
 we shall make a few comments. 
 
 i. It is obvious, that this description of Christians entertain very erroneous 
 and dangerous notions of the present judgments of God. A belief, that 
 Providence interferes in all the little actions of our lives, refers all merit and 
 demerit to bad and good fortune ; and causes the successful man to be 
 always considered as a good man, and the unhappy man as the object of 
 divine vengeance. It furnishes ignorant and designing men with a power 
 which is sure to be abused : the cry of, *. judgment, a judgment, it is always 
 easy to make, but not easy to resist. It encourages the grossest supersti- 
 tions ; for if the Deity rewards and punishes on every slight occasion, it is 
 quite impossible, but that such a helpless being as man will set himself at 
 work to discover the will of Heaven in the appearances of outward nature, 
 and to apply all the phenomena of thunder, lightning, wind, and every 
 striking appearance to the regulation of his conduct ; as the poor Methodist, 
 when he rode into Piccadilly in a thunder storm, and imagined that all 
 the uproar of the elements was a mere hint to him not to preach at Mr 
 Romaine's chapel. Hence a great deal of error, and a great deal of secret 
 misery. This doctrine of a theocracy must necessarily place an excessive 
 power in the hands of the clergy ; it applies so instantly and so tremendously 
 to men's hopes and fears, that it must make the priest omnipotent over the 
 people, as it always has done where it has been established. It has a great 
 tendency to check human exertions, and to prevent the employment of those 
 secondary means of effecting an object which Providence has placed in our 
 power. The doctrine of the immediate and perpetual interference of Divine 
 Providence, is not true. If two men travel the same road, the one to rob, 
 the other to relieve a fellow-creature who is starving j will any but the most 
 fanatic contend, that they do not both run the same chance of falling over
 
 1 10 METHODISM. 
 
 a stone, and breaking their legs ? and is it not matter of fact, that the robber 
 often returns safe, and : the just man sustains the injury? Have not the 
 soundest divines of both churches always urged this unequal distribution of 
 good and evil, in the present state, as one of the strongest natural arguments 
 for a future state of retribution ? Have not they contended, and well and 
 admirably contended, that the supposition of such a state is absolutely 
 necessary to our notion of the justice of God, absolutely necessary to 
 restore order to that moral confusion which we all observe and deplore in 
 the present world ? The man who places religion upon a false basis is the 
 greatest enemy to religion. If victory is always to the just and good, how 
 is the fortune of impious conquerors to be accounted for ? Why do they 
 erect dynasties, and found families which last for centuries ? The reflecting 
 mind whom you have instructed in this manner, and for present effect only, 
 naturally comes upon you hereafter with difficulties of this sort ; he finds he 
 has been deceived ; and you will soon discover that, in breeding up a fanatic, 
 you have unwittingly laid the foundation of an atheist. The honest and the 
 orthodox method is to prepare young people for the world, as it actually 
 exists ; to tell them that they will often find vice perfectly successful, virtue 
 exposed to a long train of afflictions ; that they must bear this patiently, 
 and look to another world for its rectification. 
 
 2. The second doctrine which it is necessary to notice among the 
 Methodists, is the doctrine of inward impulse and emotions, which, it is 
 quite plain, must lead, if universally insisted upon, and preached among 
 the common people, to every species of folly and enormity. When a human 
 being believes that his internal feelings are the monitions of God, and that 
 these monitions must govern his conduct ; and when a great stress is pur- 
 posely laid upon these inward feelings in all the discourses from the pulpit ; it 
 is, of course, impossible to say to what a pitch of extravagance mankind 
 may not be carried, under the influence of such dangerous doctrines. 
 
 3. The Methodists hate pleasure and amusements ; no theatre, no cards, 
 no dancing, no punchinello, no dancing dogs, no blind fiddlers ; all the 
 amusements of the rich and of the poor must disappear, wherever these 
 gloomy people get a footing. It is not the abuse of pleasure which they 
 attack, but the interspersion of pleasure, however much it is guarded by good 
 sense and moderation ; it is not only wicked to hear the licentious plays of 
 Congreve, but wicked to hear Henry the Fifth, or the School for Scandal ; 
 it is not only dissipated to run about to all the parties in London and 
 Edinburgh, but dancing is no\.Jitfor a being -who is preparing himself for 
 Eternity. Ennui, wretchedness, melancholy, groans and sighs, are the 
 offerings which these unhappy men make to a Deity, who has covered the 
 earth with gay colours, and scented it with rich perfumes ; and shown us, 
 by the plan and order of his works, that he has given to man something 
 better than a bare existence, and 'scattered over his creation a thousand 
 superfluous joys, which are totally unnecessary to the mere support of life. 
 
 4. The Methodists lay very little stress upon practical righteousness. 
 They do not say to their people, Do not be deceitful ; do not be idle ; get 
 rid of your bad passions ; or at least (if they do say these things) they say 
 them very seldom. Not that they preach faith without works ; for if they 
 told the people, that they might rob and murder with impunity, the civil 
 magistrate must be compelled to interfere with such doctrine : but they say 
 a great deal about faith, and very little about works. What are commonly 
 called the mysterious parts of our religion, are brought into the fore-ground, 
 much more than the doctrines which lead to practice ; and this among the 
 lowest of the community. 
 
 The Methodists have hitherto been accused of dissenting from the Church
 
 METHODISM. ill 
 
 of England. This, as far as relates to mere subscription to articles, is not 
 true ; but they differ in their choice of the articles upon which they dilate 
 and expand, and to which they appear to give the preference, from the stress 
 which they place upon them. There is nothing heretical in saying, that 
 God sometimes intervenes with his special providence ; but these people 
 differ from the Established Church, in the degree in which they insist upon 
 this doctrine. In the hands of a man of sense and education, it is a safe 
 doctrine ; in the management of the Methodists, we have seen how ridicu- 
 lous and degrading it becomes. In the same manner, a clergyman of the 
 Church of England would not do his duty, if he did not insist upon the 
 necessity of faith, as well as of good works ; but as he believes that it is 
 much more easy to give credit to doctrines than to live well, he labours most 
 in those points where human nature is the most liable to prove defective. 
 Because he does so, he is accused of giving up the articles of his faith, by 
 men who have their partialities also in doctrine ; but partialities, not founded 
 upon the same sound discretion, and knowledge of human nature. 
 
 5. The Methodists are always desirous of making men more religious 
 than it is possible, from the constitution of human nature, to make them. 
 I f they could succeed as much as they wish to succeed, there would be at 
 once an end of delving and spinning, and of every exertion of human in- 
 dustry. Men must eat, and drink, and work ; and if you wish to fix upon 
 them high and elevated notions, as the ordinary furniture of their minds, 
 you do these two things ; you drive men of warm temperaments mad, 
 and you introduce, in the rest of the world, a low and shocking familiarity 
 with words and images, which every real friend to religion would wish to 
 keep sacred. The friends of the dear Redeemer -who are in the habit of visit- 
 ing tJte Isle of Thaiiet (as in the extract we have quoted) Is it possible 
 that this mixture of the most awful, with the most familiar images, sa 
 common among Methodists now, and with the enthusiasts in the time of 
 Cromwell, must not, in the end, divest religion of all the deep and solemn 
 impressions which it is calculated to produce ? In a man of common im- 
 agination (as we have before observed), the terror, and the feeling which it 
 first excited, must necessarily be soon separated : but, where the fervour of 
 impression is long preserved, piety ends in Bedlam. Accordingly, there is 
 not a madhouse in England, where a considerable part of the patients have 
 not been driven to insanity by the extravagance of these people. We 
 cannot enter such places without seeing a number of honest artisans, covered 
 with blankets, and calling themselves angels and apostles, who, if they had 
 remained contented with the instruction of men of learning and education, 
 would still have been sound masters of their own trade, sober Christians, 
 and useful members of society. 
 
 6. It is impossible not to observe how directly all the doctrine of the 
 Methodists is calculated to gain power among the poor and ignorant. To 
 say, that the Deity governs this world by general rules, and that we must 
 wait for another and a final scene of existence, before vice meets with its 
 merited punishment, and virtue with its merited reward ; to preach this up 
 daily, would not add a single votary to the Tabernacle, nor sell a Number 
 of the Methodistical Magazine ; but, to publish an account of a man who 
 was cured of scrofula by a single sermon of Providence destroying the 
 innkeeper at Garstang for appointing a cock-fight near the Tabernacle ; this 
 promptness of judgment and immediate execution is so much like human 
 justice, and so much better adapted to vulgar capacities, that the system is 
 at once admitted, as soon as any one can be found who is impudent or 
 ignorant enough to teach it ; and, being onc<j admitted, it produces too 
 strong an effect upon the passions to be easily relinquished. The case is
 
 H2 METHODISM. 
 
 the same with the doctrine" of inward impulse, or, as they term it, experi- 
 ence. If you preach up to ploughmen and artizans, that every singular 
 feeling which comes across them is a visitation of the Divine Spirit can 
 there be any difficulty under the influence of this nonsense, in converting 
 these simple creatures into active and mysterious fools, and making them 
 your slaves for life ? It is not possible to raise up any dangerous enthusiasm, 
 by telling men to be just, and good, and charitable ; but keep this part of 
 Christianity out of sight and talk long and enthusiastically, before ignorant 
 people, of the mysteries of our religion, and you will not fail to attract a 
 crowd of followers : verily the Tabernacle loveth not that which is simple, 
 intelligible, and leadeth to good sound practice. 
 
 Having endeavoured to point out the spirit which pervades these people, 
 we shall say a few words upon the causes, the effects, and the cure of this 
 calamity. The fanaticism so prevalent in the present day, is one of those 
 evils from which society is never wholly exempt : but which bursts out at 
 different periods, with peculiar violence, and sometimes overwhelms every 
 thing in its course. The last eruption took place about a century and a 
 half ago, and destroyed both Church and Throne with its tremendous force. 
 Though irresistible, it was short ; enthusiasm spent its force the usual 
 reaction took place ; and England was deluged with ribaldry and indecency, 
 because it had been worried with fanatical restrictions. By degrees, how- 
 ever, it was found out, that orthodoxy and loyalty might be secured by 
 other methods than licentious conduct and immodest conversation. The 
 public morals improved ; and there appeared as much good sense and 
 moderation upon the subject of religion as ever can be expected from man- 
 kind in large masses. Still, however, the mischief which the Puritans had 
 done was not forgotten ; a general suspicion prevailed of the dangers of 
 religious enthusiasm ; and the fanatical preacher wanted his accustomed 
 power among a people recently recovered from a religious war, and guarded 
 by songs, proverbs, popular stories, and the general tide of humour and 
 opinion, against all excesses of that nature. About the middle of the last 
 century, however, the character of the genuine fanatic was a good deal 
 forgotten ; and the memory of the civil wars worn away ; the field was 
 clear for extravagance in piety ; and causes, which must always produce an 
 immense influence upon the mind of man, were left to their own unimpeded 
 operations. Religion is so noble and powerful a consideration it is so 
 buoyant and so insubmergible that it may be made, by fanatics, to carry 
 with it any degree of error and of perilous absurdity. In this instance 
 Messrs Whitfield and Wesley happened to begin. They were men of con- 
 siderable talents ; they observed the common decorums of life ; they did 
 not run naked into the streets, or pretend to the prophetical character ; 
 and therefore they were not committed to Newgate. They preached with 
 great energy to weak people ; who first stared then listened then be- 
 lieved then felt the inward feeling of grace, and became as foolish as their 
 teachers could possibly wish them to be : in short, folly ran its ancient 
 course, and human nature evinced itself to be what it always has been under 
 similar circumstances. The great and permanent cause, therefore, of the 
 increase of Methodism, is the cause which has given birth to fanaticism in 
 all ages, the facility of mingling human errors -with the fundamental truths 
 of religion. The formerly imperfect residence of the clergy may, perhaps, 
 in some trifling degree, have aided this source of Methodism. But unless a 
 man of education, and a gentleman, could stoop to such disingenuous arts 
 as the Methodist preachers, unless he hears heavenly music all of a sudden, 
 and enjoys sweet experiences, it is quite impossible that he can contend 
 against such artists as these. More active than they are at present the
 
 METHODISM. 113 
 
 clergy might perhaps be ; but the calmness and moderation of an Establish- 
 ment can never possibly be a match for sectarian activity. If the common 
 people are ennui 'd with the fine acting of Mrs Siddons, they go to Sadler's 
 Wells. The subject is too serious for ludicrous comparisons : but the 
 Tabernacle really is to the church, what Sadler's Wells is to the Drama. 
 There, popularity is gained by vaulting and tumbling, by low arts, which 
 the regular clergy are not too idle to have recourse to, but too dignified : 
 their institutions are chaste and severe, they endeavour to do that which, 
 upon the whole, and for a great number of years, will be found to be the 
 most admirable and the most useful : it is no part of their plan to descend 
 to small artifices, for the sake of present popularity and effect. The re- 
 ligion of the common people under the government of the Church may 
 remain as it is for ever ; enthusiasm must be progressive, or it will expire. 
 
 It is probable that the dreadful scenes which have lately been acted in 
 the world, and the dangers to which we are exposed, have increased the 
 numbers of the Methodists. To what degree will Methodism extend in 
 this country ? This question is not easy to answer. That it has rapidly 
 increased within these few years, we have no manner of doubt ; and we 
 confess we cannot see what is likely to impede its progress. The party 
 which it has formed in the Legislature ; and the artful neutrality with 
 which they give respectability to their small number, the talents of some 
 of this party, and the unimpeached excellence of their characters, all make 
 it probable that fanaticism will increase rather than diminish. The Method- 
 ists have made an alarming inroad into the Church, and they are attacking 
 the army and navy. The principality of Wales, and the East-India Com- 
 pany, they have already acquired. All mines and subterraneous places 
 belong to them ; they creep into hospitals and small schools, and so work 
 their way upwards. It is the custom of the religious neutrals to beg all the 
 little livings, particularly in the north of England, from the minister for the 
 time being ; and from these fixed points they make incursions upon the 
 happiness and common sense of the vicinage. We most sincerely deprecate 
 such an event ; but it will excite in us no manner of surprise, if a period 
 arrives when the churches of the sober and orthodox part of the English 
 clergy are completely deserted by the middling and lower classes of the 
 community. We do not prophesy any such event ; but we contend that it 
 is not impossible, hardly improbable. If such, in future, should be the 
 situation of this country, it is impossible to say what political animosities 
 may not be ingrafted upon this marked and dangerous division of mankind 
 into the godly and the ungodly. At all events, we are quite sure that happi- 
 ness will be destroyed, reason degraded, sound religion banished from the 
 world ; and that when fanaticism becomes too foolish and too prurient to 
 be endured (as is at last sure to be the case), it will be succeeded by a long 
 period of the grossest immorality, atheism, and debauchery. 
 
 We are not sure that this evil admits of any cure, or of any considerable 
 palliation. We ,nost sincerely hope that the government of this country 
 will never be guilty of such indiscretion as to tamper with the Toleration 
 Act, or to attempt to put down these follies by the intervention of the law. 
 If experience has taught us any thing, it is the absurdity of controlling 
 men's notions of eternity by acts of Parliament. Something may perhaps 
 be done, in the way of ridicule, towards turning the popular opinion. It 
 may be as well to extend the privileges of the dissenters to the members of 
 the Church of England ; for, as the law now stands, any man who dissents 
 from the established church may open a place of worship where he pleases. 
 No orthodox clergyman can do so, without the consent of the parson of the 
 pariih, who always refuses, because he does not choose to have his mono- 
 
 H
 
 114 INDIAN MISSIONS. 
 
 poly disturbed ; and refuses in parishes where there are not accommodations 
 for one half of the persons who wish to frequent the Church of England, 
 and in instances where he knows that the chapels from which he excludes 
 the established worship will be immediately occupied by sectaries. It may 
 be as well to encourage in the early education of the clergy, as Mr Ingram 
 recommends, a better and more animated method of preaching ; and it may 
 be necessary, hereafter, if the evil gets to a great height, to relax the articles 
 of the English church, and to admit a greater variety of Christians within 
 the pale. The greatest and best of all remedies, is perhaps the education 
 of the poor ; we are astonished, that the Established Church in England 
 is not awake to this means of arresting the progress of Methodism. Of 
 course, none of these things will be done ; nor is it clear, if they were done, 
 that they would do much good. Whatever happens, we are for common 
 sense and orthodoxy. Insolence, servile politics, and the spirit of persecu- 
 tion, we condemn and attack, whenever we observe them ; but to the learn- 
 ing, the moderation, and the rational piety of the Establishment, we most 
 earnestly wish a decided victory over the nonsense, the melancholy, and 
 the madness of the tabernacle.* 
 
 God send that our wishes be not in vain 1 
 
 INDIAN MISSIONS. (E. REVIEW, 1808.) 
 
 Considerations on the Policy of communicating the Knowledge of Christianity to the 
 
 Natives in India. By a late Resident in Bengal. London : Hatchard. 1807. 
 An Address to the Chairman of the East India Company, occasioned by Mr Twining" s 
 
 Letter to that Gentleman. By the Rev. JOHN OWEN. London: Hatchard. 
 A Letter to the Chairman of the East India Company, on the Danger of interfering in 
 
 the religious Opinions of the Natives of India. By THOMAS TWINING. London : 
 
 Ridgeway. 
 
 Vindication of the Hindoos. By a Bengal Officer. London : RodweiL 
 Letter to John Scott Waring. London : Hatchard. 
 Cunningham's Christianity in India. London : Hatchard. 
 Answer to Major Scott IVaring. Extracted from the Christian Observer. 
 Observations on the present State of the East India Company. By MAJORJ SCOTT 
 
 WARING. Ridgeway. London. 
 
 AT two o'clock in the morning, July the lOth, 1806, the EuVopean barracks, 
 at Vellore, containing then four complete companies of the ogth regiment, 
 were surrounded by two battalions of Sepoys in the Company's service, 
 who poured in a heavy fire of musketry, at every door and window, upon 
 the soldiers : at the same time the European sentries, the soldiers at the 
 main-guard, and the sick in the hospital, were put to death ; die officers' 
 houses were ransacked, and every body found in them murdered. Upon 
 the arrival of the igth Light Dragoons under Colonel Gillespie, the Sepoys 
 were immediately attacked ; 600 cut down upon the spot ; and 200 taken 
 from their hiding places, and shot. There perished, of the four European 
 companies, about 164, besides officers ; and many British officers of the 
 native troops were murdered by the insurgents. 
 
 Subsequent to this explosion, there was a mutiny at Nundydroog ; and, 
 
 * There is one circumstance to which we have neg]ected to advert in the proper place, 
 the dreadful pillage of the earnings of the poor which is made by the Methodists. A 
 case is mentioned in one of the Numbers of these two magazines for 1807, of a poor man 
 with a family, earning only twenty-eight shillings a week, who has made 
 if te* guineas tacA to the missionary J\tnd I
 
 INDIAN MISSIONS. 1 1 5 
 
 in one day 450 Mahomedan Sepoys were disarmed, and turned out of the 
 fort, on the ground of an intended massacre. It appeared, also, from the 
 information of the commanding officer at Tritchinopoly, that, at that period, 
 a spirit of disaffection had manifested itself at Bangalore and other places ; 
 and seemed to gam ground in every direction. On the 3d of December, 
 1806, the government of Madras issued the following proclamation : 
 
 "A PROCLAMATION. 
 
 " The Right Hon. the Governor in Council, having observed that, in 
 some late instances, an extraordinary degree of agitation has prevailed 
 among several corps of the native army of this coast, it has been his Lord- 
 ship's particular endeavour to ascertain the motives which may have led to 
 conduct so different from that which formerly distinguished the native army. 
 From this inquiry it has appeared that many persons of evil intention have 
 endeavoured, for malicious purposes, to impress upon the native troops a 
 belief that it is the wish of the British Government to convert them by 
 forcible means to Christianity ; and his Lordship in Council has observed 
 with concern, that such malicious reports have been believed by many of 
 the native troops. 
 
 " The Right Hon. the Governor in Council, therefore, deems it proper, 
 in this public manner, to repeat to the native troops his assurance, that the 
 same respect which has been invariably shown by the British Government 
 for their religion and for their customs will be always continued ; and that 
 no interruption will be given to any native, whether Hindoo or Mussulman, 
 in the practice of his religious ceremonies. 
 
 "His Lordship in Council desires that the native troops will not give 
 belief to the idle rumours which are circulated by enemies of their happi- 
 ness, who endeavour, with the basest designs, to weaken the confidence of 
 the troops in the British Government. His Lordship hi Council desires 
 that the native troops will remember the constant attention and humanity 
 which have been shown by the British Government in providing for their 
 comfort, by augmenting the pay of the native officers and Sepoys ; by 
 allowing liberal pensions to those who have done their duty faithfully ; by 
 making ample provision for the families of those who may have died in 
 battle : and by receiving their childrenfmto the service of the Honourable 
 Company, to be treated with the same care and bounty as their father had 
 experienced. 
 
 " The Right Hon. the Governor in Council trusts that the native troops, 
 remembering these circumstances, will be sensible of the happiness of their 
 situation, which is greater than what the troops of any other part of the 
 world enjoy ; and that they will continue to observe the same good conduct 
 for which they were distinguished in the days of Gen. Lawrence, of Sir 
 Eyre Coote, and of other renowned heroes. 
 
 " The native troops must at the same time be sensible, that if they should 
 fail in the duties of their allegiance, and should show themselves disobedient 
 to their officers, their conduct will not fail to receive merited punishment, as 
 the British government is not less prepared to punish the guilty than to protect 
 and distinguish those who are deserving of its favour. 
 
 "It is directed that this paper be translated with care into the Tamul, 
 Telinga, and Hindoostany languages ; and that copies of it be circulated to 
 each native battalion, of which the European officers are enjoined and ordered 
 to be careful hi making it known to every native officer and Sepoy under his 
 command. 
 
 " It is also directed, that copies of the paper be circulated to all the magi*
 
 Il6 INDIAN MISSIONS. 
 
 trates and collectors under this government, for the purpose of being fully 
 understood in all parts of the country. 
 
 " Published by order of the Right Hon. the Governor in Council. 
 
 " G. BUCHAN, Chief Secretary to Government. 
 
 " Dated in Fort St George, 3</ Dec. 1806." 
 
 Scott Waring 1 * Preface, iii. v. 
 
 So late as March, 1807, three months after the date of this proclamation, 
 so universal was the dread of a general revolt among the native troops, that 
 the British officers attached to the native troops constantly slept with loaded 
 pistols under their pillows. 
 
 It appears that an attempt had been made by the military men at Madras, 
 to change the shape of the Sepoy turban into something resembling the 
 helmet of the light infantry of Europe, and to prevent the native troops from 
 wearing on their foreheads the marks characteristic of their various castes. 
 The sons of the late Tippoo, with many noble Mussulmans deprived of 
 office at that time, resided in the fortress of Vellore, and in all probability 
 contributed very materially to excite, or to inflame those suspicions of designs 
 against their religion, which are mentioned in the proclamation of the 
 Madras Government, and generally known to have been a principal cause 
 of the insurrection at Vellore. It was this insurrection which first gave 
 birth to the question upon missions to India ; and before we deliver any 
 opinion upon the subject itself, it will be necessary to state what had been 
 done in former periods towards disseminating the truths of the gospel in 
 India, and what new exertions had been made about the period at which 
 this event took place. 
 
 More than a century has elapsed since the first Protestant missionaries 
 appeared in India. Two young divines, selected by the University of 
 Halle, were sent out in this capacity by the King of Denmark, and arrived 
 at the Danish settlement of Tranquebar in 1706. The mission thus begun, 
 has been ever since continued, and has been assisted by the Society for the 
 Promotion of Christian Knowledge established in this country. The same 
 Society has, for many years, employed German missionaries, of the Lutheran 
 persuasion, for propagating the doctrines of Christianity among the natives 
 of India. In 1 799, their number was six ; it is now reduced to five. 
 
 The Scriptures translated into the Tamulic language, which is vernacular 
 in the southern parts of the peninsula, have, for more than half a century, 
 been printed at the Tranquebar press, for the use of Danish missionaries and 
 their converts. A printing press, indeed, was established at that place by 
 the two first Danish missionaries ; and, in 1714, the Gospel of St Matthew, 
 translated into the dialect of Malabar, was printed there. Not a line of the 
 Scriptures, in any of the languages current on the coast, had issued from the 
 Bengal press on September 13, 1806. 
 
 It does appear, however, about the period of the mutiny at Vellore, and 
 a few years previous to it, that the number of the missionaries on the coast 
 had been increased. In 1804, the Missionary Society, a recent institution, 
 sent a new mission to the coast of Coromandel ; from whose papers, we 
 think it right to lay before our readers the following extracts : * 
 
 "March 3is(, 1805. Waited on A. B. He says, Government seems to 
 be very willing to forward our views. We may stay at Madras as long as we 
 
 * There are six societies in England for converting Heathens to the Christian religion. 
 I. Society for Missions to Africa and tkt East : of which Messrs Wilberforce, Grant, 
 Parry, and Thorntons, are the principal encouragers. ""2. Methodist Society for Missions. 
 3. Anabaptist Society for Missions. 4. Missionary Society. 5. Society for Promoting 
 Christian Knowledge. 6. Moravian Missions. They all publish their proceedings.
 
 INDIAN MISSIONS. 1 1 7 
 
 please ; and when we intend to go into the country, on our application to 
 the governor by letter, he would issue orders for granting us passports, which 
 Would supersede the necessity of a public petition. Lord's Day." Trans, 
 of Miss. Society, II. p. 365. 
 
 In a letter from Brother Ringletaube to Brother Cran, he thus expresses 
 himself : 
 
 " The passports Government has promised you are so valuable, that I 
 should not think a journey too troublesome to obtain one for myself, if I 
 could not get it through your interference. In hopes that your application 
 will suffice to obtain one for me, I inclose you my Gravesend passport, that 
 will give you the particulars concerning my person." Trans, cf Miss. 
 Society, II. p. 369. 
 
 They obtain their passports from Government ; and the plan and objects 
 of their mission are printed, free of expense, at the Government press. 
 
 " 1805. June 27. Dr sent for one of us to consult with him on 
 
 particular business. He accordingly went. The Doctor told him, that he 
 had read the publications which the brethren lately brought from Eng- 
 land, and was so much delighted with the report of the Directors, that he 
 wished 200 or more copies of it were printed, together with an introduction, 
 giving an account of the rise and progress of the Missionary Society, in order 
 to be distributed in the different settlements in India. He offered to print 
 them at the Government press free of expense. On his return, we consulted 
 with our two brethren on the subject, and resolved to accept the Doctor's 
 favour. We have begun to prepare it for the press." Trans, of Miss. 
 Society, II. p. 394. 
 
 In page 89 of the l8th Number, Vol. III., the Missionaries write thus to 
 the Society in London, about a fortnight before the massacre at Vellore : 
 
 " Every encouragement is offered us by the established government of the 
 country. Hitherto they have granted us every request, whether solicited by 
 ourselves or others. Their permission to come to this place j their allowing 
 us an acknowledgment for preaching in the fort, which sanctions us hi our 
 work ; together with the grant which they have lately given us to hold a 
 large spot of ground every way suited for missionary labours, are objects of 
 the last importance, and remove every impediment which might be appre- 
 hended from this source. We trust not to an arm of flesh ; but when we 
 reflect on these things, we cannot but behold the loving-kindness of the 
 Lord." 
 
 In a letter of the same date, we learn, from Brother Ringletaube, the 
 following fact : 
 
 "The Dewan of Travancore sent me word, that if I despatched one of 
 our Christians to him, he would give me leave to build a church at Magi- 
 lancly. Accordingly, I shall send in a short time. For this important 
 
 service, our Society is indebted alone to Colonel without -whose 
 
 determined and fearless interposition, none of their missionaries would have 
 been able to set afoot in that country." 
 
 In page 381, Vol. II., Dr Kerr, one of the chaplains on the Madras 
 establishment, baptizes a Mussulman who had applied to him for that pur- 
 pose : upon the first application, it appears that Dr Kerr hesitated ; but 
 upon the Mussulman threatening to rise against him on the day of judgment, 
 Pr Kerr complies.
 
 Il8 INDIAN MISSIONS. 
 
 It appears that in the Tinevelly district, about a year before the massacre 
 of Vellore, not only riots, but very serious persecutions of the converted 
 natives had taken place, from the jealousy evinced by the Hindoos and 
 Mussulmen at the progress of the gospel. 
 
 " ' Rev. Sir, I thought you sufficiently acquainted with the late vexations 
 of the Christians in those parts, arising from the blind zeal of the Heathens 
 and Mahometans ; the latter viewing with a jealous eye the progress of the 
 gospel, and trying to destroy, or at least to clog it, by all the crafty means 
 in their power. I therefore did not choose to trouble you ; but as no stop 
 has been put to those grievances, things go on from bad to worse, as you 
 will see from what has happened at Hickadoe. The Catechist has provi- 
 dentially escaped from that outrageous attempt, by the assistance of ten or 
 twelve of our Christians, and has made good his flight to Palamcotta ; 
 whilst the exasperated mob, coming from Padeckepalloe, hovered round the 
 village, plundering the houses of the Christians, and ill-treating their 
 families, by kicking, flogging, and other bad usage ; these monsters not 
 even forbearing to attack, strip, rob, and miserably beat the Catechist 
 Jesuadian, who, partly from illness and partly through fear, had shut him- 
 self up in his house. I have heard various accounts of this sad event ; but 
 yesterday the Catechist himself called on me, and told me the truth of it. 
 From what he says, it is plain that the Manikar of Wayrom (a Black peace- 
 officer of that place) has contrived the whole affair, with a view to vex the 
 Christians. I doubt not that these facts have been reported to the Rev. Mr 
 K. by the country-priest ; and if I mention them to you, it is with a view to 
 show in what a forlorn state the poor Christians hereabout are, and how 
 desirable a thing it would be, if the Rev. Mr Ringletaube were to come 
 hither as soon as possible ; then tranquillity would be restored, and future 
 molestations prevented. I request you to communicate this letter to him 
 with my compliments. I am, Sir, c. Manapaar, June 8, 1805.' 
 
 '"This letter left a deep impression on my mind, especially when I re- 
 ceived a fuller account of the troubles of the Christians. By the Black 
 underlings of the collectors, they are frequently driven from their homes, 
 put in the stocks, and exposed for a fortnight together to the heat of the 
 raging sun, and the chilling dews of the night, all because there is no 
 European Missionary to bring their complaints to the ear of Government, 
 who, I am happy to add, have never been deficient in their duty of procur- 
 ing redress, where the Christians have had to complain of real injuries. One 
 of the most trying cases, mentioned in a postscript of the above letter, is that 
 of Christians being flogged till they Consent to hold the torches to the 
 Heathen Idols. The letter says, ' The Catechist of Collesigrapatuam has 
 informed me, that the above Manikar has forced a Christian, of the Villally 
 caste, who attends at our church, to sweep the temple of the Idol. A 
 severe flogging was given on this occasion." From such facts, the post- 
 script continues, ' You may guess at the deplorable situation of our fellow- 
 believers, as long as every Manikar thinks he has a right to do them what 
 violence he pleases.' 
 
 " It must be observed, to the glory of that Saviour who is strong in weak- 
 ness, that many of the Neophytes in that district have withstood all these 
 fiery trials with firmness. Many also, it is to be lamented, have fallen off 
 in the evil day, and at least so far yielded to the importunity of their perse- 
 cutors, as again to daub their faces and bodies with paint and ashes, after 
 the manner of the Heathen. How great this falling off has been, I am not 
 yet able to judge. But I am happy to add, that the Board of Revenue has
 
 INDIAN MISSIONS. ng 
 
 issued the strictest orders against all unprovoked persecution." Trans, of 
 Miss. Society, II. 431433. 
 
 The following quotations evince how far from indifferent the natives are 
 to the progress of the Christian religion in the East : 
 
 " 1805. Oct. IO. A respectable Brahman in the Company's employ 
 called on us. We endeavoured to point out to him the important object of 
 our coming to India, and mentioned some of the great and glorious truths 
 of the gospel, which we wished to impart in the native language. He 
 seemed much hurt, and told us the Gentoo religion was of a divine origin, 
 as well as the Christian ; that heaven was like a palace which has many 
 doors, at which people may enter ; that variety is pleasing to God, &c. 
 and a number of other arguments which we hear every day. On taking 
 leave, he said, ' The Company has got the country (for the English are 
 very clever), and perhaps, they may succeed in depriving the Brahmans of 
 their power, and let you have it.' 
 
 "November i6t/i. Received a letter from the Rev. Dr Taylor ; we are 
 happy to find he is safely arrived at Calcutta, and that our Baptist brethren 
 are labouring with increasing success. The natives around us are astonished 
 to hear this news. It is bad news to the Brahmans, who' seem unable to 
 account for it. They say the world is going to ruin. Trans, of Miss. 
 Society, II. 442 and 446. 
 
 " "While living in the town, our house was watched by the natives from 
 morning to night, to see if any persons came to converse about religion. 
 This prevented many from coming, who have been very desirous of hearing 
 of the good -way." Trans, of Miss. Society, No. 18, p. 87. 
 
 " If Heathen, of great influence and connections, or Brahmans, were in- 
 clined to join the Christian Church, it would probably cause commotions, 
 and even rebellions, either to prevent them from it, or to endanger their 
 life. In former years, we had some instances of this kind at Tranquebar ; 
 where they were protected by the assistance of Government. If such in- 
 stances should happen now in our present times, we don't know what the 
 consequence would be." Trans, of Miss. Society, II. 185. 
 
 This last extract is contained in a letter from Danish Missionaries at 
 Tranquebar to the Directors of the Missionary Society in London. 
 
 It is hardly fair to contend, after these extracts, that no symptoms of 
 jealousy upon the subject of religion had been evinced on the coast, except 
 in the case of the insurrection at Vellore j or that no greater activity than 
 common had prevailed among the missionaries. We are very far, however, 
 from attributing that insurrection exclusively, or even principally, to any 
 apprehensions from the zeal of the missionaries. The rumour of that zeal 
 might probably have more readily disposed the minds of the troops for the 
 corrupt influence exercised upon them ; but we have no doubt that the 
 massacre was principally owing to an adroit use made by the sons of 
 Tippoo, and the high Mussulmen living in the fortress, of the abominable 
 military foppery of our own people. 
 
 After this short sketch of what has been lately passing on the coast, we 
 shall attempt to give a similar account of missionary proceedings in Bengal ; 
 and it appears to us, it will be more satisfactory to do so as much as possible 
 in the words of the missionaries themselves. In o.ur extracts from their 
 publications, we shall endeavour to show the character and style of the men 
 employed in these missions, the extent of their success, or rather of their 
 failure, and the general impression made upon the people by their efforts foi 
 the dissemination of the gospel.
 
 120 INDIAN MISSIONS. 
 
 It will be necessary to premise, that the missions in Bengal, of which the 
 public have heard so much of late years, are the missions of Anabaptist dis- 
 senters, whose peculiar and distinguishing tenet it is to baptize the members 
 of their church by plunging them into the water when they are grown up, 
 instead of sprinkling them with water when they are young. Among the 
 subscribers to this society, we perceive the respectable name of the Deputy- 
 Chairman of the East-India Company, who, in the common routine of 
 office, will succeed to the Chair of that Company at the ensuing election. 
 The Chairman and Deputy-Chairman of the East- India Company are also 
 both of them trustees to another religious society for missions to Africa and 
 the East. 
 
 The first Number of the Anabaptist Missions informs us that the origin of 
 the Society will be found in the workings of Brother Careys mind, whose 
 heart appears to have been set upon the conversion of the Heathen in 1/86, 
 before he came to reside at Moidton. (No. I. p. I.) These workings pro- 
 duced a sermon at Northampton, and the sermon a subscription to convert 
 420 millions of Pagans. Of the subscription we have the following 
 account : " Information has come from Brother Carey, that a gentleman 
 from Northumberland had promised to send him ,20 for the society, and to 
 subscribe four guineas annually." 
 
 " At this meeting at Northampton two other friends subscribed, and paid 
 two guineas apiece, two more one guinea each, and another half a guinea, 
 making six guineas and a half in all. And such members as were present 
 of the first subscribers paid their subscriptions into the hands of the 
 treasurer, who proposed to put the sum now received into the hands of a 
 banker, who will pay interest for the same. " Baptist Miss. Soc. No. I. 
 P- 5- 
 
 In their first proceedings they are a good deal guided by Brother Thomas, 
 who has been in Bengal before, and who lays before the Society a history of 
 his life and adventures, from which we make the following extract : 
 
 "On my arrival in Calcutta, I sought for religious people, but found 
 none.' At last, how was I rejoiced to hear that a very religious man was 
 coming to dine with me at a house in Calcutta ; a man who would not omit 
 his closet hours, of a morning or evening, at sea or on land, for all the 
 world. I concealed my impatience as well as I could till the joyful moment 
 came : and a moment it was, for I soon heard him take the Lord's name 
 in vain, and it was like a cold dagger, with which I received repeated stabs 
 in the course of half an hour's conversation ; and he was ready to kick me 
 when I spoke of some things commonly believed by other hypocrites, 
 concerning our Lord Jesus Christ ; and with fury put an end to our conver- 
 sation, by saying I was a mad enthusiast to suppose that Jesus Christ had 
 any tiling to do in the creation of the world, who was born only seventeen 
 hundred years ago. When I returned, he went home in the same ship, and 
 I found him a strict observer of devotional hours, but an enemy to all reli- 
 gion, and horribly loose, vain, and intemperate in his life and conversation. 
 
 " After this, I advertised for a Christian ; and that I may not be misunder- 
 stood, I shall subjoin a copy of the advertisement, from the Indian Gazette 
 of November I, 1783, which now lies before me." Baptist Miss. Soc. No. 
 I. pp. 14, IS- 
 
 Brother Thomas relates the conversion of a Hindoo on the Malabar Coast to 
 
 the Society. 
 
 "A certain man on the Malabar coast had inquired of various devotees 
 and priests how he might make atonement for his sins ; and at last he was
 
 INDIAN MISSIONS. 121 
 
 directed to drive iron spikes, sufficiently blunted, through his sandals, and 
 on these spikes he was to place his naked feet, and walk (if I mistake not) 
 250 cos, that is, about 480 miles. If, through loss of blood, or weakness of 
 body, he was obliged to halt, he might wait for healing and strength. He 
 undertook the journey ; and while he halted under a large shady tree where 
 the gospel was sometimes preached, one of the missionaries came, and 
 preached in his hearing from these words, The blood of Jesus Christ deanscth 
 from all sin. While he was preaching, the man rose up, threw off his tor- 
 turing sandals, and cried out aloud, ' This is what I -want I'" Baptist Miss. 
 Soc. No. I. p. 29. 
 
 On June 13, 1793, the missionaries r set sail, carrying [with them letters to 
 three supposed converts of Brother Thomas, Parbotee, Ram Ram Boshoo, 
 and Mohun Chund. Upon their arrival in India, they found, to their inex- 
 pressible mortification, that Ram Ram had relapsed into Paganism : and we 
 shall present our readers with a picture of the present and worldly misery to 
 which a Hindoo is subjected, who becomes a convert to the Christian religion. 
 Every body knows that the population of Hindostan is divided into castes, 
 or classes of persons ; and that when a man loses his caste, he is shunned 
 by his wife, children, friends, and relations ; that it is considered as an 
 abomination to lodge or eat with him ; and that he is a wanderer and an 
 outcast upon the earth. Caste can be lost in a variety of means, and the 
 Protestant missionaries have.'always made the loss of it a previous requisite 
 to admission into the Christian church. 
 
 " On our arrival at Calcutta, we found poor Ram Boshoo waiting for us ; 
 but, to our great grief, he has been bowing down to idols again. When 
 Mr T. left India, ! he went from place to place ; but, forsaken by the Hindoos, 
 and neglected by the Europeans, he was seized with a flux and fever. In 
 this state he says, ' I had nothing to support me or my family ; a relation 
 offered to save me from perishing for want of necessaries on condition of 
 my bowing to the idol ; I knew that the Roman Catholic Christians wor- 
 shipped idols ; I thought they might be commanded to honour images in 
 some part of the Bible which I had not seen j I hesitated, and complied ; 
 but I love Christianity still." Bapt. Miss. Soc. Vol. I. pp. 64, 65. 
 
 "Jim. 8, 1794. We thought to write you long before this, but our hearts 
 have been burthcned with cares and sorrows. It was very afflicting to hear 
 of Ram Boshoo's great persecution and fall. Deserted by Englishmen, and 
 persecuted by his own countrymen, he was nigh unto death. The natives 
 gathered in bodies, and threw dust in the air as he passed along the streets 
 in Calcutta. At last one of his relations offered him an asylum on condition 
 of his bowing down to their idols. " Ibid. p. 78. 
 
 Brother Carey's Fifty at Sea. 
 
 " Brother Carey, while very sea-sick, and leaning over the ship to relieve 
 his stomach from that very oppressive complaint, said his mind was even 
 then filled with consolation in contemplating the wonderful goodness of 
 God." Ibid. p. 76. 
 
 Extracts from Brother Carey's and Brother Thomas's Journals, at Sea 
 and by Land. 
 
 "1793- 7"" e l6 - Lord's Day. A little recovered from my "sickness ; met 
 for prayer and exhortation in my cabin j had a dispute with a French deist." 
 Ibid, p. 158.
 
 123 INDIAN MISSIONS. 
 
 " 30. Lord's Day. A pleasant and profitable day : our congregation 
 
 composed often persons." Bapt. Miss. Soc. Vol. I. p. 159. 
 
 July 7. Another pleasant and profitable Lord's-day : our congregation 
 increased with one. Had much sweet enjoyment with God." Ibid. 
 
 "1794. Jan. 26. Lord's Day. Found much pleasure in reading Ed wards's 
 Sermon on the Justice of God in t/ie Damnation of Sinners." Ibid. p. 165. 
 
 "April(>. Had some sweetness to-day, especially in reading Edwards's 
 Sermon." Ibid. p. 171. 
 
 "June%. This evening reached Bowlea, where we lay to for the Sab- 
 bath. Felt thankful that God had preserved us, and wondered at his 
 regard for so mean a creature. I was unable to wrestle with God in prayer 
 for many of my dear friends in England." Ibid. p. 179. 
 
 " 16. This day I preached twice at Malda, where Mr Thomas met 
 
 me. Had much enjoyment ; and though our congregation did not exceed 
 sixteen, yet the pleasure I felt in having my tongue once more set at liberty 
 I can hardly describe. Was enabled to be faithful, and felt a sweet affec- 
 tion for immortal souls." Ibid. p. 180. 
 
 " 1796. Feb. 6. I am now in my study ; and oh, it is a sweet place, because 
 of the presence of God with the vilest of men. It is at the top of the house ; 
 I have but one window in it." Ibid. p. 295. 
 
 " The work to which God has set his hand will infallibly prosper. Christ 
 has begun to bombard this strong and ancient fortress, and will assuredly 
 carry it." Ibid. p. 328. 
 
 " More missionaries I think absolutely necessary to the support of the in- 
 terest. Should any natives join us, they would become outcast immediately, 
 and must be consequently supported by us. The missionaries on the coast 
 are to this day obliged to provide for those who join them, as I learn from a 
 letter sent to Brother Thomas by a son of one of the missionaries." IbiJ. 
 P- 334- 
 
 In the last extract our readers will perceive a new difficulty attendant upon 
 the progress of Christianity in the East. The convert must not only be sub- 
 jected to degradation, but his degradation is so complete, and his means of 
 providing for himself so entirely destroyed, that he must be fed by his in- 
 structor. The slightest success in Hindostan would eat up the revenues of 
 the East India Company. 
 
 Three years after their arrival these zealous and most active missionaries 
 give the following account of their success : 
 
 "I bless God, our prospect is considerably brightened up, and our hopes 
 are more enlarged than at any period since the commencement of the mis- 
 sion, owing to very pleasing appearances of the gospel having been made 
 effectual to FOUR poor labouring Mussulmans, who have been setting their 
 faces towards Zion ever since the month of August last. I hope their bap- 
 tism will not be much longer deferred ; and that might encourage Mohund 
 Chund, Parbottee, and Casi Naut (who last year appeared to set out in the 
 ways of God), to declare for the Lord Jesus Christ, by an open profession of 
 their faith in him. Seven of the natives, we hope, are indeed converted." 
 Bapt. Miss. Vol. I. pp. 345, 346. 
 
 Effects of preaching to an Hindoo Congregation. 
 
 " I then told them, that if they could not tell me, I would tell them ; and 
 that God, who had permitted the Hindoos to sink into a sea of darkness, 
 had at length commiserated them ; and sent me and my colleagues to preach 
 life to them. I then told them of Christ, his death, his person, his love,
 
 INDIAN MISSIONS. 123 
 
 his being the surety of sinners, his power to save, &c., and exhorted them 
 earnestly and affectionately to come to him. Effects were various ; one man 
 came before I had well done, and wanted to sell stockings to me." Baft. 
 Miss. Vol. I. p. 357. 
 
 Extracts from Journals. 
 
 " After worship, I received notice that the printing-press was just arrived 
 at the Ghat from Calcutta. Retired, and thanked God for furnishing us with 
 a press. " Ibid. p. 469. 
 
 Success in the Sixth Year. 
 
 " We lament that several who did run well, are now hindered. We have 
 faint hopes of a few, and pretty strong hopes of one or two ; but if I say more, 
 it must be either a dull recital of our journeying to one place or another to 
 preach the gospel, or something else relating to ourselves, of which I ought 
 to be the last to speak." Ibid. p. 488. 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM MR WARD'S JOURNAL, ANEW ANABAPTIST MISSIONARY 
 SENT OUT IN 1799. 
 
 Mr Ward admires the Caplain. 
 
 " Several of our friends who have been sick begin to look up. This 
 evening we had a most precious hour at prayer. Captain Wickes read from 
 the 1 2th verse of the 33d of Exodus, and then joined in prayer. Our hearts 
 were all warmed. We shook hands with our dear Captain, and, in design, 
 clasped him to our bosoms." Ibid. Vol. II. p. 2. 
 
 Mr Ward is frightened by a Privateer. 
 
 "June II. Held our conference this evening. A vessel is still pursuing 
 us, which the Captain believes to be a Frenchman. I feel some alarm : 
 considerable alarm. O Lord, be thou our defender ! the vessel seems to 
 gain upon us. (Quarter past eleven at night. ) There is no doubt of the 
 vessel being a French privateer : when we changed our tack, she changed 
 hers. We have, since dark, changed into our old course, so that possibly 
 we shall lose her. Brethren G. and B. have engaged in prayer : we have 
 read Luther's psalm, and our minds are pretty well composed. Our guns 
 are all loaded, and the Captain seems very low. All hands are at the guns, 
 and the matches are lighted. I go to the end of the ship. I can just see 
 the vessel, though it is very foggy. A ball whizzes over my head, and 
 makes me tremble. I go down, and go to prayer with our friends." Ibid. 
 PP- 3, 4- 
 
 Mr Ward feds a regard for the Sailors. 
 
 " fofy I2 - I never felt so much for any men as for our sailors ; a tender- 
 ness which could weep over them ! Oh, Jesus ! let thy blood cover some of 
 them ! A sweet prayer meeting. Verily God is here." Ibid. p. 7. 
 
 Mr Ward sees an American Vessel, and longs to preach to the Sailors. 
 
 " Sept. 27. An American vessel is along-side, and the Captain is speaking 
 to their Captain through his tmmpet. How pleasant to talk to a friend ! 
 I have been looking at them through the glass ; the sailors sit in a group, 
 and are making their observations upon us. I long to go and preach to 
 them." Ibid. p. II.
 
 124 INDIAN MISSIONS. 
 
 Feelings of the Natives upon hearing their Religion attacked. 
 
 " iSoo. Feb. 25. Brother C. had some conversation with one of the 
 Mussulmans, who asked, upon his denying the divine mission of Mahom- 
 mcd, what was to become of Mussulmans and Hindoos? Brother C. expressed 
 his fears that they would all be lost. The man seemed as if he would have 
 torn him to pieces." Bapt. Miss. Vol. II. p. 51. 
 
 ' ' Mar. 30. The people seem quite anxious to get the hymns which we 
 give away. The Brahmans are rather uneasy. The Gai'ernor advised his 
 Brahmans to send their children to learn English. They replied, that we 
 seemed to take pains to make the natives Christians ; and they were afraid 
 that, their children being of tender age, would make them a more easy con- 
 quest." Ibid. p. 158. 
 
 " April 27. Lord's Day. One Brahman said he had no occasion for a 
 hymn, for they were all over the country. He could go into any house and 
 read one." Ibid. p. 61. 
 
 " May 9. Brother Fountain was this evening at Buddabarry. At the 
 close, the Brahmans having collected a number of boys, they set up a great 
 shout, and followed the brethren out of the village with noise and shout- 
 ings." Ibid. 
 
 "May 1 6. Brother Carey and I were at Buddabarry this evening. No 
 sooner had we begun than a Brahman went round to all the rest that were 
 present, and endeavoured to pull them away." Ibid. p. 62. 
 
 " May 30. This evening at Buddabarry, the man mentioned in my journal 
 of March I4th insulted Brother Carey. He asked why we came ; and said, 
 if we could employ the natives as carpenters, blacksmiths, c. , it would be 
 very well : but that they did not want our holiness. In exact conformity 
 with this sentiment, our Brahman told Brother Thomas, when here, ' that 
 he did not want the favour of God.' " Ibid. p. 63. 
 
 " June 22. Lord's Day. A Brahman has been several times to disturb 
 the children, and to curse Jesus Christ ! Another Brahman complained to 
 Brother Carey that, by our school and printing, we were now teaching the 
 gospel to their children from their infancy." Ibid. p. 65. 
 
 " June 29. Lord's Day. This evening a Brahman went round amongst 
 the people who were collected to hear Brother Carey, to persuade them not 
 to accept of our papers. Thus 'darkness struggles with the light.' " Ibid. 
 p. 66. 
 
 " It was deemed advisable to print 2000 copies of the New Testament, 
 and also 500 additional copies of Matthew, for immediate distribution ; to 
 which are annexed some of the most remarkable prophecies in the Old 
 Testament respecting Christ. These are now distributing, together with 
 copies of several evangelical hymns, and a veiy earnest and pertinent address 
 to the natives, respecting the gospel. It was written by Ram Boshoo, and 
 contains a hundred lines in Bengalee verse. We hear that these papers are 
 read with much attention, and that apprehensions are rising in the minds of 
 some of the Brahmans whereunto these things may grow." Ibid. p. 69. 
 
 "We have printed several small pieces in Bengalee, which have had a 
 large emulation." Ibid. p. 77. 
 
 Mr Fountain's gratitude to Ilervey. 
 
 " When I was about eighteen or nineteen years of age Hervey's Medita- 
 tions fell into my hands. Till then I had read nothing but my Bible and 
 the Prayer-book. This ushered me, as it were, into a new world. It ex- 
 panded my mind, and excited a thirst after knowledge ; this was not all ; I
 
 INDIAN MISSIONS. 125 
 
 derived spiritual as well as intellectual advantages from it. 1 shall bless 
 God for this book while I live upon earth, and when I get to heaven, I will 
 thank dear Hervey himself " Bapt. Miss. Vol. II. p. 90. 
 
 Hatred of the Natives to the Gospel. 
 
 " Jan. 27. The inveterate hatred that the Brahmans every where show to 
 the gospel, and the very name of Jesus, in which they are joined by many 
 lewd fellows of the baser sort, requires no common degree of self-possession, 
 caution, and prudence. The seeming failure of some we hoped well of is a 
 source of considerable anxiety and grief." Ibid. p. no. 
 
 "Aug. 31. Lord's Day. We hav.e the honour of printing the first book 
 that was ever printed in Bengalee ; and this is the first piece in which 
 Brahmans have been opposed, perhaps for thousands of years. All their 
 books are filled with accounts to establish Brahmanism, and raise Brahmans 
 to the seat of God. Hence they are believed to be inferior gods. All the 
 waters of salvation in the country are supposed to meet in the foot of a 
 Brahman. It is reckoned they have the keys of heaven and hell, and have 
 power over sickness and health, life and death. O pray that Brahmanism 
 may come down !" Ibid. p. in. 
 
 " Oct. 3. Brother Marsham having directed the children in the Bengalee 
 school to write out a piece, written by Brother Fountain (a kind of cate- 
 chism), the schoolmaster reported yesterday that all the boys would leave 
 the school rather than write it ; that it was designed to make them lose 
 caste, and make them Feringas ; that is, persons who have descended from 
 those who were formerly converted by the papists, and who are to this day 
 held in the greatest contempt by the Hindoos. From this you may gather 
 how much contempt a converted native would meet with." Ibid. pp. 113, 
 114. 
 
 " Oct. 26. Lord's Day. Bharratt told Brother Carey to-day what the 
 people talked among themselves ' Formerly (say they) here were no white 
 people amongst us. Now the English have taken the country, and it is 
 getting full of whites. Now also the white man's shaster is publishing. Is 
 it not going to be fulfilled which is written in our shastcrs, that all shall be 
 of one caste; and will not this caste be the gospel?'" Ibid. p. 115. 
 
 " Nov. 7. He also attempted repeatedly to introduce Christ and him 
 crucified ; but they would immediately manifest the utmost dislike of the 
 very name of him. Nay, in their turn, they commended Creeshnoo, and 
 invited Brother C. to believe in him." Ibid. p. 118. 
 
 " Dec. 23. This forenoon Gokool came to tell us that Kristno and his 
 whole family were in confinement ! Astonishing news ! It seems the whole 
 neighbourhood, as soon as it was noised abroad that these people had lost 
 caste, was in an uproar. It is said that two thousand people were assem- 
 bled pouring their anathemas on these new converts." Ibid. p. 125. 
 
 "Jan. 12. The Brahmans and the young people show every degree of 
 contempt ; and the name of Christ is become a byword, like the name 
 method! st in England formerly." Ibid. p. 130. 
 
 "Sept. 15. I then took occasion to tell them that the Brahmans only 
 wanted their money, and cared nothing about their salvation. To this they 
 readily assented." Ibid. p. 134. 
 
 " A'm. 23. Lord's Day. Went with Brother Carey to tlic new pagoda 
 at the upper end of the town. About ten Brahmans attended. They be- 
 haved in the most scoffiing and blasphemous manner, treating the name of 
 Christ with the greatest scorn : nor did they discontinue their ridicule while 
 Brother Carey prayed with them. No name amongst men seems so offen-
 
 126 INDIAN MISSIONS. 
 
 sive to them as that of our adorable REDEEMER ! " Baft. Miss. Vol. II. 
 p. 138. 
 
 " Dec. 24. The Governor had the goodness to call on us in the course of 
 the day, and desired' us to secure the girl, at least within our walls, for a 
 few days, as he was persuaded the people round the country were so exas- 
 perated at Kristno's embracing the gospel, that he could not answer for 
 their safety. A number of the mob might come from twenty miles distant 
 in the night, and murder them all, without the perpetrators being discovered. 
 He believed, that had they obtained the girl, they would have murdered her 
 before the morning, and thought they had been doing God service 1 " Ibid. 
 pp. 143, 144. 
 
 " Jan. 30. After speaking about ten minutes, a rude fellow began to be 
 very abusive, and, with the help of a few boys, raised such a clamour that 
 nothing could be heard. At length, seeing no hope of their becoming 
 quiet, I retired to the other part of the town. They followed, hallooing, 
 and crying ' Hurree boll ! ' (an exclamation in honour of Veeshno). They 
 at last began to pelt me with stones and dirt. One of the men, who knew 
 the house to which Brother Carey was gone, advised me to accompany him 
 thither, saying, that these people would not hear our words. Going with 
 him, I met Brother C. We were not a little pleased that the devil had 
 begun to bestir himself, inferring from hence that he suspected danger." 
 Ibid. pp. 148, 149. 
 
 Feelings of a Hindoo Boy upon the Eve of Conversion. 
 
 " Nov. 18. One of the boys of the school, called Benjamin, is under con- 
 siderable concern ; indeed there is a general stir amongst our children, 
 which affords us great encouragement. The following are some of the ex- 
 pressions used, in prayer by poor Benjamin : 
 
 " ' Oh Lord, the day of judgment is coming : the sun, and moon, and 
 stars will all fall down. Oh, what shall I do in the day of judgment ! 
 Thou wilt break me to pieces [literal]. The Lord Jesus Christ was so good 
 as to die for us poor souls : Lord, keep us all this day ! Oh hell ! gnash- 
 ing, and beating, and beating ! One hour weeping, another gnashing 1 
 We shall stay there for ever ! I am going to hell ! I am going to hell ! 
 Oh Lord, give me a new heart ; give me a new heart, and wash away all 
 my sins ! Give me a new heart, that I may praise Him, that I may obey 
 Him, that I may speak the truth, that I may never do evil things ! Oh, 
 I have many times sinned against thee, many times broken thy command- 
 ments, oh'many times ; and what shall I do in the day of judgment I ' " 
 Ibid. pp. 162, 163. 
 
 Alarm of the Natives at the Preaching of the Gospel. 
 
 "From several parts of Calcutta he hears of people's attention being 
 excited by reading the papers which we have scattered among them. Many 
 begin to wonder that they never heard these things before, since the English 
 have been so long hi the country." Ibid. p. 223. 
 
 " Many of the natives have expressed their astonishment at seeing'the con- 
 verted Hindoos sit and eat with Europeans. It is what they thought would 
 never come to pass. The priests are much alarmed for their tottering fabric, 
 and rack their inventions to prop it up. They do not like the institution of 
 the College hi Calcutta, and that their sacred shasters should be explored 
 by the unhallowed eyes of Europeans." Ibid. p. 233. 
 
 " Indeed, by the distribution of many copies of the Scriptures, and of 
 some thousands of small tracts, a spirit of inquiry has been excited to a 
 degree unknown at any former period." Ibid. p. 23^
 
 INDIAN MISSIONS. 127 
 
 "As he and Kristno walked through the street, the natives cried out, 
 ' What will this joiner do ? (meaning Kristno). Will he destroy the caste 
 of us all ? Is this Brahman going to be a Feringa ? ' " Bapt. Miss. Vol. 
 II. p. 245. 
 
 Account of Success in 1802 Tenth Year of the Mission. 
 
 " Wherever we have gone we have uniformly found, that so long as 
 people did not understand the report of our message, they appeared to listen ; 
 but the moment they understood something of it, they either became indifferent, 
 or began to ridicule. This in general has been our reception." Ibid. p. 273. 
 
 Hatred of the Natives. 
 
 " Sept. 27. This forenoon three of the people arrived from Ponchetalok- 
 pool, who seemed very happy to see us. They inform us that the Brahmans 
 had raised a great persecution against them ; and when they set out on 
 their journey hither, the mob assembled to hiss them away. After Brother 
 Marsham had left that part of the country, they hung him in effigy, and 
 some of the printed papers which he had distributed amongst them." Ibid. 
 p. 314. 
 
 Difficulty which the Mission experiences from not being able to get Converts 
 
 shaved. 
 
 " Several persons there seemed willing to be baptized ; but if they 
 should, the village barber, forsooth, will not shave them ! When a native 
 loses caste, or becomes unclean, his barber and his priest will not come near 
 him ; and as they are accustomed to shave the head nearly all over, and 
 cannot well perform this business themselves, it becomes a serious incon- 
 venience." Ibid. p. 372. 
 
 Hatred of the Natives. 
 
 " April 24. Lord's Day. Brother Chamberlain preached at home, and 
 Ward at Calcutta ; Brother Carey was amongst the brethren, and preached 
 at night. Kristno Prisaud, Ram Roteen, and others, were at Buddabatty, 
 where they met with violent opposition. They were set upon as Feringas, 
 as destroyers of the caste, as having eaten fowls, eggs, &c. As they at- 
 tempted to return, the mob began to beat them, putting their hands on the 
 back of their necks, and pushing them forward ; and one man, even a civil 
 officer, grazed the point of a spear against the body of Kristno Prisaud. 
 When they saw that they could not make our friends angry by such treatment, 
 they said, You salla ; you will not be angry, will you ? They then insulted 
 them again, threw cow-dung mixed in gonga water at them, talked of 
 making them a necklace of old shoes ; beat Neeloo with Ram Roteen's shoe, 
 &c. ; and declared, that if they ever 'came again, they would make an end 
 of them." Ibid. p. 378. 
 
 A Plan for procuring an Order from Government to shave the Converts. 
 
 " After concluding with prayer, Bhorud Ghose, Sookur, and Torribot 
 Bichcss took me into the field, and told me that their minds were quite 
 decided ; there was no necessity for exhorting them. There was only one 
 thing that kpt them from being baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. 
 Losing caste in a large town like Serampore was a very different thing from 
 losing caste in their village. If they declared themselves Christians, the
 
 128 INDIAN MISSIONS. 
 
 barber of their village would no longer shave them ; and, without shaving 
 their heads and their beards, they could not live. If an order could be 
 obtained from the magistrate of the district for the barber to shave Chris- 
 tians as well as others, they would be immediately baptized." Baft. Miss. 
 Vol. II. p. 397. 
 
 "We meet in these proceedings with the account of two Hindoos who had 
 set up as gods, Dttlol and Ram Doss. The missionaries, conceiving this 
 schism from the religion of the Hindoos to be a very favourable opening for 
 them, wait upon the two deities. With Dulol, who seems to be a very 
 shrewd fellow, they are utterly unsuccessful ; and the following is an extract 
 from the account of their conference with Ram Dass : 
 
 " After much altercation, I told him he might put the matter out of all 
 doubt as to himself : he had only to come as a poor, repenting, suppliant 
 sinner, and he would be saved, whatever became of others. To this he 
 gave no other answer than a smile of contempt. I then asked him in what 
 way the sins of these his followers would be removed ; urging it as a matter 
 of the last importance, as he knew that they were all sinners, and must stand 
 before the righteous bar of God ? After much evasion, he replied that he 
 had fire in his belly, which would destroy the sins of all his followers ! " 
 Ibid. p. 401. 
 
 A Brahman converted. 
 
 "Dec. II. Lord's Day. A Brahman came from Nucldea. After talk- 
 ing to him about the gospel, which he said he was very willing to embrace, 
 we sent him to Kristno's. He ate with them without hesitation, but dis- 
 covered such a thirst for Bengalee rum as gave them a disgust." 
 
 " Dec. 13. This morning the Brahman decamped suddenly." Ibid. 
 p. 424. 
 
 Extent of Printing. 
 
 " Sept. 12. We are building an addition to our printing-office, where we 
 employ seventeen printers and five book -binders. The Brahman from near 
 Bootan gives some hope that he has received the truth in love." Ibid. 
 
 P- 483- 
 
 "The news of Jess Christ, and of the Church at Serampore, seems to 
 have gone much further than I expected : it appears to be known to a few 
 in most villages." Ibid. p. 487. 
 
 Hatred to the Gospel. 
 
 " The caste (says Mr W.) is the great millstone round the necks of these 
 people. Roteen wants shaving ; but the barber here will not do it. He is 
 nm away lest he should be compelled. He says he will not shave Yesoo 
 Kreest's people ! " Ibid. p. 493. 
 
 Success greater by Importunity in Prayer. 
 
 " With respect to their success, there are several particulars attending it 
 worthy of notice. One is, that it was preceded by a spirit of importunate 
 prayer. The brethren had all along committed their cause to God ; but in 
 the autumn of 1800 they had a special weekly prayer meeting for a blessing 
 on the work of the mission. At these assemblies, Mr Thomas, who was 
 then present on a visit, seems to have been more than usually stiengthened 
 to wrestle for a blessing ; and, writing to a friend in America, he speaks of 
 1 the holy unction appearing on all the missionaries, especially of late ; and
 
 INDIAN MISSIONS. 
 
 129 
 
 of times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord, being solemn, frequent, 
 and lasting.' In connecting these things, we cannot but remember that 
 previous to the outpouring of the Spirit in the days of Pentecost, the dis- 
 ciples 'continued with one accord in prayer and supplication."' Bapt. 
 Mh?. Pref. Vol. III. p. vii. 
 
 What this success is, we shall see by the following extract : 
 
 "The whole number baptized in Bengal since the year 1795, \sforty-eight. 
 Over many of these we rejoice with great joy ; for others we tremble ; and 
 over some we are compelled to weep." Ibid. pp. 21, 22. 
 
 Hatred to the Gospel. 
 
 "April z. This morning, several of our chief printing servants pre- 
 sented a petition, desiring they might have some relief, as they were com- 
 pelled, in our Bengalee worship, to hear so many blasphemies against their 
 gods ! Brother Carey and I had a strong contention with them in the 
 printing-office, and invited them to argue the point with Petumber, as his 
 sermon had given them offence ; but they declined it ; though we told them 
 that they were ten, and he was only one ; that they were Brahmans, and 
 he was only a sooder ! " Ibid. p. 36. 
 
 " The enmity against the gospel and its professors is universal. One of 
 our baptized Hindoos wanted to rent a house : after going out two or three 
 days, and wandering all the town over, he at last persuaded a woman to let 
 him have a house : but though she was herself a Feringa, yet when sh 
 heard that he was a Brahman who had become a Christian, she insulted 
 him, and drove him away ; so that we are indeed made the offscouring of 
 all things." Ibid. p. 38. 
 
 " I was sitting among our native brethren, at the Bengalee school, hear- 
 ing them read and explain a portion of the Word in turn, when an aged, 
 grey-headed Brahman, well-dressed, came in ; and standing before me, said, 
 with joined hands, and a supplicating tone of voice, ' Sahib ! I am come to 
 ask an alms. ' Beginning to weep, he repeated these words hastily ; ' I am 
 come to ask an .... an alms.' He continued standing, with his hands 
 in a supplicating posture, weeping. I desired him to say what alms ; and 
 told him, that by his looks, it did not seem as if he wanted any relief. At 
 length, being pressed, he asked me to give him his son, pointing with his 
 hand into the midst of our native brethren. I asked which was his son ? 
 He pointed to a young Brahman, named Soroop ; and setting up a plain- 
 tive cry, said, that was his son. We tried to comfort him, and at last 
 prevailed upon him to come and sit down upon the veranda. Here he 
 began to weep again ; and said that the young man's mother was dying 
 with grief." Ibid. p. 43. 
 
 " This evening Buxoo, a brother, who is servant with us, and Soroop, 
 went to a market in the neighbourhood, where they were discovered to be 
 Yesoo Khreestare Loke (Jesus Christ's people). The whole market was all 
 in a hubbub : they clapped their hands, and threw dust at them. Buxoo 
 was changing a rupee for cowries, when the disturbance began ; and in the 
 scuille the man run away with the nipee without giving the cowries." 
 Ibid. p. 55. 
 
 ' ' Nov. 24. This day Hawnye and Ram Khunt returned from their village. 
 They relate that our Brother Fotick, who lives in the same village, was 
 lately seized by the chief Bengalee man there ; dragged from his house ; 
 his face, eyes, and ears clogged with cow-dung his hands tied, and in this 
 state confined several hours. They also tore to pieces all the papers, and 
 
 I
 
 130 INDIAN MISSIONS. 
 
 the copy of the Testament, which they found in Fotick's house. A relation 
 of these persecutors being dead, they did not molest Hawnye and Ram 
 Khunt ; but the townsfolk would not hear about the gospel : they only 
 insulted them for becoming Christians." Bapt. Miss. Vol. III. p. 57. 
 
 " Cutwa on the Ganges, Sept, 3, 1804. This place is about seventy miles 
 from Serampore, by the Hoogley river. Here I have procured a spot of 
 ground, perhaps about two acres, pleasantly situated by two tanks, and a 
 fine grove of mango trees, at a small distance from the to\vn. It was with 
 difficulty I procured a spot. I was forced to leave one, after I had made a 
 beginning, through the violent opposition of the people. Coming to this, 
 opposition ceased ; and therefore I called it REHOBOTH ; for Jehovah hath 
 made room for us. Here I have raised a_spacious bungalo." Ibid. p. 59. 
 
 It would perhaps be more prudent to leave the question of sending mis- 
 sions to India to the effect of these extracts, which appear to us to be quite 
 decisive, both as to the danger of insurrection from the prosecution of the 
 scheme, the utter unfitness of the persons employed in it, and the complete 
 hopelessness of the attempt while pursued under such circumstances as now 
 exist. But, as the Evangelical party who have got possession of our Eastern 
 empire have brought forward a great deal of argument upon the question, 
 it may be necessary to make to it some sort of reply. 
 
 We admit it to be the general duty of Christian people to disseminate their 
 religion among the Pagan nations who are subjected to their empire. It is 
 true they have not the aid of miracles ; but it is their duty to attempt such 
 conversion by the earnest and abundant employment of the best human 
 means in their power. We believe that we are in possession of a revealed 
 religion ; that we are exclusively in possession of a revealed religion ; and 
 that the possession of that religion can alone confer immortality, and best 
 confer present happiness. This religion, too, teaches us the duties of general 
 benevolence : and how, under such a system, the conversion of Heathens 
 can be a matter of indifference, we profess not to be able to understand. 
 
 So much for the general rule : now for the exceptions. 
 
 No man (not an Anabaptist) will, we presume, contend that it is our duty 
 to preach the natives into an insurrection, or to lay before them, so fully and 
 emphatically, the scheme of the gospel, as to make them rise up in the dead 
 of the night and shoot their instructors through the head. If conversion be 
 the greatest of all objects, the possession of the country to be converted is 
 the only mean, in this instance, by which that conversion can be ac- 
 complished ; for we have no right to look for a miraculous conversion of 
 the Hindoos ; and it would be little short of a miracle, if General Oudinot 
 was to display the same spirit as the serious part of the Directors of the 
 East India Company. Even for missionary purposes, therefore, the utmost 
 discretion is necessary ; and if we wish to teach the natives a better religion, 
 we must take care to do it in a manner which will not inspire them with 
 a passion for political change, or we shall inevitably lose our disciples 
 altogether. To us it appears quite clear, from the extracts before us, that 
 neither Hindoos nor Mahomedans are at all indifferent to the attacks made 
 upon their religion ; the arrogance and irritability of the Mahomedan are 
 universally acknowledged ; and we put it to our readers, whether the 
 Brahmans seem in these extracts to show the smallest disposition to behold 
 the encroachments upon their religion with passiveness and unconcern. A 
 missionary who converted only a few of the refuse of society, might live for 
 ever in peace in India, and receive his salary from his fanatical masters for 
 pompous predictions of universal conversion, transmitted by the ships of the 
 season ; but, if he had any marked success among the natives, it could not
 
 INDIAN MISSIONS. 1 3 1 
 
 fail to excite much more dangerous specimens of jealousy and discontent 
 than those which we have extracted from the Anabaptist Journal. How is 
 it in human nature that a Brahman should be indifferent to encroachments 
 upon his religion ? His reputation, his dignity, and in great measure his 
 wealth, depend upon the preservation of the present superstitions ; and why 
 is it to be supposed that motives which are so powerful with all other human 
 beings, are inoperative with him alone ? If the Brahmans, however, are 
 disposed to excite a rebellion in support of their own influence, no man, who 
 knows any thing of India, can doubt that they have it in their power to 
 effect it. 
 
 It is in vain to say that these attempts to diffuse Christianity do not originate 
 from the government in India. The omnipotence of government in the 
 East is well known to the natives. If government does not prohibit, it 
 tolerates ; if it tolerates the conversion of the natives, the suspicion may be 
 easily formed that it encourages that conversion. If the Brahmans do not 
 believe this themselves, they may easily persuade the common people that 
 such is the fact ; nor are there wanting, besides the activity of these new 
 missionaries, many other circumstances to corroborate such a rumour. 
 Under the auspices of the College at Fort William, the Scriptures are in a 
 course of translation into the languages of almost the whole continent of 
 Oriental India, and we perceive that in aid of this object the Bible Society 
 lias voted a very magnificent subscription. The three principal chaplains of 
 our Indian settlements are (as might be expected) of principles exactly cor- 
 responding with the enthusiasm of their employers at home ; and their zeal 
 upon the subject of religion has shone and burnt with the most exemplary 
 fury. These circumstances, if they do not really impose upon the minds of 
 the leading natives, may give them a very powerful handle for misrepresent- 
 ing the intentions of government to the lower orders. 
 
 We see from the massacre at Vellore what a powerful engine attachment 
 to religion may be rendered in Hindostan. The rumours might all have 
 been false ; but that event shows they were tremendously powerful when 
 excited. The object, therefore, is not only not to do any thing violent and 
 unjust upon subjects of religion, but not to give any strong colour to jealous 
 and disaffected natives for misrepresenting your intentions. 
 
 All these observations have tenfold force, when applied to an empire 
 which rests so entirely upon opinion. If physical force could be called in 
 to stop the progress of error, we could afford to be misrepresented for a 
 season ; but 30,000 white men living in the midst of 70 millions of sable 
 subjects, must be always hi the right, or at least never represented as grossly 
 in the wrong. Attention to the prejudices of the subject is wise in all 
 governments, but quite indispensable in a government constituted as our 
 empire in India is constituted ; where an uninterrupted series of dexterous 
 conduct is not only necessary to our prosperity, but to our existence. 
 
 Those reasonings are entitled to a little more consideration at a period 
 when the French threaten our existence in India by open force, and by 
 every species of intrigue with the native powers. In all governments, every 
 thing takes its tone from the head : fanaticism has got into the government 
 at home ; fanaticism will lead to promotion abroad. The civil servant in 
 India will not only not dare to exercise his own judgment, in checking the in- 
 discretions of ignorant missionaries ; but he will strive to recommend himself 
 to his holy masters in Leadenhall Street, by imitating Brother Cran and 
 Brother Ringletaube, and by every species of fanatical excess. Methodism 
 at home is no unprofitable game to play. In the East it will soon be the 
 infallible road to promotion. This is the great evil : if the management 
 was in the hands of men who were as discreet and wise in their devotion,
 
 132 INDIAN MISSIONS. 
 
 as they are in matters of temporal welfare, the desire of putting an end to 
 missions might be premature and indecorous. But the misfortune is, the 
 men who wield the instrument ought not, in common sense and propriety, 
 to be trusted with it for a single instant. Upon this subject, they are quite 
 insane and ungovernable ; they would deliberately, piously, and conscien- 
 tiously expose our whole Eastern empire to destruction, for the sake of con- 
 verting half a dozen Brahmans, who, after stuffing themselves with rum and 
 rice, and borrowing money from the missionaries, would run away and cover 
 the Gospel and its professors with every species of impious ridicule and 
 abuse. 
 
 Upon the whole, it appears to us hardly possible to push the business of 
 proselytism in India to any length, without incurring the utmost risk of 
 losing our empire. The danger is more tremendous, because it may be so 
 sudden ; religious fears are a very probable cause of disaffection in the 
 troops ; if the troops are generally disaffected, our Indian empire may be 
 lost to us as suddenly as a frigate or a fort ; and that empire is governed by 
 men who, we are very much afraid, would feel proud to lose it in such a 
 cause. 
 
 "But I think it my duty to make a solemn appeal to all who still retain 
 the fear of God, and who admit that religion and the course of conduct 
 which it prescribes are not to be banished from the affairs of nations now 
 when the political sky, so long overcast, has become more lowering and 
 black than ever whether this is a period for augmenting the weight of our 
 national sins and provocations, by an exclusive TOLERATION of idolatry ; a 
 crime which, unless the Bible be a forgery, has actually drawn forth the 
 heaviest denunciations of vengeance, and the most fearful inflictions of the 
 Divine displeasure." Considerations, &c., p. 98. 
 
 Can it be credited that this is an extract from a pamphlet generally sup- 
 posed to be written by a noble Lord at the Board of Control, from whose 
 official interference the public might have expected a corrective to the pious 
 temerity of others ? 
 
 The other leaders of the party, indeed, make at present great professions 
 of toleration, and express the strongest abhorrence of using violence to the 
 natives. This does very well for a beginning : but we have little confidence 
 in such declarations. We believe their fingers itch to be at the stone and 
 clay gods of the Hindoos; and that, in common with the noble comptroller, 
 they attribute a great part of our national calamities to these ugly images of 
 deities on the other side of the world. We again repeat, that upon such 
 subjects, the best and ablest men, if once tinged by fanaticism, are not to be 
 trusted for a single moment. 
 
 zdly, Another reason for giving up the task of conversion is the want of 
 success. In India, religion extends its empire over the minutest actions of 
 life. It is not merely a law for moral conduct, and for occasional worship ; 
 but it dictates to a man his trade, his dress, his food, and his whole behaviour. 
 His religion also punishes a violation of its exactions, not by eternal and 
 future punishments, but by present infamy. If a Hindoo is irreligious, or, 
 in other words, if he loses his caste, he is deserted by father, mother, wife, 
 child, and kindred, and becomes instantly a solitary wanderer upon the 
 earth : to touch him, to receive him, to eat with him, is a pollution pro- 
 ducing a similar loss of caste ; and the state of such a degraded man is 
 worse than death itself. To these evils a Hindoo must expose himself 
 before he becomes a Christian ; and this difficulty must a missionary over- 
 come before he can expect the smallest success ; a difficulty which, it is
 
 INDIAN MISSIONS. 133 
 
 quite clear, that they themselves, after a short residence in India, consider 
 to be insuperable. 
 
 As a proof of the tenacious manner in which the Hindoos cling to their 
 religious prejudices, we shall state two or three very short anecdotes, to 
 which any person who has resided in India might easily produce many 
 parallels. 
 
 'In the year 1766, the late Lord Clive and Mr Verelst employed the 
 whole influence of Government to restore a Hindoo to his caste, who had 
 forfeited it, not by any neglect of his own, but by having been compelled, 
 by a most unpardonable act of violence, to swallow a drop of cow broth. 
 TheBrahmans, from the peculiar circumstances of the case, were very anxious 
 to comply with the wishes of Government ; the principal men among them 
 met once at Kishnagur, and once at Calcutta ; but after consultations, and 
 an examination of their most ancient records, they declared to Lord Clive, 
 that as there was no precedent to justify the act, they found it impossible to 
 restore the unfortunate man to his caste, and he died soon after of a broken 
 heart. " Scott IVariiig's Preface, p. Ivi. 
 
 It is the custom of the Hindoos to expose dying people upon the banks 
 of the Ganges. There is something peculiarly holy in that river ; and it 
 soothes the agonies of death, to look upon its waters in the last moments. 
 A party of English were coming down in a boat, and perceived upon the 
 bank a pious Hindoo, in a state of the last imbecility about to be drowned 
 by the rising of the tide, after the most approved and orthodox manner of 
 their religion. They had the curiosity to land ; and as they perceived some 
 more signs of life than were at first apparent, a young Englishman poured 
 down his throat the greatest part of a bottle of lavender-water, which he 
 happened to have in his pocket. The effects of such a stimulus, applied to 
 a stomach accustomed to nothing stronger than water, were instantaneous 
 and powerful. The Hindoo revives sufficiently to admit of his being con- 
 veyed to the boat, was carried to Calcutta, and perfectly recovered. He 
 had drank however, in the company of Europeans ; no matter whether 
 voluntary or involuntary the offience was committed : he lost caste, was 
 turned away from his home, and avoided, of course, by every relation and 
 friend. The poor man came before the police, making the bitterest com- 
 plaints upon bemg restored to life ; and for three years the burden of sup- 
 porting him fell upon the mistaken Samaritan who had rescued him from 
 death. During that period, scarcely a day elapsed in which the degraded 
 resurgent did not appear before the European, and curse him with the 
 bitterest curses as the cause of all his misery and desolation. At the end 
 of that period he fell ill, and of course was not again thwarted in his passion 
 for dying. The writer of this article vouches for the truth of this anecdote ; 
 and many persons who were at Calcutta at the time must have a distinct 
 recollection of the fact, which excited a great deal of conversation and 
 amusement, mingled with compassion. 
 
 It is this institution of castes which has preserved India hi the same state 
 in which it existed in the days of Alexander ; and which would leave it 
 without the slightest change in habits and manners, if we were to abandon 
 the country to-morrow. \Ve are astonished to observe the late resident in 
 Bengal speaking of the fifteen millions of Mahomedans hi India as converts 
 from the Hindoos ; an opinion, in support of which he does not offer the 
 shadow of an argument, except by asking, whether the Mahomedans have 
 the Tartar face ? and if not, how they can be the descendants of the first 
 conquerors of India? Probably, not altogether. But does this writer 
 imagine, that the Mahomedan empire could exist in Hindostan for 700
 
 134 IXDIA:S MISSIONS. 
 
 years, without tnc intrusion of Persians, Arabians, aud every species of 
 Mussulman adventurers from every part of the East, which had embraced 
 the religion of Mahomed? And let them come from what quarter they 
 would, could they ally themselves to Hindoo women, without producing in 
 their descendants an approximation to the Hindoo features? Dr Robertson, 
 who has investigated this subject with the greatest care, and looked into 
 all the authorities, is expressly of an opposite opinion ; and considers the 
 Mussulman inhabitants of Hindostan to be merely the descendants of 
 Mahomedan adventurers, and not converts from the Hindoo faith. 
 
 " The armies (says Orme) which made the first conquests for the heads 
 of the respective dynasties, or for other invaders, left behind them numbers 
 of Mahomedans, who, seduced by a finer climate, and a richer country, 
 forgot their own. 
 
 " The Mahomedan princes of India naturally gave a preference to the 
 service of men of their own religion, who, from whatever country they 
 came, were of a more vigorous constitution than the stoutest of the subjected 
 nation. This preference has continually encouraged adventurers from Tar- 
 tary, Persia, and Arabia, to seek their fortunes under a government from 
 which they were sure of receiving greater encouragement than they could 
 expect at home. From these origins, time has formed in India a mighty 
 nation of near ten millions of Mahomedans." Ormfs Indostatt, I. p. 24. 
 
 Precisely similar to this is the opinion of Dr Robertson, Note xl. Indian 
 Disquisition. 
 
 As to the religion of the Ceylonese, from which the Bengal resident would 
 infer the facility of making converts of the Hindoos ; it is to be observed, 
 that the religion of Boudhou, in ancient times, extended from the north of 
 Tartary to Ceylon, from the Indus to Siam, and (if Foe and Boudhou are 
 the same persons) over China. That of the two religions of Boudhou and 
 Brama, the one was the parent of the other, there can be very little doubt ; 
 but the comparative antiquity of the two is so very disputed a point, that it 
 is quite unfair to state the case of the Ceylonese as an instance of conversion 
 from the Hindoo religion to any other : and even if the religion of Brama is 
 the most ancient of the two, it is still to be proved, that the Ceylonese pro- 
 fessed that religion before they changed it for their present faith. In point 
 of fact, however, the boasted Christianity of the Ceylonese is proved by the 
 testimony of the missionaries themselves to be little better than nominal. 
 The following extract from one of their own communications, dated Columbo, 
 1805, will set this matter in its true light : 
 
 "The elders, deacons, and some of the members of the Dutch congregation, 
 came to see us, and we paid them a visit in return, and made a little inquiry 
 concerning the state of the church on this island, which is, in one word, 
 miserable I One hundred thousand of those who are called Christians 
 (because they are baptized) need not go back to heathenism, for they never 
 have been any thing else but heatJiens, worshippers of Budda : they have been 
 induced, for worldly reasons, to be baptized. O Lord, have mercy on the 
 poor inhabitants of this populous island !" Trans. Miss. Soc. II. 265. 
 
 "What success the Syrian Christians had in making converts ; hi what 
 degree they have gained their numbers by victories over the native super- 
 stition, or lost their original numbers by the idolatrous examples to which 
 for so many centuries they have been exposed ; are points wrapt up in so 
 much obscurity, that no kind of inference, as to the facility of converting 
 the natives, can be drawn from them. Their present number is s; 
 to be about 150,000.
 
 INDIAN MISSIONS. 135 
 
 It would be of no use to quote the example of Japan and China, even if 
 the progress of the faith in these empires had been much greater than it is. 
 We do not say, it is difficult to convert the Japanese, or the Chinese ; but 
 the Hindoos. We are not saying, it is difficult to convert human creatures ; 
 but difficult to convert human creatures with such institutions. To mention 
 the example of other nations who have them not, is to pass over the material 
 objection, and to answer others which are merely imaginary, and have never 
 been made. 
 
 ^dZy, The duty of conversion is less plain, and less imperious, when con- 
 version exposes the convert to great present misery. An African, or an 
 Otaheite proselyte, might not perhaps be less honoured by his countrymen 
 if he became a Christian ; a Hindoo is instantly subjected to the most per- 
 fect degradation. A change of faith might increase the immediate happiness 
 of any other individual ; it annihilates for ever all the human comforts which 
 a Hindoo enjoys. The eternal happiness which you proffer him, is there- 
 fore less attractive to him than to any other heathen, from the life of misery 
 by which he purchases it. 
 
 Nothing is more precarious than our empire in India. Suppose we were 
 to be driven out of it to-morrow, and to leave behind us twenty thousand 
 converted Hindoos ; it is most probable they would relapse into heathenism . 
 but their original station in society could not be regained. The duty of 
 making converts, therefore, among such a people, as it arises from the 
 general duty of benevolence, is less strong than it would be in many other 
 cases ; because, situated as we are, it is quite certain we shall expose them 
 to a great deal of misery, and not quite certain we shall do them any future 
 good. 
 
 4t/ify, Conversion is no duty at all, if it merely destroys the old religion, 
 without really and effectually teaching the new one. Brother Ringletaube 
 may write home that he makes a Christian, when, in reality, he ought only 
 to state that he has destroyed a Hindoo. Foolish and imperfect as the 
 religion of a Hindoo is, it is at least some restraint upon the intemperance 
 of human passions. It is better a Brahman should be respected, than that 
 nobody should be respected. A Hindoo had better believe that a deity, 
 with an hundred legs and arms, will reward and punish him hereafter, 
 than that he is not to be punished at all. Now, when you have destroyed 
 the faith of a Hindoo, are you quite sure that you will graft upon his mind 
 fresh principles of action, and make him any thing more than a nominal 
 Christian ? 
 
 You have 30,000 Europeans in India, and 60 millions of other subjects. 
 If proselytism were to go on as rapidly as the most visionary Anabaptist 
 could dream or desire, in what manner are these people to be taught the 
 genuine truths and practices of Christianity ? Where are the clergy to come 
 from ? Who is to defray the expense of the establishment ? and who can 
 foresee the immense and perilous difficulties of bending the laws, manners, 
 and institutions of a country, to the dictates of a new religion ? If it were 
 easy to persuade the Hindoos that their own religion was folly, it would be 
 infinitely difficult effectually to teach them any other. They would tumble 
 their own idols into the river and you would build them no churches : you 
 would destroy all their present motives for doing right and avoiding wrong, 
 without being able to fix upon their minds the more sublime motives by 
 which you profess to be actuated. What a missionary will do hereafter with 
 the heart of a convert, is a matter of doubt and speculation. He is quite 
 certain, however, that he must accustom the man to see himself considered 
 as infamous ; and good principles can hardly be exposed to a ruder shock. 
 Whoever has seen much of Hindoo Christians must have perceived, that
 
 136 INDIAN MISSIONS. 
 
 the man who bears that name is very commonly nothing more than a 
 drunken reprobate, who conceives himself at liberty to eat and drink any 
 thing he pleases, and annexes hardly any other meaning to the name of 
 Christianity. Such sort of converts may swell the list of names, and gratify 
 the puerile pride of a missionary ; but what real, discreet Christian can wish 
 to see such Christianity prevail ? But it will be urged, if the present con- 
 verts should become worse Hindoos, and very indifferent Christians, still 
 the next generation will do better ; and by degrees, and at the expiration of 
 half a century, or a century, true Christianity may prevail. We may apply 
 to such sort of Jacobin converters what Mr Burke said of the Jacobin poli- 
 ticians in his time, " To such men a whole generation of human beings are 
 of no more consequence than a frog in an air-pump." For the distant pros- 
 pect of doing, what most probably, after all, they will never be able to effect, 
 there is no degree of present misery and horror to which they will not expose 
 the subjects of their experiment. 
 
 As the duty of making proselytes springs from the duty of benevolence, 
 there is a priority of choice in conversion. The greatest zeal should plainly 
 be directed to the most desperate misery and ignorance. Now, in com- 
 parison to many other nations who are equally ignorant of the truths of 
 Christianity, the Hindoos are a civilised and a moral people. That they 
 have remained in the same state for so many centuries, is at once a proof, 
 that the institutions which established that state could not be highly unfavour- 
 able to human happiness. After all that has been said of the vices of the 
 Hindoos, we believe that a Hindoo is more mild and sober than most 
 Europeans, and as honest and chaste. In astronomy the Hindoos have 
 certainly made very high advances ; some, and not an unimportant progress 
 in many sciences. As manufacturers, they are extremely ingenious and as 
 agriculturists, industrious. Christianity would improve them ; (whom would 
 it not improve?) but if Christianity cannot be extended to all, there are 
 many other nations who want it more.* 
 
 The Hindoos have some very savage customs, which it wouid be desirable 
 to abolish. Some swing on hooks, some run kimes through their hands. 
 and widows burn themselves to death : but these follies (even the last) are 
 quite voluntary on the part of the sufferers. We dislike all misery, voluntary 
 or involuntary ; but the difference between the torments which a man 
 chooses, and those which he endures from the choice of others, is very great. 
 It is a considerable wretchedness, that men and women should be shut up 
 in religious houses ; but it is only an object of legislative interference, when 
 such incarceration is compulsory. Monasteries and nunneries with us would 
 be harmless institutions ; because the moment a devotee found he had acted 
 Kke a fool, he might avail himself of the discovery and run away ; and so may 
 a Hindoo, if he repents of his resolution of running hooks into his flesh. 
 
 The duties of conversion appear to be of less importance, when it is im- 
 possible to procure proper persons to undertake them, and when such reli- 
 gious embassies, in consequence, devolve "ipon the. lowest of the people. 
 Who wishes to see scrofula and atheism curjd by a single sermon in Bengal? 
 who wishes to see the religious hoy riding at anchor in the Hoogley river ? 
 or shoals of jumpers exhibiting their nimble piety before the learned Brah- 
 mans of Benares ? This madness is disgusting and dangerous enough at 
 home : Why are we to send out little detachments of maniacs to spread 
 over the fine regions of the world the most unjust and contemptible opinion 
 of the gospel ? The wise and rational part of the Christian ministry find 
 
 * We are here, of course, arffuing the question only in a worldly point of view. This 
 is one point of view in which it must be placed, though certainly the lowest and least 
 important. 

 
 INDIAN MISSIONS. 
 
 137 
 
 they have enough to do at home to combat with passions unfavourable to 
 human happiness, and to make men act up to their professions. But if a 
 tinker is a devout man, he infallibly sets off for the East. Let any man 
 read the Anabaptist missions ; can he do so, without deeming such men 
 pernicious and extravagant in their own country, and without feeling that 
 they are benefiting us much more by their absence, than the Hindoos by 
 their advice ? 
 
 It is somewhat strange, in a duty which is stated by one party to be so 
 clear and so indispensable, that no man of moderation and good sense can 
 be found to perform it. And if no other instruments remain but visionary 
 enthusiasts, some doubt may be honestly raised whether it is not better to 
 drop the scheme entirely. 
 
 Shortly stated, then, our argument is this : We see not the slightest 
 prospect of success ; we see much danger in making the attempt ; and we 
 doubt if the conversion of the Hindoos would ever be more than nominal. 
 If it is a duty of general benevolence to convert the Heathen, it is less a 
 duty to convert the Hindoos than any other people, because they are already 
 highly civilised, and because you must infallibly subject them to infamy and 
 present degradation. The instruments employed for these purposes are 
 calculated to bring ridicule and disgrace upon the gospel ; and in the dis- 
 cretion of those at home, whom we consider as their patrons, we have not 
 the smallest reliance ; but, on the contrary, we are convinced they would 
 behold the loss of our Indian empire, not with the humility of men con- 
 vinced of erroneous views and projects, but with the pride, the exultation, 
 and the alacrity of martyrs. 
 
 Of the books which have handled this subject on either side, we have 
 little to say. Major Scott Waring's book is the best against the Missions ; 
 but he wants arrangement and prudence. The late resident writes well ; 
 but is miserably fanatical towards the conclusion. Mr Cunningham has 
 been diligent in looking into books upon the subject : and though an evan~ 
 gelical gentleman, is not uncharitable to those who differ from him in opinion. 
 There is a passage in the publication of his reverend brother, Mr Owen, which, 
 had we been less accustomed than we have been of late to this kind of 
 writing, would appear to be quite incredible. 
 
 " I have not pointed out the comparative indifference, upon Mr Twining's 
 principles, between one religion and another, to the welfare of a people ; 
 nor the impossibility, on those principles, of India being Christianized by 
 any human means, so long as it shall remain under the dominion of the 
 Company ; nor the alternative to which Proz'idence is by consequence reduced, 
 of either giving up that country to everlasting superstition, or of working some 
 miracle in order to accomplish its conversion." Chven's Address, p. 28. 
 
 This is really beyond any thing we ever remember to have read. The 
 hoy, the cockfight, and the religious newspaper, are pure reason when com- 
 pared to it. The idea of reducing Providence to an alternative It and, by a 
 motion at the India House, carried by ballot ! We would not insinuate, in 
 the most distant manner, that Mr Owen is not a gentleman of the most 
 sincere piety ; but the misfortune is, all extra superfine persons accustom 
 themselves to a familiar phraseology upon the most sacred subjects which 
 is quite shocking to the common and inferior orders of Christians. Provi- 
 dence reduced to an alternative 1 1 1 1 ! Let it be remembered, this phrase 
 comes from a member of a religious party, who are loud in their complaints 
 of being confounded with enthusiasts and fanatics. 
 
 We cannot conclude without the most pointed reprobation of the low 
 mischief of the Christian Observer ; a publication which appears to have no
 
 138 CURA TE 'S SALAR Y BILL. 
 
 other method of discussing a question fairly open to discussion, than that of 
 accusing their antagonists of infidelity. No art can be more unmanly, or, if 
 its consequences are foreseen, more wicked. If this publication had been 
 the work of a single individual, we might have passed it over in silent dis- 
 gust ; but as it is looked upon as the organ of a great political religious 
 party in this country, we think it right to notice the very unworthy manner 
 in which they are attempting to extend their influence. For ourselves, if 
 there were a fair prospect of carrying the e?pel into regions where it was 
 before unknown, if such a project did nci expose the best possessions of 
 the country to extreme danger, and if it was in the hands of men who were 
 discreet as well as devout, we should consider it to be a scheme of true 
 piety, benevolence, and wisdom : but the baseness and malignity of fanati- 
 cism shall never prevent us from attacking its arrogance, its ignorance, and 
 its activity. For what vice can be more tremendous than that which, while 
 it wears the outward appearance of religion, destroys the happiness of man, 
 and dishonours the name of God 1 
 
 LETTER ON THE CURATE'S SALARY BILL.* 
 (E. REVIEW, 1808.) 
 
 A Letter to the Right Honourable Spencer Perceval, on a Subject connected with hit 
 Bill, now -under Discussion in Parliament, for improving the Situation ofStipen~ 
 diary Curates. Svo. Hatchard, London. 1808. 
 
 THE poverty of curates has long been a favourite theme with novelists, 
 sentimental tourists, and elegiac poets. But, notwithstanding the known 
 accuracy of this class of philosophers, we cannot help suspecting that there 
 is a good deal of misconception hi the popular estimate of the amount of 
 the eviL 
 
 A very great proportion of all the curacies in England are filled with men 
 to whom the emolument is a matter of subordinate importance. They are 
 rilled by young gentlemen who have recently left college, who of course are 
 able to subsist as they had subsisted for seven years before, and who are 
 glad to have an opportunity, on any terms, of acquiring a practical famili- 
 arity with the duties of their profession. They move away from them to 
 higher situations as vacancies occur ; and make way for a new race of 
 ecclesiastical apprentices. To those men, the smallness of the appointment 
 is a grievance of no very great magnitude ; nor is it fair, with relation to 
 them, to represent the ecclesiastical order as degraded by the indigence to 
 which some of its members are condemned. With regard, again, to those 
 who take curacies merely as a means of subsistence, and with the prospect 
 of remaining permanently in that situation, it is certain that by far the 
 greater part of them are persons born in a very humble rank hi society, and 
 accustomed to no greater opulence than that of an ordinary curate. There 
 are scarcely any of those persons who have taken a degree in an university, 
 and not very many who have resided there at all. Now, the son of a small 
 Welsh farmer, who works hard every day for less than ^40 a year, has no 
 great reason to complain of degradation or disappointment if he get from 
 5 to 1O f r a moderate portion of labour one day hi seven. The 
 situation, accordingly, is looked upon by these people as extremely eligible ; 
 
 * Now we arc all dead, it may be arousing to state that I was excited to this article 
 by Sir William Scott, who brought me the book in his pocket ; and begged I would 
 attend to it, carefully concealing his name ; my own opinions happened entirely to agree 
 with his.
 
 CUR A TE 'S SALAR Y BILL. 139 
 
 and there is a great competition for curacies, even as they are now provided. 
 The amount of the evil, then, as to the curates themselves, cannot be con- 
 sidered as very enormous, when there are so few who either actually feel, or 
 are entitled to feel, much discontent on the subject. The late regulations 
 about residence, too, by diminishing the total number of curates, will 
 obviously throw that office chiefly into the hands of the well-educated and 
 comparatively independent young men, who seek for the situation rather for 
 practice than profit, and do not complain of the want of emolument. 
 
 Still we admit it to be an evil, that the resident clergyman of a parish 
 should not be enabled to hold a respectable rank in society from the regular 
 emoluments of his office. But it is an evil which does not exist exclusively 
 among curates ; and which, wherever it exists, we are afraid is irremediable, 
 without the destruction of the Episcopal Church, or the augmentation of its 
 patrimony. More than one half of the livings in England are under ^80 a 
 year ; and the whole income of the Church, including that of the bishops, 
 if thrown into a common fund, would not afford above ,180 for each living. 
 Unless Mr Perceval, therefore, will raise an additional million or two for the 
 Church, there must be poor curates, and poor rectors also ; and unless he 
 is to reduce the Episcopal hierarchy to the republican equality of our Pres- 
 byterian model, he must submit to very considerable inequalities in the dis- 
 tribution of this inadequate provision. * 
 
 Instead of applying any of these remedies, however, instead of proposing 
 to increase the income of the Church, or to raise a fund for its lowest servants 
 by a. general assessment upon those who are more opulent, instead of even 
 trying indirectly to raise the pay of curates, by raising their qualifications in 
 respect of regular education, Mr Perceval has been able, after long and pro- 
 found study, to find no better cure for the endemic poverty of curates, than 
 to ordain all rectors of a certain income to pay them one fifth part of their 
 emoluments, and to vest certain alarming powers in the bishops for the 
 purpose of controlling their appointment. Now, this scheme, it appears to 
 us, has all the faults which it is possible for such a scheme to have. It is 
 unjust and partial in its principle, it is evidently altogether and utterly in- 
 efficient for the correction of the evil in question, and it introduces other 
 evils infinitely greater than that which it vainly proposes to abolish. 
 
 To this project, however, for increasing the salary of curates, Mr Perceval 
 has been so long and so obstinately partial, that he returned to the charge 
 in the last session of Parliament, for the third time ; and experienced, in 
 spite of his present high situation, the same defeat which had baffled him in 
 his previous attempts. 
 
 Though the subject is gone by once more for the present, we cannot abstain 
 from bestowing a little gentle violence to aid its merited descent into the gulf 
 of oblivion, and to extinguish, if possible, that resurgent principle which has 
 so often disturbed the serious business of the country, and averted the at- 
 tention of the public from the great scenes that are acting in the world to 
 search for some golden medium between the selfishness of the sacred prin- 
 cipal, and the rapacity of the sacred deputy. 
 
 If church property is to be preserved, that precedent is not without danger 
 which disposes at once of a fifth of all the valuable livings in England. We 
 do not advance this as an argument of any great importance against the bill, 
 but only as an additional reason why its utility should be placed in the 
 clearest point of view, before it can attain the assent of well-wishers to the 
 English establishment. 
 
 Our first and greatest objection to such a measure, is the increase of power 
 which it gives to the bench of Bishops, an evil which may produce the 
 most serious effects, by placing the whole body of the clergy under the ab-
 
 140 CUR A TE 'S SALAR Y BILL. 
 
 solute control of men who are themselves so much under the influence of the 
 Crown. This, indeed, has been pretty effectually accomplished by the late 
 Residence bill of Sir William Scott ; and our objection to the present bill 
 is, that it tends to augment that excessive power before conferred on the 
 prelacy. 
 
 If a clergyman lives in a situation which is destroying his constitution, 
 he cannot exchange with a brother clergyman without the consent of the 
 bishop ; in whose hands, under such circumstances, his life and death are 
 actually placed. If he wishes to cultivate a little land for his amusement or 
 better support, he cannot do it without the licence of the bishop. If he 
 wishes to spend the last three or four months with a declining wife or child, 
 at some spot where better medical assistance can be procured, he cannot 
 do so without permission of the bishop. If he is struck with palsy, or racked 
 with stone, the bishop can confine him in the most remote village in Eng- 
 land. In short, the power which the bishops at present possess over their 
 clergy is so enormous, that none but a fool or a madman would think of 
 compromising his future happiness, by giving the most remote cause of offence 
 to his diocesan. We ought to recollect, however, that the clergy constitute 
 a body of 12 or 15,000 educated persons ; that the whole concern of educa- 
 tion devolves upon them ; that some share of the talents and information 
 which exist in the country must naturally fall to their lot ; and that the com- 
 plete subjugation of such a body of men cannot, in any point of view, be a 
 matter of indifference to a free country. 
 
 It is in vain to talk of the good character of bishops. Bishops are men ; 
 not always the wisest of men ; not always preferred for eminent virtues and 
 talents, or for any good reason whatever known to the public. They are 
 almost always devoid of striking and indecorous vices ; but a man may be 
 very shallow, very arrogant, and very vindictive, though a bishop ; and 
 pursue with unrelenting hatred a subordinate clergyman, whose principles 
 he dislikes,* and whose genius he fears. Bishops, besides, are subject to 
 the infirmities of old age, like other men ; and in the decay of strength and 
 understanding, will be governed as other men are, by daughters and wives, 
 and whoever ministers to their daily comforts. We have no doubt that such 
 cases sometimes occur, and produce, wherever they do occur, a very capri- 
 cious administration of ecclesiastical affairs, t As the power of enforcing 
 residence must be lodged somewhere, why not give the bishop a council, 
 consisting of two thirds ecclesiastics, and one third laymen : and meeting at 
 the same time as the sessions and deputy sessions ; the bishop's licence for 
 non-residence to issue, of course, upon their recommendations ? Consider- 
 ing the vexatious bustle of a new and the laxity of an aged bishop, we can- 
 not but think that a diocese would be much more steadily administered 
 under this system, than by the present means. 
 
 Examine the constitutional effects of the power now granted to the bench. 
 "What hinders a bishop from becoming, in the hands of the Court, a very 
 important agent in all county elections ? what clergyman would dare to re- 
 fuse him his vote ? But it will be said that no bishop will ever condescend 
 to such sort of intrigues : a most miserable answer to a most serious objec- 
 tion. The temptation is admitted, the absence of all restraint ; the dan- 
 gerous consequences are equally admitted ; and the only preservative is the 
 personal character of the individual. If this style of reasoning were general, 
 what would become of law, constitution, and every wholesome restraint 
 which we have been accumulating for so many centuries ? We have no in- 
 
 * Bold language for the year 1808. 
 
 t I have seen in the course of my life, as the mind of the prelate decayed, wifu bishop?, 
 daughter bishops, butler bishops, and even cook and housekeeper bishops.
 
 CUR A TE 'S SALAR Y BJLL. 14 1 
 
 mention tJ speak disrespectfully of constituted authorities ; but when men 
 ca'n abuse power with impunity, and recommend themselves to their supe- 
 riors by abusing it, it is but common sense to suppose that power will be 
 abused ; if it is, the country will hereafter be convulsed to its very entraih, 
 in tearing away that power from the prelacy which has been so improvi- 
 dently conferred upon them. It is useless to talk of the power they anciently 
 possessed. They have never possessed it since England has been what it 
 now is. Since we have enjoyed practically a free constitution, the bishops 
 have, in point of fact, possessed little or no power of oppression over their 
 clergy. 
 
 It must be remembered, however, that we are speaking only of proba- 
 bilities ; the fact may turn out to be quite the reverse ; the power vested 
 in the Bench may be exercised for spiritual purposes only, and with the 
 greatest moderation. We shall be extremely happy to find that this is the 
 case ; and it will reflect great honour upon those who have corrected the 
 improvidence of the Legislature by their own sense of propriety. 
 
 It is contended by the friends of this law, that the respectability of the 
 clergy depends in some measure on their wealth ; and that, as the rich 
 bishop reflects a sort of worldly consequence upon the poor bishop, and the 
 rich rector upon the poor rector ; so, a rich class of curates could not fail 
 to confer a greater degree of importance upon that class of men in general. 
 This is all very well, if you intend to raise up some new fund in order to 
 enrich curates : but you say that the riches of some constitute the dignity 
 of the whole ; and then you immediately take away from the rector the 
 superfluous wealth which, according to your own method of reasoning, is to 
 decorate and dignify the order of men to whom he belongs ! The bishops 
 constitute the first class in the church ; the beneficed clergy the second ; the 
 curates the last. Why are you to take from the second to give to the last ? 
 Why not as well from the first * to give to the second, if you really mean 
 to contend that the first and second are already too rich ? 
 
 It is not true, however, that the class of rectors is generally either too 
 rich, or even rich enough. There are 6000 livings below ,80 per annum, 
 which is not very much above the average allowance of a curate. If every 
 rector, however, who has more than ^500 is obliged to give a fifth part to 
 a curate, there seems to be no reason why every bishop who has more than 
 1000 should not give a fifth part among the poor rectors in his diocese. It 
 is in vain to say this assessment upon rectors is reasonable and right, because 
 they may reside and do duty themselves, and then they will not need a 
 curate ; that their non-residence, in short, is a kind of delinquency for 
 which they compound by this fine to the parish. If more than half of the 
 rectories in England are under .80 a year, and some thousands of them 
 under ^o, pluralities are absolutely necessary ; and clergymen, who have 
 not the gift of ubiquity, must be non-resident at some of them. Curates, 
 therefore, are not the deputies of negligent rectors ; they are an order of 
 priests absolutely necessary in the present form of the Church of England : 
 and a rector incurs no shadow of delinquency by employing one, more than 
 the King does by appointing a Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, or a Com- 
 missioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, instead of 
 doing the duty of these offices in person. If the Legislature, therefore, is 
 to interfere to raise the natural, i.e., the actual wages of this order of men, 
 at the expense of the more opulent ministers of the Gospel, there seems to 
 be no sort of reason for exempting the bishops from their share in this pious 
 contribution, or for refusing to make a similar one for the benefit of all 
 rectors who have less than 100 per annum. 
 
 * The first unfortunately make the laws.
 
 142 CURA TE 'S SALAR Y BILL. 
 
 The true reason, however, for exempting my Lords the Bishops from this 
 imposition is, that they have the privilege of voting upon all bills brought in 
 by Mr Perceval, and of materially affecting his comfort and security by their 
 parliamentary control and influence. This, however, is to cure what you 
 believe to be unjust, by means which you must know to be unjust ; to fly 
 out against abuses which may be remedied without peril, and to connive at 
 them when the attempt at a remedy is attended with political danger ; to 
 be mute and obsequious towards men who enjoy church property to the 
 amount of 18 or ^"19,000 per annum ; and to be so scandalised at those 
 who possess as many hundreds, that you must melt their revenues down 
 into curacies, and save to the eye of political economy the spectacle of such 
 flagrant inequality ! 
 
 In the same style of reasoning it may be asked, why the lay impropriators 
 are not compelled to advance the salary of their perpetual curacies, up to a 
 fifth of their estates? The answer, too, is equally obvious. Many lay im- 
 propriators have votes in both Houses of Parliament ; and the only class of 
 men this cowardly reformation attacks, is that which has no means of say- 
 ing any thing hi its own defence. 
 
 Even if the enrichment of curates were the most imperious of all duties, it 
 might very well be questioned whether a more unequal and pernicious mode 
 of fulfilling it could be devised than that enjoined by this bill. Curacies are 
 not granted for the life of the curate ; but for the life or incumbency or 
 good-liking of the rector. It is only rectors worth $oo a year who are 
 compelled by Mr Perceval to come down with a fifth to their deputy ; and 
 these form but a very small proportion of the whole non-resident rectors ; 
 so that the great multitude of curates must remain as poor as formerly, 
 and probably a little more discontented. Suppose, however, that one has 
 actually entered on the enjoyment of ^250 per annum. His wants, and his 
 habits of expense, are enlarged by this increase of income. In a year or 
 two his rector dies, or exchanges his living ; and the poor man is reduced, 
 by the effects of comparison, to a much worse state than before the opera- 
 tion of the bill. Can any person say that this is a wise and effectual mode 
 of ameliorating the condition of the lower clergy ? To us it almost appears 
 to be invented for the express purpose of destroying those habits of economy 
 and caution, which are so indispensably necessary to their situation. If it 
 be urged that the curate, knowing his wealth only to be temporary, will 
 make use of it as a means of laying up a fund for some future day, we ad- 
 mire the good sense of the man : but what becomes of all the provisions of 
 the bill ? what becomes of that opulence which is to confer respectability 
 upon all around it, and to radiate even upon the curates of Wales ? The 
 money was expressly given to blacken his coat, to render him convex and 
 rosy, to give him a sort of pseudo-rectorial appearance, and to dazzle the 
 parishioners at the rate of &2$o per annum. The poor man, actuated by 
 those principles of common sense, which, are so contrary to all the pro- 
 visions of the bill, chooses to make a good thing of it, because he knows it 
 will not last ; wears his old coat, rides his lean horse, and defrauds the class 
 of curates of all the advantages which they were to derive from the sleek- 
 ness and splendour of his appearance. 
 
 It is of some importance to the welfare of a parish, and the credit of the 
 church, that the curate and his rector should live upon good terms together. 
 Such a bill, however, throws between them elements of mistrust and hatred, 
 which must render their agreement highly improbable. The curate would 
 be perpetually prying into every little advance which the rector made upon 
 his tithes, and claiming his proportionate increase. No respectable man 
 could brook such inquisition ; some, we fear, would endeavour to prevent
 
 CUR A TE 'S SALAR Y BILL. 143 
 
 its effects by clandestine means. The church would be a perpetual scene of 
 disgraceful animosities ; and the ears of the bishop never free from the 
 clamours of rapacity and irritation. 
 
 It is some slight defect in such a bill, that it does not proportion reward 
 to the labour done, but to the wealth of him for whom it is done. The 
 curate of a parish containing 400 persons, may be paid as much as another 
 person who has the care of 10,000 ; for, in England, there is very little 
 proportion between the value of a living, and the quantity of duty to be 
 performed by its clergyman. 
 
 The bill does not attain its object in the best way. Let the bishop refuse 
 to allow of any curate upon a living above ^500 per annum, who is not a 
 Master of Arts of one of the universities. Such curates will then be 
 obtained at a price which will render it worth the while of such men to take 
 curacies ; and such a degree and situation in society will secure good 
 curates, much more effectually than the complicated provisions of this bill : 
 for, primd facie, it appears to us much more probable, that a curate should 
 be respectable who is a Master of Arts in some English university, than if 
 all that we knew about him was, that he had a fifth of the profits of the 
 living. The object is, to fix a good clergyman in a parish. The law will 
 not trust the non-resident rector to fix both the price and the person ; but 
 fixes the price, and then leaves him the choice of the person. Our plan is 
 to fix upon the description of person, and then to leave the price to find its 
 level ; for the good price by no means implies a good person, but the good 
 person will be sure to get a good price. 
 
 Where the living will admit of it, we have commonly observed that the 
 English clergy are desirous of putting in a proper substitute. If this be so, 
 the bill is unnecessary ; for it proceeds on the very contrary supposition, 
 that the great mass of opulent clergy consult nothing but economy in the 
 choice of their curates. 
 
 It is very galling and irksome to any class of men to be compelled to dis- 
 close their private circumstances ; a provision contained in and absolutely 
 necessary to this bill, under which the diocesan can always compel the 
 minister to disclose the full value of his living. 
 
 After ah 1 , however, the main and conclusive objection to the bill is, that 
 its provisions are drawn from such erroneous principles, and betray such 
 gross ignorance of human nature, that though it would infallibly produce a 
 thousand mischiefs foreseen and not foreseen, it would evidently have no 
 effect whatsoever in raising the salaries of curates. We do not put this as 
 a case of common buyer and seller ; we allow that the parish is a third 
 party, having an interest ; * we fully admit the rig/it of the Legislature to 
 interfere for their relief. We only contend, that such interference would be 
 necessarily altogether ineffectual, so long as men can be found capable of 
 doing the duty of curates, and willing to do it for less than the statutory 
 minimum. 
 
 If there be a competition of rectors for curates, it is quite unnecessary 
 and absurd to make laws in favour of curates. The demand for them will 
 do their business more effectually than the law. If, on the contrary (as the 
 fact plainly is), there is a competition of curates for employment, is it pos- 
 sible to prevent this order of men from labouring under the regulation price ? 
 Is it possible to prevent a curate from pledging himself to his rector, that 
 
 * We remember Horace's description of the misery of a parish where there is no resi- 
 dent clergyman. 
 
 " Illacrymabiles 
 
 Urgentur, iguotique longa 
 Nocte, carent quin vate sacro."
 
 144 CUR A TE 'S SALAR Y BILL. 
 
 he will accept only half the legal salary, if he is so fortunate as to be pre- 
 ferred among an host of rivals, who are willing to engage on the same 
 terms? You may make these contracts illegal. What then? Men laugh 
 at such prohibitions ; and they always become a dead letter. In nine in- 
 stances out of ten, the contract would be honourably adhered to ; and then 
 what is the use of Mr Perceval's law ? Where the contract was not ad- 
 hered to, whom would the law benefit ? A man utterly devoid of every 
 particle of honour and good faith. And this is the new species of curate, 
 \vho is to reflect dignity and importance upon his poorer brethren ! The 
 law encourages breach of faith between gambler and gambler ; it arras 
 broker against broker : but it cannot arm clergyman against clergyman. 
 Did any human being before, ever think of disseminating such a principle 
 among the teachers of Christianity? Did any ecclesiastical law, before 
 this, ever depend for its success upon the mutual treachery of men who 
 ought to be examples to their fellow creatures of every thing that is just and 
 upright ? 
 
 We have said enough already upon the absurdity of punishing all rich 
 rectors for non-residence, as for a presumptive delinquency. A law is 
 already passed, fixing what shall be legal and sufficient causes for non- 
 residence. Nothing can be more unjust, then, than to punish that absence 
 which you admit to be legal. If the causes of absence are too numerous, 
 lessen them ; but do not punish him who has availed himself of their exist- 
 ence. We deny, however, that they are too numerous. There are 6000 
 livings out of ll,ooo in the English church under ^80 per annum : many 
 of these 20, many 30 per annum. The whole task of education at the 
 university, public schools, private families, and in foreign travel, devolves 
 upon the clergy. A great part of the literature of their country is in their 
 hands. Residence is a very proper and necessary measure ; but, consider- 
 ing all these circumstances, it requires a great deal of moderation and 
 temper to carry it into effect without doing more mischief than good. At 
 present, however, the torrent sets the other way. Every lay plunderer, 
 and every fanatical coxcomb, is forging fresh chains for the English clergy ; 
 and we should not be surprised, in a very little time, to see them absenting 
 themselves from their benefices by a kind of day-rule, like prisoners in the 
 King's Bench. The first bill, which was brought in by Sir William Scott, 
 always saving and excepting the power granted to the bishops, is full of 
 useful provisions, and characterised throughout by great practical wisdom. 
 We have no doubt but that it has, upon the whole, improved the condition 
 of the English church. Without caution, mildness, or information, how- 
 ever, it was peculiarly unfortunate to follow such a leader. We are ex- 
 tremely happy the bill was rejected. We have seldom witnessed more of 
 ignorance and error stuffed and crammed into so very narrow a compass. 
 Its origin, we are confident, is from the Tabernacle ; and its consequences 
 would have been, to have sown the seeds of discord and treachery in an 
 ecclesiastical constitution, which, under the care of prudent and honest men, 
 may always be rendered a source of public happiness. 
 
 One glaring omission in this bill we have almost forgotten to mention. 
 The Chancellor of the Exchequer has entirely neglected to make any pro- 
 vision for that very meritorious class of men, the lay curates, who do all the 
 business of those offices, of which lazy and non-resident placemen receive 
 the emoluments. So much delicacy and conscience, however, are here dis- 
 played on the subject of pocketing unearned emoluments, that we have no 
 doubt the moral irritability of this servant of the Crown will speedily urge 
 him to a species of reform, of which he may be the object as well as the 
 mover.
 
 CA TIIOLICS. I45 
 
 CATHOLICS. (E. REVIEW, 1808.) 
 
 KUiorj af the Pcn&l Laivi against the Irish Catholics, from the Treaty of Lunenck 
 to the Union. By HENRY PARNELL, Esq., M.P. 
 
 THE various publications which have issued from the press in favour of 
 religious liberty, have now nearly silenced the arguments of their opponents ; 
 and, teaching sense to some, and inspiring others with shame, have left 
 those only on the field who can neither learn nor blush. 
 
 But, though the argument is given up, and the justice of the Catholic 
 cause admitted, it seems to be generally conceived, that their case, at 
 present, is utterly hopeless ; and that, to advocate it any longer, will only 
 irritate the oppressed, without producing any change of opinion in those 
 by whose influence and authority that oppression is continued. To this 
 opinion, unfortunately too prevalent, we have many reasons for not sub- 
 scribing. 
 
 We do not understand what is meant in this country by the notion, that 
 a measure, of consummate wisdom and imperious necessity, is to be de- 
 ferred for any time, or to depend upon any contingency. Whenever it can 
 be made clear to the understandings of the great mass of enlightened people, 
 that any system of political conduct is necessary to the public welfare, every 
 obstacle (as it ought) will be swept away before it ; and as we conceive it 
 to be by no means improbable, that the country may, ere long, be placed 
 in a situation where its safety or ruin will depend upon its conduct towards 
 the Catholics, we sincerely believe we are doing our duty in throwing every 
 possible light on this momentous question. Neither do we understand 
 where this passive submission to ignorance and error is to end. Is it 'con- 
 fined to religion ? or does it extend to war and peace, as well as religion ? 
 Would it be tolerated, if any man were to say, " Abstain from all argu- 
 ments in favour of peace ; the court have resolved upon eternal war ; and, 
 as you cannot have peace, to what purpose urge the necessity of it ? " We 
 answer, that courts must be presumed to be open to the influence of 
 reason ; or, if they were not, to the influence of pradence and discretion, 
 when they perceive the public opinion to be loudly and clearly against 
 them. To lie by in timid and indolent silence, to suppose an inflexibility, 
 in which no court ever could, under pressing circumstances, persevere, 
 and to neglect a regular and vigorous appeal to public opinion, is to give 
 up all chance of doing good, and to abandon the only instrument by which 
 the few are ever prevented from ruining the many. 
 
 It is folly to talk of any other ultimatum in government than perfect 
 justice to the fair claims of the subject. The concessions to the Irish 
 Catholics in 1 792, were to be the ne plus ultra. Every engine was set on 
 foot to induce the grand juries in Ireland to petition against further conces- 
 sions ; and, in six months afterwards, government were compelled to intro- 
 duce, themselves, those further relaxations of the penal code, of which they 
 had just before assured the Catholics they must abandon all hope. Such is 
 the absurdity of supposing, that a few interested and ignorant individuals 
 can postpone, at their pleasure and caprice, the happiness of millions. 
 
 As to the feeling of irritation with which such continued discussion may 
 inspire the Irish Catholics, we are convinced that no opinion could be so 
 prejudicial to the cordial union which we hope may always subsist between 
 the two countries, as that all the efforts of the Irish were unavailing, that 
 argument was hopeless, that their case was prejudged with a sullen inflexi- 
 bility which circumstances could not influence, pity soften, or reason subdue. 
 We are by no means convinced, that th~ decorous silence recommended 
 
 K
 
 146 CATHOLICS. 
 
 upon the Catholic question would be rewarded by those future concessions, 
 of which many persons appear to be so certain. \Ve have a strange in- 
 credulity where persecution is to be abolished, and any class of men restored 
 to their indisputable rights. When we see it done, we will believe it. Till 
 it is done, we shall always consider it to be highly improbable much too 
 improbable to justify the smallest relaxation in the Catholics themselves, 
 or in those who are well-wishers to their cause. When the fanciful period 
 at present assigned for the emancipation arrives, new scruples may arise 
 fresh forbearance be called for and the operations of common sense be 
 deferred for another generation. Toleration never had a present tense, 
 nor taxation a future one. The answer which Paul received from Felix, 
 he owed to the subject on which he spoke. When justice and righteousness 
 were his theme, Felix told him to go away, and he would hear him some 
 ether time. All men who have spoken to courts upon such disagreeable 
 topics, have received the same answer. Felix, however, trembled when he 
 gave it ; but his fear was ill directed. He trembled at the subject he 
 ought to have trembled at the delay. 
 
 Little or nothing is to be expected from the shame of deferring what it is 
 so wicked and perilous to defer. Profligacy in taking office is so extreme, 
 that we have no doubt public men may be found, who, for half a century, 
 would postpone all remedies for a pestilence, if the preservation of their 
 places depended upon the propagation of the virus. To us, such kind of 
 conduct conveys no other action than that of sordid avaricious impudence : 
 it puts to sale the best interests of the country for some improvement in the 
 wines and meats and carriages which a man uses and encourages a new 
 political morality which may always postpone any other great measure and 
 every other great measure, as well as the emancipation of the Catholics. 
 
 We terminate this apologetical preamble with expressing the most earnest 
 hope that the Catholics will not, from any notion that their cause is effectually 
 carried, relax in any one constitutional effort necessary to their purpose. 
 Their cause is the cause of common sense and justice : the safety of England 
 and of the world may depend upon it. It rests upon the soundest principles ; 
 leads to the most important consequences ; and therefore cannot be too 
 frequently brought before the notice of the public. 
 
 The book before us is written by Mr Henry Parnell, the brother of 
 Mr William Parnell, author of the Historical Apology, reviewed in one 
 of our late Numbers ; and it contains a very well-written history of the 
 penal laws enacted against the Irish Catholics, from the peace of Limerick, 
 in the reign of King William, to the late Union. Of these we shall present 
 a very short, and, we hope even to loungers, a readable abstract. 
 
 The war carried on in Ireland against King William cannot deserve the 
 name of a rebellion : it was a struggle for their lawful Prince, whom they 
 had sworn to maintain ; and whose zeal for the Catholic religion, whatever 
 effect it might have produced in England, could not by them be considered 
 as a crime. This war was terminated by the surrender of Limerick, upon 
 conditions by which the Catholics hoped, and very rationally hoped, 
 to secure to themselves the free enjoyment of their religion in future, and an 
 exemption from all those civil penalties and incapacities which the reigning 
 creed is so fond of heaping upon its subjugated rivals. 
 
 By the various articles of this treaty, they are to enjoy such privileges in 
 the exercise of their religion as they did enjoy in the time of Charles II. : 
 and the King promises upon the meeting of Parliament, ' ' to endeavour to 
 procure for them such further security in that particular, as may preserve 
 them/row any disturbance on account of their said religion." They are to 
 be restored to their estates, privileges, and immunities, as they enjoyed them iu
 
 CATHOLICS. 147 
 
 the time of Charles II. The gentlemen are to be allowed to carry arms ; and 
 no other oath is to be tendered to the Catholics who submit to King William, 
 than the oath of allegiance. These and other articles, King William ratifies 
 for himself, his heirs and successors, as far as in him lies ; and confirms the 
 same, and every other clause and matter therein contained. 
 
 These articles were signed by the English general on the 3d of October, 
 1691 ; and diffused comfort, confidence, and tranquillity among the Catholics. 
 On the 22d of October, the English Parliament excluded Catholics from the 
 Irish Houses of Lords and Commons, by compelling them to take the oaths 
 of supremacy before admission. 
 
 In 1695, the Catholics were deprived of all means of educating their 
 children, at home or abroad, and of the privilege of being guardians to their 
 own or to other persons' children. Then all the Catholics were disarmed 
 and then all the priests banished. After this (probably by way of 
 joke), an act was passed to confirm the treaty of Limerick, the great and 
 glorious King William totally forgetting the contract he had entered into, of 
 recommending the religious liberties of the Catholics to the attention of 
 Parliament. 
 
 On the 4th of March, 1704, it was enacted, that any son of a Catholic, 
 who would turn Protestant, should succeed to the family estate, which from 
 that moment could no longer be sold, or charged with debt and legacy. On 
 the same day, Popish fathers were debarred, by a penalty of ^500, from 
 being guardians to their own children. If the child, however young, declared 
 himself a Protestant, he was to be delivered immediately to the custody of 
 some Protestant relation. No Protestant to marry a Papist. No Papist to 
 purchase land, or take a lease of land for more than thirty-one years. If 
 the profits of the lands so leased by the Catholic amounted to above a certain 
 rate settled by the *.<&, farm to belong to the first Protestant -who made the 
 discovery. No Papist to be in a line of entail ; but the estate to pass on to 
 the next Protestant heir, as if the Papist were dead. If a Papist dies in- 
 testate, and no Protestant heir can be found, property to be equally divided 
 among all the sons ; or, if he has none, among all the daughters. By the 
 1 6th clause of this bill, no Papist to hold any office civil or military. Not 
 to dwell in Limerick or Gahvay, except on certain conditions. Not to vote 
 at elections. Not to hold advowsons. 
 
 In 1 709, Papists were prevented from holding an annuity for life. If any 
 son of a Papist chose to turn Protestant, and enrol the certificate of his con- 
 version in the Court of Chancery, that court is empowered to compel his 
 father to state the value of his property upon oath, and to make o,;t of that 
 property a competent allowance to the son, at their own discretion, not only 
 for his present maintenance, but for his future portion after the death of his 
 father. An increase of jointure to be enjoyed by Papist wives, upon their 
 conversion. Papist keeping schools, to be prosecuted as convicts. Popish 
 priests who are converted to receive ,30 per annum. 
 
 Rewards are given by the same act for the discovery of Popish clergy ; 
 50 for discovering a Popish bishop ; 20 for a common Popish clergyman ; 
 ,10 for a Popish usher ! Two justices of the peace can compel any Papist 
 above 18 years of age to disclose every particular which has come to his 
 knowledge respecting Popish priests, celebration of mass, or Papist schools. 
 Imprisonment for a year if he" refuses to answer. Nobody can hold pro- 
 perty in trust for a Catholic. Juries, in all trials growing out of these 
 statutes, to be Protestants. No Papist to take more than two apprentices, 
 except in the linen trade. All the Catholic clergy to give in their names 
 and places of abode at the quarter-sessions, and to keep no curates. 
 Catholics not to serve on grand juries. In any trial upon statutes for
 
 I 4 3 CATHOLICS. 
 
 strengthening the Protestant interest, a Papist juror may be peremptorily 
 challenged. 
 
 In the next reign, Popish horses were attacked, and allowed to be seized 
 for the militia. Papists cannot be either high or petty constables. No 
 Papists to vote at elections. Papists in towns to provide Protestant watch- 
 men ; and not to vote at vestries. 
 
 In the reign of George II., Papists were prohibited from being barristers. 
 Barristers and solicitors marrying Papists, considered to be Papists, and sub- 
 jected to all penalties as such. Persons robbed by privateers, during a war 
 with a Popish prince, to be indemnified by grand jury presentments, and the 
 money to be levied on the Catholics only. No Papist to many a Protestant ; 
 any priest celebrating such a marriage to be hanged, 
 
 During all this time, there was not the slightest rebellion in Ireland. 
 
 In 1715 and 1745, while Scotland and the north of England were up in 
 arms, not a man stirred in Ireland ; yet the spirit of persecution against the 
 Catholics continued till the iSth of his present Majesty ; and then gradually 
 gave way to the increase of knowledge, the humanity of our Sovereign, the 
 abilities of Mr Grattan, the weakness of England struggling in America, and 
 the dread inspired by the French revolution. 
 
 Such is the rapid outline of a code of laws which reflects indelible disgrace 
 upon the English character, and explains but too clearly the cause of that 
 hatred in which the English name has been so long held in Ireland. It 
 would require centuries to efface such an impression : and yet, when we 
 find it fresh, and operating at the end of a few years, we explain the fact by 
 every cause which can degrade the Irish, and by none which can remind us 
 of our own scandalous policy. With the folly and the horror of such a code 
 before our eyes, with the conviction of recent and domestic history, that 
 mankind are not to be lashed'and chained out of their faith, we are striv- 
 ing to teaze and worry them into a better theology. Heavy oppression is 
 removed ; light insults and provocations are retained ; the scourge does not 
 fall upon their shoulders, but it sounds in their ears. And this is the con- 
 duct we are pursuing, when it is still a great doubt whether this country 
 alone may not be opposed to the united efforts of the whole of Europe. It 
 is really difficult to ascertain which is the most utterly destitute of common 
 sense, the capricious and arbitrary stop we have made in our concessions 
 to the Catholics, or the precise period we have chosen for this grand effort 
 of obstinate folly. 
 
 In whatsoever manner the contest now in agitation on the continent may 
 terminate, its relation to the emancipation of the Catholics will be very 
 striking. If the Spaniards succeed in establishing their own liberties, and 
 in rescuing Europe from the tyranny under which it at present labours, it 
 will still be contended, within the walls of our own Parliament, that the 
 Catholics cannot fulfil the duties of social life. Venal politicians will still 
 argue that the time is not yet come. Sacred and lay sycophants will still 
 lavish upon the Catholic faith their well-paid abuse, and England still 
 passively submit to such a disgraceful spectacle of ingratitude and injustice. 
 If, on the contrary (as may probably be the case), the Spaniards fall before 
 the numbers and military skill of the French, then are we left alone in the 
 world, without another ray of hope ; and compelled to employ against 
 internal disaffection, that force which, exalted to its utmost energy, would 
 in ah 1 probability prove but barely equal to the external danger by which 
 we should be surrounded. Whence comes it that these things are uni- 
 versally admitted to be true, but looked upon in servile silence by a country 
 hitherto accustomed to make great efforts for its prosperity, safety, aad 
 independence ?
 
 SOCIETY FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF VICE. 149 
 
 PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE SUPPRESSION 
 OF VICE. (E. REVIEW, 1809.) 
 
 An Address to the Public from the Society for the Suppression of Vice instituted in 
 London 1802. Part the Second. Containing an Account of the Proceedings of the 
 Society from its original Institution. London. 1804. 
 
 A SOCIETY, that holds out as its object the suppression of vice, must at first 
 sight conciliate the favour of every respectable person ; and he who objects 
 to an institution calculated apparently to do so much good, is bound to give 
 very clear and satisfactory reasons for his dissent from so popular an opinion. 
 We certainly have, for a long time, had doubts of its utility ; and now think 
 ourselves called upon to state the grounds of our distrust. 
 
 Though it were clear that individual informers are useful auxiliaries to'the 
 administration of the laws, it would by no means follow that these informers 
 should be allowed to combine, to form themselves into a body, to make 
 a public purse, and to prosecute under a common name. An informer, 
 whether he is paid by the week, like the agents of this society or by the 
 crime, as in common cases, is, in general, a man of a very indifferent 
 character. So much fraud and deception are necessary for carrying on his 
 trade it is so odious to his fellow subjects, that no man of respectability 
 will ever undertake it. It is evidently impossible to make such a character 
 otherwise than odious. A man who receives weekly pay for prying into the 
 transgressions of mankind, and bringing them to consequent punishment, 
 will always be hated by mankind ; and the office must fall to the lot of some 
 man of desperate fortunes and ambiguous character. The multiplication, 
 therefore, of such officers, and the extensive patronage of such characters, 
 may, by the management of large and opulent societies, become an evil 
 nearly as great as the evils they would suppress. The alarm which a 
 private and disguised accuser occasions in a neighbourhood, is known to be 
 prodigious, not only to the guilty, but to those who may be at once innocent, 
 and ignorant, and timid. The destruction of social confidence is another 
 evil, the consequence of information. An informer gets access to my house 
 or family, worms my secret out of me, and then betrays me to the magis- 
 trate. Now all these evils may be tolerated in a small degree, while, in a 
 greater degree, they would be perfectly intolerable. Thirty or forty informers 
 roaming about the metropolis, may frighten the mass of offenders a little, and 
 do some good ; ten thousand informers would either create an insurrection, or 
 t otally destroy the confidence and cheerfulness of private life. Whatever may 
 be said, therefore, of the single and insulated informer, it is quite a new ques- 
 tion when we come to a corporation of informers supported by large contribu- 
 tions. The one may be a good, the other a very serious evil ; the one legal, the 
 other wholly out of the contemplation of law, which often, and very wisely, 
 allows individuals to do, what it forbids to many individuals assembled. 
 
 If once combination is allowed for the suppression of vice, where are its 
 limits to be ? Its capital may as well consist of ^100,000 per annum, as of 
 a thousand : its numbers may increase from a thousand subscribers, which 
 this society, it seems, had reached in its second year, to twenty thousand 
 and, in that case, what accused person of an inferior condition of life would 
 have the temerity to stand against such a society ? Their mandates would 
 very soon be law ; and there is no compliance into which they might not 
 frighten the common people, and the lower orders of tradesmen. The idea
 
 l$o SOCIETY FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF VICE, 
 
 of a society of gentlemen, calling themselves nn Association for the Suppres- 
 sion of Vice, would alarm any small offender, to a degree that would make 
 him prefer any submission to any resistance. lie would consider the very 
 fact of being accused by them as almost sufficient to ruin him. 
 
 An individual accuser accuses at his own expense ; and the risk he runs 
 is a good security that the subject will not be harassed by needless accusa- 
 tions, a security which, of course, he cannot have against such a society as 
 this, to whom pecuniary loss is an object of such little consequence. It 
 must never be forgotten, that this is not a society {<yc punishing people who 
 have been found to transgress the law, but for . rsons of transgres- 
 
 sing the law ; and that, before trial, the accused person is to be considered 
 as innocent, and is to have every fair chance of establishing his innocence. 
 He must be no common defendant, however, who does not contend against 
 such a society with very fearful odds ; the best counsel engaged for his 
 opponents, great practice in the particular court and particular species of 
 cause, witnesses thoroughly hackneyed in a court of justice, and an un- 
 limited command of money. It by no means follows, that the legislature, 
 in allowing individuals to be informers, meant to subject the accused 
 to the superior weight and power of such societies. The very influence of 
 names must have a considerable weight with the jury. Lord Dartmouth, 
 Lord Radstock, and the Bishop of Durham, :-frfi,s a Whitechapel butcher 
 or a publican I Is this a fair contest before a jury? It is not so even in 
 London ; and what must it be in the country, vhcre a society for the sup- 
 pression of vice may consist of all the principal persons in the neighbour- 
 hood? These societies are now established in York, in Reading, and in 
 many other large towns. Wherever this is the case, it is far from improb- 
 able that the same persons, at the Quarter or Town Sessions, may be both 
 judges and accusers ; and still more fatally so, if the offence is tried by a 
 special jury. This is already most notoriously the case in societies for the pre- 
 servation of game. They prosecute a poacher ; the jury is social ; and the 
 poor wretch is found guilty by the very same persons who 1 d him. 
 
 If it be lawful for respectable men to combine for the purpose of turning 
 informers, it is lawful for the lowest and most despicable race of informers 
 to do the same thing ; and then it is quite clear that every species of wicked- 
 ness and extortion would be the consequence. \Ye are rather surprised that 
 no society of perjured attorneys and fraudulent bankrupts has risen up in 
 this metropolis for the suppression of vice. A chairman, deputy chairman, 
 subscriptions, and an annual sermon, would give great dignity to their pro- 
 ceedings ; and they would soon begin to take some rank in the world. 
 
 It is true that it is the duty of grand juries to inform against vice ; but 
 the law knows the probable number of grand jurymen, the times oi their 
 meeting, and the description of persons of whom they consist. Of voluntary 
 societies it can know nothing, their numbers, their wealth, or the ch.ir.uier 
 of their members. It may therefore trust to a grand jury what it would by 
 no means trust to an unknown combination. A vast distinction is to be 
 made, too, between official duties and voluntary duties. The first are com- 
 monly carried on with calmness and moderation ; the latter often character- 
 ized, in their execution, by rash and intemperate zeal. 
 
 The present Society receives no members but those who are of the Church 
 of England. As we are now arguing the question generally, we have a 
 right to make any supposition. It is equally free, therefore, upon general 
 principles, for a society of sectarians to combine and exch:.:e members of 
 the Church of England ; and the suppression of vice may thus come in aid 
 of Methodism, Jacobinism, or of any set of principles, however perilous, 
 cither to Church or State. The present Society may perhaps consist of
 
 SOCIETY FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF VICE. 151 
 
 persons whose sentiments on these points are rational and respectable. 
 Combinations, however, of this sort may give birth to something far differ- 
 ent ; and such a supposition is the fair way of trying the question. 
 
 We doubt if there be not some mischief in averting the fears and hopes of 
 fhe people from the known and constituted authorities of the country to 
 those self-created powers ; a Society that punishes in the Strand, another 
 which rewards at Lloyd's Coffee-house ! If these things get to any great 
 height, they throw an air of insignificance over those branches of the govern- 
 ment to whom these cares properly devolve, and whose authority is by these 
 means assisted, till it is superseded. It is supposed that a project must 
 necessarily be good, because it is intended for the aid of law and govern- 
 ment. At this rate, there should be a society in aid of the government, for 
 procuring intelligence from foreign parts, with accredited agents all over 
 Europe. There should be a voluntary transport board, and a gratuitous 
 victualling office. There should be a duplicate, in short, of every depart- 
 ment of the State, the one appointed by the King, and the other by itself. 
 There should be a real Lord Glenbervie in the woods and forests, and with 
 him a monster, a voluntary Lord Glenbervie, serving without pay, and guid- 
 ing gratis, with secret counsel, the axe of his prototype. If it be asked, who 
 are the constituted authorities who are legally appointed to watch over 
 morals, and whose functions the Society usurp ? our answer is, that there 
 are in England about 12,000 clergy, not unhandsomely paid for persuading 
 the people, and about 4000 justices, 30 grand juries, and 40,000 constables, 
 whose duty and whose inclination it is to compel them to do right. Under 
 such circumstances a voluntary moral society does indeed seem to be the 
 purest result of volition ; for there certainly is not the smallest particle of 
 necessity mingled with its existence. 
 
 It is hardly possible that a society for the suppression of vice can ever be 
 kept within the bounds of good sense and moderation. If there are many 
 members who have really become so from a feeling of duty, there will 
 necessarily be some who enter the Society to hide a bad character, and 
 others whose object it is to recommend themselves to their betters by a 
 sedulous and bustling inquisition into the immoralities of the public. The 
 loudest and noisiest suppressors will always carry it against the more prudent 
 part of the community; the most violent will be considered as the most 
 moral ; and those who see the absurdity will, from the fear of being thought 
 to encourage vice, be reluctant to oppose it. 
 
 It is of great importance to keep public opinion on the side of virtue. 
 To their authorized and legal correctors, mankind are, on common occa- 
 sions, ready enough to submit ; but there is something in the self-erection 
 of a voluntary magistracy which creates so much disgust, that it almost 
 renders vice popular, and puts the offence at a premium. \Ve have no 
 doubt but that the immediate effect of a voluntary combination for the 
 suppression of vice, is an involuntary combination in favour of the vices 
 to be suppressed ; and this is a very serious drawback from any good of 
 which such societies may be the occasion ; for the state of morals, at any 
 one period, depends much more upon opinion than law ; and to bring 
 odious and disgusting auxiliaries to the aid of virtue, is to do the utmost 
 possible good to the cause of vice. We regret that mankind are as they 
 are ; and we sincerely wish that the species at large were as completely 
 devoid of every vice and infirmity as the President, Vice-President, and 
 Committee of the Suppressing Society ; but, till they are thus regenerated, 
 it is of the greatest consequence to teacli them virtue and religion in a man- 
 ner which will not make them hate both the one and the other. The 
 greatest delicacy is required in the application of violence to moral and
 
 152 SOCIETY FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF VICE. 
 
 religious sentiment. We forget, that the object is, not to produce the out- 
 ward compliance, but to raise up the inward feeling, which secures the 
 outward compliance. You may drag men into church by main force, and 
 prosecute them for buying a pot of beer, and cut them off from the enjoy- 
 ment of a leg of mutton ; and you may do all this, till you make the 
 common people hate Sunday, and the clergy, and religion, and every thing 
 which relates to such subjects. There are many crimes, indeed, where per- 
 suasion cannot be waited for, and where the untaught feelings of all men go 
 along with the violence of the law. A robber and a murderer must be 
 knocked on the head like mad dogs ; but we have no great opinion of the 
 possibility of indicting men into piety, or of calling in the Quarter Sessions 
 to the aid of religion. You may produce outward conformity by these 
 means ; but you are so far from producing (the only thing worth producing) 
 the inward feeling, that you incur a great risk of giving birth to a totally 
 opposite sentiment. 
 
 The violent modes of making men good, just alluded to, have been 
 resorted to at periods when the science of legislation was not so well under- 
 stood as it now is ; or when the manners of the age have been peculiarly 
 gloomy or fanatical. The improved knowledge, and the improved temper 
 of later times push such laws into the back ground, and silently repeal them. 
 A Suppressing Society, hunting every where for penalty and information, 
 has a direct tendency to revive ancient ignorance and fanaticism, and to 
 re-enact laws which, if ever they ought to have existed at all, were certainly 
 calculated for a very different style of manners, and a very different degree 
 of information. To compel men to go to church under a penalty appears to 
 us to be absolutely absurd. The bitterest enemy of religion will necessarily 
 be that person who is driven to a compliance with its outward ceremonies, 
 by informers and justices of the peace. In the same manner, any constable 
 who hears another swear an oath has a right to seize him, and carry him 
 before a magistrate, where he is to be fined so much for each execration. 
 It is impossible to carry such laws into execution ; and it is lucky that it is 
 impossible, for their execution would create an infinitely greater evil than 
 it attempted to remedy. The common sense, and common feeling of man- 
 kind, if left to themselves, would silently repeal such laws ; and it is one of 
 the evils of these societies, that they render absurdity eternal, and ignorance 
 indestructible. Do not let us be misunderstood : upon the object to be 
 accomplished, there can be but one opinion ; it is only upon the means 
 employed, that there can be the slightest difference of sentiment. To go to 
 church is a duty of the greatest possible importance ; and on the blasphemy 
 and vulgarity of swearing, there can be but one opinion. But such duties 
 are not the objects of legislation ; they must be left to the general state of 
 public sentiment ; which sentiment must be influenced by example, by the 
 exertions of the pulpit and the press, and, above all, by education. The 
 fear of God can never be taught by constables, nor the pleasures of religion 
 be learnt from a common informer. 
 
 Beginning with the best intentions in the world, such societies must in all 
 probability degenerate into a receptacle for every species of tittle-tattle, im- 
 pertinence, and malice. Men, whose trade is rat-catching, love to catch 
 rats ; the bug-destroyer seizes on his bug with delight ; and the suppressor 
 is gratified by finding his vice. The last soon becomes a mere tradesman 
 like the others ; none of them moralize, or lament that their respective evils 
 should exist in the world. The public feeling is swallowed up in the pur- 
 suit of a daily occupation, and in the display of a technical skill. Here, 
 then, is a society of men, who invite accusation, who receive it (almost 
 unknown to themselves) with pleasure, and who, if they hate dulnes? and
 
 SOCIETY FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF VICE. 153 
 
 inoccupation, can have very little pleasure in the innocence of their fellow 
 creatures. The natural consequence of all this is, that (besides that portion 
 of rumour which every member contributes at the weekly meeting) their 
 table must be covered with anonymous lies against the characters of indi- 
 viduals. Every servant discharged from his master's service, every villain 
 who hates the man he has injured, every cowardly assassin of character, 
 now knows where his accusations will be received, and where they cannot 
 fail to produce some portion of the mischievous effects which he wishes. 
 The very first step of such a Society should be, to declare, in the plainest 
 manner, that they would never receive any anonymous accusation. This 
 would be the only security to the public, that they were not degrading them- 
 selves into a receptacle for malice and falsehood. Such a declaration would 
 inspire some species of confidence ; and make us believe that their object 
 was neither the love of power, nor the gratification of uncharitable feelings. 
 The Society for the Suppression, however, have done no such thing. They 
 request, indeed, the signature of the informers whom they invite ; but they 
 do not (as they ought) make that signature an indispensable condition. 
 
 Nothing has disgusted us so much in the proceedings of this Society, as 
 the control which they exercise over the amusements of the poor. One of 
 the specious titles under which this legal meanness is gratified is, Prevention 
 of Cruelty to Animals. 
 
 Of cruelty to animals, let the reader take the following specimens : 
 
 Running an iron hook in the intestines of an animal ; presenting this 
 first animal to another as his food ; and then pulling this second creature up 
 and suspending him by the barb in his stomach. 
 
 Riding a horse till he drops, in order to see an innocent animal torn to 
 pieces by dogs. 
 
 Keeping a poor animal upright for many weeks, to communicate a peculiar 
 hardness to his flesh. 
 
 Making deep incisions into the flesh of another animal while living, in order 
 to make the muscles more firm. 
 
 Immersing another animal, while living, in hot water. 
 
 Now we do fairly admit, that such abominable cruelties as these are 
 worthy the interference of the law : and that the Society should have 
 punished them, cannot be matter of surprise to any feeling mind. But stop, 
 gentle reader ! these cruelties are the cruelties of the Suppressing Com- 
 mittee, not of the poor. You must not think of punishing these. The first 
 of these cruelties passes under the pretty name of angling ; and therefore 
 there can be no harm in it the more particularly as the President himself 
 has one of the best preserved trout streams in England. The next is hunt- 
 ing; and as many of the Vice-Presidents and of the Committee hunt, it is 
 not possible there can be any cruelty in hunting.* The next is, a process 
 for making brawn a dish never tasted by the poor, and therefore not to be 
 disturbed by indictment. The fourth is the mode of crimping CQ&. ; and the 
 fifth, of boiling lobsters ; all high-life cruellies, with which a justice of the 
 peace has no business to meddle. The real thing which calls forth the sym- 
 pathies, and harrows up the soul, is to see a number of boisterous artizans 
 baiting a bull, or a bear ; not a savage hare, or a carnivorous stag, but a 
 
 ' * " How reasonable creatures (says the Society) can enjoy a pastime which is the cause 
 of such sufferings to brute animals, or how they can consider themselves entitled, for 
 their own amusement, to stimulate those animals, by means of the antipathies which Pro- 
 vidence has thought proper to place between them, to worry and tear, and often to de- 
 stroy each other, it is difficult to conceive. So inhuman a practice, by a retribution 
 peculiarly just, tends obviously to render the human character brutal and ferocious," &c. 
 tVC. (Address, pp. 71, 72.) We take it for granted, that the reader sees clearly that no 
 part of this description can possibly apply to the case of hunting.
 
 154 SOCIETY FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF VICE. 
 
 poor, innocent, timid bear, not pursued by magistrates, and deputy lieu- 
 tenants, and men of education, but by those who must necessarily seek 
 their relaxation in noise and tumultuous merriment, by men whose feelings 
 are blunted, and whose understanding is wholly devoid of refinement. The 
 Society detail, with symptoms of great complacency, their detection of a 
 l>ear-baiting in Blackboy Alley, Chick Lane, and the prosecution of the 
 offenders before a magistrate. It appears to us, that nothing can$be more 
 partial and unjust than this kind of proceedings. A man of ten thousand 
 a year may worry a fox as much as he pleases, may encourage the breed 
 of a mischievous animal on purpose to worry it ; and a poor labourer is 
 carried before a magistrate for paying sixpence to see an exhibition of 
 courage between a dog and a bear ! Any cruelty may be practised to gorge 
 the stomachs of the rich, none to enliven the holidays of the poor. We 
 venerate those feelings which really protect creatures susceptible of pain, and 
 incapable of complaint. But heaven-born pity, now-a-days, calls for the 
 income tax, and the court guide ; and ascertains the rank and fortune of the 
 tormentor before she weeps for the pain of the sufferer. It is astonishing 
 how the natural feelings of mankind are distorted by false theories. Nothing 
 can be more mischievous than to say, that the pain inflicted by the dog of a 
 man of quality is not (when the strength of the two animals is the same) 
 equal to that produced by the cur of a butcher. Haller, in his Pathology, 
 expressly says, that the animal bitten knows 110 difference in tJie quality of the 
 biting animal's master ; and it is now the universal opinion among all 
 enlightened men, that the misery of the brawner would be very little 
 diminished, if he could be made sensible that he was to be eaten up only by 
 persons of the first fashion. The contrary supposition seems to us to be 
 absolute nonsense ; it is the desertion of the true Baconian philosophy, and 
 the substitution of mere unsupported conjecture in its place. The trespass, 
 however, which calls forth all the energies of a suppressor, is the sound of a 
 fiddle. That the common people are really enjoying themselves, is now 
 beyond all doubt : and away rush Secretary, President, and Committee, to 
 clap the cotillon into the Compter, and to bring back the life of the poor to its 
 regular standard of decorous gloom. The gambling-houses of St James's 
 remain untouched. The peer ruins himself and his family with impunity ; 
 while the Irish labourer is privately whipped for not making a better use of 
 the excellent moral and religious education which he has received in the 
 days of his youth 1 
 
 It is not true, as urged by the Society, that the vices of the poor are 
 carried on in houses of public resort, and those of the rich in their own 
 houses. The Society cannot be ignorant of the innumerable gambling- 
 houses resorted to by men of fashion. Is there one they have suppressed, 
 or attempted to suppress ? Can any thing be more despicable than such 
 distinctions as these ? Those who make them seem to have for other 
 pereoos' vices all the rigour of the ancient Puritans without a particle of 
 their honesty or their courage. To suppose that any society will ever attack 
 the vices of people of fashion, is wholly out of the question. If the Society 
 consisted of tradesmen, they would infallibly be turned off by the vicious 
 customers whose pleasures they interrupted : and what gentleman so fond 
 of suppressing, as to interfere with the vices of good company, and inform 
 against persons who were really genteel ? He knows very well that the 
 consequence of such interference would be a complete exclusion from elegant 
 society ; that the upper classes could not, and would not, endure it ; and 
 that he must immediately lose his rank in the world, if his zeal subjected 
 fashionable offenders to the slightest inconvenience from the law. Nothing, 
 therefore, remains, but to rage against the Sunday dinners of the poor, and
 
 SOCIETY FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF VICE. 155 
 
 to prevent a bricklayer's labourer from losing, on the seventh day, that 
 beard which has been augmenting the other six. We see at the head of 
 this Society the names of several noblemen, and of other persons moving in 
 the fashionable world. Is it possible they can be ignorant of the innumer- 
 able offences against the law and morality which are committed by their 
 own acquaintances and connexions ? Is there one single instance where 
 they have directed the attention of the Society to this higher species of sup- 
 pression, and sacrificed men of consideration to that zeal for virtue which 
 watches so acutely over the vices of the poor ? It would give us very little 
 pleasure to see a duchess sent to the Poultry Compter ; but if we saw the 
 Society flying at such high game, we should at least say they were honest 
 and courageous, whatever judgment we might form of their good sense. 
 At present they should denominate themselves a Society for suppressing 
 the vices of persons whose income does not exceed ^500 per annum ; and 
 then, to put all classes upon an equal footing, there must be another society 
 of barbers, butchers, and bakers, to return to the higher classes that moral 
 character, by which they are so highly benefited. 
 
 To show how impossible it fs to keep such societies within any kind of 
 bounds, we shall quote a passage respecting circulating libraries, from their 
 Proceedings. 
 
 " Your Committee have good reasons for believing, that the circulation 
 of their notices among the printsellers, warning them against the sale or 
 exhibition of indecent representations, has produced, and continues to pro- 
 duce, the best effects. 
 
 " But they have to lament that the extended establishments of circulating 
 libraries, however useful they may be, in a variety of respects, to the easy 
 and general diffusion of knowledge, are extremely injurious to morals and 
 religion, by the indiscriminate admission which they give to works of a 
 prurient and immoral nature. It is a toilsome task to any virtuous and 
 enlightened mind, to wade through the catalogues of these collections, and 
 much more to select such books from them as have only an apparent bad 
 tendency. But your Committee being convinced that their attention ought 
 to be directed to those institutions which possess such powerful and numerous 
 means of poisoning the minds of young persons, and especially of the female 
 youth, have therefore begun to make some endeavours towards their better 
 regulation." Statement of the Proceedings for 1804, pp. n, 12. 
 
 In the same spirit we see them writing to a country magistrate in Devon- 
 shire, respecting a wake advertised in the public papers. Nothing can be 
 more presumptuous than such conduct, or produce, in the minds of impartial 
 men, a more decisive impression against the Society. 
 
 The natural answer from the members of the Society (the only answer 
 they have ever made to the enemies of their institution) will be, that we are 
 lovers of vice, desirous of promoting indecency, of destroying the Sabbath, 
 and of leaving mankind to the unrestrained gratification of their passions. 
 We have only very calmly to reply, that we are neither so stupid nor so 
 wicked as not to concur in every scheme which has for its object the preser- 
 vation of rational religion and sound morality ; but the scheme must be 
 well concerted, and those who are to carry it into execution must deserve 
 our confidence, from their talents and then- character. Upon religion and 
 morals depends the happiness of mankind ; but the fortune of knaves and 
 the power of fools is sometimes made to rest on the same apparent basis ; 
 and we will never (if we can help it) allow a rogue to get rich, or a block- 
 head to get powerful, under the sanction of these awful words. We do not 
 by any means intend to apply these contemptuous epithets to the Society for
 
 156 METHODISM. 
 
 the Suppression. That there are among their numbers some very odious 
 hypocrites, is not impossible ; that many men who believe they come there 
 from the love of virtue, do really join the Society from the love of power, 
 we do not doubt ; but \ve see no reason to doubt that the great mass of 
 subscribers consists of persons who have very sincere intentions of doing 
 good. That they have, in some instances, done a great deal of good, we 
 admit with the greatest pleasure. We believe that, in the hands of truly 
 honest, intrepid, and above all, discreet men, such a society might become 
 a valuable institution, improve in some degree the public morals, and in- 
 crease the public happiness. So many qualities, however, are required to 
 carry it on well, the temptations to absurdity and impertinence are so very 
 great, that we ever despair of seeing our wishes upon this subject realised. 
 In the present instance, our object has been to suppress the arrogance of 
 suppressers, to keep them within due bounds, to show them that to do 
 good requires a little more talent and reflection than they are aware of, 
 and, above all, to impress upon them that true zeal for virtue knows no 
 distinction between the rich and the poor ; and that the cowardly and the 
 mean can never be the true friends of morality, and the promoters of human 
 happiness. If they attend to these rough doctrines, they will ever find in 
 the writers of this Journal their warmest admirers, and their most sincere 
 advocates and friends. 
 
 METHODISM. (E. REVIEW, 1809.) 
 
 Strictures on two Critiques in the Edinburgh Review, on the Subject of Methodism 
 and Missions : with Remarks on the Influence of Reviews, in general, on Morals 
 and Haziness. By JOHN STYLES. 8vo. London : i8oe> 
 
 IN routing out a nest of consecrated cobblers, and in bringing to light such 
 a perilous heap of trash as we were obliged to work through, in our articles 
 upon the Methodists and Missionaries, we are generally conceived to have 
 rendered an useful service to the cause of rational religion. Every one, 
 however, at all acquainted with the true character of Methodism, must have 
 known the extent of the abuse and misrepresentation to which we exposed 
 ourselves in such a service. All this obloquy, however, we were very will- 
 ing to encounter, from our conviction of the necessity of exposing and cor- 
 recting the growing evil of fanaticism. In spite of all misrepresentation, we 
 have ever been, and ever shall be, the sincere friends of sober and rational 
 Christianity. We are quite ready, if any fair opportunity occur, to defend 
 it, to the best of our ability, from the tiger-spring of infidelity ; and we are 
 quite determined, if we can prevent such an evil, that it shall not be eaten 
 up by the nasty and numerous vermin of Methodism. For this purpose, we 
 shall proceed to make a few short remarks upon the sacred and silly gentle- 
 man before us, not, certainly, because we feel any sort of anxiety as to the 
 effect of his strictures on our own credit or reputation, but because his direct 
 and articulate defence of the principles and practices which we have con- 
 demned, affords us the fairest opportunity of exposing, still more clearly, 
 both the extravagance and the danger of these popular sectaries. 
 
 These very impudent people have one ruling canon, which pervades every 
 thing they say and do. Whoever is unfriendly to Methodism, is an infidel and 
 en atheist. This reasonable and amiable maxim, repeated, in every form of 
 dulness, and varied in every attitude of malignity, is the sum and substance 
 of Mr Styles's pamphlet. Whoever wishes to rescue religion from the hands 
 of didactic artizans whoever prefers a respectable clergyman for his teacher
 
 METHODISM. 157 
 
 to a delirious mechanic whoever wishes to keep the intervals between 
 churches and lunatic asylums as wide as possible all such men, in the esti- 
 mation of Mr Styles, are nothing better than open or concealed enemies of 
 Christianity. His catechism is very simple. In what hoy do you navigate ? 
 By what shoemaker or carpenter are you instructed ? What miracles have 
 you to relate ? Do you think it sinful to reduce Provide nee to an alternative, 
 &c. &c. &c. Now, if we were to content ourselves with using to Mr Styles, 
 while he is dealing about his imputations of infidelity, the uncourtly language 
 which is sometimes applied to those who are little curious about truth or 
 falsehood, what Methodist would think the worse of him for such an attack ? 
 Who is there among them that would not glory to lie for the tabernacle ? 
 who that would not believe he was pleasing his Maker, by sacrificing truth, 
 justice, and common sense, to the interests of his own little chapel, and his 
 < )wn deranged instructor ? Something more than contradiction or confuta- 
 tion, therefore, is necessary to discredit those charitable dogmatists, and to 
 diminish their pernicious influence ; and the first accusation against us is, 
 that we have endeavoured to add ridicule to reasoning. 
 
 We are a good deal amused, indeed, with the extreme disrelish which Mr 
 John Styles exhibits to the humour and pleasantry with which he admits 
 the Methodists to have been attacked ; but Mr John Styles should remember, 
 that it is not the practice with destroyers of vermin, to allow the little victims 
 a veld upon the weapons used against them. If this were otherwise, we 
 should have one set of vermin banishing small-tooth combs ; another pro- 
 testing against mouse-traps ; a third prohibiting the finger and thumb ; a 
 fourth exclaiming against the intolerable infamy of using soap and water. 
 It is impossible, however, to listen to such pleas. They must all be caught, 
 killed, and cracked in the manner, and by the instruments which are found 
 most efficacious to their destruction ; and the more they cry out, the greater 
 plainly is the skill used against them. We are convinced a little laughter 
 will do them more harm than all the arguments in the world. Such men 
 as the author before us cannot understand when they are out-argued ; but 
 he has given us a specimen, from his irritability, that he fully comprehends 
 when he has become the object of universal contempt and derision. We 
 agree with him, that ridicule is not exactly the weapon to be used in mat- 
 ters of religion ; but the use of it is excusable, when there is no other which 
 can make fools tremble. Besides, he should remember the particular sort 
 of ridicule we have used, which is nothing more than accurate quotation 
 from the Methodists themselves. It is true, that this is the most severe and 
 cutting ridicule to which we could have had recourse ; but, whose fault is that ? 
 
 Nothing can be more disingenuous than the attacks Mr Styles has made 
 upon us for our use of Scripture language. Light and grace are certainly 
 terms of Scripture. It is not to the words themselves that any ridicule can 
 ever attach. It is from the preposterous application of those words, in the 
 mouths of the most arrogant and ignorant of human beings ; it is from 
 their use in the most trivial, low, and familiar scenes of life ; it is from the 
 illiterate and ungrammatical prelacy of Mr John Styles, that any tinge of 
 ridicule ever is, or ever can be imparted to the sacred language of Scripture. 
 
 We admit also, with this gentleman, that it would certainly evince the 
 most vulgar and contracted heart, to ridicule any religious opinions, me- 
 thodistical or otherwise, because they were the opinions of the poor, and 
 were conveyed in the language of the poor. But are we to respect the poor, 
 when they wish to step out of their province and become the teachers of the 
 land? when men, whose proper "talk is of bullocks," pretend to have 
 " wisdom and understanding," is it not lawful to tell them they have none? 
 An ironmonger is a very respectable man, so long as he is merely an iron-
 
 158 METHODISM, 
 
 monger, an admirable man, if he is a religious ironmonger ; but a great 
 blockhead, if he sets up for a bishop or a dean, and lectures upon theology. 
 It is not the poor we have attacked but the writing poor, the publishing 
 poor the limited arrogance which mistakes its own trumpery sect for the 
 world : nor have we attacked them for want of talent, but for want of mo- 
 desty, want of sense, and want of true rational religion for every fault 
 which Mr John Styles defends"and exemplifies. 
 
 It is scarcely possible to reduce the drunken declamations of Methodism to 
 a point, to grasp the wriggling lubricity of these cunning animals, and to fix 
 them in one position. We have said, in our review of the Methodists, that it 
 is extremely wrong to suppose that Providence interferes with special and ex- 
 traordinary judgments on every trifling occasion of life : that to represent an 
 innkeeper killed for preventing a Methodist meeting, or loud claps of thunder 
 rattling along the heavens merely to hint to Mr Scott that he was not to 
 preach at a particular tabernacle in Oxford Road, appeared to us to be blas- 
 phemous and mischievous nonsense. With great events, which change the 
 destiny of mankind, we might suppose such interference, the discovery of 
 which, upon every trifling occasion, we consider to be pregnant with very mis- 
 chievous consequences. To all which Mr Styles replies, that, with Provi- 
 dence, nothing is great, or nothing little nothing difficult, or nothing easy ; 
 that a worm and a whale are equal in the estimation of a Supreme Being. 
 But did any human being but a Methodist, and a third or fourth rate Me- 
 thodist, ever make such a reply to such an argument ? We are not talking 
 of what is great or important to Providence, but to us. The creation of a 
 worm or a whale, a Newton or a Styles, are tasks equally easy to Omni- 
 potence. But are they, in their results, equally important to us? The 
 lightning may as easily strike the head of the French emperor, as of an in- 
 nocent cottager ; but we are surely neitheV impious nor obscure, when we 
 say, that one would be an important interference of Providence, and the 
 other comparatively not so. But it is a loss of time to reply to such trash ; 
 it presents no stimulus of difficulty to us ; nor would it offer any of novelty 
 to our readers. 
 
 To our attack upon the melancholy tendency of Methodism, Mr Styles 
 replies, ' ' that a man must have studied in the schools of Hume, Voltaire, 
 and Kotzebue, who can plead in behalf of the theatre ; that, at fashionable 
 ball-rooms and assemblies, seduction is drawn out to a system ; that dancing 
 excites the fever of the passions, and raises a delirium too often fatal to 
 innocence and peace ; and that, for the poor, instead of the common rough 
 amusements to which they are now addicted, there .remain the simple 
 beauties of nature, the gay colours and scented perfumes of the earth." 
 These are the blessings which the common people have to expect from their 
 Methodistical instructors. They are pilfered of all their money shut out 
 from all their dances and country wakes and are then sent penniless into 
 the fields, to gaze on the clouds, and smell to dandelions ! 
 
 Against the orthodox clergy of all descriptions, our sour devotee pro- 
 claims, as was to have been expected, the most implacable war ; declaring, 
 that, ' ' in one century they would have obliterated all t/ie remaining practical 
 religion in the church, had it not been for this new sect, every n.'/iere spoken 
 against" Undoubtedly, the distinction of mankind into godly and ungodly 
 if by godly is really meant those who apply religion to the extinction of 
 bad passions would be highly desirable. But when, by that word, is only 
 intended a sect more desirous of possessing the appellation than of deserving 
 it, when, under that term, are comprehended thousands of canting hypo- 
 crites and raving enthusiasts men despicable from their ignorance, and 
 formidable from their madness the distinction may hereafter prove to be
 
 METHODISM. 159 
 
 truly terrific ; and a dynasty of fools may again sweep away both church 
 and state in one hideous ruin. There may be, at present, some very re- 
 spectable men at the head of these maniacs, who would insanify them with 
 some degree of prudence, and keep them only half mad, if they could. But 
 this won't do ; Bedlam will break loose, and overpower its keepers. If 
 the preacher sees visions, and has visitations, the clerk will come next, and 
 then the congregation ; every man will be his own prophet, and dream 
 dreams for himself : the competition in extravagance will be hot and lively, 
 and the whole island a receptacle for incurables. There is, at this moment, 
 a man in London who prays for what garments he wants, and finds them 
 next morning in his room, tight and fitting. This man, as might be 
 expected, gains between two and three thousand a year from the common 
 people, by preaching. Anna, the prophetess, encamps in the woods of 
 America, with thirteen or fourteen thousand followers, and has visits every 
 night from the prophet Elijah. Joanna Southcote raises the dead, &c. Sc. 
 Mr Styles will call us atheists, and disciples of the French school, for what 
 we are about to say ; but it is our decided opinion, that there is some fraud 
 in the 'prophetic visit ; and it is but too probable, that the clothes are 
 merely human, and the man measured for them in the common way. 
 When such blasphemous deceptions are practised upon mankind, how can 
 remonstrance be misplaced, or exposure mischievous ? If the choice rested 
 with us, we should say, Give us back our wolves again restore our 
 Danish invaders curse us with any evil but the evil of a canting, deluded, 
 and Methodistical populace. Wherever Methodism extends its baneful 
 influence, the character of the English people is constantly changed by it. 
 Boldness and rough honesty are broken down into meanness, prevarication, 
 and fraud. 
 
 While Mr Styles is so severe upon the indolence of the Church, he should 
 recollect that his Methodists are the ex-party ; that it is not in human 
 nature, that any persons who quietly possess power, can be as active as 
 those who are pursuing it. The fair way to state the merit of the two par- 
 ties is, to estimate what the exertions of the lachrymal and suspirious clergy 
 would be, if they stepped into the endowments of their competitors. The 
 moment they ceased to be paid by the groan the instant that Easter offer- 
 ings no longer depended upon jumping and convulsions Mr Styles may 
 assure himself, that the character of his darling preachers would be totally 
 changed ; their bodies would become quiet, and their minds reasonable. 
 
 It is not true, as this bad writer is perpetually saying, that the world 
 hates piety. That modest and unobtrusive piety, which fills the heart with 
 all human charities, and makes a man gentle to others, and severe to him- 
 self, is an object of universal love and veneration. But mankind hate the 
 lust of power, when it is veiled under the garb of piety ; they hate canting 
 and hypocrisy ; they hate advertisers, and quacks in piety ; they do not 
 choose to be insulted ; they love to tear folly and impudence from that 
 altar, wliich should only be a sanctuary for the wretched and the good. 
 
 Having concluded his defence of Methodism, this fanatical writer opens 
 upon us his Missionary battery, firing away with the most incessant fury, 
 and calling names, all the time, as loud as lungs accustomed to the elo- 
 quence of the tub usually vociferate. In speaking of the cruelties which 
 their religion entails upon the Hindoos, Mr Styles is peculiarly severe upon 
 us for not being more shocked at their piercing their limbs with kimes. This 
 is rather an unfair mode of alarming his readers with the idea of some un- 
 known instrument. He represents himself as having paid considerable 
 attention to the manners and customs of the Hindoos ; and, therefore, the 
 peculiar stress he lays upon this instrument is naturally calculated to
 
 160 METHODISM. 
 
 produce, in the minds of the humane, a great degree of mysterious terror. 
 A drawing of the kime was imperiously called for ; and the want of it is a 
 subtle evasion, for which Mr Styles is fairly accountable. As he has been 
 silent on this subject, it is for us to explain the plan and nature of this 
 terrible and unknown piece of mechanism. A kime, then, is neither more 
 nor less than a false print in the Edinburgh Review for a knife ; and from 
 this blunder of the printer has Mr Styles manufactured this Daedalean 
 instrument of torture, called a kime! We were at first nearly persuaded by 
 his arguments against kimes ; we grew frightened ; we stated to ourselves 
 the horror of not sending missionaries to a nation which used kimes ; we 
 were struck with the nice and accurate information of the Tabernacle upon 
 this important subject : but we looked in the errata, and found Mr Styles 
 to be always MJ Styles always cut off from every hope of mercy, and 
 remaining for ever himself. 
 
 Mr Styles is right in saying we have abolished many practices of the 
 Hindoos since the establishment of our empire ; but then we have always 
 consulted the Brahmins, whether or not such practices were conformable 
 with their religion ; and it is upon the authority of their condemnation that 
 we have proceeded to abolition. 
 
 To the whole of Mr Styles's observations upon the introduction of 
 Christianity into India, we have one short answer : it is not Christianity 
 which is introduced there, but the debased mummery and.) nonsense of 
 Methodists, which has little more to do with the Christian religion than 
 it has to do with the religion of China. We would as soon consent that 
 Brodum and Solomon should carry the medical art of Europe into India, as 
 that Mr Styles and his Anabaptists should give to the Eastern World their 
 notions of our religion. We send men of the highest character for the 
 administration of justice and the regulation of trade nay, we take great 
 pains to impress upon the minds of the natives the highest ideas of our arts 
 and manufactures, by laying before them the finest specimens of our skill 
 and ingenuity why then, are common sense and decency to be forgotten in 
 religion alone ? and so foolish a set of men allowed to engage themselves in 
 this occupation, that the natives almost instinctively duck and pelt them ? 
 But the missionaries, we are told, have mastered the languages of the East. 
 They may also, for aught we know, in the same time, have learnt perspec- 
 tive, astronomy, or any thing else. What is all this to us ? Our charge is, 
 that they want sense, conduct, and sound religion ; and that, if they are not 
 watched, the throat of every European in India will be cut : the answer to 
 which is, that their progress in languages is truly astonishing ! If they ex- 
 pose us to imminent peril, what matters it if they have every virtue under 
 heaven ? We are not writing dissertations upon the intellect of Brother 
 Carey, but stating his character so far as it concerns us, and caring for it 
 no further. But these pious gentlemen care nothing about the loss of 
 the country. The plan, it seems, is this : We are to educate India 
 in Christianity, as a parent does his child ; and, when it is perfect in 
 its catechism, then to pack up, quit it entirely, and leave it to its own 
 management. This is the evangelical project for separating a colony from 
 the parent country. They see nothing of the bloodshed, and massacres, 
 and devastations, nor of the speeches in parliament, squandered millions, 
 fruitless expeditions, jobs and pensions, with which the loss of our Indian 
 possessions would necessarily be accompanied ; nor will they see that these 
 consequences could arise from the attempt, and not from the completion, of 
 their scheme of conversion. We should be swept from the peninsula by 
 Pagan zealots ; and should lose, among other things, all chance of ever 
 really converting them.
 
 METHODISM. 161 
 
 V\"hat is the use, too, of telling us what these men endure? Suffering is 
 not a merit, but only useful suffering. Prove to us that they are fit men, 
 doing a fit thing, and we are ready to praise the missionaries ; but it gives 
 ;;s no pleasure to hear that a man has walked a thousand miles with peas in 
 his shoes, unless we know why and wherefore, and to what good purpose he 
 has done it 
 
 But these men, it is urged, foolish and extravagant as they are, may be 
 very useful precursors of the established clergy. This is much as if a regular 
 physician should send a quack doctor before him, and say, Do you go and 
 look after this disease for a day or two, and ply the patient well with your 
 nostrums, and then I will step in and complete the cure ; a more notable 
 expedient we have seldom heard of. Its patrons forget that these self- 
 ordained ministers, with Mr John Styles at their head, abominate the estab- 
 lished clergy ten thousand times more than they do Pagans, who cut them- 
 themselves with cruel kimes. The efforts of these precursors would be directed 
 with infinitely more zeal to make the Hindoos disbelieve in Bishops, than to 
 make them believe in Christ. The darling passion in the soul of every mis- 
 sionary is, not to teach the great leading truths of the Christian faith, but to 
 enforce the little paltry modification and distinction which he first taught 
 from his own tub. And then what a way of teaching Christianity is this ! 
 There are five sects, if not six, now employed as missionaries, every one 
 instructing the Hindoos in their own particular method of interpreting the 
 Scriptures ; and, when these have completely succeeded, the Church of 
 England is to step in, and convert them all over again to its own doctrines. 
 There is, indeed, a very fine varnish of probability over this ingenious and 
 plausible scheme. Mr John Styles, however, would much rather see a kime 
 in the flesh of a Hindoo than the hand of a Bishop on his head. 
 
 The missionaries complain of intolerance. A weasel might as well com- 
 plain of intolerance when he is throttled for sucking eggs. Toleration for 
 their own opinions toleration for their domestic worship, for their private 
 groans and convulsions they possess in the fullest extent ; but who ever 
 heard of toleration for intolerance ? Who ever before heard men cry out 
 that they were persecuted, because they might not insult the religion, shock 
 the feelings, irritate the passions of their fellow-creatures, and throw a whole 
 colony into bloodshed and confusion ? We did not say that a man was not 
 an object of pity who tormented himself from a sense of duty, but that he 
 was not so great an object of pity as one equally tormented by the tyranny 
 of another, and without any sense of duty to support him. Let Mr Styles 
 first inflict forty lashes upon himself, then let him allow an Edinburgh 
 Reviewer to give him forty more he will find no comparison between the 
 two flagellations. 
 
 These men talk of the loss of our possessions in India, as if it made the 
 argument against them only more or less strong ; whereas, in our estima- 
 tion, it makes the argument against them conclusive, and shuts up the case. 
 Two men possess a cow, and they quarrel violently how they shall manage 
 this cow. They will surely both of them (if they have a particle of common 
 sense) agree, that there is an absolute necessity for preventing the cow from 
 running away. It is not only the loss of India that is in question but how 
 will it be lost ? By the massacre of ten or twenty thousand English, by the 
 blood of our sons and brothers, who have been toiling so many years to re- 
 turn to their native country. But what is all this to a ferocious Methodist ? 
 What care brothers Barrel and Ringletub for us and our colonies? 
 
 If it were possible to invent a method by which a few men sent from a 
 distant country could hold such masses of people as the Hindoos in subjec- 
 tion, that method would be the institution of castes. There is no institution 
 
 L
 
 162 METHODISM. 
 
 which can so effectually curb the ambition of genius, reconcile the individual 
 more completely to his station, and reduce the varieties of human character 
 to such a state of insipid and monotonous lameness ; and yet the religion 
 which destroys castes is said to render our empire in India more certain ! 
 It may be our duty to make the Hindoos Christians that is another argu 
 ment : but, that we shall by so doing strengthen our empire, we utterly 
 deny. What signifies identity of religion to a question of this kind ? Diver- 
 sity of bodily colour and of language would soon overpower this considera- 
 tion. Make the Hindoos enterprising, active, and reasonable as yourselves 
 destroy the eternal track in which they have moved for ages and, in a 
 moment, they would sweep you off the face of the earth. Let us ask, too, 
 if the Bible is universally diffused in Hindostan, what must be the astonish- 
 ment of the natives to find that we are forbidden to rob, murder, and steal ; 
 we who, in fifty years, have extended our empire from a few acres about 
 Madras, over the whole peninsula, and sixty millions of people, and exem- 
 plified in our public conduct every crime of which human nature is capable. 
 What matchless impudence to follow up such practice with such precepts ! 
 If we have common prudence, let us keep the gospel at home, and tell them 
 that Machiavel is our prophet, and the god of the Manicheans our god. 
 
 There is nothing which disgusts us more, than the familiarity which these 
 impious coxcombs affect with the ways and designs of Providence. Every 
 man, now-a-days, is an Amos or a Malachi. One rushes out of his chambers, 
 and tells us we are beaten by the French, because we do not abolish the 
 slave trade. Another assures us that we have no chance of victory till India 
 is evangelised. The new Christians are now come to speak of the ways of 
 their Creator with as much confidence as they would of the plans of an 
 earthly ruler. We remember when the ways of God to man were gazed 
 upon with trembling humility when they were called inscrutable when 
 piety looked to another scene of existence for the true explanation of this 
 ambiguous and distressing world. We were taught in our childhood that 
 this was true religion ; but it turns out now to be nothing but atheism and 
 infidelity. If any thing could surprise us from the pen of a Methodist, we 
 should be truly surprised at the very irreligious and presumptuous answers 
 which Mr Styles makes to some of our arguments. Our title to one of the 
 anecdotes from the Methodist Magazine is as follows : "4 sinner punished 
 a Bee the instrument ; " to which Mr Styles replies, that we might as well 
 ridicule the Scriptures, by relating their contents in the same ludicrous 
 manner. An interference with respect to a travelling yew; blindness the 
 consequence. Acts, the ninth cJiapler, and first nine verses. The account of 
 Paul s conversion, drv. &c. drv. page 38. But does Mr Styles forget, that 
 the one is a shameless falsehood, introduced to sell a twopenny book, and 
 the other a miracle recorded by inspired writers? In the same manner, 
 when we express our surprise that sixty millions of Hindoos should be con- 
 verted by four men and sixteen guineas, he asks what would have become 
 of Christianity if the twelve apostles had argued in the same way ? It is 
 impossible to make this infatuated gentleman understand that the lies of the 
 Evangelical Magazine are not the miracles of Scripture ; and that the Bap- 
 tist Missionaries are not the Apostles. He seriously expects that we should 
 speak of Brother Carey as we would speak of St Paul ; and treat with an 
 equal respect the miracles of the Magazine and the Gospel. 
 
 Mr Styles knows very well that we have never said because a nation has 
 present happiness, that it can therefore dispense with immortal happiness ; 
 but we have said that, where of two nations both cannot be made Christians, 
 it is more the duty of a missionary to convert the one which is exposed to 
 every evil of barbarism, than the other possessing every blessing of civilisa-
 
 METHODISM. 163 
 
 ticn. Our argument is merely comparative : Mr Styles must have known 
 it to be so : but who does not love the Tabernacle better than truth ? 
 When the tenacity of the Hindoos on the subject of their religion is adduced 
 as a reason against the success of the missions, the friends of this undertak- 
 ing are always fond of reminding us how patiently the Hindoos submitted to 
 the religious persecution and butchery of Tippoo. The inference from such 
 citations is truly alarming. It is the imperious duty of Government to 
 watch some of these men most narrowly. There is nothing of which they 
 are not capable. And what, after all, did Tippoo effect in the way of con- 
 version ? How many Mahometans did he make ? There was all the car- 
 nage of Medea's Kettle, and none of the transformation. He deprived 
 multitudes of Hindoos of their caste, indeed ; and cut them off from all the 
 benefits of their religion. That he did, and we may do, by violence ; but, 
 did he make Mahometans ? or shall we make Christians ? This, how- 
 ever, it seems, is a matter of pleasantry. To make a poor Hindoo hateful 
 to himself and his kindred, and to fix a curse upon him to the end of his 
 days ! we have no doubt but that this is very entertaining ; and par- 
 ticularly to the friends of toleration. But our ideas of comedy have been 
 formed in another school. We are dull enough to think, too, that it is 
 more innocent to exile pigs, than to offend conscience, and destroy human 
 happiness. The scheme of baptizing with beef-broth is about as brutal 
 and preposterous, as the assertion that you may vilify the gods and priests 
 of the Hindoos with safety, provided you do not meddle with their turbans 
 and toupees (which are cherished solely on a principle of religion), is silly 
 and contemptible. After all, if the Mahometan did persecute the Hindoo 
 with impunity, is that any precedent of safety to a government that offends 
 every feeling both of Mahometan and Hindoo at the same time ? You 
 have a tiger and a buffalo in the same inclosure ; and the tiger drives the 
 buffalo before him ; is it therefore prudent in you to do that which will 
 irritate them both, and bring their united strength upon you? 
 
 In answer to all the low malignity of this author, we have only to reply, 
 that we are, as we always have been, sincere friends to the conversion of 
 the Hindoos. We admit the Hindoo religion to be full of follies, and full 
 of enormities ; we think conversion a great duty ; and should think it, if 
 it could be effected, a great blessing ; but our opinion of the missionaries 
 and of their employer is such, that we most firmly believe, in less than 
 twenty years, for the conversion of a few degraded wretches, who would be 
 neither Methodists nor Hindoos, they would infallibly produce the mas- 
 sacre of every European in India ; * the loss of our settlements ; and, con- 
 sequently, of the chance of that slow, solid, and temperate introduction of 
 Christianity, which the superiority of the European character may ulti- 
 mately effect in the Eastern world. The Board of Control (all Atheists, 
 and disciples of Voltaire, of course) are so entirely of our way of thinking, 
 that the most peremptory orders have been issued to send all the mission- 
 aries home upon the slightest appearance of disturbance. Those who have 
 sons and brothers in India may now sleep in peace. Upon the transmis- 
 sion of this order, Mr Styles is said to have destroyed himself with a kime. 
 
 * Every opponent says, of Major Scott's book, " What a dangerous book I the arrival 
 of it at Calcutta may throw the whole Indian Empire into confusion ;" and yet these are 
 the people whose religious prejudices may be insulted with impunity.
 
 164 HANA'AH MORE. 
 
 HANNAH MORE. (E. REVIEW, 1809.) 
 
 Cartels in Search of a Wife : comprehending Oburoattuu an Domestic Habits a/td 
 Manners, Religion and Morals. 2 Vols. London, 1809. 
 
 THIS book is written, or supposed to be written (for we would speak 
 timidly of the mysteries of superior beings), by the celebrated Mrs Hannah 
 More ! We shall probably give great offence by such indiscretion ; but 
 still we must be excused for treating it as a book merely human an unin- 
 spired production the result of mortality left to itself, and depending ou 
 its own limited resources. In taking up the subject in this point of view, 
 we solemnly disclaim the slightest intention of indulging in any indecorous 
 levity, or of wounding the religious feelings of a large class of very respect- 
 able persons. It is the only method in which we can possibly make this 
 work a proper object of criticism. We have the strongest possible doubts 
 of the attributes usually ascribed to this authoress ; and we think it more 
 simple and manly to say so at once, than to admit nominally superlunary 
 claims, which, in the progress of our remarks, we should virtually deny. 
 
 Ccelebs wants a wife ; and, after the death of his father, quits his estate 
 in Northumberland to see the world, and to seek for one of its best produc- 
 tions, a woman, who may add materially to the happiness of his future life. 
 His first journey is to London, where, in the midst of the gay society of the 
 Metropolis, of course, he does not find a wife ; and his next journey is to 
 the family of Mr Stanley, the head of the Methodists, a serious people, 
 where, of course, he does not find a wife. The exaltation, therefore, of 
 what the authoress deems to be the religious, and the depreciation of what 
 she considers to be the worldly character, and the influence of both upon 
 matrimonial happiness, form the subject of this novel rather of this 
 dramatic sermon. 
 
 The machinery upon which the discourse is suspended is of the slightest 
 and most inartificial texture, bearing every mark of haste, and possessing 
 not the slightest claim to merit. Events there are none ; and scarcely a 
 character of any interest. The book is intended to convey religious advice ; 
 and no more labour appears to have been bestowed upon the story, than 
 was merely sufficient to throw it out of the dry, didactic form. Lucilla is 
 totally uninteresting ; so is Mr Stanley ; Dr Barlow still worse ; and 
 Coelebs a mere clod or dolt. Sir John and Lady Belfield are rather more 
 interesting and for a very obvious reason : they have some faults ; they 
 put us in mind of men and women ; they seem to belong to one common 
 nature with ourselves. As we read, we seem to think we might act as 
 such people act, and therefore we attend ; whereas imitation is hopeless in 
 the more perfect characters which Mrs More has set before us ; and there- 
 fore they inspire us with very little interest. 
 
 There are books, however, of all kinds ; and those may not be unwisely 
 planned which set before us very pure models. They are less probable, 
 and therefore less amusing, than ordinary stories ; but they are more amus- 
 ing than plain, unfabled precept. Sir Charles Grandison is less agreeable 
 than Tom Jones ; but it is more agreeable than Sherlock and Tillotson ; 
 and teaches religion and morality to many who would not seek it in the 
 productions of these professional writers. 
 
 But, making every allowance for the difficulty of the task which Mrs 
 More has prescribed to herself, the book abounds with marks of negligence 
 and want of skill ; with representations of life and manners which are 
 either false or trite. 
 
 Temples to friendship and virtue must be totally laid aside, for many
 
 HANNAH MORE. 165 
 
 years to come, in novels. Mr Lane, of the Minerva Press, has given them 
 up long since ; and we were quite surprised to find such a writer as Mrs 
 More busied in moral brick and mortar. Such an idea, at first, was merely 
 juvenile ; the second time, a little nauseous ; but the ten-thousandth time 
 it is quite intolerable. Ccelebs, upon his first arrival in London, dines out 
 meets with a bad dinner supposes the cause of that bad dinner to be the 
 erudition of the ladies of the house talks to them upon learned subjects, 
 and finds them as dull and ignorant as if they had piqued themselves upon 
 all the mysteries of housewifery. We humbly submit to Mrs More, that 
 this is not humorous, but strained and unnatural. Philippics against frugi- 
 vorous children after dinner are too common. Lady Melbury has been 
 introduced into every novel for these four years last past. Peace to her 
 ashes ! 
 
 The characters in this novel which evince the greatest skill are unques- 
 tionably those of Mrs Ranby and her daughters. There are some scenes in 
 this part of the book extremely well painted, and which evince that Mrs 
 More could amuse, in no common degree, if amusement was her object. 
 
 "At tea, I found the young ladies took no more interest in the conversa- 
 tion than they had done at dinner, but sat whispering and laughing, and 
 netting white silk gloves, till they were summoned to the harpsichord. 
 Despairing of getting on with them in company, I proposed a walk in 
 the garden. I now found them as willing to talk as destitute of any thing 
 to say. Their conversation was vapid and frivolous. They laid great 
 stress on small things. They seemed to have no shades in their under- 
 standing, but used the strongest terms for the commonest occasions ; and 
 admiration was excited by things hardly worthy to command attention. 
 They were extremely glad and extremely sorry, on subjects not calculated 
 to excite affections of any kind. They were animated about trifles, and 
 indifferent on things of importance. They were, I must confess, frank and 
 good-natured ; but it was evident that, as they were too open to have any 
 thing to conceal, so they were too uninformed to have any thing to produce ; 
 and I was resolved not to risk my happiness with a woman who could not 
 contribute her full share towards spending a wet winter cheerfully in the 
 country." (I. 54, $$.) 
 
 This trait of character appears to us to be very good. The following 
 passage is still better. 
 
 "In the evening, Mrs Ranby was lamenting in general, in rather customary 
 terms, her own exceeding sinfulness. Mr Ranby said, ' You accuse your- 
 self rather too heavily, my dear; you have sins to be sure.' 'And pray 
 what sins have I, Mr Ranby ? ' said she, turning upon him with so much 
 quickness that the poor man started. ' Nay,' said he, meekly, 'I did not 
 mean to offend you ; so far from it, that, hearing you condemn yourself 
 so grievously, I intended to comfort you, and to say that, except a few 
 
 faults ' 'And pray what faults?' interrupted she, continuing to speak, 
 
 however, lest he should catch an interval to tell them. ' I defy you, Mr 
 Ranby, to produce one.' ' My dear,' replied he, as you charged yourself 
 with all, I thought it would be letting you off cheaply, by naming only two 
 
 or three, such as ' Here, fearing matters would go too far, I interposed ; 
 
 and, softening things as much as I could for the lady, said, ' I conceive that 
 
 Mr Ranby meant, that though she partook of the general corruption ' 
 
 Here Ranby, interrupting me with more spirit than I thought he possessed, 
 suid, ' General corruption, Sir, must be the source of particular corruption. 
 I did not mean that my wife was worse than other women.' ' Worse, Mr
 
 i66 HANNAH MORE. 
 
 Ranby, worse ?' cried she. Ranby, for the first time in his life, not minding 
 her, went on, ' As she is always insisting that the whole species is corrupt, 
 she cannot help allowing that she herself has not quite escaped the infection. 
 Now, to be a sinner in the gross, and a saint in the detail that is, to have 
 all sins, and no faults is a thing I do not quite comprehend.' 
 
 " After he had left the room, which he did as the shortest way of allaying 
 the storm, she, apologising for him, said, ' he was a well-meaning man, and 
 acted up to the little light he had ; ' but added, ' that he was unacquainted 
 with religious feelings, and knew little of the nature of conversion. ' 
 
 " Mrs Ranby, I found, seems to consider Christianity as a kind of free- 
 masonry ; and therefore thinks it superfluous to speak on serious subjects 
 to any but the initiated. If they do not return the sign, she gives them up 
 as blind and dead. She thinks she can only make herself intelligible to 
 those to whom certain peculiar phrases are familiar : and though her friends 
 may be correct, devout, and both doctrinally and practically pious ; yet, if 
 they cannot catch a certain mystic meaning if there is not a sympathy of 
 intelligence between her and them if they do not fully conceive of impres- 
 sions, and cannot respond to mysterious communications, she holds them 
 unworthy of intercourse with her. She does not so much insist on high 
 and moral excellence as the criterion of their worth, as on their own account 
 of their internal feelings." (I. 60-63.) 
 
 The great object kept in view, throughout the whole of this introduction, 
 is the enforcement of religious principle, and the condemnation "of a life 
 lavished in dissipation and fashionable amusement. In the pursuit of this 
 object, it appears to us that Mrs More is much too severe upon the ordinary 
 amusements of mankind, many of which she does not object to hi this or 
 that degree, but altogether. Ccelebs and Lucilla, her optimus and optima, 
 never dance, and never go to the play. They not only stay away from the 
 comedies of Congreve and Farquhar, for which they may easily enough be 
 forgiven ; but they never go to see Mrs Siddons in the Gamester, or in 
 Jane Shore. The finest exhibition of talent, and the most beautiful moral 
 lessons, are interdicted at the theatre. There is something in the word 
 Playhouse which seems so closely connected, in the minds of these people, 
 with sin and Satan, that it stands in their vocabulary for every species 
 of abomination. And yet why ? Where is every feeling more roused in 
 favour of virtue than at a good play ? Where is goodness so feelingly, so 
 enthusiastically leamt ? What so solemn as to see the excellent passions of 
 the human heart called forth by a great actor, animated by a great poet ? 
 To hear Siddons repeat what Shakspeare wrote ! To behold the child and 
 his mother the noble and the poor artizan the monarch and his subjects 
 all ages and all ranks convulsed with one common passion wrung with 
 one common anguish, and, with loud sobs and cries, doing involuntary 
 homage to the God that made their hearts ! What wretched infatuation to 
 interdict such amusements as these ! What a blessing that mankind can 
 be allured from sensual gratification, and find relaxation and pleasure in 
 such pursuits ! But the excellent Mr Stanley is uniformly paltry and 
 narrow always trembling at the idea of being entertained, and thinking 
 no Christian safe who is not dull. As to the spectacles of impropriety 
 which are sometimes witnessed in parts of the theatre, such reasons apply, 
 in a much stronger degree, to not driving along the Strand, or any of the 
 great public streets of London, after dark ; and, if the virtue of well- 
 educated young persons is made of such very frail materials, their best 
 resource is a nunnery at once. It is a very bad rule, however, never to 
 quit the house for fear of catching cold.
 
 HANNAH MORE. 167 
 
 Mrs More practically extends the same doctrine to cards and assemblies. 
 No cards because cards are employed in gaming ; no assemblies because 
 many dissipated persons pass their lives in assemblies. Carry this but a 
 little further, and we must say, no wine because of drunkenness ; no meat 
 because of gluttony ; no use, that there may be no abuse ! The fact is, 
 that Mr Stanley wants, not only to be religious, but to be at the head of 
 the religious. These little abstinences are the cockades by which the party 
 are known the rallying points for the evangelical faction. So natural is 
 the love of power, that it sometimes becomes the influencing motive with 
 the sincere advocates of that blessed religion, whose very characteristic 
 excellence is the humility which it inculcates. 
 
 We observe that Mrs More, in one part of her work, falls into the com- 
 mon error about dress. She first blames ladies for exposing their persons 
 in the present style of dress, and then says, if they knew their own interest 
 if they were aware how much more alluring they were to men when their 
 charms are less displayed, they would make the desired alteration from 
 motives merely selfish. 
 
 " Oh ! if women in general knew what was their real interest, if they 
 could guess with what a charm even the appearance of modesty invests its 
 possessor, they would dress decorously from mere self-love, if not from 
 principle. The designing would assume modesty as an artifice ; the coquet 
 would adopt it as an allurement ; the pure as her appropriate attraction ; 
 and the voluptuous as the most infallible art of seduction. (I. 189.) 
 
 If there is any truth in this passage, nudity becomes a virtue ; and no 
 decent woman, for the future, can be seen in garments. 
 
 We have a few more of Mrs More's opinions to notice. It is not fair to 
 attack the religion of the times, because, in large and indiscriminate parties, 
 religion does not become the subject of conversation. Conversation must 
 and ought to grow out of materials on which men can agree, not upon sub- 
 jects which try the passions. But this good lady wants to see men chatting 
 together upon the Pelagian heresy to hear, in the afternoon, the theological 
 rumours of the day and to glean polemical tittle-tattle at a tea-table rout. 
 All the disciples of this school uniformly fall into the same mistake. They 
 are perpetually calling upon their votaries for religious thoughts and 
 religious conversation in every thing ; inviting them to ride, walk, row, 
 wrestle, and dine out religiously ; forgetting that the being to whom this 
 impossible purity is recommended, is a being compelled to scramble for his 
 existence and support for ten hours out of the sixteen he is awake ; for- 
 getting that he must dig, beg, read, think, move, pay, receive, praise, 
 scold, command, and obey ; forgetting, also, that if men conversed as often 
 upon religious subjects as they do upon the ordinary occurrences of the world, 
 they would converse upon them with the same familiarity and want of 
 respect ; that religion would then produce feelings not more solemn or 
 exalted than any other topics which constitute at present the common furni- 
 ture of human understandings. 
 
 We are glad to find in this work some strong compliments to the efficacy 
 of works some distinct admissions that it is necessary to be honest and 
 just, before we can be considered as religious. Such sort of concessions are 
 very gratifying to us ; but how will they be received by the children of the 
 tabernacle ? It is quite clear, indeed, throughout the whole of the work, 
 thnt an apologetical explanation of certain religious opinions is intended ; 
 and there is a considerable abatement of that tone of insolence with which 
 ths improved Christians are apt to treat the bungling specimens of piety L) 
 be met with in the more ancient churches.
 
 i68 CHARACTERS OF FOX. 
 
 So much for the extravagances of this lady. With equal sincerity, and 
 tdth greater pleasure, we bear testimony to her talents, her good sense, and 
 her real piety. There occur, every now and then, in her productions, very 
 original, and very profound observations. Her advice is very often charac- 
 terised by the most amiable good sense, and conveyed in the most brilliant 
 and inviting style. If, instead of belonging to a trumpery faction, she had 
 only watched over those great points of religion in which the hearts of every 
 sect of Christians are interested, she would have been one of the most useful 
 and valuable writers of her day. As it is, every man would wish his wife 
 and his children to read Calebs ; watching himself its effects ; separating 
 the piety from the puerility ; and showing that it is very possible to be a 
 good Christian, without degrading the human understanding to the trash and 
 folly of Methodism. 
 
 CHARACTERS OF FOX. (E. REVIEW, 1809.) 
 
 Ckaracttrt of the late Charles Jawes Fox. By PHILOPATRIS VARVICENSTS. 2 vols. 
 
 8vo. 
 
 THIS singular work consists of a collection of all the panegyrics passed upon 
 Mr Fox, after his decease, in periodical publications, speeches, sermons, or 
 elsewhere, in a panegyric upon Mr Fox by Philopatris himself, and in a 
 volume of notes by the said Philopatris upon the said panegyric. 
 
 Of the panegyrics, that by Sir James Mackintosh appears to us to be by 
 far the best. It is remarkable for good sense, acting upon a perfect know- 
 ledge of his subject, for simplicity, and for feeling. Amid the languid or 
 turgid efforts of mediocrity, it is delightful to notice the skill, attention, and 
 resources of a superior man, of a man, too, who seems to feel what he 
 writes, who does not aim at conveying his meaning in rhetorical and orna- 
 mented phrases, but who uses plain words to express strong sensations. 
 We cannot help wishing, indeed, that Sir James Mackintosh had been more 
 diffuse upon the political character of Mr Fox, the great feature of whose 
 life was the long and unwearied opposition which he made to the low 
 cunning, the profligate extravagance, the sycophant mediocrity, and the 
 stupid obstinacy of the English Court. 
 
 To estimate the merit, and the difficulty, of this opposition, we must 
 remember the enormous influence which the Crown, through the medium 
 of its patronage, exercises in the remotest corners of the kingdom, the 
 number of subjects whom it pays, the much greater number whom it keeps 
 in a state of expectation, and the ferocious turpitude of those mercenaries 
 whose present profits and future hopes are threatened by honest, and exposed 
 by eloquent men. It is the easiest of all things, too, in this country, to 
 make Englishmen believe that those who oppose the Government wish to 
 rain the country. The English are a very busy people ; and, with all the 
 faults of their governors, they are still a very happy people. They have, 
 as they ought to have, a perfect confidence in the administration of justice. 
 The rights which the different classes of mankind exercise the one over 
 the other are arranged upon equitable principles. Life, liberty, and pro- 
 perty are protected from the violence and caprice of power. The visible 
 and immediate stake, therefore, for which English politicians play, is not 
 large eribugh to attract the notice of the people, and to call them off from 
 their daily occupations, to investigate thoroughly the characters and motives 
 of men engaged in the business of legislation. The people can only under- 
 stand, and attend to, the last results of a long series of measures. They
 
 CHARACTERS OF FOX. 169 
 
 are impatient of the details which lead to these results ; and it is the easiest 
 of all things to make them believe that those who insist upon such details 
 are actuated only by factious motives. We are all now groaning under the 
 weight of taxes : but how often was Mr Fox followed by-the curses of his 
 country for protesting against the two wars which have loaded us with these 
 taxes? the one of which wars has made America independent, and the 
 other rendered France omnipotent. The case is the same with all the 
 branches of public liberty. If the broad and palpable question were, whether 
 every book which issues from the press should be subjected to the licence of 
 a general censor, it would be impossible to blacken the character of any 
 man, who, so called upon, defended the liberty of publishing opinions. 
 But, when the Attorney-General for the time being ingratiates himself with 
 the Court, by nibbling at this valuable privilege of the people, it is very 
 easy to treat hostility to his measures as a minute and frivolous opposition 
 to the Government, and to persuade the mass of mankind that it is so. In 
 fact, when a nation has become free, it is extremely difficult to persuade 
 them that their freedom is only to be preserved by perpetual and minute 
 jealousy. They do not observe that there is a constant, perhaps an uncon- 
 scious, effort on the part of their governors to diminish, and so ultimately 
 to destroy, that freedom. They stupidly imagine that what is, will always 
 be ; and, contented with the good they have already gained, are easily per- 
 suaded to suspect and vilify those friends the object of whose life it is to 
 preserve that good, and to increase it. 
 
 It was the lot of Mr Fox to fight this battle for the greater part of his 
 life ; in the course of which time he never was seduced, by the love of 
 power, wealth, or popularity, to sacrifice the happiness of the many to the 
 interests of the few. He rightly thought, that kings and all public officers 
 were instituted only for the good of those over whom they preside ; and he 
 acted as if this conviction was always present to his mind ; disdaining and 
 withstanding that idolatrous tendency of mankind, by which they so often 
 not only suffer, but invite, ruin from that power which they themselves have 
 wisely created for their own happiness. He loved, too, the happiness of 
 his countrymen more than their favour ; and while others were exhausting 
 the resources by flattering the ignorant prejudices and foolish passions of 
 the country, Mr Fox was content to be odious to the people, so long as he 
 could be useful also. It will be long before we witness again such pertina- 
 cious opposition to the alarming power of the Crown, and to the follies of 
 our public measures, the necessary consequence of that power. That such 
 opposition should ever be united again with such extraordinary talents, it 
 is, perhaps, in vain to hope. 
 
 One little exception to the eulogium of Sir James Mackintosh upon Mr 
 Fox, we cannot help making. We are no admirers of Mr Fox's poetry. 
 His Vers de Sod'eti appears to us flat and insipid. To write verses was the 
 only thing which Mr Fox ever attempted to do, without doing it well. In 
 that single instance he seems to have mistaken his talent. 
 
 Immediately after the collection of panegyrics which these volumes con- 
 tain, follows the eulogium of Mr Fox by Philopatris himself ; and then a 
 volume of notes upon a variety of topics which this eulogium has suggested. 
 Of the laudatory talents of this Warwickshire patriot, we shall present our 
 readers with a specimen. 
 
 "Mr Fox, though not an adept in the use of political wiles, was very 
 unlikely to be the dupe of them. lie was conversant in the ways of man, 
 as well as in the contents of books. lie was acquainted with the peculiar 
 language of states, their peculiar forms, and the grounds and effects of their
 
 1 70 CHARACTERS OF FOX. 
 
 peculiar usages. From his earliest youth, he had investigated the science of 
 politics in the greater and the smaller scale ; he had studied it in the records 
 of history, both popular and rare in the conferences of ambassadors in 
 the archives of royal cabinets in the minuter detail of memoirs and in 
 collected or straggling anecdotes of the wrangles, intrigues, and cabals, 
 which, springing: up in the secret recesses of courts, shed their baneful 
 influence on the determinations of sovereigns, the fortune of favourites, and 
 the tranquillity of kingdoms. But that statesmen of all ages, like priests of 
 all religions, are in all respects alike, is a doctrine the propagation of which 
 he left, as an inglorious privilege, to the misanthrope, to the recluse, to the 
 factious incendiary, and to the unlettered multitude. For himself, he thought 
 it no very extraordinary stretch of penetration or charity, to admit that 
 human nature is every where nearly as capable of emulation in good, as in 
 evil. He boasted of no very exalted heroism, in opposing the calmness 
 and firmness of conscious integrity to the shuffling and slippery movements, 
 the feints in retreat and feints in advance, the dread of being overreached, 
 or detected in attempts to overreach, and all the other humiliating and 
 mortifying anxieties of the most accomplished proficients in the art of 
 diplomacy. He reproached himself for no guilt, when he endeavoured to 
 obtain that respect and confidence which the human heart unavoidably feels 
 in its intercourse with persons who neither wound our pride, nor take aim 
 at our happiness, in a war of hollow and ambiguous words. He was 
 sensible of no weakness in believing that politicians, who, after all, ' know 
 only as they are known,' may, like other human beings, be at first the in- 
 voluntary creatures of circumstances, and seem incorrigible from the want of 
 opportunities or incitements to correct themselves ; that, bereft of the pleas 
 usually urged in vindication of deceit, by men who are fearful of being de- 
 ceived, they, in their official dealings with him, would not wantonly lavish 
 the stores they had laid up for huxtering in a traffic, which, ceasing to be 
 profitable, would begin to be infamous ; and that, possibly, here and there, 
 if encouraged by example, they might learn to prefer the shorter process, 
 and surer results, of plain dealing, to the delays, the vexations, and the 
 uncertain or transient success, both of old-fashioned and new-fangled 
 chicanery." (I. 209 211.) 
 
 It h impossible to read this singular book without being every where struck 
 with the lofty and honourable feelings, the enlightened benevolence, and 
 sterling honesty with which it abounds. Its author is every where the 
 circumspect friend of those moral and religious principles upon which the 
 happiness of society rests. Though he is never timid,- nor prejudiced, nor 
 bigoted, his piety, not prudish and full of antiquated and affected tricks, 
 presents itself with an earnest aspect, and in a manly form ; obedient to 
 reason, prone to investigation, and dedicated to honest purposes. The 
 writer, a clergyman, speaks of himself as a very independent man, who has 
 always expressed his opinions without any fear of consequences, or any hope 
 of bettering his condition. We sincerely believe he speaks the truth ; and 
 revere him for the life which he has led. Political independence discouraged 
 enough in these times among all classes of men is sure, in the timid pro- 
 fession of the church, to doom a man to eternal poverty and obscurity. 
 
 There are occasionally, in Philopatris, a great vigour of style, and felicity 
 of expression. His display of classical learning is quite unrivalled his 
 reading various and good ; and we may observe, at intervals, a talent for 
 wit, of which he might have availed himself to excellent purpose, had it 
 been compatible with the dignified style in which he generally conveys his 
 sentiments. With all these excellent qualities of head and heart, we have
 
 CHARACTERS OF FOX. i-i 
 
 seldom met witn a writer more full of faults than Philopatris. There is an 
 event recorded in the Bible, which men who write books should keep con- 
 stantly in their remembrance. It is there set forth, that many centuries ago 
 the earth was covered with a great flood, by which the whole of the human 
 race, with the exception of one family, were destroyed. It appears, also, 
 that from thence, a great alteration was made in the longevity of mankind, 
 who, from a range of seven or eight hundred years, which they enjoyed 
 before the flood, were confined to their present period of seventy or eighty 
 years. This epoch in the history of man gave birth to the twofold division 
 of the antediluvian and the postdiluvian style of writing, the latter of which 
 naturally contracted itself into those inferior limits which were better accom- 
 modated to the abridged duration of human life and literary labour. Now, 
 to forget this event, to write without the fear of the deluge before his eyes, 
 and to handle a subject as if mankind could lounge over a pamphlet for ten 
 years, as before their submersion, is to be guilty of the most grievous error 
 into which a writer can possibly fall. The author of this book should call 
 in the aid of some brilliant pencil, and cause the distressing scenes of the 
 deluge to be portrayed in the most lively colours for his use. He should 
 gaze at Noah, and be brief. The ark should constantly remind him of the 
 little time there is left for reading ; and he should learn, as they did in the 
 ark, to crowd a great deal of matter into a very little compass. 
 
 Philopatris must not only condense what he says in a narrower compass, 
 but he must say it in a more natural manner. Some persons can neither stir 
 hand nor foot without making it clear that they are thinking of themselves, 
 and laying little traps for approbation. In the course of two long volumes, the 
 Patriot of Warwick is perpetually studying modes and postures : the subject 
 is the second consideration, and the mode of expression the first. Indeed, 
 whole pages together seem to be mere exercises upon the English language, 
 to evince the copiousness of our synonymes, and to show the various methods 
 in which the parts of speech can be marshalled and arrayed. This, which 
 would be tiresome in the ephemeral productions of a newspaper, is intolerable 
 in two closely printed volumes. 
 
 Again, strange as it may appear to this author to say so, he must not fall 
 into the frequent mistake of rural politicians, by supposing that the under- 
 standings of all Europe are occupied with him and his opinions. His 
 ludicrous self-importance is perpetually destroying the effect of virtuous 
 feeling and just observation, leaving his readers with a disposition to laugh, 
 where they might otherwise learn and admire. 
 
 " I have been asked, why, after pointing out by name the persons who 
 seemed to me most qualified for reforming our Penal Code, I declined 
 mentioning such ecclesiastics as might with propriety be employed in pre- 
 paring for the use of the churches a grave and impressive discourse on the 
 authority of human laws ; and as other men may ask the same question 
 which my friend did, I have determined, after some deliberation, to insert 
 the substance of my answer in this place. 
 
 "If the public service of our church should ever be directly employed in 
 giving effect to the sanctions of our Penal Code, the office of drawing up such 
 a discourse as I have ventured to recommend would, I suppose, be assigned 
 to more than one person. My ecclesiastical superiors will, I am sure, make 
 a wise choice. But they will hardly condemn me for saying, that the best 
 sense expressed in the best language may be expected from the Bishops of 
 Llandaff, Lincoln, St David's, Cloyne, and Norwich, the Dean of Christ- 
 church, and the President of Magdalen College, Oxford. I mean not to 
 throw t'..e slightest reproach upon other dignitaries whom I have not men-
 
 172 CHARACTERS OF FOX. 
 
 tloned. But I should imagine that few of my enlightened contemporaries 
 hold an opinion different from my own, upon the masculine understanding 
 of a Watson, the sound judgment of a Tomline, the extensive erudition of 
 a Burgess, the exquisite taste and good nature of a Bennet, the calm and 
 enlightened benevolence of a Bathurst, the various and valuable attainments 
 of a Cyril Jackson, or the learning, wisdom, integrity, and piety of a Martin 
 Routh." (PP- 524, 525.) 
 
 In the name of common modesty, what could it have signified whether 
 this author had given a list of ecclesiastics whom he thought qualified to 
 preach about human laws? what is his opinion worth? who called for it? 
 who wanted it ? how many millions will be influenced by it ? andjwho, 
 oh gracious Heaven ! who are a Burgess, a Tomline, a Bennet, a Cyril 
 Jackson, a Martin Routh ? A Tom,* Jack,& Harry, a Peter ? All 
 good men enough in their generation doubtless they are. But what have 
 they done for the broad a ? what has any one of them perpetrated, which 
 will make him be remembered, out of the sphere of his private virtues, six 
 months after his decease ? Surely, scholars and gentlemen can drink tea 
 with each other, and eat bread and butter, without all this laudatory cackling. 
 
 Philopatris has employed a great deal of time upon the subject of capital 
 punishments, and has evinced a great deal of very laudable tenderness and 
 humanity in discussing it. We are scarcely, however, converts to that sys- 
 tem which would totally abolish the punishment of death. That it is much 
 too frequently inflicted in this country, we readily admit ; but we suspect it 
 will be always necessary to reserve it for the most pernicious crimes. Death 
 is the most terrible punishment to the common people, and therefore the 
 most preventive. It does not perpetually outrage the feelings of those 
 who are innocent, and likely to remain innocent, as would be the case 
 from the spectacle of convicts working in the high roads and public places. 
 Death is the most irrevocable punishment, which is in some sense a good ; 
 for, however necessary it might be to inflict labour and imprisonment 
 for life, it would never be done. Kings and Legislatures would take pity 
 after a great lapse of years ; the punishment would be remitted, and its 
 preventive efficacy, therefore, destroyed. We agree with Philopatris, that 
 the executions should be more solemn ; but still the English are not "of 
 a very dramatic turn, and the thing must not be got up too finely. Philo- 
 patris, and Mr Jeremy Bentham before him, lay a vast stress upon the 
 promulgation of laws, and treat the inattention of the English Govern- 
 ment to this point as a serious evil. It may be so but we do not happen 
 to remember any man punished for an offence which he did not know 
 to be an offence ; though he might not know exactly the degree in which 
 it was punishable. Who are to read the laws to the peopla ? who would 
 listen to them if they were read? who would comprehend them if they 
 listened ? In a science like law there must be technical phrases, known 
 only to professional men : business could not be carried on without them : 
 and of what avail would it be to repeat such phrases to the people ? Again, 
 what laws are to be repeated, and in what places? Is a law respecting the 
 number of threads on the shuttle of a Spittalfields weaver to be read to the 
 corn-growers of the Isle of Thanet? If not, who is to make the selection? 
 If the law cannot be comprehended by listening to the -viva voce repetition, 
 is the reader to explain it, and are there to be law lectures all over the king- 
 dom ? The fact is that the evil does not exist. Those who are likely to 
 commit the offence soon scent out the newly-devised punishments, and have 
 been long thoroughly acquainted with the old ones. Of the nice applica- 
 tions of the law they are indeed ignorant ; but they purchase the requisite
 
 THE RIGHT HON. CHARLES JAMES FOX. 173 
 
 skill of some man whose business it is to acquire it ; and so they get into 
 loss mischief by trusting to others than they would do if they pretended 
 to inform themselves. The people, it is true, are ignorant of the laws ; but 
 they are ignorant only of the laws which do not concern them. A poacher 
 knows nothing of the penalties to which he exposes himself by stealing ten 
 thousand pounds from the public. Commissioners of public boards are un- 
 acquainted with all the decretals of our ancestors respecting the wiring of 
 hares ; but the one pockets his extra per-centage, and the other his leveret, 
 with a perfect knowledge of the laws the particular laws which it is his 
 business to elude. Philopatris will excuse us for differing from him upon a 
 subject where he seems to entertain such strong opinions. We have a real, 
 respect for all his opinions : no man could form them who had not a good 
 heart and a sound understanding. If we have been severe upon his style of 
 writing, it is because we know his weight in the commonwealth : and we 
 wish that the many young persons who justly admire and imitate him should 
 be turned to the difficult task of imitating his many excellences, rather than 
 the useless and easy one of copying his few defects. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE HISTORICAL WORK OF THE 
 RIGHT HONOURABLE CHARLES JAMES FOX. (E. 
 REVIEW, 1809.) 
 
 Observations on the Historical Work of the Right Honourable Charles Janus Fox. 
 By the Right Honourable GEORGE ROSE. pp. 215. With a Narrative of the Events 
 which occurred in the Enterprise of the Earl of Argyle in 1685. By Sir PATRICK 
 HUME. London : 1809, 
 
 THIS is an extraordinary performance in itself ; but the reasons assigned 
 for its publication are still more extraordinary. A person of Mr Rose's 
 consequence incessantly occupied, as he assures us, " with official duties, 
 which take equally," according to his elegant expression, " from the disem- 
 barrassment of the mind and the leisure of time," thinks it absolutely neces- 
 sary to explain to his country the motives which have led him to do so idle 
 a thing as to write a book. He would not have it supposed, however, that 
 he could be tempted to so questionable an act by any light or ordinary 
 consideration. Mr Fox and other literary loungers may write from a love 
 of fame, or a relish for literature ; but the official labours of Mr Rose can 
 only be suspended by higher calls. All his former publications, he in- 
 forms us, originated in "a sense of public duty;" and the present, in "an 
 impulse of private friendship. " An ordinary reader may perhaps find some 
 difficulty in comprehending how Mr Rose could be " impelled by private 
 friendship " to publish a heavy quarto of political observations on Mr Fox's 
 History : and for our own parts, we must confess, that after the most dili- 
 gent perusal of his long explanation, we do not in the least comprehend it 
 yet. The explanation, however, which is very curious, it is our duty to lay 
 before our readers. 
 
 Mr Rose was much patronised by the late Earl of Marchmont, who left 
 him liis family papers, with an injunction to make use of them, "if it should 
 ever become necessary." Among these papers was a narrative by Sir Patrick 
 Hume, the Earl's grandfather, of the occurrences which befel him and his 
 associates in the unfortunate expedition undertaken by the Earl of Argyle in 
 1685. Mr Fox, in detailing the history of that expedition, has passed a 
 censure, as Mr Rose thinks, on the character of Sir Patrick ; and, to obviate 
 the effects of that censure, he now finds it "necessary" to publish thia 
 volume.
 
 174 HISTORICAL WORK OF THE 
 
 All this sounds very chivalrous and affectionate ; but we have three little 
 remarks to make. In the first place, Mr Fox passes no censure on Sir 
 Patrick Hume. In the second place, this publication does by no means 
 obviate the censure of which Mr Rose complains. And, thirdly, it is utterly 
 absurd to ascribe Mr Rose's part of the volume, hi which Sir Patrick Hume 
 is scarcely ever mentioned to any anxiety about his reputation. 
 
 In the first place, it is quite certain that Mr Fox passes no censure on Sir 
 Patrick Hume. On the contrary, he says of him, that " he had early dis- 
 tinguished himself hi the cause of liberty ; " and afterwards rates him so very 
 highly, as to think it a sufficient reason for construing some doubtful points 
 in Sir John Cochrahe's conduct favourably, that, " he had always acted in 
 conjunction with Sir Patrick Hume, who is proved by the subsequent events, 
 and indeed'<5y the whole tenor of his life and conduct, to have bun uniformly 
 sincere and zealous in the cause of his country" Such is the deliberate and 
 unequivocal testimony which Mr Fox has borne to the character of this 
 gentleman ; and such the historian, whose unjust censures have compelled, 
 the Right Honourable George Rose to indite 250 quarto pages, out of pure 
 regard to the injured memory of this ancestor of his deceased patron. 
 
 Such is Mr Fox's opinion, then, of Sir Patrick Hume ; and the only 
 opinion he any -where gives of his character. With regard to his conduct, 
 he observes, indeed, in one place, that he and the other gentlemen engaged 
 in the enterprise appear to have paid too little deference to the opinion of 
 their noble leader ; and narrates, in another, that at the breaking up of their 
 little army, they did not even stay to rcnson with him, but crossed the 
 Clyde with such as would follow them. Now, Sir Patrick's own narrative, 
 so far from contradicting either of these statements, confirms them both in 
 the most remarkable manner. There is scarcely a page of it that does not 
 show the jealous and controlling spirit which was exercised towards their 
 leader ; and, with regard to the concluding scene, Sir Patrick's own account 
 makes infinitely more strongly against himself and Sir John Cochrane, than 
 the general statement of Mr Fox. So far from staying to argue with their 
 general before parting with him, it appears that Sir Patrick did not so much 
 as see him ; and that Cochrane, at whose suggestion he deserted him, had 
 in a manner ordered that unfortunate nobleman to leave their company. 
 The material words of the narrative are these : 
 
 " On coming down to Kilpatrick, I met Sir John (Cochrane), with 
 others accompanieing him ; who takeing mee by the hand, turned mee, say- 
 ing, My heart, goe you with mee ? Whither goe you, said I ? Over Glide 
 by boate, said he. I : Wher is Argyle? I must see him. He : He is 
 gone away to his owne countrey, you cannot see him. I : How conies 
 this change of resolution, and that wee went not together to Glasgow ? He : 
 It is no time to answer questions, but I shall satisfy you afterward. To the 
 boates wee came, filled 2, and rowed over,' &c. ' An honest gentleman 
 who was present told mee aftenvard the manner of his parting with the 
 Erie. Argyle being in the room with Sir John, the gentleman coming in, 
 found confusion in the Erie's countenance and speach. In end he said, Sir 
 John, I pray advise mee what shall I doe ; shall I goe over Glide with you, 
 or shall I goe to my owne countrey? Sir John answered, My Lord, I have 
 told you my opinion ; you have some Highlanders here about you ; it is best 
 you goe to your owne countrey with them, for it is to no purpose for you to goe 
 over Clide. My Lord, faire you well. Then call'd the gentleman, Come 
 away, Sir; -who followed him when I met with him." Sir P. Hume's 
 Narrative, pp. 63, 64. 
 
 Such are all the censures which Mr Fox passes upon this departed worthy ;
 
 RIGHT HON. CHARLES JAMES FOX. 175 
 
 and such the contradiction which Mr Rose now thinks it necessary to ex- 
 hibit. It is very true that Mr Fox, in the course of his narrative, is under 
 the necessity of mentioning, on the credit of all the historians who have 
 treated of the subject, that Argyle, after his capture, did express himself in 
 terms of strong disapprobation both of Sir Patrick Hume and of Sir John 
 Cochrane ; and said, that their ignorance and misconduct was, though 
 not designedly, the chief cause of his failure. Mr Fox neither adopts nor 
 rejects this sentiment. He gives his own opinion, as we have already seen, 
 in terms of the highest encomium on the character of Sir Patrick Hume, 
 and merely repeats the expressions of Argyle as he found them in Woodrow 
 and the other historians, and as he was under the necessity of repeating 
 them, if he was to give any account of the last words of that unfortunate 
 nobleman. It is this censure of Argyle, then, perhaps, and not any censure 
 of Mr Fox's, that Mr Rose intended to obviate by the publication before us. 
 But, upon this supposition, how did the appearance of Mr Fox's book 
 constitute that necessity which compelled the tender conscience of Lord 
 Marchmont's executor to give to the world this long-lost justification of his 
 ancestor ? The censure did not appear for the first tune in Mr Fox's book. 
 It was repeated, during Sir Patrick's own life, in all the papers of the time, 
 and in all the historians since. Sir Patrick lived nearly forty good years 
 after this accusation of Argyle was made public ; and thirty-six of those 
 years in great credit, honour, and publicity. If he had thought that the 
 existence of such an accusation constituted a kind of moral necessity for the 
 publication of his narrative, it is evident that he would himself have pub- 
 lished it ; and if it was not necessary, then, while he was alive to suffer by 
 the censure of his leader, or to profit by its refutation, it is not easy to 
 understand how it should be necessary now, when 130 years have elapsed 
 from the date of it, and the bones of its author have reposed for nearly a 
 century in their peaceful and honoured monument. 
 
 That the narrative never was published before, though the censure, to 
 which it is supposed to be an antidote, had been published for more than a 
 century, is a pretty satisfactory proof that those who were most interested 
 and best qualified to judge, either did not consider the censure as very 
 deadly, or the antidote as very effectual. We are very well contented to 
 leave it doubtful which of these was the case ; and we are convinced that 
 all the readers of Mr Rose's book will agree that it is still very doubtful. 
 Sir Patrick, in his narrative, no doubt, says that Argyle was extremely 
 arrogant, self-willed, and obstinate ; but it is equally certain, that the Earl 
 said of him, that he was jealous, disobedient, and untractable. Both were 
 men of honour and veracity ; and, we doubt not, believed what they said. 
 It is even possible that both may have said truly ; but, at this distance of 
 time, and with no new evidence but the averment of one of the parties, it 
 would be altogether ridiculous to pretend to decide which may have come 
 nearest to an impartial statement. Before the publication of the present 
 narrative, it is plain from Woodrow, Burnet, and other writers, that con- 
 siderable blame was generally laid on Argyle for his peremptoriness and 
 obstinacy ; and, now that the narrative is published, it is still more appar- 
 ent than ever that he had some ground for the charges he made against his 
 officers. The whole tenor of it shows that they were constantly in the habit 
 of checking and thwarting him ; and we have already seen that it gives a 
 very lame and unsatisfactory account of their strange desertion of him, when 
 their fortunes appeared to be desperate. 
 
 It is perfectly plain, therefore, we conceive, that the publication of Mr 
 Fox's book constituted neither a necessity nor an intelligible inducement for 
 the publication of this narrative ; and that the narrative, now that it is
 
 176 HISTORICAL WORK OF THE 
 
 published, has no tendency to remove any slight shade of censure that 
 history may have thrown over the temper or prudence of Sir Patrick Hume. 
 But, even if all this had been otherwise, if Mr Fox had, for the first time, 
 insinuated a censure on this defunct Whig, and if the narrative had con- 
 tained the most complete refutation of such a censure this might indeed 
 have accounted for the publication of Sir Patrick's narrative ; but it could 
 not have accounted at all for the publication of Mr Rose's book the only 
 thing to be accounted for. The narrative is given as an appendix of 65 
 pages to a volume of upwards of 300. In publishing the narrative, Mr 
 Rose did not assume the character of "an author," and was not called 
 upon, by the responsibility of that character, to explain to the world his 
 reasons for "submitting himself to their judgment." It is only for his 
 book, then, exclusive of the narrative, that Mr Rose can be understood to 
 be offering any apology ; and the apology he offers is, that it sprung from 
 the impulse of private friendship. When the matter is looked into, how- 
 ever, it turns out, that though private friendship may, by a great stretch, be 
 supposed to have dictated the publication of the appendix, it can by no 
 possibility account, or help to account, for the composition of the book. 
 Nay, the tendency and tenor of the book is such as this ardent and romantic 
 friendship must necessarily condemn. It contains nothing whatever in 
 praise or in defence of Sir Patrick Hume ; but it contains a very keen, 
 and not a very candid, attack upon his party and his principles. Pro- 
 fessing to be published from anxiety to vindicate and exalt the memory 
 of an insurgent revolution Whig, it consists almost entirely of an attempt 
 to depreciate Whig principles, and openly to decry and vilify such of 
 Mr Fox's opinions as Sir Patrick Hume constantly exemplified in his 
 actions. There never was an effect, we believe, imputed to so improbable 
 a cause. 
 
 Finally, we may ask, if Mr Rose's view, in this publication, was merely 
 to vindicate the memory of Sir Patrick Hume, why he did not put into Mr 
 Fox's hands the information which would have rendered all vindication un- 
 necessary? It was known to all the world, for several years, that Mr Fox 
 was engaged in the history of that period ; and if Mr Rose really thought 
 that the papers in his custody gave a different view of Sir Patrick's conduct 
 from that exhibited in the printed authorities, was it not his duty to put Mi- 
 Fox upon his guard against being misled by them, and to communicate to 
 him those invaluable documents to which he could have access in no other 
 way? Did he doubt that Mr Fox would have the candour to state the 
 truth, or that he would have stated with pleasure any thing that could exalt 
 the character of a revolution Whig ? Did he imagine that any statement 
 of his could ever attain equal notoriety and effect with a statement in Mr 
 Fox's history ? Or, did he poorly withhold this information, that he might 
 detract from the value of that history, and have to boast to the public that 
 there was one point upon which he was better informed than that illustrious 
 statesman ? As to the preposterous apology which seems to be hinted at in 
 the book itself, viz. that it was Mr Fox's business to have asked for these 
 papers, and not Mr Rose's to have offered them, we shall only observe, that 
 it stands on a point of etiquette, which would scarcely be permitted to govern 
 the civilities of tradesmen's wives ; and that it seems not a little unreason- 
 able to lay Mr Fox under the necessity of asking for papers, the very exist- 
 ence of which he could have no reason to expect. This narrative of Sir 
 Patrick Hume has now lain in the archives of his family for 130 years, 
 unknown and unsuspected to all but its immediate proprietor; and, dis- 
 tinguished as Sir Patrick was in his day in Scotland, it certainly does not 
 imply any extraordinary stupidity in Mr Fox, not to know, by intuition,
 
 RIGHT HON. CHARLES JAMES FOX. 177 
 
 that there were papers of his in existence which might afford him some 
 lights on the subject of his history. 
 
 We may appear to have dwelt too long on these preliminary considera- 
 tions, since the intrinsic value of Mr Rose's observations certainly will not 
 be affected by the truth or the fallacy of the motives he has assigned for 
 publishing them. It is impossible, however, not to see that, when a writer 
 assigns a false motive for his coming forward, he is commonly conscious 
 that the real one is discreditable ; and that to expose the hollowness of such 
 a pretence, is to lay the foundation of a wholesome distrust of his general 
 fairness and temper. Anybody certainly had a right to publish remarks on 
 Mr Fox's work and nobody a better right than Mr Rose ; and if he had 
 stated openly, that all the habits and connections of his life had led him to 
 wish to see that work discredited, no one would have been entitled to com- 
 plain of his exertions in the cause. When he chooses to disguise this 
 motive, however, and to assign another which does not at all account for 
 the phenomenon, we are so far from forgetting the existence of the other, 
 that we are internally convinced of its being much stronger than we should 
 otherwise have suspected ; and that it is only dissembled, because it exists 
 in a degree that could not have been decently avowed. For the same 
 reason, therefore, of enabling our readers more distinctly to appreciate the 
 intellect and temper of this Right Honourable author, we must say a word 
 or two more of his Introduction, before proceeding to the substance of his 
 remarks. 
 
 Besides the edifying history of his motive for writing, we are favoured, in 
 that singular piece, with a number of his opinions upon points no way con- 
 nected with Mr Fox or his history, and with a copious account of his labours 
 and studies in all kinds of juridical and constitutional learning. In order to 
 confirm an opinion that a minute knowledge of our ancient history is not 
 necessary to understand our actual constitution, he takes an unintelligible 
 survey of the progress of our government, from the days of king Alfred, 
 and quotes Lord Coke, Plowden, Doomsday Book, Lord Ellesmere, Rymer's 
 Fcedera, Dugdale's Origines, the Rolls of Parliament, Whitelock, and Ab- 
 bott's Records ; but, above all, "a report which / made several years ago 
 on the state of the records in my custody. " He then goes on, in the most 
 obliging manner, to inform his readers that " Vertot's Account of the Re- 
 volutions of Rome has been found very useful by persons who have read 
 the Roman History ; but the best model that I have met with for such a 
 work as appeal's to me to be much wanted, is a short History of Poland, 
 which I translated nearly forty years ago, but did not publish ; the manu- 
 script of which His Majesty at the time did me the honour to accept ; and 
 it probably is still in His Majesty's library." Introduction, pp. xxiv. xxv. 
 
 Truly all this is very interesting, and very much to the purpose : but 
 scarcely more so than eight or nine pages that follow, containing a long 
 account of the conversations which Lord Marchmont had with Lord Boling- 
 broke, about the politics of Queen Anne's ministers, and which Mr Rose 
 now gives to the world from his recollection of various conversations be- 
 tween himself and Lord Marchmont. He tells us, moreover, that, "accus- 
 tomed as he has been to official accuracy in statement," he had naturally a 
 quick eye for mistakes in fact or in deduction ; that " having long enjoyed 
 the confidence and affectionate friendship of Mr Pitt," he has been more 
 scrupulous than he would otherwise have been in ascertaining the grounds 
 of his animadversions on the work of his great rival ; and that, notwitK- 
 standing all this anxiety, and the want of "disembarrassment of mind "and 
 " leisure of time," he has compiled this volume in about as many weeks as 
 Mr Fox tookjwrj- to the work on which it comments ! 
 
 M
 
 178 HISTORICAL WORK OF THE 
 
 For the Observations themselves, we must say that we have perused them 
 U'ith considerable pleasure not certainly from any extraordinary gratifica- 
 tion which we derived from the justness of the sentiments, or the elegance 
 of the style, but from a certain agreeable surprise which we experienced on 
 finding how few parts of Mr Fox's doctrine were considered as vulnerable, 
 even by Mr Rose ; and in how large a proportion of his freest and strongest 
 observations that jealous observer has expressed his most cordial concur- 
 rence. The Right Honourable George Rose, we rather believe, is commonly 
 considered as one of the least whiggish or democratical of all the public 
 characters who have lived in our times ; and he has himself acknowleged, 
 that a long habit of political opposition to Mr Fox had perhaps given him 
 a stronger bias against his favourite doctrines than he might otherwise have 
 entertained. It was therefore no slight consolation to us to find that the 
 true principles of English liberty had made so great a progress in the 
 opinions of all men in upper life, as to extort such an ample admission of 
 them, even from a person of Mr Rose's habits and connections. As we 
 fear, however, that the same justness and liberality of thinking are by no 
 means general among the more obscure retainers of party throughout the 
 country, we think it may not be without its use to quote a few of the pas- 
 sages to which we have alluded, just to let the vulgar Tories in the provinces 
 see how much of their favourite doctrines has been abjured by their more 
 enlightened chief and leaders in the seat of government. 
 
 In the first place, there are all the passages (which it would be useless 
 and tedious to recite) hi which the patriotism and public virtue of Sir P. 
 Hume are held up to the admiration of posterity. Now, Sir P. Hume, 
 that true and sincere lover of his country, whose "talents and virtues his 
 Sovereign acknowledged and rewarded," and "whose honours have been 
 attended by the suffrage of his country, and the approbation of good men," 
 was, even in the reign of Charles, concerned in designs analogous to those 
 uf Russell and Sydney ; and, very soon after the accession of James, and 
 (as Mr Rose thinks) before that monarch had done any thing in the least 
 degree blameable, rose up openly in arms, and endeavoured to stir up the 
 people to overthrow the existing government. Even Mr Fox hesitates as to 
 the wisdom and the virtue of those engaged in such enterprises ; and yet 
 Mr Rose, professing to see danger in that writer's excessive zeal for liberty, 
 writes a book to extol the patriotism of a premature insurgent. 
 
 After this, we need not quote our author's warm panegyrics on the Re- 
 volution " that glorious event to which the measures of James neces- 
 sarily led," or on the character of Lord Somers, " whose wisdom, talents, 
 political courage and virttie, would alone have been sufficient to insure the 
 success of that measure." It may surprise some of his political admirers a 
 little more, however, to find him professing that he " concurs with Mr 
 Fox as to the expediency of the Bill of Exclusion " (that boldest and most 
 decided of all Whig measures) ; and " thinks that the events which took 
 place in the next reign afford a strong justification of the conduct of the 
 promoters of that measure." When his Tory friends have digested that 
 sentiment, they may look at his patriotic invectives against the degrading 
 connection of the two last of the Stuart Princes with the Court of France ; 
 and the "scandalous profligacy by which Charles and his successor be- 
 trayed the best interests of their country for miserable stipends." There 
 is something very edifying, indeed, though we should fear a little alarming 
 to courtly tempers, in the warmth with which our author winds up his 
 diatribe on this interesting subject. "Everyone," he observes, "who 
 carries on a clandestine correspondence with a foreign power, in matters 
 touching the interests of Great Britain, is primd facie guilty of a great
 
 RIGHT HON~. CHAJRLES JAMES FOX. 179 
 
 moral, as well as political, crime. If a subject, he is a traitor to his 
 King and his country ; and if a Monarch, he is a traitor to the Crown 
 which he wears, and to the empire which he governs. There may, by 
 possibility, be circumstances to extenuate the former ; there can be none 
 to lessen our detestation of the latter." (pp. 149, 150.) 
 
 Conformably with these sentiments, Mr Rose expresses his concurrence 
 with all that Mr Fox says of the arbitrary and oppressive measures which 
 distinguished the latter part of Charles's reign; declares that "he has 
 manifested great temperance and forbearance in the character which he 
 gives of Jeffries ; and understated the enormity of the cruel and detest- 
 able proceedings of the Scottish government, in its unheard-of acts of 
 power, and the miseries and persecutions which it inflicted ; " admits that 
 Mr Fox's work treated of a period " in which the tyranny of the Sovereign 
 at home was not redeemed by any glory or success abroad ; " and speaks 
 of the Revolution as the era " when the full measure of the Monarch's 
 tyrannical usurpations made resistance a duty paramount to every considera- 
 tion of personal or public danger." 
 
 It is scarcely possible, we conceive, to read these, and many other pas- 
 sages which might be quoted from the work before us, without taking the 
 author for a Whig ; and it certainly is not easy to comprehend how the 
 writer of them could quarrel with any thing in Mr Fox's history, for want 
 of deference and veneration for the monarchical part of our constitution. 
 To say the truth, we have not always been able to satisfy ourselves of the 
 worthy author's consistency ; and holding, as we are inclined to do, that 
 his natural and genuine sentiments are liberal and manly, we can only 
 .iccount for the narrowness and unfairness of some of his remarks by sup- 
 posing them to originate from the habits of his practical politics and of 
 that long course of opposition, in which he learned to consider it a duty 
 to his party to discredit every thing that came from the advocate of the 
 people. We shall now say a word or two on the remarks themselves, 
 which, as we have already noticed, will be found to be infinitely fewer, 
 and more insignificant, than any one, looking merely to the bulk of the 
 volume, could possibly have conjectured. 
 
 The first of any sort of importance, is made on those passages in which 
 Mr Fox calls the execution of the King "a far less violent measure than 
 that of Lord Strafford;" and says, "that there was something in the 
 splendour and magnanimity of the act, which has served to raise the char- 
 acter of the nation in the opinion of Europe in general." Mr Rose takes 
 great offence at both these remarks ; and says that the constitution itself 
 was violated by the execution of the King, while the case of Lord Straf- 
 ford was but a private injury. We are afraid Mr Rose does not perfectly 
 understand Mr Fox, otherwise it would be difficult not to agree with him. 
 The grossness of Lord Strafford's case consisted in this, that a bill of 
 attainder was brought in, after a regular proceeding by impeachment had 
 been tried against him. He was substantially acquitted, by the most un- 
 exceptionable process known in our law, before the bill of attainder came 
 to declare him guilty, and to punish him. There was here, therefore, a 
 most flagrant violation of all law and justice, and a precedent for endless 
 abuses and oppressions. In the case of the King, on the other hand, there 
 could be no violation of settled rules or practice ; because the case itself 
 was necessarily out of the purview of every rule, and could be drawn into 
 no precedent. The constitution, no doubt, was necessarily destroyed or 
 suspended by the trial ; but Mr Rose appears to forget that it had been 
 destroyed or suspended before, by the war, or by the acts of the King 
 which brought on the war. If it were lawful to fight against the King, it
 
 i8o HISTORICAL WORK OF THE 
 
 must have been lawful to take him prisoner : after he was a prisoner, it was 
 both lawful and necessary to consider what should be done with him ; and 
 every deliberation of this sort had all the assumption, and none of the fair- 
 ne'ss of a trial. Yet Mr Rose has himself told us, that "there are cases in 
 which resistance becomes a paramount duty ; " and probably is not prepared 
 to say, that it was more violent and criminal to drive King James from the 
 throne in 1688, than to wrest all law and justice to take the life of Lord 
 Straffo.rd in 1641. Yet the constitution was as much violated by the for- 
 feiture of the one Sovereign, as by the trial and execution of the other. It 
 was impossible that the trial of King Charles might have terminated in a 
 sentence of mere deprivation ; and if James had fought against his people 
 and been conquered, he might have been tried and executed. The consti- 
 tution was gone for the time, in both cases, as soon as force was mutually 
 appealed to ; and the violence that followed thereafter, to the person of 
 the Monarch, can receive no aggravation from any view of that nature. 
 
 With regard, again, to the loyal horror which Mr Rose expresses, when 
 Mr Fox speaks of the splendour and magnanimity of the proceedings 
 against the King, it is probable that this zealous observer was not aware 
 that his favourite "prerogative writer," Mr Hume, had used the same, or 
 still loftier expressions, in relation to the same event. Some of the words 
 of that loyal and unsuspected historian are as follow: "the pomp, the 
 dignity, the ceremony of this transaction, correspond to the greatest con- 
 ceptions that are suggested in the annals of human kind ; the delegates of 
 a great people sitting in judgment upon their supreme magistrate, and 
 trying him for his mismanagement and breach of trust."* Cordially as we 
 agree with Mr Fox in the unprofitable severity of this example, it is im- 
 possible, we conceive, for any one to consider the great, grave, and solemn 
 movement of the nation that led to it, or the stem and dispassionate temper 
 in which it was conducted, without feeling that proud contrast between this 
 execution and that of all other deposed sovereigns in history, which led 
 Mr Fox, in common with Mr Hume, and every other writer on the sub- 
 ject, to make use of the expressions which have been alluded to. 
 
 When Mr Rose, in the close of his remarks upon this subject, permits 
 himself to insinuate, that if Mr Fox thought such high praise due to the pub- 
 licity, &c. of King Charles's trial, he must have felt unbounded admiration 
 at that of Lewis XVI., he has laid himself open to a charge of such vulgar 
 and uncandid unfairness, as was not to have been at all expected from a 
 person of his rank and description. If Lewis XVI. had been openly in 
 arms against his people if the Convention had required no other victim 
 and had settled into a regular government as soon as he was removed 
 there might have been more room for a parallel, to which, as the fact 
 actually stands, every Briton must listen with indignation. Lewis XVI. 
 was wantonly sacrificed to the rage of an insane and blood-thirsty faction, 
 and tossed to the executioner among the common supplies for the guillo- 
 tine. The publicity and parade of his trial were assumed from no love of 
 justice, or sense of dignity ; but from a low principle of profligate and 
 clamorous defiance to every thing that had become displeasing : and ridi- 
 culous and incredible as it would appear of any other nation, we have not 
 the least doubt that a certain childish emulation of the avenging liberty of 
 the English had its share in producing this paltry copy of our grand and 
 original daring. The insane coxcombs who blew out their brains, after a 
 piece of tawdry declamation, in some of the provincial assemblies, were 
 about as like Cato or Hannibal, as the trial and execution of Lewis was 
 like the condemnation of King Charles. Our regicides were serious and 
 * Hume's History, vol. vii. p. 141.
 
 RIGHT HON. CHARLES JAMES FOX. 181 
 
 original at least, in the bold, bad deeds which they committed. The 
 regicides of France were poor theatrical imitators, intoxicated with blood 
 and with power, and incapable even of forming a sober estimate of the 
 guilt or the consequences of their actions. Before leaving this subject, we 
 must remind our readers that Mr Fox unequivocally condemns the execu- 
 tion of the King ; and spends some time in showing that it was excusable 
 neither on the ground of present expediency nor future warning. After he 
 had finished that statement, he proceeds to say, that notwithstanding what 
 the more reasonable part of mankind may think, it is to be doubted, whether 
 that proceeding has not served to raise the national character in the eyes of 
 foreigners, &c. ; and then goes on to refer to the conversations he had 
 himself witnessed on that subject abroad. A man must be a very zealous 
 royalist, indeed, to disbelieve or be offended with this. 
 
 Mr Rose's next observation is in favour of General Monk ; upon whom 
 he is of opinion that Mr Fox has been by far too severe, at the same time 
 that he fails utterly in obviating any of the grounds upon which that severity 
 is justified. Monk was not responsible alone indeed, for restoring the King, 
 without taking any security for the people ; but, as wielding the whole 
 power of the army, by which that restoration was effected, he is certainly 
 chiefly responsible for that most criminal omission. As to his indifference 
 to the fate of his companions in arms, Mr Rose does indeed quote the testi- 
 mony of his chaplain, who wrote a complimentary life of his patrgn, to 
 prove that, on the trial of the regicides, he behaved with great moderation. 
 We certainly do not rate this testimony very high, and do think it far more 
 than compensated by that of Mrs Hutchinson, who, in the life of her hus- 
 band, says, that on the first proceedings against the regicides in the House 
 of Commons, " Monk sate still, and had not one word to interpose for any 
 man, but was as forward to set vengeance on foot as any one." * And a little 
 afterwards she adds, apparently from her own personal knowledge and 
 observation, that " before the prisoners were brought to the Tower, Monk 
 and his wife came one evening to the garden, and caused them to be brought 
 down, only to stare at them, which was such a behaviour for that man, 
 who had betrayed so many of those that had honoured and tnisted him, &c. 
 as no story can parallel the inhumanity of." f 
 
 With regard again to Mr Fox's charge of Monk's tamely acquiescing in 
 the insults so meanly put on the illustrious corpse of his old commander 
 Blake, it is perfectly evident, even from the authorities referred to by Mr 
 Rose, that Blake's body was dug up by the King's order, among others, 
 and removed out of the hallowed precincts of Westminster, to be reinterred 
 with twenty more in one pit at St Margaret's. 
 
 But the chief charge is, that on the trial of Argyle, Monk spontaneously 
 sent down some confidential lettters, which turned the scale of evidence 
 against that unfortunate nobleman. This statement, to which Mr Fox is 
 most absurdly blamed for giving credit, is made on the authority of the three 
 historians who lived nearest to the date of the transaction, and who all 
 report it as quite certain and notorious. These historians are Bumet, 
 Baillie, and Cunningham ; nor are they contradicted by any one writer on 
 the subject, except Dr Campbell, who, at a period comparatively recent, 
 and without pretending to have discovered any new document on the sub- 
 ject, is pleased to disbelieve them upon certain hypothetical and argumen- 
 tative reasons of his own. These reasons Mr Laing has examined and most 
 satisfactorily obviated in his history ; and Mr Rose has exerted incredible 
 industry to defend. The Scottish records for that period have perished ; 
 
 * Life of Colonel Hutchin$cn, p. 372. t Ibid. p. 378.
 
 182 HISTORICAL WORK OF THE 
 
 raid for this reason, and because a collection of pamphlets and newspapers, 
 of that age, in Mr Rose's possession, make no mention of the circumstance, 
 he thinks fit to discredit it altogether. If this kind of scepticism were to be 
 indulged, there would be an end of all reliance on history. In this parti- 
 cular case, both Burnet and Baillie speak quite positively, from the infor- 
 mation of contemporaries, and state a circumstance that would very well 
 account for the silence of the formal accounts of the trial, if any such had 
 been preserved, viz. that Monk's letters were not produced till after the 
 evidence was finished on both sides, and the debate begun on the result ; 
 an irregularity, by the way, by much too gross to have been charged against 
 a public proceeding without any foundation. 
 
 Mr Rose's next observation is directed rather against Judge Blackstone 
 than against Mr Fox ; and is meant to show, that this learned person was 
 guilty of great inaccuracy in representing the year 1679 as the era of good 
 laws and bad government. It is quite impossible to follow him through 
 the dull details and feeble disputations by which he labours to make it 
 appear that our laws were not very good in 1679, and that they, as well as 
 the administration of them, were much mended after the Revolution. Mr 
 Fox's or rather Blackstone's remark is too obviously and strikingly true in 
 substance, to admit of any argument or illustration.* 
 
 The next charge against Mr Fox is for saying, that if Charles II. 's minis- 
 ters betrayed him, he betrayed them in return ; keeping, from some of them 
 at least, the secret of what he was pleased to call his religion, and the state 
 of his connections with France. After the furious attack which Mr Rose 
 has made in another place upon this Prince and his French connections, it is 
 rather surprising to see with what zeal he undertakes his defence against 
 this very venial sort of treachery, of concealing his shame from some of his 
 more respectable ministers. The attempt, however, is at least as unsuc- 
 cessful as it is unaccountable. Mr Fox says only, that some of the ministers 
 were not trusted with the secret ; and both Dalrymple and Macpherson 
 say, that none but the Catholic counsellors were admitted to this confidence. 
 Mr Rose mutters, that there is no evidence of this ; and himself produces 
 an abstract of the secret treaty between Lewis and Charles, of May, 1670, 
 
 * Mr Rose talks a great deal and justly, about the advantages of the judges not being 
 removable at pleasure ; and, with a great air of erudition, informs us, that after 6 Charles, 
 all the commissions were made guanidiu noitis placnerit, Mr Rose's researches, we 
 fear, do not often go beyond the records in his custody. If he had looked into Rush- 
 worth's Collection, he would have found, that, in 1641, King Charles agreed to make the 
 commissions gvamdiu se bene gesserint ; and that some of those illegally removed in 
 the following reign, though not officiating in court, still retained certain functions in 
 consequence of that appointment. The following is the passage, at p. 1265, vol. iii. of 
 Rushworth : " After the passing of these votes (i6th December, 1640) against the judges, 
 and transmitting them to the House of Peers, and their concurring with the House of 
 Commons therein, an address \vas made unto the King shortly after, that his Majesty, 
 for the future, would not make any judge by patent during pleasure : but that they 
 may hold their places hereafter, qitamdiu se bene gesserint : and his Majesty dui really 
 grant the same. And in his speech to both Houses of Parliament, at the time of giving 
 nis Royal assent to two bills, one to take away the High Commission Court, and the 
 other the Court of Star-Chamber, and regulating the power of the Council Table, he 
 hath this passage ; ' If you consider what I have done this parliament, disconten's will 
 not sit in your hearts ; for I hope you remember, that I have granted, that the judges 
 hereafter, shall hold their places quamdiu se bene gesserint.' And likewise, his gracious 
 Majesty, King Charles the Second observed the same rule and method in granting 
 patents to judges, qtiatndiu se bene gesserint : as appears upon record in the rolls : viz. 
 to Sergeant Slide to be Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, Sir Orlando Bridgman 
 to be Lord Chief Baron, and afterwards to be Lord Chief Justice of Common Pleas; to Sir 
 Robert Former, and others. Mr Sergeant Archer, now living, not-viths!aiuii::g his 
 
 ', still enjoys his patent being qaamdiuse bene gesserint : and receive; 
 in the profits fftlie cnnrt, as to fees and other proceedings, by virtue of his said : 
 and his name is used in those fines, &c. as a judge of that court."
 
 RIGHT HON. CHARLES JAMES FOX. 183 
 
 to which the subscriptions of four Catholic ministers of the latter are 
 affixed! 
 
 Mr Fox is next taxed with great negligence for saying that he does not 
 know what proof there is of Clarendon's being privy to Charles receiving 
 money from France ; and very long quotations are inserted from the corres- 
 pondence printed by Dalrymple and Macpherson, which do not prove 
 Clarendon s knowledge of any money being received, though they do seem 
 to establish, that he must have known of its being stipulated for. 
 
 After this comes Mr Rose's grand attack ; in which he charges the 
 historian with his whole heavy artillery of argument and quotation, and 
 makes a vigorous effort to drive him from the position, that the early and 
 primary object of James's reign was not to establish Popery in this country, 
 but in the first place to render himself absolute : and that, for a considerable 
 time, he does not appear to have aimed at anything more than a complete 
 toleration for his own religion. The grounds upon which this opinion is 
 maintained by Mr Fox are certainly very probable. There is, in the first 
 place, his zeal for the Church of England during his brother's life, and the 
 violent oppressions by which he enforced a Protestant test in Scotland ; 
 secondly, the fact of his carrying on the government and the persecution of 
 nonconformists by Protestant ministers ; and, thirdly, his addresses to his 
 Parliament, and the tenor of much of his correspondence with Lewis. In 
 opposition to this, Mr Rose quotes an infinite variety of passages from 
 Barillon's correspondence, to show in general the unfeigned zeal of this 
 unfortunate Prince for his religion, and his constant desire to glorify and 
 advance it. Now, it is perfectly obvious, in the first place, that Mr Fox 
 never intended to dispute James's zeal for Popery ; and, hi the second 
 place, it is very remarkable, that in the first seven passages quoted by Mr 
 Rose, nothing more is said to be in the King's contemplation than the 
 complete toleration of that religion. " The free exercise of the Catholic 
 religion in their own houses," the abolition of the penal laws against 
 Catholics, "the free exercise of that religion," &c. &c., are the only 
 objects to which the zeal of the King is said to be directed ; and it is not 
 till after tin* suppression of Monmouth's rebellion, that these phrases are 
 exchanged for "a resolution to establish the Catholic religion" or "to get 
 that religion established ; " though it would be fair, perhaps, to interpret 
 some even of these phrases with reference to those which precede them in 
 the correspondence ; especially as, in a letter from Lewis to Barillon, so 
 late as 2Oth August, 1685, he merely urges the great expediency of James 
 establishing "the free exercise" of that religion. 
 
 After all, in reality, there is not much substantial difference as to this 
 point, between the historian and his observer. Mr Fox admits most ex- 
 plicitly, that James was zealous in the cause of Popery ; and that after 
 Monmouth's execution, he made attempts equally violent and undisguised 
 to restore it. Mr Rose, on the other hand, admits that he was exceedingly 
 desirous to render himself absolute ; and that one ground of his attachment 
 to Popery probably was, its natural affinity with an arbitrary government. 
 Upon which of these two objects he set the chief value, and which of them 
 "he wished to make subservient to the other, it is not perhaps now very easy 
 to determine. In addition to the authorities referred to by Mr Fox, how- 
 ever, there are many more which tend directly to show that one great 
 ground of his antipathy to the reformed religion was, his conviction that 
 it led to rebellion and republicanism. There are very many passages in 
 Barillon to this effect ; and, indeed, the burden of all Lewis's letters is to 
 convince James that "the existence of monarchy" in England depended on 
 the protection of the Catholics. Barillon says (Fox, App. p. 125), that
 
 184 HISTORICAL WORK OF THE 
 
 " the King often declares publicly that all Calvinists are naturally enemies 
 to royalty, and above all to royalty in England." And Burnet observes 
 (vol. i. p. 73), that the King told him, " that among other prejudices he 
 had against the Protestant religion, this was one, that his brother and 
 himself being in many companies in Paris incognito (during the Common- 
 wealth) where there were Protestants, he found they were all alienated 
 from them, and great admirers of Cromwell ; so he beliercd tJ::y were all 
 rebels in their hearts." It will not be forgotten either, that in his first 
 address to the Council, on his accession, he made use of those memorable 
 words: "I know the principles of the Church of England are for 
 monarchy, and tJierefore I shall always take care to defend and support it." 
 While he retained this opinion of its loyalty, accordingly, he did defend 
 and support it ; and did persecute all dissidents from its doctrine, at least 
 as violently as he aftenvards did those who opposed Popeiy. It was only 
 when he found that the orthodox doctrines of non-resistance and jus diviitunt 
 would not go all lengths, and that even the bishops would not send his 
 proclamations to their clergy, that he came to class them with the rest of 
 the heretics, and to rely entirely upon the slavish votaries of the Roman 
 superstition. 
 
 The next set of remarks are introduced for the purpose of showing that 
 Mr Fox has gone rather too far, in stating that the object both of Charles and 
 James in taking money from Lewis, was to render themselves independent 
 of Parliament, and to enable them to govern without those assemblies. Mr 
 Rose admits that this was the point which both monarchs were desirous of 
 attaining ; and merely says, that it does not appear that either of them 
 expected that the calling of Parliaments could be entirely dispensed with. 
 There certainly is not here any worthy subject of contention. 
 
 The next point is, as to the sums of money which Barillon says he dis- 
 tributed to the Whig leaders, as well as to the King's ministers. Mr Rose 
 is very liberal and rational on this subject ; and thinks it not unfair to 
 doubt the accuracy of the account which this minister renders of his dis- 
 bursements. He even quotes two passages from Mad. de Sevigne, to show 
 that it was the general opinion that he had enriched himself greatly by his 
 mission to England. In a letter written during the continuance of that 
 mission, she says, "Barillon s'en va, &c. ; son emploi est admirable cette 
 anntc ; il mangera cinquante mille francs ; mat's il sail bien ou les prendrt." 
 And after his final return, she says he is old and rich, and looks without 
 envy on the brilliant situation of M. D'Avaus. The only inference he 
 draws from the discussion is, that it should have a little shaken Mr Fox's 
 confidence in his accuracy. The answer to which obviously is, that his 
 mere dishonesty, where his private interest was concerned, can afford no 
 reason for doubting his accuracy, where it was not affected. 
 . In the concluding section of his remarks, Mr Rose resumes his eulogium 
 on Sir Patrick Hume, introduces a splendid encomium on the Marquis of 
 Montrose, brings authority to show, that torture was used to extort con- 
 fession in Scotland even after the Revolution, and then breaks out into 
 a high Tory rant against Mr Fox, for supposing that the councillors who 
 condemned Argyle might not be very easy in their consciences, and for 
 calling those who were hunting down that nobleman's dispersed followers 
 "authorised assassins." James, he says, was their la-wjul sovereign; and 
 the parties in question having been in open rebellion, it was the evident 
 duty of all who had not joined with them to suppress them. We arc not 
 very fond of arguing general points of this nature ; and the question here 
 is fortunately special, and simple. If the tyranny and oppression of James 
 in Scotland the unheard-of enormity of which Mr Rose owns that Mr
 
 RIGHT HON. CHARLES JAMES FOX. 185 
 
 Fox has understated had already given that country a far juster title to 
 renounce him than England had in 1688, then James was not "their lawful 
 sovereign " in any sense in which that phrase can be understood by a free 
 people ; and those whose cowardice or despair made them submit to be 
 the instruments of the tyrant's vengeance on one who had armed for their 
 deliverance, may very innocently be presumed to have suffered some remorse 
 for their compliance. With regard, again, to the phrase of "authorised 
 assassins," it is plain, from the context of Mr Fox, that it is not applied to 
 the regular forces acting against the remains of Argyle's armed followers, 
 but to those individuals, whether military or not, who pursued the disarmed 
 and solitary fugitives, for the purpose of butchering them in cold blood, in 
 their caverns and mountains. 
 
 Such is the substance of Mr Rose's observations ; which certainly do not 
 appear to us of any considerable value though they indicate, throughout, 
 a laudable industry, and a still more laudable consciousness of inferiority, 
 together with (what we are determined to believe) a natural disposition 
 to liberality and moderation, counteracted by the littleness of party jealousy 
 and resentment. "We had noted a great number of petty misrepresentations 
 and small inaccuracies ; but in a work which is not likely either to be much 
 read, or long remembered, these things are not worth the trouble of correc- 
 tion. 
 
 Though the book itself is very dull, however, we must say that the 
 Appendix is very entertaining. Sir Patrick's narrative is clear and spirited ; 
 but what delights us far more, is another and more domestic and miscel- 
 laneous narrative of the adventures of his family, from the period of Argyle's 
 discomfiture till their return in the train of King William. This is from 
 the hand of .Lady Murray, Sir Patrick's grand-daughter, and is mostly 
 furnished from the information of her mother, his favourite and exemplary 
 daughter. There is an air of cheerful magnanimity and artless goodness 
 about this little history, which is extremely engaging ; and a variety of traits 
 of Scottish simplicity and homeliness of character, which recommend it, in 
 a peculiar manner, to our national feelings. Although we have already 
 enlarged this article beyond its proper limits, we must give our readers a 
 few specimens of this singular chronicle. 
 
 After Sir Patrick's escape, he made his way to his own castle, and was 
 concealed for some time in a vault under the church, where his daughter, 
 then a girl under twenty, went alone, every night, with an heroic fortitude, 
 to comfort and feed him. The gaiety, however, which lightened this 
 perilous intercourse, is to us still more admirable than its heroism. 
 
 " She went every night by herself, at midnight, to carry him victuals and 
 drink ; and stayed with him as long as she could to get home before day. 
 In all this time my grandfather showed the same constant composure, and 
 cheerfulness of mind, that he continued to possess to his death, which was 
 at the age of eighty-four ; all which good qualities she inherited from him 
 in a high degree. Often did they laugh heartily in that doleful habitation, 
 at different accidents that happened. She at that time had a terror for a 
 churchyard, especially in the dark, as is not uncommon at her age, by idle 
 nursery stories ; but when engaged by concern for her father, she stumbled 
 over the graves every night alone, without fear of any kind entering her 
 thoughts, but for soldiers and parties in search of him, which the least noise 
 or motion of a leaf put her in terror for. The minister's house was near the 
 church. The first night she went, his dogs kept such a barking as put her 
 in the utmost fear of a discovery. My grandmother sent for the minister next 
 day, and, upon pretence of a mad dog, got him to hang all his dogs. There
 
 i86 THE RIGHT HON. CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 was also difficulty of getting victuals to carry him, without the servants 
 suspecting : the only way it was done, was by stealing it off her plate at 
 dinner, into her lap. Many a diverting story she has told about this, and 
 other things of the like nature. Her father liked sheep's head ; and, while 
 the children were eating their broth, she had conveyed most of one into het 
 lap. When her brother Sandy (the late Lord Marchmont) had done, he 
 .looked up with astonishment and said, ' Mother, will you look at Grizzel ; 
 while we have been eating our broth, she has eat up the whole sheep's 
 head.' This occasioned so much mirth among them, that her father at night 
 was greatly entertained by it, and desired Sandy might have a share in the 
 next." App. p. [v.] 
 
 They then tried to secrete him in a low room in his own house ; and, for 
 this purpose, to contrive a bed concealed under the floor, which this affec- 
 tionate and light-hearted girl secretly excavated herself, by scratching up 
 the earth with her nails, " till she left not a nail on her fingers," and carry- 
 ing it into the garden at night in bags. At last, however, they all got over 
 to Holland, where they seemed to have lived in great poverty, but in the 
 same style of magnanimous gaiety and cordial affection, of which some 
 instances have been recited. This admirable young woman, who lived 
 afterwards with the same simplicity of character in the first society in Eng- 
 land, seems to have exerted herself in a way that nothing but affection could 
 have rendered tolerable, even to one bred up to drudgery. 
 
 " All the time they were there (says his daughter), there was not a week 
 my mother did not sit up two nights, to do the business that was necessary. 
 She went to market ; went to the mill to have their corn ground, which, it 
 seems, is the way with good managers there ; dressed the linen ; cleaned 
 the house ; made ready dinner ; mended the children's stockings, and other 
 clothes ; made what she could for them, and, in short, did every thing. 
 Her sister Christian, who was a year or two younger, diverted her father 
 and mother, and the rest, who were fond of music. Out of their small 
 income they bought a harpsichord for little money (but is a Rucar*), now 
 in my custody, and most valuable. My aunt played and sung well, and had 
 a great deal of life and humour, but no turn to business. Though my 
 mother had the same qualifications, and liked it as well as she did, she was 
 forced to drudge ; and many jokes used to pass betwixt the sisters about their 
 different occupations" p. [ix.] 
 
 " Her brother soon afterwards entered into the Prince of Orange's guards ; 
 and her constant attention was to have him appear right in his linen and 
 dress. They wore little point cravats and cufis, which many a night she 
 sat up to have in as good order for him as any in the place ; and one of 
 their greatest expenses was in dressing him as he ought to be. As their 
 house was always full of the unfortunate banished people like themselves, 
 they seldom went to dinner without three, or four, or five of them, to share 
 with them ; and many a hundred times I have heard her say, she could 
 never look back upon then- manner of living there, without thinking it a 
 miracle. They had no want, but plenty of every thing they desired, and 
 much contentment ; and always declared it the most pleasing part of her 
 life, though they were not without their little distresses ; but to them they 
 were rather jokes than grievances. The professors, and men of learning in 
 the place, came often to see my grandfather. The best entertainment he 
 could give them, was a glass of alabast beer, which was a better kind of ale 
 than common. He sent his son Andrew, the late Lord Kimmerghame, a 
 
 * An eminent maker of that time.
 
 TOO MUCH LA TIN AND GREEK. 187 
 
 boy, to draw some for them in the cellar : he brought it up with great diligence ; 
 but in the other hand the spiket of the barrel. My grandfather said, 'Andrew, 
 what is that in your hand ? ' "When he saw it he run down with speed ; but 
 the beer was all run out before he got there. This occasioned much mirth ; 
 though perhaps they did not well know where to get more. " pp. [x. xi.] 
 
 Sir Patrick, we are glad to hear, retained this kindly cheerfulness of 
 character to the last ; and, after he was an Earl and Chancellor of Scotland, 
 and unable to stir with gout, had himself carried to the room where his 
 children and grandchildren were dancing, and insisted on beating time with 
 his foot. Nay, when dying at the advanced age of eighty-four, he could 
 not resist his old propensity to joking, but uttered various pleasantries on 
 the disappointment the worms would meet with, when, after boring through 
 his thick coffin, they would find little but bones. 
 
 There is, in the Appendix, besides these narrations, a fierce attack upon 
 Bumet, which is full of inaccuracies and ill temper ; and some interesting 
 particulars of Monmouth's imprisonment and execution. We dare say Mi- 
 Rose could publish a volume or two of very interesting tracts ; and can 
 venture to predict that his collections will be much more popular thanjiis 
 observations. 
 
 PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION. (E. REVIEW, 1809.) 
 
 Essays on Professional Education. By R. L. EDGEWORTH, Esq., F.R.S., &C. 
 London : 1809. 
 
 THERE are two questions to be asked respecting every new publication 
 Is it worth buying ? Is it worth borrowing ? and we would advise our 
 readers to weigh diligently the importance of these interrogations, before 
 they take any decided step as to this work of Mr Edgeworth ; the more 
 especially as the name carries with it considerable authority, and seems, in 
 the estimation of the unwary, almost to include the idea of purchase. For 
 our own part, we would rather decline giving a direct answer to these 
 questions ; and shall content ourselves for the present with making a few 
 such slight observations as may enable the sagacious to conjecture what 
 our direct answer would be, were we compelled to be more explicit. 
 
 One great and signal praise we think to be the eminent due of Mr Edge- 
 worth : in a canting age he does not cant ; at a period when hypocrisy and 
 fanaticism will almost certainly insure the success of any publication, he has 
 constantly disdained to have recourse to any such arts ; without ever having 
 been accused of disloyalty or irreligiou, he is not always harping upon Church 
 and King, in order to catch at a little popularity, and sell Ms books ; he 
 is manly, independent, liberal and maintains enlightened opinions with 
 discretion and honesty. There is also in this work of Mr Edgeworth, an 
 agreeable diffusion of anecdote and example, such as a man acquires who 
 reads with a view to talking or writing. With these merits, we cannot say 
 that Mr Edgeworth is either very new, very profound, or very apt to be right 
 in his opinion. He is active, enterprising, and unprejudiced ; but we have 
 not been very much instructed by what lie has written, or always satisfied 
 that he has got to the bottom of his sul 
 
 On one subject, however, . .j with this gentleman; and 
 
 return him our thanks for the courage with which he has combatted the 
 excessive abuse of classical learning in England. It is a subject upon which 
 we have long wished for an opportunity of saying something ; and one which 
 we consider to be of the ve>y highest importance.
 
 l88 TOO MUCH LATIN AND GREEK. 
 
 "The principal defect," says Mr Edgeworth, "in the present system of 
 our great schools, is, that they devote too large a portion of time to Latin 
 and Greek. It is true, that the attainment of classical literature is highly 
 desirable ; but it should not, or rather it need not, be the exclusive object 
 of boys during eight or nine years. 
 
 "Much less time, judiciously managed, would give them an acquaintance 
 with the classics sufficient for all useful purposes, and would make them as 
 good scholars as gentlemen or professional men need to be. It is not 
 requisite that every man should make Latin or Greek verses ; therefore, a 
 knowledge of prosody beyond the structure of hexameter and pentameter 
 verses is as worthless an acquisition as any which folly or fashion has intro- 
 duced amongst the higher classes of mankind. It must indeed be acknow- 
 ledged that there are some rare exceptions ; but even party prejudice would 
 allow, that the persons alluded to must have risen to eminence though they 
 had never written sapphics or iambics. Though preceptors, parents, and 
 the public in general, may be convinced of the absurdity of making boys 
 spend so much of life in learning what can be of no use to them ; such are 
 the difficulties of making any change in the ancient rules of great establish- 
 ments, that masters themselves, however reasonable, dare not, and cannot, 
 make sudden alterations. 
 
 "The only remedies that can be suggested might be, perhaps, to take 
 those boys, who are not intended for professions in which deep scholarship 
 is necessary, away from school before they reach the highest classes, where 
 prosody and Greek and Latin verses are required. 
 
 " In the college of Dublin, where an admirable course of instruction has 
 been long established, where this course is superintended by men of acknow- 
 ledged learning and abilities, and pursued by students of uncommon industry, 
 such is the force of example, and such the fear of appearing inferior in trifles 
 to English universities, that much pains have been lately taken to introduce 
 the practice of writing Greek and Latin verses, and much solicitude has been 
 shown about the prosody of the learned languages, without any attention 
 being paid to the prosody of our own. 
 
 "Boarding houses for the scholars at Eton and Westminster, which are 
 at present mere lodging-houses, might be kept by private tutors, who might, 
 during the hours when the boys were not in their public classes, assist them 
 in acquiring general literature, or such knowledge as might be advantageous 
 for their respective professions. 
 
 "New schools that are not restricted to any established routine, should 
 give a fair trial to experiments in education, which afford a rational prospect 
 of success. If nothing can be altered in the old schools, leave them as they 
 are. Destroy nothing injure none but let the public try whether they 
 cannot have something better. . If the experiment do not succeed, the public 
 will be convinced that they ought to acquiesce in the established methods of 
 instruction, and parents will send their children to the ancient seminaries 
 with increased confidence." (pp. 47 49.) 
 
 We are well aware that nothing very new can remain to be said upon a 
 topic so often debated. The complaints we have to make are at least as 
 old as the time of Locke and Dr Samuel Clarke ; and the evil which is the 
 subject of these complaints has certainly rather increased than diminished 
 since the period of those two great men. A hundred years, to be sure, is a 
 very little time for the duration of a national error ; and it is so far from 
 being reasonable to look for its decay at so short a date, that it can hardly 
 be expected, within such limits, to have displayed the full bloom of its 
 imbecility.
 
 TOO MUCH LATIN AND GREEK. 189 
 
 There are several feelings to which attention must be paid, before the 
 question of classical learning can be fairly and temperately discussed. 
 
 We are apt, in the first place, to remember the immense benefits which 
 the study of the classics once conferred on mankind ; and to feel for those 
 models on which the taste of Europe has been formed, something like sen- 
 timents of gratitude and obligation. This is all well enough, so long as 
 it continues to be a mere feeling ; but, as soon as it interferes with action, 
 it nourishes dangerous prejudices about education. Nothing will do in the 
 pursuit of knowledge but the blackest ingratitude ; the moment we have 
 got up the ladder, \\ e must kick it down ; as soon as we have passed over 
 the bridge, we must lot it rot ; when we have got upon the shoulders of 
 the ancients, we must look over their heads. The man who forgets the 
 friends of his childhood in real life is base ; but he who clings to the props 
 of his childhood in literature, must be content to remain ignorant as he was 
 when a child. His business is to forget, disown, and deny to think him- 
 self above every thing which has been of use to him in time past and to 
 cultivate that exclusively from which lie expects future advantage : in short, 
 to do every thing for the advancement of his knowledge, which it would be 
 infamous to do for the advancement of his fortune. If mankind still derive 
 advantage from classical literature proportionate to the labour they bestow 
 upon it, let their labour and their study proceed ; but the moment we cease 
 to read Latin and Greek for the solid utility w-e derive from them, it would 
 be a very romantic application of human talents to do so from any feeling of 
 gratitude, and recollection of past service. 
 
 To almost every Englishman up to the age of three or four and twenty, 
 classical learning has been the great object of existence ; and no man is very 
 apt to suspect, or very much pleased to hear, that what he has done for so 
 long a time was not worth doing. His classical literature, too, reminds 
 every man of the scenes of his childhood, and brings to his fancy several of 
 the most pleasing associations which we are capable of forming. A certain 
 sort of vanity, also, very naturally grows among men occupied in a common 
 pursuit. Classical quotations are the watchwords of scholars, by which they 
 distinguish each other from the ignorant and illiterate ; and Greek and Latin 
 are insensibly become almost the only test of a cultivated mind. 
 
 Some men through indolence, others through ignorance, and most through 
 necessity, submit to the established education of the times ; and seek for 
 their children that species of distinction which happens, at the period in 
 which they live, to be stamped with the approbation of mankind. This 
 mere question of convenience every parent must determine for himself. A 
 poor man, who has his fortune to gain, must be a quibbling theologian, or 
 a classical pedant, as fashion dictates ; and he must vary his error with the 
 error of the times. But it would be much more fortunate for mankind, if 
 the public opinion, which regulates the pursuits of individuals, were more 
 wise and enlightened than it at present is. 
 
 All these considerations make it extremely difficult to procure a candid 
 hearing on this question ; and to refer this branch of education to the only 
 proper criterion of every branch of education its utility in future life. 
 
 There are two questions which grow out of this subject : 1st, How far is 
 any sort of classical education useful? 2d, How far is that particular 
 classical education, adopted in this country, useful ? 
 
 Latin and Greek are, in the first place, useful, as they inure children to 
 intellectual difficulties, and make the life of a young student what it ought 
 to be, a life of considerable labour. We do not, of course, mean to confine 
 this praise exclusively to the study of Latin and Greek ; or to suppose that 
 other difficulties might not be found which it would be useful to overcome :
 
 190 TOO MUCH LA TIN AND GREEK. 
 
 but though. Latin and Greek have this merit in common with many arts and 
 sciences, still they have it ; and, if they do nothing else, they at least secure 
 a solid and vigorous application at a period of life which materially influ- 
 ences all other periods. 
 
 To go through the grammar of one language thoroughly is of great use for 
 the mastery of every other grammar ; because there obtains, through all 
 languages, a certain analogy to each other in their grammatical construction. 
 Latin and Greek have now mixed themselves etymologically with all the 
 languages of modern Europe and with none more than our own ; so that 
 it is necessary to read these two tongues for other objects than themselves. 
 
 The two ancient languages are as mere inventions as pieces of mechan- 
 ism incomparably more beautiful than any of the modern languages of 
 Europe : their mode of signifying time and case, by terminations, instead of 
 auxiliary verbs and particles, would of itself stamp their superiority. Add 
 to this, the copiousness of the Greek language, with the fancy, majesty, and 
 harmony of its compounds ; and there are quite sufficient reasons why the 
 classics should be studied for the beauties of language. Compared to them, 
 merely as vehicles of thought and passion, all modern languages are dull, 
 ill-contrived, and barbarous. 
 
 That a great part of the Scriptures have come down to us in the Greek 
 language, is of itself a reason, if all others were wanting, why education 
 should be planned so as to produce a suppiy of Greek scholars. 
 
 The cultivation of style is very justly made a part of education. Every 
 thing which is written is meant either to please or to instruct. The second 
 object it is difficult to effect, without attending to the first ; and the cultiva- 
 tion of style is the acquisition of those rules and literary habits which saga- 
 city anticipates, or experience shows to be the most effectual means of pleas- 
 ing. Those works are the best which have longest stood the test of time, 
 and pleased the greatest number of exercised minds. Whatever, therefore, 
 our conjectures may be, we cannot be so sure that the best modem writers 
 can afford us as good models as the ancients ; we cannot be certain that 
 they will live through the revolutions of the world, and continue to please 
 in every climate under every species of government through every stage 
 of civilisation. The moderns have been well taught by their masters ; but 
 the time is hardly yet come when the necessity for such instruction no longer 
 exists. We may still borrow descriptive power from Tacitus ; dignified 
 perspicuity from Livy ; simplicity from Caesar ; and from Homer some por- 
 tion of that light and heat which, dispersed into ten thousand channels, has 
 filled the world with bright images and illustrious thoughts. Let the cul- 
 tivator of modern literature addict himself to the purest models of taste 
 which France, Italy, and England could supply, he might still learn from 
 Virgil to be majestic, and from Tibullus to be tender ; he might not yet 
 look upon the face of nature as Theocritus saw it ; nor might he reach those 
 springs of pathos with which Euripides softened the hearts of his audience. 
 In short, it appears to us, that there are so many excellent reasons why a 
 certain number of scholars should be kept up in this and in every civilised 
 country, that we should consider every system of education from which 
 classical education was excluded, as radically erroneous, and completely 
 absurd. 
 
 That vast advantages, then, may be derived from classical learning, there 
 can be no doubt. The advantages which are derived from classical learning 
 by the English manner of teaching, involve another and a very different 
 question ; and we will venture to say, that there never was a more complete 
 instance in any country of such extravagant and overacted attachment to any 
 branch of knowledge, as that which obtains in this country with regard to
 
 TOO MUCH LATIN AND GREEK. 191 
 
 classical knowledge. A young Englishman goes lo school at six or seven 
 years old; and he remains in a course of education till twenty-three or 
 twenty-four years of age. In all that time, his sole and exclusive occupa- 
 tion is learning Latin and Greek :* he has scarcely a notion that there is 
 any other kind of excellence ; and the great system of facts with which he 
 is the most perfectly acquainted, are the intrigues of the heathen Gods : 
 with whom Pan slept ? with whom Jupiter ? whom Apollo ravished ? 
 These facts the English youth get by heart the moment they quit the nursery ; 
 and are most sedulously and industriously instructed in them till the best 
 and most active part of life is passed asvay. Now, this long career of 
 classical learning, we may, if we please, denominate a foundation ; but it is 
 a foundation so far above ground, that there is absolutely no room to put 
 any thing upon it. If you occupy a man with one thing till he is twenty- 
 four years of age, you have exhausted all his leisure time : he is called into 
 the world and compelled to act ; or is surrounded with pleasures, and thinks 
 and reads no more. If you have neglected to put other things in him, they 
 will never get in afterwards ; if you have fed him only with words, he will 
 remain a narrow and limited being to the end of his existence. 
 
 The bias given to men's minds is so strong that it is no uncommon thing 
 to meet with Englishmen, whom, but for their grey hairs and wrinkles, we 
 might easily mistake for school-boys. Their talk is of Latin verses ; and it 
 is quite clear, if men's ages are to be dated from the state of their mental 
 progress, that such men are eighteen years of age, and not a day older. 
 Their minds have been so completely possessed by exaggerated notions of 
 classical learning, that they have not been able, in the great school of the 
 world, to form any other notion of real greatness. Attend, too, to the 
 public feelings look to all the terms of applause. A learned man ! a 
 scholar ! a man of erudition ! Upon whom are these epithets of approba- 
 tion bestowed? Are they given to men acquainted with the science of 
 government ? thoroughly masters of the geographical and commercial rela- 
 tions of Europe ? to men who know the properties of bodies, and their action 
 upon each other ? No : this is not learning ; it is chemistry, or political 
 economy not learning. The distinguishing abstract term, the epithet of 
 Scholar, is reserved for him who writes on the JEolic reduplication, and is 
 familiar with the Sylburgian method of arranging defectives in w and fu. 
 The picture which a young Englishman, addicted, to the pursuit of know- 
 ledge, draws his beau idiot, of human nature his top and consummation 
 of man's powers is a knowledge of the Greek language. His object is not 
 to reason, to imagine, or to invent ; but to conjugate, decline, and derive. 
 The situations of imaginary glory which he draws for himself, are the detec- 
 tion of an anapaest in the wrong place, or the restoration of a dative case 
 which Cranzius had passed over, and the never-dying Ernesti failed to 
 observe. If a young classic of this kind were to meet the greatest chemist 
 or the greatest mechanician, or the most profound political economist of his 
 time, in company with the greatest Greek scholar, would the slightest com- 
 parison between them ever come across his mind ? would he ever dream 
 that such men as Adam Smith and Lavoisier were equal in dignity of 
 understanding to, or of the same utility as, Bentley and Heyne ? We are 
 inclined to think, that the feeling excited would be a good deal like that 
 which was expressed by Dr George about the praises of the great King of 
 Prussia, who entertained considerable doubts whether the King, with all his 
 victories, knew how to conjugate a Greek verb in p.i. 
 
 * Unless he goes to the University of Cambridge ; and then classics occupy him 
 tirely for about ten years ; and divide him with mathematics for four or five more.
 
 192 TOO MUCH LATIN A.\D GREEK. 
 
 Another misfortune of classical learning, as taught in England, is, that 
 scholars have come, in process of time, and from the effects of association, 
 to love the instrument better than the end ; not the luxury which the diffi- 
 culty incloses, but the difficulty ; not the filbert, but the shell ; not what 
 may be read in Greek, but Greek itself. It is not so much the man who 
 has mastered the wisdom of the ancients, that is valued, as he who displays 
 his knowledge of the vehicle in which that wisdom is conveyed. The glory 
 is to show I am a scholar. The good sense and ingenuity I may gain by 
 my acquaintance with ancient authors is matter of opinion ; but if I bestow 
 an immensity of pains upon a point of accent or quantity, this is something 
 positive ; I establish my pretensions to the name of Scholar, and gain the 
 credit of learning, while I sacrifice all its utility. 
 
 Another evil in the present system of classical education is the extra- 
 ordinary perfection which is aimed at in teaching those languages ; a need- 
 less perfection ; an accuracy which is sought for in nothing else. There are 
 few boys who remain to the age of eighteen or nineteen at a public school, 
 without making above ten thousand Latin verses ; a greater number than 
 is contained in the dZneid : and after he has made this quantity of verses 
 in a dead language, unless the poet should happen to be a very weak man 
 indeed, he never makes another as long as he lives. It may be urged, and 
 it is urged, that this is of use in teaching the delicacies of the language. No 
 doub* it is of use for this purpose, if we put out of view the immense time 
 oni trouble sacrificed in gaining these little delicacies. It would be of use 
 that we should go on till fifty years of age making Latin verses, if the price 
 of a whole life were not too much to pay for it. We effect our object ; but 
 we do it at the price of something greater than our object. And whence 
 comes it, that the expenditure of life and labour is totally put out of the 
 calculation, when Latin and Greek are to be attained? In every other 
 occupation, the question is fairly stated between the attainment and the 
 time employed in the pursuit ; but, in classical learning, it seems to be 
 sufficient if the least possible good is gained by the greatest possible exer- 
 tion ; if the end is any thing, and the means every thing. It is of some im- 
 portance to speak and write French ; and innumerable delicacies would be 
 gained by writing ten thousand French verses : but it makes no part of our 
 education to write French poetry. It is of some importance that there 
 should be good botanists ; but no botanist can repeat by heart the names of 
 all the plants in the known world ; nor is any astronomer acquainted with 
 the appellation and magnitude of every star in the map of the heavens. The 
 only department of human knowledge in which there can be no excess, no 
 arithmetic, no balance of profit and loss, is classical learning. 
 
 The prodigious honour in which Latin verses are held at public schools 
 is surely the most absurd of all absurd distinctions. You rest all reputation 
 upon doing that which is a natural gift, and which no labour can attain. If 
 a lad won't leam the words of a language, his degradation in the school is 
 a very natural punishment for his disobedience, or his indolence ; but it 
 would be as reasonable to expect that all boys should be witty, or beautiful, 
 as that they should be poets. In either case, it would be to make an acci- 
 dental, unattainable, and not a very important gift of nature, the only, or 
 the principal, test of merit. This is the reason why boys, who make a 
 considerable figure at school, so very often make no figure in the world ; 
 and why other lads, who are passed over without notice, turn out to be 
 valuable, important men. The test established in the world is widely 
 different from that established in a place which is presumed to be a pre- 
 paration for the world ; and the head of a public school, who is a perfect 
 miracle to his contemporaries, finds himself shrink into absolute insignifi"
 
 TOO MUCH LA TIN AND GREEK. 193 
 
 cance, because he has nothing else to command respect or regard, but a 
 talent for fugitive poetry in a dead language. 
 
 The present state of classical education cultivates the imagination a great 
 deal too much, and other habits of mind a great deal too little ; and trains 
 up many young men in a style of elegant imbecility, utterly unworthy of 
 the talents with which nature has endowed them. It may be said, there 
 are profound investigations, and subjects quite powerful enough for any 
 understanding, to be met with in classical literature. So there are ; but no 
 man likes to add the difficulties of a language to the difficulties of a subject ; 
 and to study metaphysics, morals, and politics in Greek, when the Greek 
 alone is study enough without them. In all foreign languages, the most 
 popular works are works of imagination. Even in the French language, 
 which we know so well, for one serious work which has any currency in 
 this country, we have twenty which are mere works of imagination. This 
 is still more true in classical literature ; because what their poets and orators 
 have left us is of infinitely greater value than the remains of their philosophy ; 
 for, as society advances, men think more accurately and deeply, and ima- 
 gine more tamely ; works of reasoning advance, and works of fancy decay. 
 So that the matter of fact is, that a classical scholar of twenty-three or 
 twenty-four years of age is a man principally conversant with works of 
 imagination. His feelings are quick, his fancy lively, and his taste good. 
 Talents for speculation and original inquiry he has none ; nor has he formed 
 the invaluable habit of pushing things up to their first principles, or of 
 collecting dry and unamusing facts as the materials of reasoning. All the 
 solid and masculine parts of his understanding are left wholly without culti- 
 vation ; he hates the pain of thinking, and suspects every man whose bold- 
 ness and originality call upon him to defend his opinions and prove his 
 assertions. 
 
 A very curious argument is sometimes employed in justification of the 
 learned minutiae to which all young men are doomed, whatever be their 
 propensities in future life. What are you to do with a young man up to the 
 age of seventeen ? Just as if there were such a want of difficulties to over- 
 come, and of important tastes to inspire, that, from the mere necessity of 
 doing something, and the impossibility of doing any thing else, you were 
 driven to the expedient of metre and poetry ; as if a young man within 
 that period might not acquire the modern languages, modern history, experi- 
 mental philosophy, geography, chronology, and a considerable share of 
 mathematics ; as if the memory of things were not more agreeable, and 
 more profitable, than the memory of words. 
 
 The great objection is, that we are not making the most of human life, 
 when we constitute such an extensive, and such minute classical erudition, 
 an indispensable article in education. Up to a certain point we would 
 educate every young man in Latin and Greek ; but to a point far short of 
 that to which this species of education is now carried. Afterwards, we 
 would grant to classical erudition as high honours as to every other depart- 
 ment of knowledge, but not higher. We would place it upon a footing with 
 many other objects of study ; but allow to it no superiority. Good scholars 
 would be as certainly produced by these means, as good chemists, astrono- 
 mers, and mathematicians are now produced, without any direct provision 
 whatsoever for their production. Why are we to trust to the diversity of 
 human tastes, and the varieties of human ambition, in every thing else, and 
 distrust it in classics alone ? The passion for languages is just as strong 
 as any other literary passion. There are very good Persian and Arabic 
 scholars in this country. Large heaps of trash have been dug up from 
 Sanscrit ruins. We have seen, in our own times, a clergyman of the Uni- 
 
 N
 
 194 TOO MUCH LA TIN AND CREEK. 
 
 versity of Oxford complimenting their Majesties in Coptic and Syro-phce- 
 nician verses ; and yet we doubt whether there will be a sufficient avidity in 
 literary men to get at the beauties of the finest writers which the world has 
 yet seen ; and though the Bagi'at Gheeta has (as can be proved) met with 
 human beings to translate, and other human beings to read it, we think 
 that, in order to secure an attention to Homer and Virgil, we must catch 
 up every man whether he is to be a clergyman or a duke, begin with him 
 at six years of age, and never quit him till he is twenty ; making him con- 
 jugate and decline for life and death ; and so teaching him to estimate his 
 progress in real wisdom as he can scan the verses of the Greek tragedians. 
 
 The English clergy, in whose hands education entirely rests, bring up the 
 first young men of the country as if they were all to keep grammar schools 
 in little country towns ; and a nobleman, upon whose knowledge and 
 liberality the honour and welfare of his country may depend, is diligently 
 worried, for half his life, with the small pedantry of longs and shorts. 
 There is a timid and absurd apprehension, on the part of ecclesiastical 
 tutors, of letting out the minds of youth upon difficult and important sub- 
 jects. They fancy that mental exertion must end in religious scepticism ; 
 and, to preserve the principles of their pupils, they confine them to the 
 safe and elegant imbecility of classical learning. A genuine Oxford tutor 
 would shudder to hear his young men disputing upon moral and political 
 truth, forming and pulling down theories, and indulging in all the boldness 
 of youthful discussion. He would augur nothing from it, but impiety to 
 God, and treason to kings. And yet, who vilifies both more than the holy 
 poltroon who carefully averts from them the searching eye of reason, and 
 who knows no better method of teaching the highest duties, than by extir- 
 pating the finest qualities and habits of the mind? If our religion is a 
 fable, the sooner it is exploded the better. If our government is bad, it 
 should be amended. But we have no doubt of the truth of the one, or of 
 the excellence of the other ; and are convinced that both will be placed on 
 a firmer basis, in proportion as the minds of men are more trained to the 
 investigation of truth. At present, we act with the minds of our young 
 men, as the Dutch did with their exuberant spices. An infinite quantity of 
 talent is annually destroyed in the Universities of England by the miserable 
 jealousy and littleness of ecclesiastical instructors. It is in vain to say we 
 have produced great men under this system. We have produced great men 
 under all systems. Every Englishman must pass half his life in learning 
 Latin and Greek ; and classical learning is supposed to have produced the 
 talents which it has not been able to extinguish. It is scarcely possible to 
 prevent great men from rising up under any system of education, however 
 bad. Teach men dsemonology or astrology, and you will still have a cer- 
 tain portion of original genius, in spite of these or any other branches of 
 ignorance and folly. 
 
 There is a delusive sort of splendour in a vast body of men pursuing one 
 object, and thoroughly obtaining it ; and yet, though it be very splendid, it 
 is far from being useful. Classical literature is the great object at Oxford. 
 Many minds so employed have produced many works, and much fame in 
 that department ; but if all liberal arts and sciences useful to human life had 
 been taught there, if some had dedicated themselves to chemistry, some to 
 mathematics, some to experimental philosophy, and if every attainment 
 had been honoured in the mixt ratio of its difficulty and utility, the system 
 of such an University would have been much more valuable, but the splen- 
 dour of its name something less. 
 
 When an University has been doing useless things for a long time, it 
 appears at first degrading to them to be useful. A set of. lectures upon
 
 TOO MUCH LATIN AND GREEK. 195 
 
 political economy would be discouraged in Oxford,* probably despised, 
 probably not permitted. To discuss the enclosure of commons, and to 
 dwell upon imports and exports, to come so near to common life, would 
 seem to be undignified and contemptible. In the same manner, the Parr, 
 or the Bentley of his day, would be scandalised in an University to be put 
 on a level with the discoverer of a neutral salt ; and yet, what other 
 measure is there of dignity in intellectual labour, but usefulness and diffi- 
 culty? And what ought the term University to mean, but a place where 
 every science is taught which is liberal, and at the same time useful to 
 mankind ? Nothing would so much tend to bring classical literature within 
 proper bounds as a steady and invariable appeal to these tests in our 
 appreciation of all human knowledge. The puffed up pedant would col- 
 lapse into his proper size, and the maker of verses and the rememberer 
 of words, would soon assume that station, which is the lot of those who go 
 up unbidden to the upper places of the feast. 
 
 We should be sorry, if what we have said should appear too contemptu- 
 ous towards classical learning, which we most sincerely hope will always be 
 held in great honour in this country, though we certainly do not wish to it 
 that exclusive honour which it at present enjoys. A great classical scholar 
 is an ornament, and an important acquisition to his country ; but, in a place 
 of education, we would give to all knowledge an equal chance for distinc- 
 tion ; and would trust to the varieties of human disposition, that every 
 science worth cultivation would be cultivated. Looking always to real 
 utility as our guide, we should see, with equal pleasure, a studious and 
 inquisitive mind arranging the productions of nature, investigating the 
 qualities of bodies, or mastering the difficulties of the learned languages. 
 We should not care whether he were chemist, naturalist, or scholar, 
 because we know it to be as necessary that matter should be studied, and 
 subdued to the use of man, as that taste should be gratified, and imagina- 
 tion inflamed. 
 
 In those who were destined for the church, we would undoubtedly 
 encourage classical learning, more than in any other body of men ; but if 
 we had to do with a young man going out into public life, we would 
 exhort him to contemn, or at least not to affect the reputation of a great 
 scholar, but to educate himself for the offices of civil life. He should learn 
 what the constitution of his country really was, how it had grown into its 
 present state, the perils that had threatened it, the malignity that had 
 attacked it the courage that had fought for it, and the wisdom that had 
 made it great. We would bring strongly before his mind the characters of 
 those Englishmen who have been the steady friends of the public happiness ; 
 and, by their examples, would breathe into him a pure public taste, which 
 should keep him untainted in all the vicissitudes of political fortune. We 
 would teach him to burst through the well paid, and the pernicious cant of 
 indiscriminate loyalty ; and to know his Sovereign only as he discharged 
 those duties, and displayed those qualities, for which the blood and the 
 treasure of his people are confided to bis hands. We should deem it of the 
 utmost importance, that his attention was directed to the true principles of 
 legislation, what effect laws can produce upon opinions, and opinions 
 upon laws, what subjects are fit for legislative interference, and when men 
 may be left to the management of their own interests. The mischief 
 occasioned by bad laws, and the perplexity which arises from numerous 
 laws, the causes of national wealth, the relations of foreign trade, the 
 encouragement of manufactures and agriculture, the fictitious wealth 
 
 * They have since been established.
 
 196 FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 occasioned by paper credit, the laws of population, the management of 
 poverty and mendicity, the use and abuse of monopoly, the theory of 
 taxation, the consequences o'f the public debt. These are some of the 
 subjects, and some of the branches of civil education, to which we would 
 turn the minds of future judges, future senators, and future noblemen. 
 After the first period of life had been given up to the cultivation of the 
 classics, and the reasoning powers were now beginning to evolve themselves, 
 these are some of the propensities in study which we would endeavour to 
 inspire. Great knowledge at such a period of life, we could not convey ; 
 but we might fix a decided taste for its acquisition, and a strong disposition 
 to respect it in others. The formation of some great scholars we should 
 certainty prevent, and hinder many from learning what, in a few years, 
 they would necessarily forget ; but this loss would be well repaid, if we 
 could show the future rulers of the country that thought and labour which 
 it requires to make a nation happy, or if we could inspire them with that 
 love of public virtue, which, after religion, we most solemnly believe to be 
 the brightest ornament of the mind of man. 
 
 FEMALE EDUCATION. (E. REVIEW, 1810.) 
 
 Advice to Young Ladies on the Improvement of the Mind. By THOMAS BROADHI'RST. 
 8vo. London : 1808. 
 
 MR BROADHURST is a very good sort of a man, who has not written a very 
 bad book upon a very important subject. His object (a very laudable one) 
 is to recommend a better system of female education than at present prevails 
 in this country to turn the attention of women from the trifling pursuits to 
 which they are now condemned and to cultivate faculties which, under the 
 actual system of management, might almost as well not exist. To the exami- 
 nation of his ideas upon these points, we shall very cheerfully give up a 
 portion of our time and attention. 
 
 A great deal has been said of the original difference of capacity between 
 men and women ; as if women were more quick, and men more judicious 
 as if women were more remarkable for delicacy of association, and men 
 for stronger powers of attention. ,i All this, we confess, appears to us very 
 fanciful. That there is a difference in the understandings of the men and 
 the women we every day meet with, every body, we suppose, must perceive ; 
 but there is none surely which may not be accounted for by the difference 
 of circumstances in which they have been placed, without referring to any 
 conjectural difference of original conformation of mind. As long as boys 
 and girls run about in the dirt, and trundle hoops together, they are both 
 orecisely alike. If you catch up one half of these creatures, and train them 
 to a particular set of actions and opinions, and the other half to a perfectly 
 opposite set, of course their understandings will differ, as one or the other 
 sort of occupations has called this or that talent into action. There is surely 
 no occasion to go into any deeper or more abstruse reasoning, in order to 
 explain so very simple a phenomenon. Taking it, then, for granted, that 
 nature has been as bountiful of understanding to one sex as the other, it is 
 incumbent on us to consider what are the principal objections commonly 
 made against the communication of a greater share of knowledge to women 
 than commonly falls to their lot at present : for though it may be doubted 
 whether women should learn all that men learn, the immense disparity which 
 now exists between their knowledge we should hardly think could admit of
 
 FEMALE EDUCATION. igj 
 
 any rational defence. It is not easy to imagine that there can be any just 
 cause why a woman of forty should be more ignorant than a boy of twelve 
 years of age. If there be any good at all in female ignorance, this (to use a 
 very colloquial phrase) is surely too much of a good thing. 
 
 Something in this question must depend, no doubt, upon the leisure which 
 either sex enjoys for the cultivation of their understandings : and we cannot 
 help thinking, that women have fully as much, if not more, idle time upon 
 their hands than men. Women are excluded from all the serious business 
 of the world ; men are lawyers, physicians, clergymen, apothecaries, and 
 justices of the peace sources of exertion which consume a great deal more 
 time than producing and suckling children ; so that if the thing is a thing 
 that ought to be done if the attainments of literature are objects really 
 worthy the attention of females, they cannot plead the want of leisure as an 
 excuse for indolence and neglect. The lawyer who passes his day in exas- 
 perating the bickerings of Roe and Doe, is certainly as much engaged as his 
 lady, who has the whole of the morning before her to correct the children 
 and pay the bills. The apothecary, who rushes from an act of phlebotomy 
 in the western parts of the town to insinuate a bolus in the east, is surely as 
 completely absorbed as that fortunate female who is darning the garment or 
 preparing the repast of her ^Isculapius at home ; and in every degree and 
 situation of life, it seems that men must necessarily be exposed to more 
 serious demands upon their time and attention, than can possibly be the case 
 with respect to the other sex. We are speaking always of the fair demands 
 which ought to be made upon the time and attention of women ; for, as the 
 matter now stands, the time of women is considered as worth nothing at all. 
 Daughters are kept to ocaupations in sewing, patching, mantua-making, and 
 mending, by which it is impossible they can earn tenpence a day. The in- 
 tellectual improvement of women is considered to be of such subordinate 
 importance, that twenty pounds paid for needle-work would give to a whole 
 family leisure to acquire a fund of real knowledge. They are kept with 
 nimble fingers and vacant understandings, till the season for improvement is 
 utterly past away, and all chance of forming more important habits com- 
 pletely lost. We do not therefore say that women have more leisure than 
 men, if it be necessary they should lead the life of artizans ; but we make 
 this assertion only upon the supposition that it is of some importance women 
 should be instructed ; and that many ordinary occupations, for which a little 
 money will find a better substitute, should be sacrificed to this consideration. 
 
 We bar, in this discussion, any objection which proceeds from the mere 
 novelty of teaching women more than they are already taught. It may be 
 useless that their education should be improved, or it may be pernicious ; 
 and these are the fair grounds on which the question may be argued. But 
 those who cannot bring their minds to consider such an unusual extension 
 of knowledge, without connecting with it some sensation of the ludicrous, 
 should remember, that, in the progress from absolute ignorance, there is a 
 period when cultivation of the mind is new to every rank and description of 
 persons. A century ago, who would have believed that country gentlemen 
 could be brought to read and spell with the ease and accuracy which we now 
 so frequently remark, or supposed that they could be carried up even to 
 the elements of ancient and modern history ? Nothing is more common, or 
 more stupid, than to take the actual for the possible to believe that all 
 which is, is all which can be ; first to laugh at every proposed deviation 
 from practice as impossible then, when it is carried into effect, to be aston- 
 ished that it did not take place before. 
 
 It is said, that the effect of knowledge is to make women pedantic and 
 affected ; and that nothing can be more offensive, than to see a woman
 
 1 98 FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 stepping out of the natural modesty of her sex, to make an ostentatious dis- 
 play of her literary attainments. This may be true enough ; but the answer 
 is so trite and obvious, that we are almost ashamed to make it. All affec- 
 tation and display proceed from the supposition of possessing something 
 better than the rest of the world possesses. Nobody is vain of possessing 
 two legs and two arms ; because that is the precise quantity of either sort 
 of limb which every body possesses. Who ever heard a lady boast that she 
 understood French ? for no other reason, that we kr.ow of, but because 
 every body in these days does understand French ; and though there may 
 be some disgrace in being ignorant of that language, there is little or no 
 merit in its acquisition. Diffuse knowledge generally among women, and 
 you will at once cure the conceit which knowledge occasions while it is rare. 
 Vanity and conceit we shall of course witness in men and women as long as 
 the world endures : but by multiplying the attainments upon which these 
 feelings are founded, you increase the difficulty of indulging them, and render 
 them much more tolerable, by making them the proofs of a much higher 
 merit. When learning ceases to be uncommon among women, learned 
 women will cease to be affected. 
 
 A great many of the lesser and more obscure duties of life necessarily de- 
 volve upon the female sex. The arrangement of all household matters, and 
 the care of children in their early infancy, must of course depend upon 
 them. Now, there is a very general notion, that the moment you put the 
 education of women upon a better footing than it is at present, at that mo- 
 ment there will be an end of all domestic economy ; and that, if you once 
 suffer women to eat of the tree of knowledge, the rest of the family will very 
 soon be reduced to the same kind of aerial and unsatisfactory diet. These, 
 and all such opinions, are referable to one great and common cause of error ; 
 that man does every thing, and that nature does nothing ; and that every 
 thing we see, is referable to positive institution, rather than to original feel- 
 ing. Can any thing, for example, be more perfectly absurd than to suppose 
 that the care and perpetual solicitude which a mother feels for her children, 
 depends upon her ignorance of Greek and Mathematics ; and that she would 
 desert an infant for a quadratic equation ? We seem to imagine, that we can 
 break in pieces the solemn institutions of nature, by the little laws of a board- 
 ing-school ; and that the existence of the human race depends upon teaching 
 women a little more or a little less ; that Cimmerian ignorance can aid 
 parental affection, or the circle of arts and sciences produce its destmction. 
 In the same manner, we forget the principles upon which the love of order, 
 arrangement, and all the arts of economy depend. They depend not upon 
 ignorance nor idleness ; but upon the poverty, confusion, and ruin which 
 would ensue from neglecting them. Add to these principles the love of 
 what is beautiful and magnificent, and the vanity of display ; and there can 
 surely be no reasonable doubt but that the order and economy of private life 
 is amply secured from the perilous inroads of knowledge. 
 
 We would fain know, too, if knowledge is to produce such baneful effects 
 upon the material and the household virtues, why this influence has not 
 already been felt ? Women are much better educated now than they were 
 a century ago ; but they are by no means less remarkable for attention to 
 the arrangements of their household, or less inclined to discharge the offices 
 of parental affection. It would be very easy to show, that the same objec- 
 tion has been made at all times to every improvement in the education of 
 both sexes, and all ranks and been as uniformly and completely refuted by 
 experience. A great part of the objections made to the education of women, 
 are rather objections made to human nature than to the female sex : for it is 
 surely true, that knowledge, where it produces any bad effects at all, does
 
 FEMALE EDUCATION. I99 
 
 as much mischief to one sex as to the other, and gives T>trtTi to fully as 
 much arrogance, inattention to common affairs, and eccentricity among men, 
 as it does among women. But it by no means follows, that you get rid of 
 vanity and self-conceit, because you get rid of learning. Self-complacency 
 can never want an excuse ; and the best way to make it more tolerable, and 
 more useful, is to give to it as high and as dignified an object as possible. 
 But, at all events, it is unfair to bring forward against a part of the world 
 an objection which is equally powerful against the whole. \Vhen foolish 
 women think they have any distinction, they are apt to be proud of it ; so 
 are foolish men. But we appeal to any one who has lived with cultivated 
 persons of either sex, whether he has not witnessed as much pedantry, as 
 much wrongheadedness, as much arrogance, and certainly a great deal more 
 rudeness, produced by learning in men than in women : therefore, we should 
 make the accusation general or dismiss it altogether ; though, with respect 
 to pedantry, the learned are certainly a little unfortunate, that so very 
 emphatic a word, which is occasionally applicable to all men embarked 
 eagerly in any pursuit, should be reserved exclusively for them : for, as 
 pedantry is an ostentatious obtrusion of knowledge, in which those who 
 hear us cannot sympathise, it is a fault of which soldiers, sailors, sportsmen, 
 gamesters, cultivators, and all men engaged in a particular occupation, 
 are quite as guilty as scholars ; but they have the good fortune to have 
 the vice only of pedantry, while scholars have both the vice and the name 
 for it too. 
 
 Some persons are apt to contrast the acquisition of important knowledge 
 with what they call simple pleasures ; and deem it more becoming that a 
 woman should educate flowers, make friendships with birds, and pick up 
 plants, than enter into more difficult and fatiguing studies. If a woman 
 have no taste and genius for higher occupations, let her engage in these, 
 rather than remain destitute of any pursuit. But why are we necessarily to 
 doom a girl, whatever be her taste or her capacity, to one unvaried line of 
 petty and frivolous occupation ? If she be full of strong sense and elevated 
 curiosity, can there be any reason why she should be diluted and enfeebled 
 down to a mere culler of simples, and fancier of birds? why books of 
 history and reasoning are to be torn out of her hand, and why she is to be 
 sent, like a butterfly, to hover over the idle flowers of the field? Such 
 amusements are innocent to those whom they can occupy ; but they are 
 not innocent to those who have too powerful understandings to be occupied 
 by them. Light broths and fruits are innocent food only to weak or to 
 infant stomachs ; but they are poison to that organ in its perfect and mature 
 state. But the great charm appears to be in the word simplicity simple 
 pleasure ! If by a simple pleasure is meant an innocent pleasure, the observa- 
 tion is best answered by showing, that the pleasure which results from the 
 acquisition of important knowledge is quite as innocent as any pleasure 
 whatever : but if by a simple pleasure is meant one, the cause of which can 
 be easily analysed, or which does not last long, or which in itself is very 
 faint ; then simple pleasures seem to be very nearly synonymous with small 
 pleasures ; and if the simplicity were to be a little increased, the pleasure 
 would vanish altogether. 
 
 As it is impossible that every man should have industry or activity sufficient 
 to avail himself of the advantages of education, it is natural that men who 
 are ignorant themselves, should view, with some degree of jealousy and 
 alarm, any proposal for improving the education of women. But such men 
 may depend upon it, however the system of female education may be exalted, 
 that there will never be wanting a due proportion of failures ; and that after 
 parents, guardians, and preceptors have done all in their power to make
 
 fioo FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 every body wise, there will still be a plentiful supply of women who have 
 taken special care to remain otherwise ; and they may rest assured, if the 
 utter extinction of ignorance and folly be the evil they dread, that their 
 interests will always be effectually protected, in spite of every exertion to 
 the contrary. 
 
 We must in candour allow, that those women who begin, will have some- 
 thing more to overcome than may probably hereafter be the case. \Ye 
 cannot deny the jealousy which exists among pompous and foolish men, 
 respecting the education of women. There is a class of pedants, who would 
 be cut short in the estimation of the world a whole cubit, if it were generally 
 known that a young lady of eighteen could be taught to decline the tenses 
 of the middle voice, or acquaint herself with the /Eolic varieties of that 
 celebrated language. Then women have, of course, all ignorant men for 
 enemies to their instruction, who being bound (as they think), in point of sex, 
 to know more, are not well pleased, in point of fact, to know less. But, among 
 men of sense and liberal politeness, a woman who has successfully cultivated 
 her mind, without diminishing the gentleness and propriety of her manners, is 
 always sure to meet with a respect and attention bordering upon enthusiasm. 
 
 There is in either sex a strong and permanent disposition to appear 
 agreeable to the other : and this is the fair answer to those who are fond 
 of supposing, -that a higher degree of knowledge would make women rather 
 the rivals than the companions of men. Presupposing such a desire to 
 please, it seems much more probable, that a common pursuit should be a 
 fresh source of interest than a cause of contention. Indeed, to suppose that 
 any mode of education can create a general jealousy and rivalry between 
 the sexes, is so very ridiculous, that it requires only to be stated in order 
 to be refuted. The same desire of pleasing secures all that delicacy and 
 reserve which' are of such inestimable value to women. We are quite 
 astonished, in hearing men converse on such subjects, to find them attributing 
 such beautiful effects to ignorance. It would appear, from the tenor of such 
 objections, that ignorance had been the great civiliser of the world. Women 
 are delicate and refined only because they are ignorant ; they manage 
 their household, only because they are ignorant ; they attend to their 
 children; only because they know no better. Now, we must really 
 confess, we have all our lives been so ignorant, as not to know the value of 
 ignorance. We have always attributed the modesty, and the refined manners 
 of women, to their being well taught in moral and religious duty, to the 
 hazardous situation in which they are placed, to that perpetual vigilance 
 which it is their duty to exercise over thought, word, and action, and to 
 that cultivation of the mild virtues, which those who cultivate the stem and 
 magnanimous virtues expect at their hands. After all, let it be remembered, 
 we are not saying there are no objections to the diffusion of knowledge 
 among the female sex. We would not hazard such a proposition respecting 
 any thing ; but we are saying, that, upon the whole, it is the best method 
 of employing time ; and that there are fewer objections to it than to any 
 other method. There are, perhaps, 50,000 females in Great Britain, who 
 are exempted by circumstances from all necessary labour ; but every human 
 being must do something with their existence ; and the pursuit of knowledge 
 is, upon the whole, the most innocent, the most dignified, and the most useful 
 method of filling up that idleness, of which there is always so large a portion 
 in nations far advanced in civilisation. Let any man reflect, too, upon the 
 solitary situation hi which women are placed, the ill treatment to which they 
 are sometimes exposed, and which they must endure in silence, and without 
 the power of complaining, and he must feel convinced that the happiness 
 of a woman will be materially increased in proportion as education has
 
 FEMALE EDUCATION. 201 
 
 given to her the habit and the means of drawing her resources from 
 herself. 
 
 There are a few common phrases in circulation, respecting the duties of 
 women, to which we wish to pay some degree of attention, because they 
 are rather inimical to those opinions which we have advanced on this sub- 
 ject. Indeed, independently of this, there is nothing which requires more 
 vigilance than the current phrases of the day, of which there are always 
 some resorted to in every dispute, and from the sovereign authority of 
 which it is often vain to make any appeal. " The true theatre for a woman 
 is the sick chamber ; " " Nothing so honourable to a woman as not to be 
 spoken of at all." These two phrases, the delight of A'oodledom, are grown 
 into common-places upon the subject ; and are not unfrequently employed 
 to extinguish that love of knowledge in women, which, in our humble 
 opinion, it is of so much importance to cherish. Nothing, certainly, is so 
 ornamental and delightful in women as the benevolent affections ; but time 
 cannot be filled up, and life employed, with high and impassioned virtues. 
 Some of these feelings are of rare occurrence all of short duration or 
 nature would sink under them. A scene of distress and anguish is an 
 occasion where the finest qualities of the female mind may be displayed ; 
 but it is a monstrous exaggeration to tell women that they are born only 
 for scenes of distress and anguish. Nurse father, mother, sister, and 
 brother, if they want it ; it would be a violation of the plainest duties to 
 neglect them. But when we are talking of the common occupations of 
 life, do not let us mistake the accidents for the occupations ; when we are 
 arguing how the twenty-three hours of the day are to be filled up, it is idle 
 to tell us of those feelings and agitations above the level of common ex- 
 istence, which may employ the remaining hour. Compassion, and every 
 other virtue, are the great objects we all ought to have in view ; but no 
 man (and no woman) can fill up the twenty-four hours b'y acts of virtue. 
 But one is a lawyer, and the other a ploughman, and the third a merchant ; 
 and then, acts of goodness, and intervals of compassion and fine feeling, 
 are scattered up and down the common occupations of life. We know 
 women are to be compassionate ; but they cannot be compassionate from 
 eight o'clock in the morning till twelve at night : and what are they to 
 do in the interval ? This is the only question we have been putting all 
 along, and is all that can be meant by literary education. 
 
 Then, again, as to the notoriety which is incurred by literature. The 
 cultivation of knowledge is a very distinct thing from its publication ; nor 
 does it follow that a woman is to become an author, merely because she 
 has talent enough for it. We do not wish a lady to write books, to de- 
 fend and reply, to squabble about the tomb of Achilles, or the plain of 
 Troy, any more than we wish her to dance at the opera, to play at a 
 public concert, or to put pictures in the Exhibition, because she has learned 
 music, dancing, and drawing. The great use of her knowledge will be that 
 it contributes to her private happiness. She may make it public : but it 
 is not the principal object which the friends of female education have in 
 view. Among men, the few who write bear no comparison to the many 
 who read. VVc hear most of the former, indeed, because they are, in 
 general, the most ostentatious part of literary men ; but there are innumer- 
 able persons who, without ever laying themselves before the public, have 
 made use of literature to add to the strength of their understandings, and to 
 improve the happiness of their lives. After all, it may be an evil for ladies 
 to be talked of : but we really think those ladies who are talked of only as 
 Mrs Marcct, Mrs Somerville, and Miss Martineau are talked off, may bear 
 their misfortunes with a very great degree of Christian patience.
 
 202 FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 Their exemption from all the necessary business of life is one of the 
 most powerful motives for the improvement of education in women. 
 Lawyers and physicians have in their professions a constant motive to ex- 
 ertion ; if you neglect their education, they must in a certain degree educate 
 themselves by their commerce with the world : they must learn caution, 
 accuracy, and judgment, because they must incur responsibility. But if 
 you neglect to educate the mind of a woman, by the speculative difficulties 
 which occur in literature, it can never be educated at all : if you do not 
 effectually rouse it by education, it must remain for ever languid. Unedu- 
 cated men may escape intellectual degradation ; uneducated women cannot. 
 They have nothing to do ; and if they come untaught from the schools of 
 education, they will never be instructed in the school of events. 
 
 Women have not their livelihood to gain by knowledge ; and that is one 
 motive for relaxing all those efforts which arc made in the education of men. 
 They certainly have not ; but they have happiness to gain, to which know- 
 ledge leads as probably as it does to profit ; and that is a reason against 
 mistaken indulgence. Besides, we conceive the labour and fatigue of ac- 
 complishments to be quite equal to the laboxir and fatigue of knowledge ; 
 and that it takes quite as many years to be charming as it does to be 
 learned. 
 
 Another difference of the sexes is, that women are attended to, and men 
 attend. All acts of courtesy and politeness originate from the one sex, and 
 are received by the other. We can see no sort of reason, in this diversity 
 of condition, for giving to women a trifling and insignificant education ; but 
 we see in it a very powerful reason for strengthening their judgment, and 
 inspiring them with the habit of employing time usefully. We admit many 
 striking differences in the situation of the two sexes, and many striking 
 differences of understanding, proceeding from the different circumstances in 
 which they are placed : but there is not a single difference of this kind 
 which does not afford a new argument for making the education of women 
 better than it is. They have nothing serious to do j is that a reason why 
 they should be brought up to do nothing but what is trifling ? They are 
 exposed to greater dangers ; is that a reason why their faculties are to be 
 purposely and industriously weakened ? They are to form the characters 
 of future men ; is that a cause why their own characters are to be broken 
 and frittered down as they now are ? In short, there is not a single trait in 
 that diversity of circumstances, in which the two sexes are placed, that does 
 not decidedly prove the magnitude of the error we commit in neglecting (as 
 we do neglect) the education of women. 
 
 If the objections against the better education of women could be over- 
 ruled, one of the great advantages that would ensue would be the extinc- 
 tion of innumerable follies. A decided and prevailing taste for one or 
 another mode of education there must be. A century past, it was for house- 
 wifery now it is for accomplishments. The object now is, to make women 
 artists, to give them an excellence in drawing, music, painting, and danc- 
 ing, of which, persons who make these pursuits the occupation of their 
 lives, and derive from them their subsistence, need not be ashamed. Now, 
 one great evil of all this is, that it does not last. If the whole of life were 
 an Olympic game if we could go on feasting and dancing to the end, 
 this might do ; but it is in truth merely a provision for the little interval 
 between coming into life and settling in it ; while it leaves a long and 
 dreary expanse behind, devoid both of dignity and cheerfulness. No mother, 
 no woman who has past over the few first years of life, sings, or dances, 
 or draws, or plays upon musical instruments. These are merely means for 
 displaying the grace and vivacity of youth, which every woman gives up,
 
 FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 203 
 
 as she gives up the dress and the manners of eighteen : she has no wish 
 to retain them ; or, if she has, she is driven out of them by diameter and 
 derision. The system of female education, as it now stands, aims only at 
 embellishing a few years of life, which are in themselves so full of grace 
 and happiness, that they hardly want it ; and then leaves the rest of exist- 
 ence a miserable prey to idle insignificance. No woman of understanding 
 and reflection can possibly conceive she is doing justice to her children by 
 such kind of education. The object is, to give to children resources that will 
 endure as long as life endures habits that time will ameliorate, not destroy, 
 occupations that will render sickness tolerable, solitude pleasant, age 
 venerable, life more dignified and useful, and therefore death less terrible : 
 and the compensation which is offered for the omission of all this, is a short- 
 lived blaze, a little temporary effect, which has no other consequence 
 than to deprive the remainder of life of all taste and relish. There may 
 be women who have a taste for the fine arts, and who evince a decided 
 talent for drawing, or for music. In that case, there can be no objection 
 to the cultivation of these arts ; but the error is, to make such things the 
 grand and universal object, to insist upon it that every woman is to sing, 
 and draw, and dance, with nature, or against nature, to bind her ap- 
 prentice to some accomplishment, and if she cannot succeed in oil or water 
 colours, to prefer gilding, varnishing, burnishing, box-making, to real and 
 solid improvement in taste, knowledge, and understanding. 
 
 A great deal is said in favour of the social nature of the fine arts. Music 
 gives pleasure to others. Drawing is an art, the amusement of which does 
 not centre in him who exercises it, but is diffused among the rest of the 
 world. This is true ; but there is nothing, after all, so social as a cultivated 
 mind. We do not mean to speak slightingly of the fine arts, or to depreciate 
 the good humour with which they are sometimes exhibited ; but we appeal 
 to any man, whether a little spirited and sensible conversation displaying, 
 modestly, useful acquirements and evincing rational curiosity, is not well 
 worth the highest exertions of musical or graphical skill. A woman of 
 accomplishments may entertain those who have the pleasure of knowing her 
 for half an hour with great brilliancy ; but a mind full of ideas, and with 
 that elastic spring which the love of knowledge only can convey, is a per- 
 petual source of exliilaration and amusement to all that come within its 
 reach ; not collecting its force into single and insulated achievements, like 
 the efforts made in the fine arts but diffusing, equally over the whole of 
 existence, a calm pleasure better loved as it is longer felt and suitable 
 to every variety and every period of life. Therefore, instead of hanging 
 the understanding of a woman upon walls, or hearing it vibrate upon 
 strings, instead of seeing it in clouds, or hearing it in the wind, we would 
 make it the first spring and ornament of society, by enriching it with 
 attainments upon which alone such power depends. 
 
 If the education of women were improved, the education of men would 
 be improved also. Let any one consider (in order to bring the matter 
 more home by an individual instance) of what immense importance to 
 society it is, whether a nobleman of first-rate fortune and distinction is well 
 or ill brought up ; what a taste and fashion he may inspire for private and 
 for political vice ! and what misery and mischief he may produce to the 
 thousand human beings who are dependent on him ! A country contains 
 no such curse within its bosom. Youth, wealth, high rank, and vice, form 
 a combination which baffles all remonstrance and beats down all opposi- 
 tion. A man of high rank who combines these qualifications for corrup- 
 tion, is almost the master of the manners of the age, and lias the public 
 happiness within his grasp. But the most beautiful possession which a
 
 2C4 FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 country can have is a noble and rich man, who loves virtue and knowledge } 
 who without being feeble or fanatical is pious and who without being 
 factious is firm and independent ; who, in his political life, is an equitable 
 mediator between king and people ; and, in his civil life, a firm promoter 
 of all which can shed a lustre upon his country, or promote the peace and 
 order of the world. But if these objects are of the importance which we 
 attribute to them, the education of women must be important, as the forma- 
 tion of character for the first seven or eight years of life seems to depend 
 almost entirely upon them. It is certainly in the power of a sensible and 
 .well educated mother to inspire, within that period, such tastes and pro- 
 pensities as shall nearly decide the destiny of the future man ; and this is 
 done, not only by the intentional exertions of the mother, but by the gradual 
 and insensible imitation of the child ; for there is something extremely con- 
 tagious in greatness and rectitude of thinking, even at that age ; and the 
 character of the mother with whom he passes his early infancy is always 
 an event of the utmost importance to the child. A merely accomplished 
 woman cannot infuse her tastes into the minds of her sons ; and, if she could, 
 nothing could be more unfortunate than her success. Besides, when her 
 accomplishments are given up, she has nothing left for it but to amuse 
 herself in the best way she can ; and, becoming entirely frivolous, either 
 declines altogether the fatigue of attending to her children, or, attending to 
 them, has neither talents nor knowledge to succeed ; and, therefore, here 
 is a plain and fair answer to those who ask so triumphantly, Why should a 
 woman dedicate herself to this branch of knowledge ? or why should she be 
 attached to such science ? Because, by having gained information on these 
 points, she may inspire her son with valuable tastes, which may abide by 
 him through life, and carry him up to all the sublimities of knowledge ; 
 because she cannot lay the foundation of a great character, if she is absorbed 
 in frivolous amusements, nor inspire her child with noble desires, when a 
 long course of trifling has destroyed the little talents which were left by a 
 bad education. 
 
 It is of great importance to a country, that there should be as many 
 understandings as possible actively employed within it. Mankind are much 
 happier for the discovery of barometers, thermometers, steam-engines, and 
 nil the innumerable inventions in the arts and sciences. \Ve are every day 
 and every hour reaping the benefit of such talent and ingenuity. The same 
 observation is true of such works as those of Dryden, Pope, Milton, and 
 Shakspeare. Mankind are much happier that such individuals have lived 
 and written ; they add every day to the stock of public enjoyment and 
 perpetually gladden and embellish life. Now, the number of those who 
 exercise their understandings to any good purpose, is exactly in proportion 
 to those who exercise it at all ; but, as the matter stands at present, half 
 the talent in the universe runs to waste, and is totally unprofitable. It 
 would have been almost as well for the world, hitherto, that women, 
 instead of possessing the capacities they do at present, should have been 
 born wholly destitute of wit, genius, and every other attribute of mind of 
 which men make so eminent an use : and the ideas of use and possession 
 are so united together, that because it has been the custom in almost all 
 countries to give to women a different and a worse education than to men, 
 the notion has obtained that they do not possess faculties which they do not 
 cultivate. Just as, in breaking up a common, it is sometimes very difficult 
 to mak the poor believe it will carry corn, merely because they have been 
 hitherto accustomed to see it produce nothing but weeds and grass they 
 very naturally mistake present condition for general nature. So completely 
 have the talents of women been kept down, that there is scarcely a single
 
 FEMALE EDUCATION. 205 
 
 work, either of reason or imagination, written by a woman, which is in 
 general circulation, either in the English, French, or Italian literature ; 
 scarcely one that has crept even into the ranks of our minor poets. 
 
 If the possession of excellent talents is not a conclusive reason why they 
 should be improved, it at least amounts to a very strong presumption ; and, 
 if it can be shown that women may be trained to reason and imagine as 
 well as men, the strongest reasons are certainly necessary to show us why 
 we should not avail ourselves of such rich gifts of nature ; and we have a 
 right to call for a clear statement of those perils which make it necessary 
 that such talents should be totally extinguished, or, at most, very partially 
 drawn out. The burthen of proof does not lie with those who say, Increase 
 the quantity of talent in any country as much as possible for such a pro- 
 position is in conformity with every man's feelings : but it lies with those 
 who say, Take care to keep that understanding weak and trifling, which 
 nature has made capable of becoming strong and powerful. The paradox 
 is with them, not with us. In all human reasoning, knowledge must be 
 taken for a good, till it can be shown to be an evil. But now, Nature 
 makes to us rich and magnificent presents ; and we say to her You are 
 too luxuriant and munificent we must keep you under, and prune you ; 
 we have talents enough in the other half of the creation ; and, if you will 
 not stupify and enfeeble the minds of women to our hands, we ourselves 
 must expose them to a narcotic process, and educate away that fatal re- 
 dundance with which the world is afflicted, and the order of sublunary 
 things deranged. 
 
 One of the greatest pleasures of life is conversation ; and the pleasures 
 of conversation are of course enhanced by every increase of knowledge : 
 not that we should meet together to talk of alkalis and angles, or to add 
 to our stock of history and philology though a little of these things is no 
 bad ingredient in conversation ; but let the subject be what it may, there is 
 always a prodigious difference between the conversation of those who have 
 been well educated and of those who have not enjoyed this advantage. 
 Education gives fecundity of thought, copiousness of illustration, quickness, 
 vigour, fancy, words, images, and illustrations ; it decorates every common 
 thing, and gives the power of trifling without being undignified and absurd. 
 The subjects themselves may not be wanted upon which the talents of an 
 educated man have been exercised ; but there is always a demand for 
 those talents which his education has rendered strong and quick. Now, 
 really, nothing can be further from our intention than to say any thing rude 
 and unpleasant ; but we must be excused for observing, that it is not now 
 a very common thing to be interested by the variety and extent of female 
 knowledge, but it is a very common thing to lament, that the finest faculties 
 in the world have been confined to trifles utterly unworthy of their richness 
 and their strength. 
 
 The pursuit of knowledge is the most innocent and interesting occupation 
 which can be given to the female sex ; nor can there be a better method of 
 checking a spirit of dissipation, than by diffusing a taste for literature. The 
 true way to attack vice, is by setting up something else against it. Give to 
 women, in early youth, something to acquire, of sufficient interest and im- 
 portance to command the application of their mature faculties, and to excite 
 their perseverance in future life ; teach them, that happiness is to be derived 
 from the acquisition of knowledge, as well as the gratification of vanity ; and 
 you will raise up a much more formidable barrier against dissipation, than 
 an host of invectives and exhortations can supply. 
 
 It sometimes happens that an unfortunate man gets drunk with veiy bad 
 wine not to gratify his palate but to forget his cares : he does not set any
 
 206 ' FEMALE ED UCA TIQN. 
 
 value on what he receives, but on account of what it excludes ; it keeps 
 out something worse than itself. Now, though it were denied that the 
 acquisition of serious knowledge is of itself important to a woman, still it 
 prevents a taste for silly and pernicious works of imagination ; it keeps 
 away the horrid trash of novels ; and, in lieu of that eagerness for emotion 
 and adventure which books of that sort inspire, promotes a calm and steady 
 temperament of mind. 
 
 A man who deserves such a piece of good fortune, may generally find an 
 excellent companion for all the vicissitudes of his life ; but it is not so easy 
 to find a companion for his understanding, who has similar pursuits with 
 himself, or who can comprehend the pleasure he derives from them. We 
 really can see no reason why it should not be otherwise ; nor comprehend 
 how the pleasures of domestic life can be promoted by diminishing the 
 number of subjects in which persons who are to spend their lives together 
 take a common interest. 
 
 One of the most agreeable consequences of knowledge, is the respect and 
 importance which it communicates to old age. Men rise in character often 
 as Aey increase in years ; they are venerable from what they have acquired, 
 and pleasing from what they can impart. If they outlive their faculties, 
 the mere frame itself is respected for what it once contained ; but women 
 (such is their unfortunate style of education) hazard every thing upon one 
 cast of the die ; when youth is gone, all is gone. No human creature 
 gives his admiration for nothing : either the eye must be charmed, or the 
 understanding gratified. A woman must talk wisely or look well. Every 
 human being must put up with the coldest civility, who has neither the 
 charms of youth nor the wisdom of age. Neither is there the slightest 
 commiseration for decayed accomplishments ; no man mourns over the 
 fragments of a dancer, or drops a tear on the relics of musical skill. They 
 are flowers destined to perish ; but the decay of great talents is always the 
 subject of solemn pity ; and, even when their last memorial is over, their 
 rums and vestiges are regarded with pious affection. 
 
 There is no connection between the ignorance in which women are kept, 
 and the preservation of moral and religious principle ; and yet certainly 
 there is, in the minds of some timid and respectable persons, a vague, 
 indefinite dread of knowledge, as if it were capable of producing these 
 effects. It might almost be supposed, from the dread which the propaga- 
 tion of knowledge has excited, that there was some great secret which was 
 to be kept in impenetrable obscurity, that all moral rules were a species of 
 delusion and imposture, the detection of which, by the improvement of the 
 understanding, would be attended with the most fatal consequences to all, 
 and particularly to women. If we could possibly understand what these 
 great secrets were, we might perhaps be disposed to concur in their pre- 
 servation j but believing that all the salutary rules which are imposed on 
 women are the result of true wisdom, and productive of the greatest happi- 
 ness, we cannot understand how they are to become less sensible of this 
 truth in proportion as their power of discovering truth in general is in- 
 creased, and the habit of viewing questions with accuracy and comprehen- 
 sion established by education. There are men, indeed, who are always 
 exclaiming against every species of power, because it is connected with 
 danger : their dread of abuses is so much stronger than their admiration of 
 uses, that they would cheerfully give up the use of fire, gunpowder, and 
 printing, to be freed from robbers, incendiaries, and libels. It is true, that 
 every increase of knowledge may possibly render depravity more depraved, 
 as well as it may increase the strength of virtue. It is in itself only power; 
 and its value depends on its application. But, trust to the natural love of
 
 PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 207 
 
 good where there is no temptation to be bad it operates nowhere more 
 forcibly than in education. No man, whether he be tutor, guardian, or 
 friend, ever contents himself with infusing the mere ability to acquire ; but 
 giving the power, he gives with it a taste for the wise and rational exercise 
 of that power ; so that an educated person is not only one with stronger and 
 better faculties than others, but with a more useful propensity a disposition 
 better cultivated and associations of a higher and more important class. 
 
 In short, and to recapitulate the main points upon which we have insisted, 
 Why the disproportion in knowledge between the two sexes should be so 
 great, when the inequality in natural talents is so small ; or why the under- 
 standing of women should be lavished upon trifles, when nature has made 
 it capable of better and higher things, we profess ourselves not able to under- 
 stand. The affectation charged upon female knowledge is best cured by 
 making that knowledge more general : and the economy devolved upon 
 women is best secured by the ruin, disgrace, and inconvenience which pro- 
 ceeds from neglecting it. For the care of children, nature has made a direct 
 and powerful provision ; and the gentleness and elegance of women is the 
 natural consequence of that desire to please, which is productive of the 
 greatest part of civilisation and refinement, and which rests upon a founda- 
 tion too deep to be shaken by any such modifications in education as we 
 have proposed. If you educate women to attend to dignified and important 
 subjects, you are multiplying, beyond measure, the chances of human im- 
 provement, by preparing and medicating those early impressions, which 
 always come from the mother ; and which, in a great majority of instances, 
 are quite decisive of character and genius. Nor is it only in the business 
 of education that women would influence the destiny of men. If women 
 knew more, men must learn more for ignorance would then be shameful 
 and it would become the fashion to be instructed. The instruction of 
 women improves the stock of national talents, and employs more minds for 
 the instruction and amusement of the world ; it increases the pleasures of 
 society, by multiplying the topics upon which the two sexes take a common 
 interest ; and makes marriage an intercourse of understanding as well as 
 of affection, by giving dignity and importance to the female character. The 
 education of women favours public morals ; it provides for every season of 
 life, as well as for the brightest and the best ; and leaves a woman when she 
 is stricken by the hand of time, not as she now is, destitute of every thing, 
 and neglected by all ; but with the full power and the splendid attractions 
 of knowledge, diffusing the elegant pleasures of polite literature, and re- 
 ceiving the just homage of learned and accomplished men. 
 
 PUBLIC SCHOOLS. (E. REVIEW, 1810.) 
 
 Remarks on the Systetn of Education in Public Sc/iools. 8vo. Hatchard. London, 1809, 
 
 THERE is a set of well-dressed, prosperous gentlemen, who assemble daily 
 it Mr Hatchard's shop ; clean, civil personages, well in with people in 
 power delighted with every existing institution and almost with every 
 existing circumstance : and7 every now and then, one of these personages 
 writes a little book ; and the rest praise that little book expecting to be 
 praised, in their turn, for their own. little books : and of these little books, 
 thus written by these clean, civil personages, so expecting to be praised, 
 the pamphlet before us appears to be one.
 
 2o8 PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 
 
 The subject of it is the advantage of public schools ; and the author, very 
 creditably to himself, ridicules the absurd clamour, first set on foot by Dr 
 Rennel, of the irreligious tendency of public schools : he then proceeds to 
 an investigation of the effects which public schools may produce upon the 
 moral character ; and here the subject becomes more difficult, and the 
 pamphlet worse. 
 
 In arguing any large or general question, it is of infinite importance to 
 attend to the first feelings which the mention of the topic has a tendency to 
 excite ; and the name of a public school brings with it immediately the idea 
 of brilliant classical attainments : but, upon the importance of these studies, 
 we are not now offering any opinion. The only points for consideration 
 are, whether boys are put in the way of becoming good and wise men by 
 these schools ; and whether they actually gather, there, those attainments, 
 which it pleases mankind, for the time being, to consider as valuable, and 
 to decorate by the name of learning. 
 
 By a public school, we mean an endowed place of education of old stand- 
 ing, to which the sons of gentlemen resort in considerable numbers, and 
 where they continue to reside, from eight or nine, to eighteen years of age. 
 We do not give this as a definition which would have satisfied Porphyry or 
 Dun-Scotus, but as one sufficiently accurate for our purpose. The charac- 
 teristic features of these schools are, their antiquity, the numbers, and the 
 ages of the young people who are educated at them. We beg leave, how- 
 ever, to premise, that we have not the slightest intention of insinuating any 
 thing to the disparagement of the present discipline or present rulers of these 
 schools, as compared with other times and other men : we have no reason 
 whatever to doubt that they are as ably governed at this, as they have been 
 at any preceding period. Whatever objections we may have to these insti- 
 tutions, they are to faults, not depending upon present administration, but 
 upon original construction.* 
 
 At a public school (for such is the system established by immemorial 
 custom), every boy is alternately tyrant and slave. The power which the 
 elder part of these communities exercises over the younger, is exceedingly 
 great very difficult to be controlled and accompanied, not unfrequently, 
 with cruelty and caprice. It is the common law of the place, that the young 
 should be implicitly obedient to the elder boys ; and this obedience resem- 
 bles more the submission of a slave to his master, or of sailor to his captain, 
 than the common and natural deference which would always be shown by 
 one boy to another a few years older than himself. Now, this system we 
 cannot help considering as an evil, because it inflicts upon boys, for two or 
 three years of their lives, many painful hardships, and much unpleasant 
 servitude. These sufferings might perhaps be of some use in military schools ; 
 but, to give to a boy the habit of enduring privations to which he will never 
 again be called upon to submit to enure him to pains which he will never 
 again feel and to subject him to the privation of comforts, with which he 
 will always in future abound is surely not a very useful and valuable 
 severity in education. It is not the life in miniature which he is to lead 
 hereafter nor does it bear any relation to it : he will never again be sub- 
 jected to so much insolence and caprice ; nor ever, in all human probability, 
 called upon to make so many sacrifices. The servile obedience which it 
 
 * A public school is thought to be the best cure for the insolence of youthful aristocracy. 
 This insolence, however, is not a little increased by the homage of masters, and would 
 soon meet with its natural check in the world. There can be no occasion to bring 500 
 boys together to teach to a young nobleman that proper demeanour which he would 
 learn so much better from the first English gentleman whom he might think proper to 
 insult.
 
 PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 209 
 
 teaches, might be useful to a menial domestic ; or the habits of enterprise 
 which it encourages, prove of importance to a military partisan ; but we 
 cannot see what bearing it has upon the calm, regular, civil life, which the 
 sons of gentlemen, destined to opulent idleness, or to any of the three 
 learned professions, are destined to lead. Such a system makes many boys 
 very miserable ; and produces those bad effects upon the temper and disposi- 
 tion, which unjust suffering always does produce ; but what good it does, we 
 are much at a loss to conceive. Reasonable obedience is extremely useful 
 in forming the disposition. Submission to tyranny lays the foundation of 
 hatred, suspicion, cunning, and a variety of odious passions. We are con- 
 vinced that those young people will turn out to be the best men, who have 
 been guarded most effectually, in their childhood, from every species of use- 
 less vexation : and experienced, in the greatest degree, the blessings of a 
 wise and rational indulgence. But even if these effects upon future charac- 
 ter are not produced, still, four or five years in childhood make a very con- 
 siderable period of human existence : and it is by no means a trifling con- 
 sideration whether they are passed happily or unhappily. The wretched- 
 ness of school tyranny is trifling enough to a man who only contemplates it, 
 in ease of body and tranquillity of mind, through the medium of twenty 
 intervening years ; but it is quite as real, and quite as acute, while it lasts, 
 as any of the sufferings of mature life : and the utility of these sufferings, or 
 the price paid in compensation for them, should be clearly made out to a 
 conscientious parent, before he consents to expose his children to them. 
 
 This system also gives to the elder boys an absurd and pernicious opinion 
 of their own importance, which is often with difficulty effaced by a con- 
 siderable commerce with the world. The head of a public school is 
 generally a very conceited young man, utterly ignorant of his own dimen- 
 sions, and losing all that habit of conciliation towards others, and that 
 anxiety for self-improvement, which result from the natural modesty of 
 youth. Nor is this conceit very easily and speedily gotten rid of; : we 
 have seen (if we mistake not) public-school importance lasting through the 
 half of after-life, strutting in lawn, swelling in ermine, and displaying itself, 
 both ridiculously and offensively, in the haunts and business of bearded 
 men. 
 
 There is a manliness in the athletic exercises of public schools, which is 
 as seductive to the imagination as it is utterly unimportant in itself. Of 
 what importance is it in after-life, whether a boy can play well or ill at 
 cricket ; or row a boat with the skill and precision of a waterman ? If our 
 young lords and esquires were hereafter to wrestle together in public, or 
 the gentlemen of the Bar to exhibit Olympic games in Hilary Term, the 
 glory attached to these exercises at public schools would be rational and 
 important. But of what use is the body of an athlete, when we have good 
 laws over our heads, or when a pistol, a postchaise, or a porter can be 
 hired for a few shillings? A gentleman does nothing but ride or walk; 
 and yet such a ridiculous stress is laid upon the manliness of the exercises 
 customary at public schools, exercises in which the greatest blockheads 
 commonly excel the most which often render habits of idleness inveterate 
 and often lead to foolish expense and dissipation at a more advanced 
 period of life. 
 
 One of the supposed advantages of a public school, is the greater know- 
 ledge of the world which a boy is considered to derive from those situations ; 
 but if, by a knowledge of the world, is meant a knowledge of the forms and 
 manners which are found to be the most pleasing and useful in the world, a 
 boy from a public school is almost always extremely deficient in these par- 
 ticulars ; and his sister, who has remained at home at the apron-strings of 
 
 o
 
 2io PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 
 
 her mother, is very much his superior in the science of manners. It is probably 
 true, that a boy at a public school has made more observations on human 
 character, because he has had more opportunities of observing, than have 
 been enjoyed by young persons educated either at home or at private 
 schools : but this little advance gained at a public school, is so soon over- 
 taken at college or in the world, that, to have made it, is of the least possible 
 consequence, and utterly undeserving of any risk incurred in the acquisition. 
 Is it any injury to a man of thirty or thirty-five years of age to a learned 
 Serjeant or venerable dean that at eighteen they did not know so much of 
 the world as some other boys of the same standing? They have probably 
 escaped the arrogant character so often attendant upon this trifling superi- 
 ority ; nor is there much chance that they have ever fallen into the common 
 and youthful error of mistaking a premature initiation into vice, for a know- 
 ledge of the ways of mankind : and, in addition to these salutary exemptions, 
 a winter in London brings it all to a level ; and offers to every novice the 
 advantages which are supposed to be derived from this precocity of confi- 
 dence and polish. 
 
 According to the general prejudice in favour of public schools, it would 
 be thought quite as absurd and superfluous to enumerate the illustrious 
 characters who have been bred at our three great seminaries of this descrip- 
 tion, as it would be to descant upon the illustrious characters who 
 have passed in and out of London over our three great bridges. Almost 
 every conspicuous person is supposed to have been educated at public 
 schools ; and there are scarcely any means (as it is imagined) of making an 
 actual comparison ; and yet, great as the rage is, and long has been, for 
 public schools, it is very remarkable, that the most eminent men in every 
 art and science have not been educated in public schools ; and this is true, 
 even if we include, in the term of public schools, not only Eton, Winchester, 
 and Westminster, but the Charterhouse, St Paul's School, Merchant Tay- 
 lors', Rugby, and every school in England, at all conducted upon the plan 
 of the three first. The great schools of Scotland we do not call public 
 schools; because, in these, the mixture of domestic life gives to them a 
 widely different character. Spenser, Pope, Shakspeare, Butler, Rochester, 
 Spratt, Parnell, Garth, Congreve, Gay, Swift, Thomson, Shenstone, Aken- 
 side, Goldsmith, Samuel Johnson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, 
 Sir Philip Sidney, Savage, Arbuthnot, and Bunas, among the poets, were 
 not educated in the system of English schools. Sir Isaac Newton, Mac- 
 laurin, Wallis, Flamsteed, Saunderson, Simpson, and Napier, among men 
 of science, were not educated in public schools. The three best historians 
 that the English language has produced, Clarendon, Hume, and Robert- 
 son, were not educated at public schools. Public schools have done little 
 in England for the fine arts as in the examples of Inigo Jones, Vanbrugh, 
 Reynolds, Gainsborough, Garrick, &c. The great medical writers and dis- 
 coverers in Great Britain, Harvey, Cheselden, Hunter, Jenner, Meade, 
 Brown, and Cullen, were not educated at public schools. Of the great 
 waiters on morals and metaphysics, it was not the system of public schools 
 which produced Bacon, Shaftesbury, Hobbes, Berkeley, Butler, Hume, 
 Hartley, or Dugald Stewart. The greatest discoverers in chemistry have 
 not been brought up at public schools : we mean Dr Priestley, Dr Black, 
 and Mr Davy. The only Englishmen who have evinced a remarkable 
 genius, in modern times, for the art of war, the Duke of Marlborough, 
 Lord Peterborough, General Wolfe, and Lord Clive, were all trained in 
 private schools. So were Lord Coke, Sir Matthew Hale, and Lord Chan- 
 cellor Hardwicke, and Chief Justice Holt, among the lawyers. So also, 
 among statesmen, were Lord Burleigh, Walsingham, the Earl of Strafford,
 
 PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 2 1 1 
 
 Thurloe, Cromwell, Hampden, Lord Clarendon, Sir Walter Raleigh, Syd- 
 ney, Russell, Sir W. Temple, Lord Somers, Burke, Sheridan, Pitt. In 
 addition to this list, we must not forget the names of such eminent scholars 
 and men of letters, as Cudworth, Chillingworth, Tillotson, Archbishop 
 King, Selden, Conyers Middleton, Bentley, Sir Thomas More, Cardinal 
 Wolsey, Bishops Sherlock and Wilkins, Jeremy Taylor, Isaac Hooker, 
 Bishops Usher, Stillingfleet, and Spelman, Dr Samuel Clarke, Bishop 
 Hoadley, and Dr Lardner. Nor must it be forgotten, in this examination, 
 that none of the conspicuous writers upon political economy which this 
 country has as yet produced, have been brought up in public schools. If it 
 be urged that public schools have only assumed their present character 
 within this last century, or half century, and that what are now called pub- 
 lic schools partook, before this period, of the nature of private schools, there 
 must then be added to our lists the names of Milton, Dryden, Addison, &c. 
 &c. : and it will follow, that the English have done almost all that they 
 iiave done in the arts and sciences, without the aid of that system of educa- 
 tion to which they are now so much attached. Ample as this catalogue of 
 celebrated names already is, it would be easy to double it ; yet, as it stands, 
 it is obviously sufficient to show that great eminence may be attained in 
 any line of fame, without the aid of public schools. Some more striking 
 inferences might perhaps be drawn from it ; but we content ourselves with 
 the simple fact. 
 
 The most important peculiarity in the constitution of a public school is 
 its numbers, which are so great, that a close inspection of the master into 
 the studies and conduct of each individual is quite impossible. We must 
 be allowed to doubt, whether such an arrangement is favourable either to 
 literature or morals. 
 
 Upon this system, a boy is left almost entirely to himself, to impress upon 
 his own mind, as well as he can, the distant advantages of knowledge, and 
 to withstand, from his own innate resolution, the examples and the seduc- 
 tions of idleness. A firm character survives this brave neglect ; and very 
 exalted talents may sometimes remedy it by subsequent diligence : but 
 schools are not made for a few youths of pre-eminent talents and strong 
 characters ; such prizes can, of course, be drawn but by a very few parents. 
 The best school is that which is best accommodated to the greatest variety 
 of characters, and which embraces the greatest number of cases. It cannot 
 be the main object of education to render the splendid more splendid ; and 
 to lavish care upon those who would almost thrive without any care at all. 
 A public school does this effectually ; but it commonly leaves the idle almost 
 as idle, and the dull almost as dull, as it found them. It disdains the 
 tedious cultivation of those middling talents, of which only the great mass 
 of human beings are possessed. When a strong desire of improvement 
 exists, it is encouraged, but no pains are taken to inspire it. A boy is cast 
 in among five or six hundred other boys, and is left to form his own char- 
 acter if his love of knowledge survive this severe trial, it, in general, 
 carries him very far : and, upon the same principle, a savage, who grows 
 up to manhood, is, in general, well made, and free from all bodily defects ; 
 not because the severities of such a state are favourable to animal life, but 
 because they are so much the reverse, that none but the strongest can sur- 
 vive them. A few boys are incorrigibly idle, and a few incorrigibly eager 
 for knowledge ; but the great mass are in a state of doubt and fluctuation ; 
 and they come to school for the express purpose, not of being left to them- 
 selves for that could be done any where but that their wavering tastes 
 and propensities should be decided by the intervention of a master. In a 
 forest, or public school for oaks and elms, the trees are left to themselves;
 
 212 PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 
 
 the strong plants live, and the weak ones die the towering oak that remains 
 is admired ; the saplings that perish around it are cast into the flames and 
 forgotten. But it is not, surely, to the vegetable struggle of a forest, or the 
 hasty glance of a forester, that a botanist would commit a favourite plant ; 
 he would naturally seek for it a situation of less hazard, and a cultivator 
 whose limited occupations would enable him to give to it a reasonable share 
 of his time and attention. The very meaning of education seems to us to be 
 that the old should teach the young, and the wise direct the weak ; that a 
 man who professes to instruct, should get among his pupils, study their char- 
 acters, gain their affections, and form their inclinations and aversions. In 
 a public school, the numbers render this impossible ; it is impossible that 
 sufficient time should be found for this useful and affectionate interference. 
 Boys, therefore, are left to their own crude conceptions and ill-formed pro- 
 pensities ; and this neglect is called a spirited and manly education. 
 
 In by far the greatest number of cases, we cannot think public schools 
 favourable to the cultivation of knowledge; and we have equally strong 
 doubts if they be so to the cultivation of morals, though we admit, that, 
 upon this point, the most striking arguments have been produced in their 
 favour. 
 
 It is contended by the friends to public schools that every person, before 
 he comes to man's estate, must run through a certain career of dissipation ; 
 and that if that career is, by the means of a private education, deferred to a 
 more advanced period of life, it will only be begun with greater eagerness, 
 and pursued into more blamable excess. The time must, of course, come, 
 when every man must be his own master ; when his conduct can be no 
 longer regulated by the watchful superintendence of another, but must be 
 guided by his own discretion. Emancipation must come at last ; and we 
 admit, that the object to be aimed at is, that such emancipation should be 
 gradual, and not premature. Upon this very invidious point of the dis- 
 cussion, we rather wish to avoid offering any opinion. The manners of 
 great schools vary considerably from time to time : and what may have been 
 true many years ago is very possibly not true at the present period. In 
 this instance, every parent must be governed by his own observations and 
 means of information. If the licence which prevails at public schools is 
 only a fair increase of liberty, proportionate to advancing age, and calculated 
 to prevent the bad effects of a sudden transition from tutelary thraldom to 
 perfect self-government, it is certainly a good, rather than an evil. If, on 
 the contrary, there exists in these places of education a system of premature 
 debauchery, and if they only prevent men from being corrupted by the 
 world, by corrupting them before their entry into the world, they can then 
 only be looked upon as evils of the greatest magnitude, however they may 
 be sanctioned by opinion, or rendered familiar to us by habit. 
 
 The vital and essential part of a school is the master ; but, at a public 
 school, no boy, or, at the best, only a very few, can see enough of him to 
 derive any considerable benefit from his character, manners, and informa- 
 tion. It is certainly of eminent use, particularly to a young man of rank, 
 that he should have lived among boys ; but it is only so when they are all 
 moderately watched by some superior understanding. The morality of boys 
 is generally very imperfect ; their notions of honour extremely mistaken ; 
 and their objects of ambition frequently very absurd. The probability then 
 is, that the kind of discipline they exercise over each other will produce 
 (when left to itself) a great deal of mischief; and yet this is the discipline 
 to which every child at a public school is not only necessarily exposed, but 
 principally confined. Our objection (we again repeat) is not to the inter- 
 ference of boys in the formation of the character of boys ; their character,
 
 DISTURBANCES AT MADRAS. 
 
 213 
 
 we are persuaded, will be very imperfectly formed without their assistance ; 
 but our objection is to that almost exclusis-e agency which they exercise in 
 public schools. 
 
 After having said so much in opposition to the general prejudice in favour 
 of public schools, we may be expected to state what species of school we 
 think preferable to them ; for if public schools, with all their disadvantages, 
 are the best that can actually be found, or easily attained, the objections to 
 them are certainly made to very little purpose. 
 
 We have no hesitation, however, in saying, that that education seems to 
 us to be the best which mingles a domestic with a school life, and which 
 gives to a youth the advantage which is to be derived from the learning of 
 a master, and the emulation which results from the society of other boys, 
 together with the affectionate vigilance which he must experience in the 
 house of his parents. But where this species of education, from peculiarity 
 of circumstances or situation, is not attainable, we are disposed to think a 
 society of twenty or thirty boys, under the guidance of a learned man, and, 
 above all, of a man of good sense, to be a seminary the best adapted for the 
 education of youth. The numbers are sufficient to excite a considerable 
 degree of emulation, to give to a boy some insight into the diversities of 
 the human character, and to subject him to the observation and control of 
 his superiors. It by no means follows, that a judicious man should always 
 interfere with his authority and advice, because he has always the means ; 
 he may connive at many things which he cannot approve, and suffer some 
 little failures to proceed to a certain extent, which, if indulged in wider 
 limits, would be attended with irretrievable mischief : he will be aware that 
 his object is to fit his pupil for the world ; that constant control is a very 
 bad preparation for complete emancipation from all control ; that it is not 
 bad policy to expose a young man, under the eye of superior wisdom, to 
 some of. those dangers which will assail him hereafter in greater number, 
 and in greater strength when he has only his own resources to depend 
 upon. A private education, conducted upon these principles, is not cal- 
 culated to gratify quickly the vanity of a parent who is blest with a child of 
 strong character and pre-eminent abilities : to be the first scholar of an 
 obscure master, at an obscure place, is no very splendid distinction ; nor 
 does it afford that opportunity, of which so many parents are desirous, of 
 forming great connections for their children : but if the object be to induce 
 the young to love knowledge and virtue, we are inclined to suspect, that, 
 for the average of human talents and characters, these are the situations in 
 which such tastes will be the most effectually formed. 
 
 DISTURBANCES AT MADRAS. (E. REVIEW, 1810.) 
 
 Narrative of the Origin and Progress of the Dissensions at tke Presidency of Madras, 
 
 founded on Original Papers and Correspondence. Lloyd, London, 1810. 
 Account of the Origin and Progress of the late Discontents of the Army on the Madras 
 
 Est.*. 'Hi': tnent. Cadell and Davies, London, 1810. 
 
 Statement of Facts delivered to the Right Honourable Lord Minto. By WILLIAM 
 PETKIE, Esq. Stockdale, London, 1810. 
 
 THE disturbances which have lately taken place in our East Indian posses- 
 sions would, at any period, have excited a considerable degree of alarm ; 
 and those feelings are, of course, not a little increased by the ruinous aspect 
 of our European affairs. The revolt of an army of eighty thousand men is 
 an event which seems to threaten so nc.;;iy the ruin of the country in which
 
 214 DISTURBANCES A T MADRAS. 
 
 it happens, that no common curiosity is excited as to the causes which could 
 have led to it, and the means by which its danger was averted. On these 
 points, we shall endeavour to exhibit to our readers the information afforded 
 to us by the pamphlets whose titles we have cited. The first of these is 
 understood to be written by an agent of Sir George Barlow, sent over for 
 the express purpose of defending his measures ; the second is most probably 
 the production of some one of the dismissed officers, or, at least, founded 
 upon their representations ; the third statement is by Mr Petrie, and we 
 most cordially recommend it to the perusal of our readers. It is charac- 
 terised, throughout, by moderation, good sense, and a feeling of duty. We 
 have seldom read a narrative, which, on the first face of it, looked so much 
 like truth. It has, of course, produced the ruin and dismissal of this gen- 
 tleman, though we have not the shadow of doubt, that if his advice had 
 been followed, every unpleasant occurrence which has happened in India 
 might have been effectually prevented. 
 
 In the year 1802, a certain monthly allowance, proportioned to their re- 
 spective ranks, was given to each officer of the Coast army, to enable him 
 to provide himself with camp equipage ; and a monthly allowance was also 
 made to the commanding officers of the native corps, for the provision of the 
 camp equipage of these corps. This arrangement was commonly called 
 the tent contract. Its intention (as the pamphlet of Sir George Barlow's 
 agent very properly states) was to combine facility of movement in military 
 operations with views of economy. In the general revision of its establish- 
 ments, set on foot for the purposes of economy by the Madras Government, 
 this contract was considered as entailing upon them a very unnecessary 
 expense ; and the then commander-in-chief, General Craddock, directed 
 Colonel Munro, the quarter-master-general, to make a report to him upon 
 the subject. The report, which was published almost as soon as it was 
 made up, recommends the abolition of this contract ; and, among other 
 passages for the support of this opinion, has the following one : 
 
 " Six years' experience of the practical effects of the existing system of 
 the camp equipage equipment of the native army, has afforded means of 
 forming a judgment relative to its advantages and efficiency, which were not 
 possessed by the persons who proposed its introduction ; and an attentive 
 examination of its operations during that period of time has suggested the 
 following observations regarding it : 
 
 After stating that the contract is needlessly expensive that it subjects the 
 Company to the same charges for troops in garrison as for those in the field 
 the report proceeds to state the following observation, made on the 
 authority of six years' experience and attentive examination. 
 
 "Thirdly. By granting the same allowances in peace and war for the 
 equipment of native corps, while the expenses incidental to that charge are 
 unavoidably much greater in war than in peace, it places the interest and 
 duty of officers commanding native corps in direct opposition to one another. 
 It makes it their interest that their corps should not be in a state of efficiency 
 fit for field service, and therefore furnishes strong inducements to neglect 
 their most important duties." Accurate and AutJuntic Narrative, pp. 117, 
 118. 
 
 Here, then, is not only a proposal for reducing the emoluments of the 
 principal officers of the Madras army, but a charge of the most flagrant 
 nature. The first they might possibly have had some right to consider as a 
 hardship ; but, when severe and unjust invective was superadclcd to strict
 
 DIS TURBANCES A T MADRAS. 2 1 5 
 
 retrenchment when their pay and their reputation were diminished at the 
 same time it cannot be considered as surprising, that such treatment, on 
 the part of the Government, should lay the foundation for a spirit of discon- 
 tent in those troops who had recently made such splendid additions to the 
 Indian empire, and established, in the progress of these acquisitions, so high 
 a character for discipline and courage. It must be remembered, that an 
 officer on European and on Indian service, are in very different situations, 
 and propose to themselves very different objects. The one never thinks of 
 making a fortune by his profession, while the hope of ultimately gaining an 
 independence is the principal motive for which the Indian officer banishes 
 himself from his country. To diminish the emoluments of his profession is 
 to retard the period of his return, and to frustrate the purpose for which he 
 exposes his life and health in a burning climate, on the other side of the 
 world. We make these observations, certainly, without any idea of denying 
 the right of the East India Company to make any retrenchments they may 
 think proper, but to show that it is a right which ought to be exercised with 
 great delicacy and with sound discretion that it should only be exercised 
 when the retrenchment is of real importance and, above all, that it should 
 always be accompanied with every mark of suavity and conciliation. Sir 
 George Barlow, on the contrary, committed the singular imprudence of 
 stigmatising the honour, and wounding the feelings of the Indian officers. At 
 the same moment that he diminished their emoluments, he tells them, that the 
 India Company take away their allowances for tents, because those allowances 
 have been abused in the meanest, most profligate, and most unsoldier-like man- 
 ner : for this, and more than this, is conveyed in the report of Colonel Munro, 
 published by order of Sir George Barlow. If it were right, in the first instance, 
 to diminish the emoluments of so vast an army, it was certainly indiscreet to 
 give such reasons for it. If any individual had abused the advantages of 
 the tent-contract, he might have been brought to a court-martial ; and, if 
 his guilt had been established, his punishment, we will venture to assert, 
 would not have occasioned a moment of complaint or disaffection in the 
 army ; but that a civilian, a gentleman accustomed only to the details of 
 commerce, should begin his government, over a settlement with which he 
 was utterly unacquainted, by telling one of the bravest set of officers in the 
 world, that, for six years past, they had been, in the basest manner, sacri- 
 ficing their duty to their interests, does appear to us an instance of indiscre- 
 tion which, if frequently repeated, would soon supersede the necessity of any 
 further discussion upon Indian affairs. 
 
 The whu'e transaction, indeed, appears to have been gone into with a 
 disregard to the common professional feelings of an army, which is to us 
 utterly inexplicable. The opinion of the Commander-in-chief, General 
 Macdowall, was never even asked upon the subject ; not a single witness 
 was examined; the whole seems to have depended upon the report of 
 Colonel Munro, the youngest staff-officer of the army, published in spite of 
 the army, published in spite of the earnest remonstrance of Colonel Capper, 
 the adjutant-general, and before three days had been given him to substitute 
 his own plan, which Sir George Barlow had promised to read before the 
 publication of Colonel Munro's report. Nay, this great plan of reduction 
 was never even submitted to the Military Board, by whom all subjects of 
 that description were, according to the orders of the Court of Directors, and 
 the usage of the service, to be discussed and digested, previous to their 
 coming before Government. 
 
 Shortly after the promulgation of this very indiscreet paper, the Comman- 
 der-in-chief, General Macdowall, received letters from almost all the officers 
 commanding native corps, representing, in terms adapted to the feelings of
 
 8 16 DISTURBANCES A T MADRAS. 
 
 each, the stigma which was considered to attach to them individually, and 
 appealing to the authority of the Commander-in-chief for redress against 
 such charges, and to his personal experience for their falsehood. To these 
 letters, the General replied, that the orders in question had been prepared 
 without any reference to his opinion, and that, as the matter was so far ad- 
 vanced, he deemed it inexpedient to interfere. The officers commanding 
 corps, finding that no steps were taken to remove the obnoxious insinua- 
 tions, and considering that, while they remained, an indelible disgrace was 
 cast upon their characters, prepared charges against Colonel Munro. 
 These charges were forwarded to General Macdowall, referred by him to 
 the Judge Advocate-General, and returned with his objections to them, to 
 the officers who had preferred the charges. For two months after this 
 period, General Macdowall appears to have remained in a state of uncer- 
 tainty, as to whether he would or would not bring Colonel Munro to a court- 
 martial upon the charges preferred against him by the commanders of corps. 
 At last, urged by the discontents of the army, he determined in the affirma- 
 tive ; and Colonel Mumo was put in arrest, preparatory to his trial. 
 Colonel Munro then appealed directly to the Governor, Sir George Barlow, 
 and was released by a positive order from him. It is necessary to state, 
 that all appeals of officers to the Government in India always pass through 
 the hands of the Commander-in-chief; and this appeal, therefore, of Colonel 
 Munro, directed to the Government, was considered by General Macdowall 
 as a great infringement of military discipline. We have very great doubts 
 whether Sir George Barlow was not guilty of another great mistake in pre- 
 venting this court-martial from taking place. It is undoubtedly true, that 
 no servant of the public is amenable to justice for doing what the Govern- 
 ment order him to do ; but he is not entitled to protection under the pre- 
 tence of that order, if he have done, something which it evidently did not 
 require of him. If Colonel Munro had been ordered to report upon the 
 conduct of an individual officer, and it could be proved that, in gratifica- 
 tion of private malice, he had taken that opportunity of stating the most 
 infamous and malicious falsehoods, could it be urged that his conduct 
 might not be fairly scrutinised in a court of justice, or a court-martial ? If 
 this were otherwise, any duty delegated by Government to an individual 
 would become the most intolerable source of oppression : He might gratify 
 every enmity and antipathy indulge in every act of malice viliiy and traduce 
 every one whom he hated and then shelter himself under the plea of the 
 public service. Every body has a right to do what the supreme power 
 orders him to do ; but he does not thereby acquire a right to do what he 
 has not been ordered to do. Colonel Munro was directed to make a report 
 upon the state of the army : the officers whom he has traduced, accuse him 
 of reporting something utterly different from the state of the army some- 
 thing which he and every body else knew to be different and this for the 
 malicious purpose of calumniating their reputation. If this were true, Colonel 
 Munro could not plead the authority of Government ; for the authority of 
 Government was afforded to him for a very different purpose. In this view 
 of the case, we cannot see how the dignity of Government was attacked by 
 the proposal of the court-martial, or to what other remedy those who had 
 suffered from his abuse of his power could have had recourse. Colonel 
 Munro had been promised, by General Macdowall, that the court-martial 
 should consist of king's officers : there could not, therefore, have been any 
 rational suspicion that his trial would have been unfair, or his judges un- 
 duly influenced. 
 
 Soon after Sir George Barlow had shown this reluctance to give the com- 
 plaining officers an opportunity of re-establishing their injured character,
 
 DISTURBANCES A T MADRAS. 2 1 7 
 
 General Macdowall sailed for England, and left behind him, for publication, 
 an order, in which Colonel Munro was reprimanded for a violent breach of 
 military discipline, in appealing to the Governor otherwise than through 
 the customary and prescribed channel of the Commander-in-chief. As this 
 paper is very short, and at the same time very necessary to the right compre- 
 hension of this case, we shall lay it before our readers. 
 
 "G. O. by the Commander-in-chief. 
 
 " The immediate departure of Lieutenant-General Macdowall from 
 Madras will prevent his pursuing the design of bringing Lieutenant-Colonel 
 Munro, Quarter-Master-General, to trial, for disrespect to the Commander- 
 in-chief, for disobedience of orders, and for contempt of military authority, 
 in having resorted to the power of the Civil Government, in defiance of the 
 judgment of the officer at the head of the army, who had placed him under 
 arrest, on charges preferred against him by a number of officers command- 
 ing native corps, in consequence of which appeal direct to the Honourable the 
 President in Council, Lieutenant-General Macdowall has received positive 
 orders from the Chief Secretary to liberate Lieutenant-Colonel Munro from 
 arrest. 
 
 ' ' Such conduct, on the part of Lieutenant-Colonel Munro, being destructive 
 of subordination, subversive of military discipline, a violation of the sacred 
 rights of the Commander-in-chief, and holding out a most dangerous 
 example to the service, Lieutenant-General Macdowall, in support of the 
 dignity of the profession, and his own station and character, feels it incum- 
 bent on him to express his strong disapprobation of Lieutenant-Colonel 
 Munro's unexampled proceedings, and considers it a solemn duty imposed 
 upon him to reprimand Lieutenant- Colonel Munro in general orders ; and 
 he is hereby reprimanded accordingly. (Signed) T. BOLES, D.A.G." 
 Accurate and Authentic Narrative, pp. 68, 69. 
 
 Sir George Barlow, in consequence of this paper, immediately deprived 
 General Macdowall of his situation of Commander-in-chief, which he had 
 not yet resigned, though he had quitted the settlement ; and as the official 
 signature of the deputy adjutant-general appeared at the paper, that officer 
 also was suspended from his situation. Colonel Capper, the adjutant- 
 general, in the most honourable manner informed Sir George Barlow, that 
 he was the culpable and responsible person ; and that the name of his 
 deputy only appeared to the paper in consequence of his positive order, and 
 because he himself happened to be absent on shipboard with General Mac- 
 dowall. This generous conduct on the part of Colonel Capper involved 
 himself in punishment, without extricating the innocent person whom he 
 intended to protect. The Madras Government, always swift to condemn, 
 doomed him to the same punishment as Major Boles ; and he was suspended 
 from his office. 
 
 This paper we have read over with great attention ; and we really cannot 
 see wherein its criminality consists, or on what account it could have drawn 
 down upon General Macdowall so severe a punishment as the privation of 
 the high and dignified office which he held. The censure upon Colonel 
 Munro was for a violation of the regular etiquette of the army, in appealing 
 to the Governor otherwise than through the channel of the Commander-in- 
 chief. This was an entirely new offence on the part of Colonel Munro. Sir 
 George Barlow had given no opinion upon it ; it had not been discussed 
 between him and the Commander-in-chief ; and the Commander-in-chief 
 was clearly at liberty to act in this point as he pleased. He does not repri- 
 ruanl Colonel Munro for obeying Sir George Barlow's orders; for Sir
 
 2i DISTURBANCES A T MADRAS. 
 
 George had given no orders upon the subject ; but he blames him for trans- 
 gressing a well-known and important rule of the service. We have great 
 doubts if he was not quite right in giving this reprimand. But at all events, 
 if he were wrong if Colonel Munro were not guilty of the offence imputed, 
 still the erroneous punishment which the General had inflicted, merited no 
 such severe retribution as that resorted to by Sir George Barlow. There 
 are no reflections in the paper on th^ conduct of the Governor or the 
 Government. The reprimand is grounded entirely upon the breach of that 
 military discipline which it was undoubtedly the business of General Mac- 
 dowall to maintain in the most perfect purity and vigour. Nor has the 
 paper any one expression in it foreign to this [ urpose. We we:e, indeed, 
 not a little astonished at reading it. We had imagined that a p.ipcr, which 
 drew after it such a long train of dismissals and suspensions, must have 
 contained a declaration of war against the Madras Government, an exhor- 
 tation to the troops to throw off their allegiance, or an advice to the natives 
 to drive their intrusive masters away, and become as free as their fore- 
 fathers had left them. Instead of this, we find nothing more than a common 
 reprimand from a Commander-in-chief to a subordinate officer, for trans- 
 gressing the bounds of his duty. If Sir George Barlow had governed king- 
 doms six months longer, we cannot help thinking he would have been a 
 little more moderate. 
 
 But whatever difference of opinion there may be respecting the punish- 
 ment of General Macdowall, we can scarcely think there can be any with 
 regard to the conduct observed towards the adjutant-general and his deputy. 
 They were the subordinates of the Commander-in-chief, and were peremp- 
 torily bound to publish any general orders which he might command them 
 to publish. They would have been liable to very severe punishment if they 
 had not ; and it appears to us the most flagrant outrage against all justice, 
 to convert their obedience into a fault. It is true, no subordinate officer is 
 bound to obey any order which is plainly, and to any common apprehen- 
 sion, illegal ; but then the illegality must be quite manifest : the order must 
 imply such a contradiction to common sense, and such a violation of duties 
 superior to the duty of military obedience, that there can be scarcely two 
 opinions on the subject. Wherever any fair doubt can be raised, the obe- 
 dience of the inferior officer is to be considered as proper and meritorious. 
 Upon any other principle, his situation is the most cruel imaginable : he is 
 liable to the severest punishment, even to instant death, if he refuses to 
 obey j and if he does obey, he is exposed to the animadversion of the civil 
 power, which teaches him that he ought to have canvassed the order, to 
 have remonstrated against it, and, in case this opposition proved ineffec- 
 tual, to have disobeyed it. We have no hesitation in pronouncing the im- 
 prisonment of Colonel Capper and Major Boles to have been an act of great 
 severity and great indiscretion, and such as might very fairly give great 
 offence to an army, who saw themselves exposed to the same punishments, 
 for the same adherence to their duties. 
 
 " The measure of removing Lieutenant-Colonel Capper and Major 
 Boles," says Mr Petrie, " was universally condemned by the most respect- 
 able officers in the army, and not more so by the officers in the Company's 
 service, than by those of his Majesty's regiments. It was felt by all as the 
 introduction of a most dangerous principle, and setting a pernicious example 
 of disobedience and insubordination to all the gradations of military rank 
 and authority ; teaching inferior officers to question the legality of the orders 
 of their superiors, and bringing into discussion questions which may endanger 
 the very existence of Government. Our proceedings at this time operated
 
 DISTURBANCES A T MADRAS. 219 
 
 like an electric shock, and gave rise to combinations, associations, and dis- 
 cussions, pregnant with danger to every constituted authority in India. It 
 was observed that the removal of General Macdowall (admitting the expe- 
 diency of that measure) sufficiently vindicated the authority of Government, 
 and exhibited to the army a memorable proof that the supreme power is 
 vested hi the civil authority. 
 
 ' ' The offence came from the General, and he was punished for it ; but 
 to suspend from the service the mere instruments of office, for the ordinary 
 transmission of an order to the army, was universally condemned as an act 
 of inapplicable severity, which might do infinite mischief, but could not 
 accomplish any good or beneficial purpose. It was to court unpopularity, 
 and adding fuel to the flame, which was ready to burst forth in every division 
 of the army ; that to vindicate the measure on the assumed illegality of the 
 order, is to resort to a principle of a most dangerous tendency, capable of 
 being extended in its application to purposes subversive of the foundations 
 of all authority, cis-il as well as military. If subordinate officers are en- 
 couraged to judge of the legality of the orders of their superiors, we intro- 
 duce a precedent of incalculable mischief, neither justified by the spirit or 
 practice of the laws. Is it not better to have the responsibility on the head 
 of the authority which issues the order, except in cases so plain, that the 
 most common capacity can judge of their being direct violations of the 
 established and acknowledged laws? Is the intemperance of the expres- 
 sions, the indiscretion of the opinions, the inflammatory tendency of the 
 order, so eminently dangerous, so evidently calculated to excite to mutiny 
 and disobedience, so strongly marked with features of criminality, as not to 
 be mistaken ? Was the order, I beg leave to ask, of this description, of 
 such a nature as to justify the adjutant-general and his deputy in their 
 refusal to publish it, to disobey the order of the Commander-in-chief, to 
 revolt from his authority, and to complain of him to the Government? 
 Such were the views I took of that unhappy transaction : and, as I foresaw 
 serious mischief from the measure, not only to the discipline of the army, 
 but even to the security of the civil Government, it was my duty to state 
 my opinion to Sir G. Barlow, and to use every argument which my reason 
 suggested, to prevent the publication of the order. In this I completely 
 failed : the suspension took effect ; and the match was laid that has com- 
 municated the flame to almost every military mind in India. I recorded 
 no dissent ; for, as a formal opposition could only tend to exonerate myself 
 from a certain degree of responsibility, without effecting any good public 
 purpose, and might probably be misconstrued or misconceived by those to 
 whom our proceedings were made known, it was a more honourable dis- 
 charge of my duty to relinquish this advantage, than to comply with the 
 mere letter of the order respecting dissents. I explained this motive of my 
 conduct to Sir G. Barlow. Statement of Facts, pp. 20 23. 
 
 After these proceedings on the part of the Madras Government, the dis- 
 affection of the troops rapidly increased ; absurd and violent manifestoes 
 were published by the general officers ; Government was insulted ; and the 
 army soon broke out into open mutiny. 
 
 When the mutiny was fairly begun, the conduct of the Madras Govern- 
 ment in quelling it, seems nearly as objectionable as that by which it had 
 been excited. The Governor, in attempting to be dignified, perpetually 
 fell into the most puerile irritability ; and, wishing to be firm, was guilty 
 of injustice and violence. Invitations to dinner were made an affair of 
 state. Long negotiations appear, respecting whole corps of officers who 
 refused to dine with Sir George Barlo-.v ; and the first persons in the settle-
 
 220 DISTURBANCES AT MADRAS. 
 
 ment were employed to persuade them to eat the repast which his Excel- 
 lency had prepared for them. A whole school of military lads were sent 
 away, for some trifling display of partiality to the cause of the army ; and 
 every unfortunate measure recurred to, which a weak understanding and a 
 captious temper could employ to bring a Government into contempt. Offi- 
 cers were dismissed ; but dismissed without trial, and even without accusa- 
 tion. The object seemed to be to punish somebody ; whether it was the 
 right or the wrong person was less material. Sometimes the subordinate 
 was selected, where the principal was guilty ; sometimes the superior was 
 sacrificed for the ungovernable conduct of those who were under his charge. 
 The blows were strong enough ; but they came from a man who shut his 
 eyes, and struck at random ; conscious that he must do something to repel 
 the danger, but so agitated by its proximity that he could not look at it, 
 or take a proper aim. 
 
 Among other absurd measures resorted to by this new Eastern Emperor, 
 was the notable expedient of imposing a test upon the officers of the army, 
 expressive of their loyalty and attachment to the Government ; and as this 
 was done at a time when some officers were in open rebellion, others fluc- 
 tuating, and many almost resolved to adhere to their duty, it had the very 
 natural and probable effect of uniting them all in opposition to Government. 
 To impose a test, or trial of opinions, is at all times an unpopular species 
 of inquisition ; and at a period when men were hesitating whether they 
 should obey or not, was certainly a very dangerous and rash measure. It 
 could be no security ; for men who would otherwise rebel against their 
 Government, certainly would not be restrained by any verbal barriers of 
 this kind ; and, at the same that it promised no effectual security, it appeared 
 to increase the danger of irritated combination. This very rash measure 
 immediately produced the strongest representations and remonstrances _/>w 
 king's officers of the most unquestionable loyalty, 
 
 " Lieutenant-Colonel Vesey, commanding at Palamcotah, apprehends 
 the most fatal consequences to the tranquillity of the southern provinces, if 
 Colonel Wilkinson makes any hostile movements from Trichinopoly. In 
 different letters he states, that such a step must inevitably throw the Com- 
 pany's troops into open revolt. He has ventured to write in the strongest 
 terms to Colonel Wilkinson, entreating him not to march against the south- 
 ern troops, and pointing out the ruinous consequences which may be ex- 
 pected from such a measure. 
 
 "Lieutenant-Colonel Stuart in Travancore, and Colonel Forbes in Mala- 
 bar, have written, that they are under no apprehension for the tranquillity of 
 those provinces, or for the fidelity of the Company's troops, if Government 
 does not insist on enforcing the orders for the signature of the test ; but 
 that, if this is attempted, the security of the country will be imminently 
 endangered. These orders are to be enforced j and I tremble for the con- 
 sequences." Statement of Facts, pp. 53, 54. 
 
 The following letter from the Hon. Col. Stuart, commanding a king's 
 regiment, was soon after received by Sir George Barlow : 
 
 " The late measures of Government, as carried into effect at the Presi- 
 dency and Trichinopoly, have created a most violent ferment among the 
 corps here. At those places where the European force was so far superior 
 in number to the Native, the measure probably was executed without diffi- 
 culty ; but here, where there are seven battalions of sepoys, and a company 
 and a half of artillery, to our one regiment, I found it totally impossible to
 
 DISTURBANCES A T MADRAS. 221 
 
 carry the business to the same length, particularly as any tumult among our 
 t'\vn corps would certainly bring the people of Travancore upon us. 
 
 "It is in vain, therefore, for me, with the small force I can depend upon, 
 to attempt to stem the torrent here by any acts of violence. 
 
 " Most sincerely and anxiously do I wish that the present tumult may 
 subside, without fatal consequences ; which, if the present violent measures 
 are continued, I much fear will not be the case. If blood is once spilt in 
 the cause, there is no knowing where it may end ; and the probable conse- 
 quence will be, that India will be lost for ever. So many officers of the 
 army have gone to such lengths, that, unless a general amnesty is granted, 
 tranquillity can never be restored. 
 
 "The honourable the Governor in council will not, I trust, impute to me 
 any other motives for having thus given my opinion. I am actuated solely 
 by anxiety for the public good and the benefit of my country ; and I think 
 it my duty, holding the responsible situation I now do, to express my sen- 
 timents at so awful a period. 
 
 ' ' Where there are any prospects of success, it might be right to persevere j 
 but, where every day's experience proves, that the more coercive the meas- 
 ures adopted, the more violent are the consequences, a different and more 
 conciliatory line of conduct ought to be adopted. I have the honour," &c. 
 Statement of Facts, pp. 55, 56. 
 
 " A letter from Colonel Forbes, commanding in Malabar, states, that to 
 prevent a revolt in the province, and the probable march of the Company's 
 troops towards Seringapatam, he had accepted of a modification in the test, 
 to be signed by the officers on their parole, to make no hostile movements 
 until the pleasure of the Government was known. Disapproved by Govern- 
 ment, and ordered to enforce the former orders." Ibid., p. 61. 
 
 It can scarcely be credited, that in spite of these repeated remonstrances 
 from officers, whose loyalty and whose knowledge of the subject could not 
 be suspected, this test was ordered to be enforced, and the severest rebukes 
 inflicted upon those who had presumed to doubt of its propriety, or suspend 
 its operation. Nor let any man say that the opinionative person who per- 
 severed in this measure saw more clearly and deeply into the consequence 
 of his own measures than those who were about him ; for unless Mr Petrie 
 has been guilty, and repeatedly guilty, of a most downright and wilful false- 
 hood, Sir George Barlow had not the most distant conception, during all 
 these measures, that the army would ever venture upon revolt. 
 
 "Government, or rather the head of the Government, was never correctly 
 informed of the actual state of the army, or I think he would have acted 
 otherwise ; he was told, and he was willing to believe, that the discontents 
 were confined to a small part of the troops ; that a great majority dis- 
 approved of their proceedings, and were firmly and unalterably attached to 
 Government." Ibid., pp. 23, 24. 
 
 In a conversation which Mr Petrie had with Sir George Barlow upon the 
 subject of the army and in the course of which he recommends to that 
 gentleman more lenient measures, and warns him of the increasing disaffec- 
 tion of the troops he gives us the following account of Sir George Barlow's 
 notions of the then state of the army : 
 
 " Sir G. Barlow assured me I was greatly misinformed ; that he could 
 rely upon his intelligence ; and would produce to council the most satisfac- 
 tory and unequivocal proofs of the fidelity of nine tenths of the army ; that 
 the discontents were confined almost exclusively to the southern division of 
 the army ; that the troops composing the subsidiary force, those in the
 
 222 DISTURBANCES AT MADRAS. 
 
 ceded districts, in the centre, and a part of the northern division, were all 
 untainted by those principles which had misled the rest of the army." 
 Statement of Facts, pp. 27, 28. 
 
 All those violent measures, then, the spirit and wisdom of which havfc 
 been so much extolled, were not measures of the consequences of which 
 their author had the most distant suspicion. They were not the acts of a 
 man who knew that he must unavoidably, in the discharge of his duty, * 
 irritate, but that he could ultimately overcome that irritation. They appear, 
 on the contrary, to have proceeded from a most gross and scandalous ignor- 
 ance of the opinions of the army. He expected passive submission, and met 
 with universal revolt. So far, then, his want of intelligence and sagacity 
 are unquestionably proved. He did not proceed with useful measures, and 
 run the risk of a revolt, for which he was fully prepared ; but he carried 
 these measures into execution, firmly convinced that they would occasion 
 no revolt at all.* 
 
 The fatal nature of this mistake is best exemplified by the means recurred 
 to for its correction. The grand expedient relied upon was to instigate the 
 natives, men and officers, to disobey their European commanders ; an ex- 
 pedient by which present safety was secured at the expense of every prin- 
 ciple upon which the permanence of our Indian empire rests. There never 
 was in the world a more singular spectacle than to see a few thousand 
 Europeans governing so despotically fifty or sixty millions of people, of 
 different climate, religion, and habits forming them into large and well- 
 disciplined armies and leading them out to the further subjugation of the 
 native powers of India. But can any words be strong enough to paint the 
 rashness of provoking a mutiny, which could only be got under by teaching 
 these armies to act against their European commanders, and to use their 
 actual strength in overpowering their officers? or, is any man entitled to 
 the praise of firmness and sagacity, who gets rid of a present danger by 
 encouraging a principle which renders that danger more frequent and more 
 violent ? We will venture to assert, that a more unwise or a more unstates- 
 manlike action was never committed by any man in any country ; and we 
 are grievously mistaken, if any length of time elapse before the evil con- 
 sequences of it are felt and deplored by every man who deems the 
 welfare of our Indian colonies of any importance to the prosperity of 
 the mother-country. We cannot help contrasting the management of the 
 discontents of the Madras army, with the manner in which the same diffi- 
 culty was got over with the army of Bengal. A little increase of attention 
 and emolument to the head of that army, under the management of a man 
 of rank and talents, dissipated appearances which the sceptered pomp of a 
 merchant's clerk would have blown up into a rebellion in three weeks ; and 
 yet the Bengal army is at this moment in as good a state of discipline, as the 
 English fleet to which Lord Howe made such abject concessions and in a 
 state to be much more permanently depended upon than the army which 
 has been so effectually ruined by the inconveniently great soul of the present 
 Governor of Madras. 
 
 Sir George Barlow's agent, though faithful to his employment of calum- 
 niating those who were in any degree opposed to his principal, seldom loses 
 sight of sound discretion, and confines his invectives to whole bodies of men 
 except where the dead are concerned. Against Colonel Capper, General 
 Macdowall, and Mr Roebuck, who are now no longer alive to answer for 
 
 * We should have been alarmed to have seen Sir G. Barlow, junior churchwarden of 
 St George's, Hanover Square, an office so nobly filled by Giblet and Leslie : it was a 
 huge affliction to see so incapable a man at the head of the Indian Empire.
 
 DISTURBANCES A T MADRAS. 
 
 223 
 
 themselves, he is intrepidly severe ; in all these instances he gives a full 
 loose to his sense of duty, and inflicts upon them the severest chastisement. 
 In his attack upon the civilians, he is particularly careful to keep to generals ; 
 and so rigidly does he adhere to this principle, that he does not support his 
 assertion, that the civil sen-ice was disaffected as well as the military, by 
 one single name, one single fact, or by any other means whatever, than his 
 own affirmation of the fact. The truth (as might be supposed to be the 
 case from such sort of evidence) is diametrically opposite. Nothing could 
 be more exemplar}-, during the whole of the rebellion, than the conduct of 
 the civil servants ; and though the courts of justice were interfered with 
 though the most respectable servants of the Company were punished for 
 the verdicts they had given as jurymen though many were dismissed for 
 the slightest opposition to the pleasure of Government, even in the discharge 
 of official duties, where remonstrance was absolutely necessary though the 
 greatest provocation was given, and the greatest opportunity afforded, to 
 the civil servants for revolt there is not a single instance in which the 
 shadow of disaffection has been proved against any civil servant. This we 
 say, from an accurate examination of all the papers which have been pub- 
 lished on the subject ; and we do not hesitate to affirm, that there never 
 was a more unjust, unfounded, and profligate charge made against any 
 body of men ; nor have we often witnessed a more complete scene of folly 
 and violence, than the conduct of the Madras Government to its civil ser- 
 vants, exhibited during the whole period of the mutiny. 
 
 Upon the whole, it appears to us, that the Indian army was ultimately 
 driven into revolt by the indiscretion and violence of the Madras govern- 
 ment ; and that every evil which has happened might, with the greatest pos- 
 sible facility, have been avoided. 
 
 We have no sort of doubt that the Governor always meant well ; but, we 
 are equally certain that he almost always acted ill ; and where incapacity 
 rises to a certain height, for all practical purposes the motive is of very little 
 consequence. That the late General Macdowall was a weak man, is un- 
 questionable. He was also irritated (and not without reason), because he 
 was deprived of a seat in council, which the commanders before him had 
 commonly enjoyed. A little attention, however, on the part of the Govern- 
 ment the compliment of consulting him upon subjects connected with his 
 profession any of those little arts which are taught, not by a consummate 
 political skill, but dictated by common good nature, and by the habit of 
 mingling with the world, would have produced the effects of conciliation, 
 and employed the force of General MacdowalTs authority in bringing the 
 army into a better temper of mind. Instead of this, it appears to have been 
 almost the object, and if not the object, certainly the practice, of the Madras 
 Government to neglect and insult this officer. Changes of the greatest im- 
 portance were made without his advice, and even without any communica- 
 tion with him ; and it was too visible to those whom he was to command, 
 that he himself possessed no sort of credit with his superiors. As to the 
 tour which General Macdowall is supposed to have made for the purpose of 
 spreading disaffection among the troops, and the part which he is represented 
 by the agents to have taken in the quarrels of the civilians with the Govern- 
 ment, we utterly discredit these imputations. They are unsupported by any 
 kind of evidence ; and we believe them to be mere inventions, circulated by 
 the friends of the Madras Government. General Macdowall appears to us 
 to have been a weak, pompous man ; extremely out of humour ; offended 
 with the slights he had experienced ; and whom any man of common address 
 might have managed with the greatest ease : but we do not see, in any part 
 of his conduct, the shadow of disloyalty and disaffection ; and we are per-
 
 224 TOLERA TION. 
 
 suaded that the assertion would never have been made, if he himself had 
 been alive to prove its injustice. 
 
 Besides the contemptuous treatment of General Macdowall, we have great 
 doubts whether the Madras Government ought not to have suffered Colonel 
 Munro to be put upon his trial; and to punish the officers who solicited that 
 trial for the purgation of their own characters, appears to us (whatever the 
 intention was) to have been an act of mere tyranny. We think, too, that 
 General Macdowall was very hastily and unadvisedly removed from his 
 situation ; and upon the unjust treatment of Colonel Capper and Major 
 Boles there can scarcely be two opinions. In the progress of the mutiny, 
 instead of discovering in the Madras Government any appearances of temper 
 and wisdom, they appear to us to have been quite as much irritated and 
 heated as the army, and to have been betrayed into excesses nearly as 
 criminal, and infinitely more contemptible and puerile. The head of a great 
 kingdom bickering with his officers about invitations to dinner the Com- 
 mander-in-chief of the forces negotiating that the dinner should be loyally 
 eaten the obstinate absurdity of the test the total want of selection in the 
 objects of punishment and the wickedness, or the insanity, of teaching the 
 sepoy to rise against his European officer the contempt of the decision of 
 juries in civil cases and the punishment of the juries themselves ; such a 
 system of conduct as this would infallibly doom any individual to punish- 
 ment, if it did not, fortunately for him, display precisely that contempt of 
 men's feelings, and that passion for insulting multitudes, which is so con- 
 genial to our present Government at home, and which passes now so cur- 
 rently for wisdom and courage. By these means, the liberties of great 
 nations are frequently destroyed and destroyed with impunity to the per- 
 petrators of the crime. In distant colonies, however, governors who attempt 
 the same system of tyranny are in no little danger from the indignation of 
 their subjects ; for though men will often yield up their happiness to kings 
 who have been always kings, they are not inclined to show the same defer- 
 ence to men who have been merchants' clerks yesterday, and are kings to-day. 
 From a danger of this kind, the Governor of Madras appears to us to have 
 very narrowly escaped. We sincerely hope that he is grateful for his good 
 luck ; and that he will now awake from his gorgeous dreams of mercantile 
 monarchy, to good nature, moderation, and common sense. 
 
 TOLERATION. (E. REVIEW, 1811.) 
 
 Hints OH Toleration, in. Five Essays, &*c., suggested for the Consideration of Lord 
 Viscount Sidntouth, and the Dissenters. By PHILAGATHARCHES. London : 1810. 
 
 IF a prudent man see a child playing with a porcelain cup of great value, he 
 takes the vessel out of his hand, pats him on the head, tells him his mamma 
 will be sorry if it is broken, and gently cheats him into the use of some less 
 precious substitute. Why will Lord Sidmouth meddle with the Toleration 
 Act, when there are so many other subjects in which his abilities might be 
 so eminently useful when inclosure bills are drawn up with such scandalous 
 negligence turnpike roads so shamefully neglected and public conveyances 
 illegitimately loaded in the face of day, and in defiance of the wisest legisla- 
 tive provisions? We confess our trepidation at seeing the Toleration Act in 
 the hands of Lord Sidmouth ; and should be very glad if it were fairly back 
 in the statute-book, and the sedulity of this well-meaning nobleman diverted 
 into another channel.
 
 TOLERATION. 225 
 
 The alarm and suspicion of the Dissenters upon these measures are wise 
 aty.l rational. They are right to consider the Toleration Act as their palla- 
 dium; and they may be certain that, in this country, there is always a strong 
 party ready, not only to prevent the further extension of tolerant principles, 
 but to abridge (if they dared) their present operation within the narrowest 
 limits. Whoever makes this attempt will be sure to make it under profes- 
 sions of the most earnest regard for mildness and toleration, and with the 
 strongest declarations of respect for King William, the Revolution, and the 
 principles which seated the House of Brunswick on the throne of these 
 realms; and then will follow the clauses for whipping Dissenters, imprison- 
 ing preachers, and subjecting them to rigid qualifications, &c. &c. &c. The 
 infringement on the militia acts is a mere pretence. The real object is, to 
 diminish the number of Dissenters from the Church of England, by abridg- 
 ing the liberiies and privileges they now possess. This is the project which 
 ve shall examine ; for we sincerely believe it to be the project in agitation. 
 The mode in which it is proposed to attack the Dissenters, is, first, by ex- 
 acting greater qualifications in their teachers ; next, by preventing the inter- 
 change or itinerancy of preachers, and fixing them to one spot. 
 
 It can never, we presume, be intended to subject dissenting ministers 
 to any kind of theological examination. A teacher examined in doctrinal 
 opinions, by another teacher who differs from him, is so very absurd a pro- 
 ject, that we entirely acquit Lord Sidmouth of any intention of this sort. 
 We rather presume his Lordship to mean, that a man who professes to teach 
 hi-; fellow-creatures should at least have made some progress in human 
 learning; that he should not be wholly without education; that he should 
 he able at least to read and write. If the test is of this very ordinary' 
 nature, it can scarcely exclude many teachers of religion ; and it was hardly 
 worth while, for the very insignificant diminution of numbers which this 
 must occasion to the dissenting clergy, to have raised all the alarm which 
 this attack upon the Toleration Act has occasioned. 
 
 P>ut, without any reference to the magnitude of the effects, is the principle 
 right ? or, What is the meaning of religious toleration ? That a man should 
 hold, without pain or penalty, any religious opinions and choose, for his 
 instruction in the business of salvation, any guide whom he pleases care 
 being taken, that the teacher, and the doctrine, injure neither the policy 
 nor the morals of the country. We maintain, that perfect religious tolera- 
 ticn applies as much to the teacher, as the thing taught ; and that it is quite 
 as intolerant to make a man hear Thomas, who wants to hear John, as it 
 would be to make a man profess Arminian, who wished to profess Calvin- 
 istical principles. What right has any Government to dictate to any man 
 \vho shall guide him to heaven, any more than it has to persecute the 
 religious tenets by which he hopes to arrive there ? You believe that the 
 heretic professes doctrines utterly incompatible with the true spirit of the 
 r.ospel ; first you burnt him for this, then you whipt him, then you 
 fined him, then you put him in prison. All this did no good ; and, for 
 these hundred years last past, you have left him alone. The heresy is now 
 firmly protected by law ; and you know it must be preached : What 
 matters it, then, who preaches it ? If the evil must be communicated, the 
 organ and instrument through which it is communicated cannot be of much 
 consequence. It is true, this kind of persecution, against persons, has not 
 been quite so much tried as the other against doctrines ; but the folly and 
 inexpediency of it rest precisely upon the same grounds. 
 
 Would it not be a singular thing, if the friends of the Church of England 
 were to make the most strenuous efforts to render their enemies eloquent and 
 learned? and to found places of education for Dissenters? But, if their 
 
 p
 
 226 TOLERATION. 
 
 learning wouid not be a good, why is their ignorance an evil ? unless it be 
 necessarily supposed, that all increase of learning must bring men over to 
 the Church of England ; in which supposition, the Scottish and Catholic 
 Universities, and the College at Hackney, would hardly acquiesce. Ignor- 
 ance surely matures and quickens the progress, by insuring the dissolution 
 of absurdity. Rational and learned Dissenters remain : religious mobs, 
 under some ignorant fanatic of the day, become foolish overmuch, dissolve 
 and return to the Church. The Unitarian, who reads and writes, gets some 
 sort of discipline, and returns no more. 
 
 AYhat connection is there (as Lord Sidmouth's plan assumes) between the 
 zeal and piety required for religious instruction and the common attain- 
 ments of literature? But, if knowledge and education are required for 
 religious instruction, why be content with the common elements of learn- 
 ing? why not require higher attainments in dissenting candidates for orders ; 
 and examine them in the languages in which the books of their religion are 
 conveyed ? 
 
 A dissenting minister, of vulgar aspect and homely appearance, declares 
 that he entered into that holy office because he felt a call ; and a clergyman 
 of the Establishment smiles at him for the declaration. But it should be 
 remembered, that no minister of the Establishment is admitted into orders, 
 before he has been expressly interrogated by the bishop, whether he feels 
 himself called to that sacred office. The doctrine of calling, or inward 
 feeling, is quite orthodox in the English church ; and in arguing this 
 subject in Parliament, it will hardly be contended, that the Episco- 
 palian only is the judge when that call is genuine, and when it is only 
 imaginary. 
 
 The attempt at making the dissenting clergy stationary, and persecuting 
 their circulation, appears to us quite as unjust and inexpedient as the other 
 measure of qualifications. It appears a gross inconsistency to say "I 
 admit that what you are doing is legal, but you must not do it thoroughly 
 and effectually. I allow you to propagate your heresy, but I object to all 
 means of propagating it which appear to be useful and effective." If there 
 are any other grounds upon which the circulation of the dissenting clergy 
 is objected to, let these grounds be stated and examined ; but to object to 
 their circulation, merely because it is the best method of effecting the 
 object which you allow them to effect, does appear to be rather unnatural 
 and inconsistent. 
 
 It is presumed, in this argument, that the only reason urged for the pre- 
 vention of itinerant preachers is the increase of heresy ; for, if heresy is not 
 increased by it, it must be immaterial to the feelings of Lord Sidmouth, 
 and of the Imperial Parliament, whether Mr Shufflebottom preaches at 
 Bungay, and Mr Ringletub at Ipswich ; or whether an artful vicissitude 
 is adopted, and the order of insane predication reversed. 
 
 But, supposing all this new interference to be just, what good will it do ? 
 You find a dissenting preacher, whom you have prohibited, still continuing 
 to preach, or preaching at Ealing when he ought to preach at Acton ; 
 his number is taken, and the next morning he is summoned. Is it believed 
 that this description of persons can be put down by fine and imprisonment ? 
 His fine is paid for him ; and he returns from imprisonment ten times as 
 much sought after and as popular as he was before. This is a receipt for 
 making a stupid preacher popular, and a popular preacher more popular, 
 but can have no possible tendency to prevent the mischief against which it 
 is levelled. It is precisely the old history of persecution against opinions, 
 turned into a persecution against persons. The prisons will be filled, the 
 enemies of the Church made enemies of the State also, and the Methodists
 
 TOLERA TIOH. 227 
 
 rendered ten tunes more actively mad than they are at present. This is the 
 direct and obvious tendency of Lord Sidmouth's plan. 
 
 Nothing dies so hard and rallies so often as intolerance. The fires are 
 put out, and no living nostril has scented the nidor of a human creature 
 roasted for faith ; then, after this, the prison-doors were got open, and 
 the chains knocked off; and now Lord Sidmouth only begs that men who 
 disagree with him in religious opinions may be deprived of all civil offices, 
 and not be allowed to hear the preachers they like best. Chains and 
 whips he would not hear of ; but these mild gratifications of his bill every 
 orthodox mind is surely entitled to. The hardship would indeed be great, 
 if a churchman were deprived of the amusement of putting a dissenting 
 parson in prison. We are convinced Lord Sidmouth is a very amiable and 
 well-intentioned man : his error is not the error of his heart, but of his 
 time, above which few men ever rise. It is the error of some four or five 
 hundred thousand English gentlemen, of decent education and worthy 
 characters, who conscientiously believe that they are punishing, and con- 
 tinuing incapacities, for the good of the State; while they are, in fact 
 (though without knowing it), only gratifying that insolence, hatred, and 
 revenge, which all human beings are unfortunately so ready to feel against 
 those who will not conform to their own sentiments. 
 
 But, instead of making the Dissenting Churches less popular, why not 
 make the English Church more popular, and raise the English clergy to 
 the privileges of the Dissenters ? In any parish of England, any layman, 
 or clergyman, by paying sixpence, can open a place of worship, provided 
 it be not the worship of the Church of England. If he wishes to attack 
 the doctrines of the bishop or the incumbent, he is not compelled to ask 
 the consent of any person ; but if, by any evil chance, he should be per- 
 suaded of the truth of those doctrines, and build a chapel or mount a pulpit 
 to support them, he is instantly put in the spiritual court ; for the regular 
 incumbent, who has a legal monopoly of this doctrine, does not choose to 
 suffer any interloper ; and without his consent, it is illegal to preach the 
 doctrines of the Church Avithin his precincts.* Now this appears to us a 
 great and manifest absurdity, and a disadvantage against the Established 
 Church which very few establishments could bear. The persons who 
 preach and who build chapels, or for whom chapels are built, among the 
 Dissenters, are active clever persons, with considerable talents for that 
 kind of employment. These talents have, with them, their free and 
 unbounded scope ; while in the English Church they are wholly extinguished 
 
 * It might be supposed that the general interests of the Church would outweigh the 
 particular interests of the rector ; and that any clergyman would be glad to see places of 
 worship opened wi:hin his parish for the doctrines of the Established Church. The fact, 
 however, is directly the reverse. It is scarcely possible to obtain permission from the 
 established clergyman of the parish to open a chapel there ; and, when it is granted, it 
 is granted upon very hard and interested conditions. The parishes of St George of St 
 James of Marylebone and of St Anne's, in London may, in the parish churches, 
 chapels of ease, and mercenary chapels, contain, perhaps, one hundredth part of their 
 Episcopalian inhabitants. Let the rectors, lay and clerical, meet together, and give 
 notice that any clergyman of the Church of England, apprpved.by the bishop, may preach 
 there ; and we will venture to say, that places of worship capable of containing 20,000 
 persons would be built within ten years. But, in these cases, the interest of the Rector 
 and of the Establishment are not the same. A chapel belonging to the Swedenborgians, 
 or Methodists of the New Jerusalem, was offered, two or three years since, in London, 
 to a clergyman of the Establishment. The proprietor was tired of his irrational tenants, 
 and wished for better doctrine. The rector (since a dignitary), with every possible com- 
 pliment to the fitness of the person in question, positively refused the application ; and 
 the church remains in the hands of Methodists. No particular blame is intended, by this 
 anecdote, against the individual rector. He acted as many have done before and since ; 
 but the incumbent clergyman ought to possess no such power. It is his interest, but not 
 the interest of the Establishment.
 
 828 TOLERA TION. 
 
 and destroyed. Till this evil is corrected, the Church contends with fearful 
 odds against its opponents. On one side, any man who can command the 
 attention of a congregation to whom nature has given the animal and 
 intellectual qualifications of a preacher such a man is the member of every 
 corporation ; all impediments are removed : there is not a single position 
 in Great Britain which he may not take, provided he is hostile to the Estab- 
 lished Church. In the other case, if the English Church were to breed 
 up a Massillon or a Bourdaloue, he finds every place occupied ; and every 
 where a regular and respectable clergyman ready to put him in the spiritual 
 court, if he attract, within his precincts, any attention to the doctrines and 
 worship of the Establ : shed Church. 
 
 The necessity of having the bishop's consent would prevent any improper 
 person from preaching. That consent should be withheld, not capri- 
 ciously, but for good and lawful cause to be assigned. 
 
 The profits of an incumbent proceed from fixed or voluntary contribu- 
 tions. The fixed could not be affected ; and the voluntary ought to vary 
 according to the exertions of the incumbent and the good-will of the 
 parishioners ; but, if this is wrong, pecuniary compensation might be made 
 (at the discretion of the ordinary) from the supernumerary to the regular 
 clergyman.* 
 
 Such a plan, it is true, would make the Church of England more popular 
 in its nature ; and it ought to be made more popular, or it will not endure 
 for another half century. There are two methods ; the Church must be 
 made more popular, or the Dissenters less so. To effect the latter object 
 by force and restriction is unjust and impossible. The only remedy seems 
 to be, to grant to the Church the same privileges which are enjoyed by the 
 Dissenters, and to excite in one party, that competition of talent which is of 
 such palpable advantage to the other. 
 
 A remedy suggested by some wellwishers to the Church, is the appoint- 
 ment of men to benefices who have talents for advancing the interests of 
 religion ; but, till each particular patron can be persuaded to care more for 
 the general good of the Church than for the particular good of the person 
 whom he patronises, little expectation of improvement can be derived from 
 this quarter. 
 
 The competition between the Established Clergy, to which this method 
 would give birth, would throw the incumbent in the background only when 
 he was unfit to stand forward immoral, negligent, or stupid. His income 
 would still remain ; and, if his influence were superseded by a man of 
 better qualities and attainments, the general good of the Establishment 
 would be consulted by the change. The beneficed clergyman would always 
 come to the contest with great advantages ; and his deficiencies must be 
 very great indeed, if he lost the esteem of his parishioners. But the contest 
 would rarely or ever take place, where the friends of the Establishment 
 were not numerous enough for all. At present, the selfish incumbent, who 
 cannot accommodate the fiftieth part of his parishioners, is determined that 
 no one else shall do it for him. It is in such situations that the benefit 
 to the Establishment would be greatest, and the injury to the appointed 
 minister none at all. 
 
 We beg of men of sense to reflect, that the question is, not whether they 
 wish the English Church to stand as it now is, but whether the English 
 Church can stand as it now is ; and whether the moderate activity here re- 
 commended is not the minimum of exertion necessary for its preservation. 
 At the same time, we hope nobody will rate our sagacity so very low as to 
 
 All this has been since placed on a. better footing.
 
 TOLERA TION. 229 
 
 imagine we have much hope that any measure of the kind will ever be 
 adopted. All establishments die of dignity. They are too proud to think 
 themselves ill, and to take a little physic. 
 
 To show that we have not mis-stated the obstinacy or the conscience of 
 sectaries, and the spirit with which they will meet the regulations of Lord 
 Sidmouth, we will lay before our readers the sentiments of Philagatharches 
 a stern subacid Dissenter. 
 
 " I shall not here enter into a comprehensive discussion of the nature of a 
 call to the ministerial office ; but deduce my proposition from a sentiment 
 admitted equally by conformists and nonconformists. It is essential to the 
 nature of a call to preach ' that a man be moved by the Holy Ghost to 
 enter upon the work of the ministry ; ' and, if the Spirit of God operate 
 powerfully upon his heart, to constrain him to appear as a public teacher of 
 religion, who shall command him to desist ? We have seen that the sanc- 
 tion of the magistrate can give no authority to preach the gospel ; and if he 
 were to forbid our exertions, we must persist in the work : we dare not 
 relinquish a task that God has required us to perform ; we cannot keep our 
 consciences in peace, if our lips are closed in silence, while the Holy Ghost 
 is moving our hearts to proclaim the tidings of salvation : ' Yea, woe is 
 unto me,' saith St Paul, 'if I preach not the gospel.' Thus, when the 
 Jewish priests had taken Peter and John into custody, and, after examining 
 them concerning their doctrine, ' commanded them not to speak at all, nor 
 to teach in the name of Jesus,' these apostolical champions of the cross un- 
 dauntedly replied, ' Whether it be right in the sight of God, to hearken 
 unto you more than unto God, judge ye : for we cannot but speak the 
 things which we have seen and heard.' Thus, also, in our day, when the 
 Holy Ghost excites a man to preach the gospel to his fellow-sinners, his 
 message is sanctioned by an authority, which is ' far above all principality 
 and power ; ' and, consequently, neither needs the approbation of subor- 
 dinate rulers, nor admits of revocation by their countermanding edicts. 
 
 " 3rdly, He who receives a license should not expect to derive from it a 
 testimony of qualification to preach. 
 
 " It would be grossly absurd to seek a testimony of this description from 
 any single individual, even though he were an experienced veteran in the 
 service of Christ : for all are fallible ; and, under some unfavourable pre- 
 possession, even the wisest or the best of men might give an erroneous 
 decision upon the case. But this observation will gain additional force, 
 when we suppose the power of judging transferred to the person of the 
 magistrate. We cannot presume that a civil ruler understands as much of 
 theology as a minister of the gospel. His necessary duties prevent him from 
 critically investigating questions upon divinity ; and confine his attention to 
 that particular department which society has deputed him to occupy; and, 
 hence, to expect at his hands a testimony of qualification to preach, would 
 be almost as ludicrous as to require an obscure country curate to fill the 
 office of Lord Chancellor. 
 
 "But again admitting that a magistrate, who is nominated by the 
 sovereign to issue forth licenses to dissenting ministers, is competent to the 
 task of judging of their natural and acquired abilities, it must still remain a 
 doubtful question whether they are moved to preach by the influences of 
 the Holy Ghost ; for it is the prerogative of God alone to ' search the heart 
 and try the reins ' of the children of men. Consequently, after every effort 
 of the ruling powers to assume to themselves the right of judging whether a 
 man be or be not qualified to preach, the most essential property of the call 
 must remain to be determined by the conscience of the individual.
 
 330 TOLERA TION. 
 
 "It is further worthy of observation, that the talents of a preacher may 
 be acceptable to many persons, if not to him who issues the license. The 
 taste of a person thus high in office may be too refined to derive gratifica- 
 tion from any but the most learned, intelligent, and accomplished preachers. 
 Yet, as the gospel is sent to the poor as well as to the rich, perhaps hundreds 
 of preachers may be highly acceptable, much esteemed, and eminently 
 useful in their respective circles, who would be despised as men of mean 
 attainments by one whose mind is well stored with literature, and cultivated 
 by science. From these remarks I infer, that a man's own judgment must 
 be the criterion, in determining what line of conduct to pursue before he 
 begins to preach ; and the opinion of the people to whom he ministers must 
 determine whether it be desirable that he should continue to fill their pulpit 
 (168173.) 
 
 The sentiments of Philagatharches are expressed still more strongly hi a 
 subsequent passage. 
 
 " Here a question may arise what line of conduct conscientious ministers 
 ought to pursue, if laws were to be enacted, forbidding either all dissent- 
 ing ministers to preach, or only lay preachers ; or forbidding to preach 
 in an unlicensed place ; and, at the same time, refusing to license 
 persons and places, except under such security as the property of the 
 parties would not meet, or under limitations to which their consciences 
 could not accede. What has been advanced ought to outweigh every con- 
 sideration of temporal interest ; and, if the evil genius of persecution were to 
 appear again, I pray God that we might all be faithful to Him who hath 
 called us to preach the gospel. Under such circumstances, let us continue 
 to preach ; if fined, let us pay the penalty and persevere in preaching ; and, 
 when unable to pay the fine, or deeming it impolitic so to do, let us submit 
 to go quietly to prison, but with the resolution still to preach upon the first 
 opportunity, and, if possible, to collect a church even within the precincts 
 of the gaol. He who, by these zealous exertions, becomes the honoured 
 instrument of converting one sinner unto God, will find that single seal to 
 his ministerial labours an ample compensation for all his sufferings. In this 
 manner, the venerable apostle of the Gentiles both avowed and proved his 
 sincere attachment to the cause in which he had embarked : ' The Holy 
 Ghost witnesseth, in every city, that bonds and afflictions abide me. But 
 none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so 
 that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I have 
 received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.' 
 
 " In the early ages of Christianity martyrdom was considered an eminent 
 honour ; and many of the primitive Christians thrust themselves upon the 
 notice of their heathen persecutors, that they might be brought to suffer in 
 the cause of that Redeemer whom they ardently loved. In the present day, 
 Christians in general incline to estimate such rash ardour as a species of 
 enthusiasm, and feel no disposition to court the horrors of persecution ; yet, 
 if such dark and tremendous days were to return in this age of the world, 
 ministers should retain their stations ; they should be true to their charge ; 
 they should continue their ministrations, each man in his sphere, shining 
 with all the lustre of genuine godliness, to dispel the gloom in which the 
 nation would then be enveloped. If this line of conduct were to be adopted, 
 and acted upon with decision, the cause of piety, of nonconformity, and of 
 itinerant preaching, must eventually triumph. All the gaols in the country 
 would speedily be filled ; those houses of correction, which were erected for 
 the chastisement of the vicious hi the community, would be replenished with 
 thousands of the most pious, active, and useful men in the kingdom, whose
 
 CHARLES FOX. 251 
 
 characters are held in general esteem. But the ultimate result of such 
 despotic proceedings is beyond the ken of human prescience : probably, 
 appeals to the public and the legislature would teem from the press, and 
 under such circumstances, might diffuse a revolutionary spirit throughout 
 the country." (239 243.) 
 
 "\Ye quote these opinions at length, not because they are the opinions of 
 Philagatharches, but because we are confident that they are the opinions of 
 ten thousand hot-headed fanatics, and that they would firmly and conscien- 
 tiously be acted upon. 
 
 Philagatharches is an instance (not uncommon, we are sorry to say, even 
 among the most rational of the Protestant Dissenters) of a love of toleration 
 combined with a love of persecution. Pie is a dissenter, and earnestly 
 demands religious liberty for that body of men ; but as for the Catholics, 
 he would not only continue their present disabilities, but load them with 
 every new one that could be conceived. He expressly says that an Atheist 
 or a Deist may be allowed to propagate their doctrines, but not a Catholic ; 
 and then proceeds with all the customary trash against that sect which nine 
 schoolboys out of ten now know how to refute. So it is with Philagath- 
 arches ; so it is with weak men in every sect. It has ever been our object, 
 and (in spite of misrepresentation and abuse) ever shall be our object, to 
 put down this spirit to protect the true interests, and to diffuse the true 
 spirit, of toleration. To a well-supported national Establishment, effectually 
 discharging its duties, we are very sincere friends. If any man, after he 
 has paid his contribution to this great security for the existence of religion 
 in any shape, choose to adopt a religion of his own, that man should be 
 permitted to do so without let, molestation, or disqualification for any of 
 the offices of life. We apologise to men of sense for sentiments so trite ; 
 and patiently endure the anger which they will excite among those with 
 whom they will pass for original. 
 
 CHARLES FOX. (E. REVIEW, 1811.) 
 
 Vindication of Mr Fo.\ J s History oftlie early Part of the Reign of James the Second. 
 By SAMUEL HEYWOOD, Serjeant-at-Law. London : Johnson and Co. 1811. 
 
 THOUGH Mr Fox's history was, of course, as much open to animadversion 
 and rebuke as any other book, the task, we think, would have become any 
 other person better than Mr Rose. The whole of Mr Fox's life was spent 
 in opposing the profligacy and exposing the ignorance of his own court. In 
 the first half of his political career, while Lord North was losing America, 
 and in the latter half, while Mr Pitt was mining Europe, the creatures of 
 the Government were eternally exposed to the attacks of this discerning, 
 dauntless, and most powerful speaker. Folly and corruption never had a 
 more terrible enemy in the English House of Commons one whom it was 
 so impossible to bribe, so hopeless to elude, and so difficult to answer. 
 Now it so happened, that during the whole of this period, the historical 
 critic of Mr Fox was employed in subordinate offices of Government ; 
 that the detail of taxes passed through his hands ; that he amassed a large 
 fortune by those occupations ; and that, both in the measures which he 
 supported, and in the friends from whose patronage he received his emolu- 
 ments, he was completely and perpetually opposed to Mr Fox. 
 
 Again, it must be remembered, that very great people have very long 
 memories for the injuries which they receive, or which they think they 
 receive. No speculation was so good, therefore, as to vilify the memory of
 
 832 CHARLES FOX. 
 
 Mr Fox, nothing so delicious as to lower him in the public estimation, 
 no service so likely to be well rewarded so eminently grateful to those of 
 whose favour Mr Rose had so often tasted the sweets, and of the value of 
 whose patronage he must, from long experience, have been so thoroughly 
 aware. 
 
 "We are almost inclined to think that we might at one time have worked 
 ourselves up to suspect Mr Rose of being actuated by some of these motives : 
 not because we have any reason to think worse of that gentleman than of 
 most of his political associates, but merely because it seemed to us so very 
 probable that he should have been so influenced. Our suspicions, however, 
 were entirely removed by the frequency and violence of his own protesta- 
 tions. He vows so solemnly that he has no bad motive in writing his 
 critique, that we find it impossible to withhold our belief in his purity. 
 But Mr Rose does not trust to his protestations alone. He is not satisfied 
 with assurances that he did not write his book from any bad motive, but he 
 informs us that his motive was excellent, and is even obliging enough to 
 tell us what that motive was. The Earl of Marchmont, it seems, was Mr 
 Rose's friend. To Mr Rose he left his manuscripts ; and among these 
 manuscripts was a narrative written by Sir Patrick Hume, an ancestor of 
 the Earl of Marchmont, and one of the leaders in Argyle's rebellion. Of 
 Sir Patrick Hume Mr Rose conceives (a little erroneously to be sure, but 
 he assures us he does conceive) Mr Fox to have spoken disrespectfully ; 
 and the case comes out, therefore, as clearly as possible, as follows. 
 
 Sir Patrick was the progenitor, and Mr Rose was the friend and sole executor, 
 of the Earl of Marchmont ; and therefore, says Mr Rose, I consider it as a 
 sacred duty to vindicate the character of Sir Patrick, and, for that purpose, 
 to publish a long and elaborate critique upon all the doctrines and state- 
 ments contained in Mr Fox's history ! This appears to us about as satis- 
 factory an explanation of Mr Rose's authorship, as the exclamation of the 
 traveller was of the name of Stony Stratford. 
 
 Before Mr Rose gave way to this intense value for Sir Patrick, and re- 
 solved to write a book, he should have inquired what accurate men there 
 were about in society ; and if he had once received the slightest notice of 
 the existence of Mr Samuel Heywood, serjeant-at-law, we are convinced he 
 would have transfused into his own will and testament the feelings he de- 
 rived from that of Lord Marchmont, and devolved upon another executor 
 the sacred and dangerous duty of vindicating Sir Patrick Hume. 
 
 The life of Mr Rose has been principally employed in the painful, yet 
 perhaps necessary, duty of increasing the burdens of his fellow-creatures. 
 It has been a life of detail, onerous to the subject onerous and lucrative to 
 himself. It would be unfair to expect from one thus occupied any great 
 depth of thought, or any remarkable graces of composition ; but we have a 
 fair right to look for habits of patient research and scrupulous accuracy. 
 We might naturally expect industry in collecting facts, and fidelity in quoting 
 them ; and hope, in the absence of commanding genius, to receive a com- 
 pensation from the more humble and ordinary qualities of the mind. Hew 
 far this is the case, our subsequent remarks will enable the reader to judge. 
 We shall not extend them to any great length, as we have before treated 
 on the same subject in our review of Mr Rose's work. Our great object at 
 present is to abridge the observations of Serjeant Heywood. For Serjeant 
 Ileywood, though a most respectable, honest, and enlightened man, really 
 does require an abridger. He has not the talent of saying what he has 
 to say quickly ; nor is he aware that brevity is in writing what charity is to 
 all other virtues. Righteousness is worth nothing without the one, nor 
 authorship without the other. But whoever will forgive this little defect
 
 CHARLES FOX. 233 
 
 will find in all his productions great learning, immaculate honesty, and the 
 most scrupulous accuracy. Whatever detections of Mr Rose's inaccuracies 
 are made in this Review are to be entirely given to him ; and we confess our- 
 selves quite astonished at their number and extent. 
 
 "Among the modes of destroying persons (says Mr Fox, p. 14), in such 
 a situation (i.e. monarchs deposed) there can be little doubt but that adopted 
 by Cromwell and his adherents is the least dishonourable. Edward II., 
 Richard II., Henry VI., Edward V., had none of them long survived their 
 deposal ; but this was the first instance, in our history at least, when of such 
 an act it could be truly said it was not done in a corner." 
 
 What Mr Rose can find in this sentiment to quarrel with, we are utterly 
 at a loss to conceive. If a human being is to be put to death unjustly, is it 
 no mitigation of such a lot that the death should be public ? Is any thing 
 better calculated to prevent secret torture and cruelty ? And would Mr 
 Rose, in mercy to Charles, have preferred that red-hot iron should have 
 been secretly thrust into his entrails? or that he should have disappeared 
 as Pichegru and Toussaint have disappeared in our times ? The periods of 
 the Edwards and Henrys were, it is true, barbarous periods : but this is the 
 very argument Mr Fox uses. All these murders, he contends, were immoral 
 and bad ; but that where the manner was the least objectionable, was the 
 murder of Charles the First because it was public. And can any human 
 being doubt, in the first place, that these crimes would be marked by less 
 intense cruelty if they were public, and, secondly, that they would become 
 less frequent, where the perpetrators incurred responsibility, than if they 
 were committed by an uncertain hand in secresy and concealment? There 
 never was, in short, not only a more innocent, but a more obvious senti- 
 ment ; and to object to it in the manner which Mr Rose has done, is surely 
 to love Sir Patrick Hume too much, if there can be any excess in so very 
 commendable a passion in the breast of a sole executor. 
 
 Mr Fox proceeds to observe, that " he who has discussed this subject with 
 foreigners, must have observed, that the act of the execution of Charles, 
 even in the minds of tho.se who condemn it, excites more admiration than 
 disgust." If the sentiment is bad, let those who feel it answer for it. Mr 
 Fox only asserts the fact, and explains without justifying it. The only 
 question (as concerns Mr Fox) is, whether such is, or is not, the feeling of 
 foreigners ; and whether that feeling (if it exist) is rightly explained ? We 
 have no doubt either of the fact or of the explanation. The conduct of 
 Cromwell and his associates, was not to be excused in the main act ; but, in 
 the manner, it was magnanimous. And among the servile nations of the 
 Continent, it must naturally excite a feeling of joy and wonder, that the 
 power of the people had for once been felt, and so memorable a lesson 
 read to those whom they must naturally consider as the great oppressors of 
 mankind. 
 
 The most unjustifiable point of Mr Rose's accusation, however, is still to 
 come. " If such high praise," says that gentleman, " was, in the judgment 
 of Mr Fox, due to Cromwell for the publicity of the proceedings against the 
 King, how would he have found language sufficiently commendatory to ex- 
 press his admiration of the magnanimity of those who brought Lewis the 
 Sixteenth to an open trial?" Mr Rose accuses Mr Fox, then, of approving 
 the execution of Lewis the Sixteenth: but, on the 2Oth December, 1792, 
 Mr Fox said, in the House of Commons, in the presence of Mr Rose, 
 
 " The proceedings with respect to the royal family of France are so far 
 from being magnanimity, justice, or mercy, that they are directly tho
 
 234 CHARLES FOX. 
 
 reverse ; they are injustice, cruelty, and pusillanimity." And afterwards 
 declared his wish for an address to his Majesty, to which he would add an 
 expression " of our abhorrence of the proceedings against the royal family 
 of France, in which, I have no doubt, we shall be supported by the whole 
 country. If there can be any means suggested that will be better adapted 
 to produce the unanimous concurrence of this House, and of all the country, 
 with respect to the measure now under consideration in Paris, I should be 
 obliged to any person for his better suggestion upon the subject" Then, 
 after stating that such address, especially if the Lords joined in it, must 
 have a decisive influence in France, he added, " I have said thus much in 
 order to contradict one of the most cruel misrepresentations of what I have 
 before said in our late debates ; and that my language may not be interpreted 
 from the manner hi which other gentlemen have chosen to answer it. I 
 have spoken the genuine sentiments of my heart, and I anxiously wish the 
 House to come to some resolution upon the subject.' And on the following 
 day, when a copy of instructions sent to Earl Gower, signifying that he 
 should leave Paris, was laid before the House of Commons, Mr Fox said 
 "he had heard it said, that the proceedings against the King of France are 
 unnecessary. He would go a great deal further, and say, he believed them 
 to be highly unjust ; and not only repugnant to all the common feelings of 
 mankind, but also contrary to all the fundamental principles of law." (pp. 
 2O, 21.) 
 
 On Monday, the 28th January, he said, 
 
 " With regard to that part of the communication from his Majesty, 
 which related to the late detestable scene exhibited in a neighbouring coun- 
 try, he could not suppose there were two opinions in their House ; he knew 
 they were all ready to declare that abhorrence of that abominable proceed- 
 ing." (p. 21.) 
 
 Two days afterwards, in the debate on the message, Mr Fox pronounced 
 the condemnation and execution of the King to be 
 
 "an act as disgraceful as any that history recorded : and whatever 
 opinions he might at any time have expressed in private conversation, he 
 had expressed none certainly in that House on the justice of bringing kings 
 to trial : revenge being unjustifiable, and punishment useless, where it could 
 not operate either by way of prevention or example ; he did not view with 
 less detestation the injustice and inhumanity that had been committed to- 
 wards that unhappy monarch. Not only were the rules of criminal justice 
 rules that more than any other ought to be strictly observed violated 
 with respect to him ; not only was he tried and condemned without any 
 existing law, to which he was personally amenable, and even contrary to 
 laws that did actually exist, but the degrading circumstances of his impri- 
 sonment, the unnecessary and insulting asperity with which he had been 
 treated, the total want of republican magnanimity in tJie whole transaction 
 (for even in that House it could be no offence to say that there might be 
 such a thing as magnanimity in a republic), added every aggravation to the 
 inhumanity and injustice." 
 
 That Mr Fox had held this language in the House of Commons, Mr 
 Rose knew perfectly well, when he accused that gentleman of approving 
 the murder of the King of France. Whatever be the faults imputed to 
 Mr Fox, duplicity and hypocrisy were never among the number ; and no 
 human being ever doubted but that Mr Fox, in this instance, spoke his 
 real sentiments : but the love of Sir Patrick Hume is an overwhelming
 
 CHARLES FOX. 235 
 
 passion ; and no man who gives way to it can ever say into what excesses 
 he may be hurried. 
 
 Non sinful cuiqvam conceditur, amare et saperf. 
 
 The next point upon which Serjeant Heywood attacks Mr Rose, is that 
 of General Monk. Mr Fox says of Monk, " that he acquiesced in the 
 insult so meanly put upon the illustrious corpse of Blake, under whose 
 Auspices and command he had performed the most creditable services of 
 pis life." This story, Mr Rose says, rests upon the authority of Neale, in 
 his History of the Puritans. This is the first of many blunders made by 
 Mr Rose upon this particular topic : for Anthony Wood, in his Fasti 
 Oxonienses, enumerating Blake among the bachelors, says, " His body 
 was taken up, and, with others, buried in a pit in St Margaret's churchyard 
 adjoining, near to the back door of one of the prebendaries of Westminster, 
 in which place it now remaineth, enjoying no other monument but what is 
 reared by its valour, which time itself can hardly efface." But the difficulty 
 is to find how the denial of Mr Rose affects Mr Fox's assertion. Mr Rose 
 admits that Blake's body was dug up by an order of the King, and does 
 not deny that it was done with the acquiescence of Monk. But if this 
 be the case, Mr Fox's position, that Blake was insulted, and that Monk 
 acquiesced in the insult, is clearly made out. Nor has Mr Rose the shadow 
 of an authority for saying that the corpse of Blake was reinterred with great 
 decorum. Kennet is silent upon the subject. We have already given 
 Serjeant Heywood's quotation from Anthony Wood ; and this statement, 
 for the present, rests entirely upon the assertion of Mr Rose ; and upon 
 that basis will remain to all eternity. 
 
 Mr Rose, who, we must say, on all occasions through the whole of this 
 book, makes the greatest parade of his accuracy, states, that the bodies of 
 Cromwell, Ireton, and Blake, were taken up at the same time ; whereas 
 the fact is, that those of Cromwell and Ireton were taken up on the a6th of 
 January, and that of Blake on the roth of September, nearly nine months 
 afterwards. It may appear frivolous to notice such errors as these ; but 
 they lead to very strong suspicions in a critic of history and of historians. 
 They show that those habits of punctuality, on the faith of which he de- 
 mands implicit confidence from his readers, really do not exist ; they prove 
 that such a writer will be exact only when he thinks the occasion of im- 
 portance ; and, as he himself is the only judge of that importance, it is 
 necessary to examine his proofs in every instance, and impossible to trust 
 him anywhere. 
 
 Mr Rose remarks, that, in the weekly paper entitled Mercurius Rusticus, 
 No. 4., where an account is given of the disinterment of Cromwell and 
 Ireton, not a syllable is said respecting the corpse of Blake. This is very 
 true ; but the reason (which does not seem to have occurred to Mr Rose) 
 is, that Blake's corpse was not touched till six months afterwards. This is 
 really a little too much. That Mr Rose should quit his usual pursuits, 
 erect himself into an historical critic, perch upon the body of the dead lion, 
 impugn the accuracy of one of the greatest, as well as most accurate men of 
 his time, and himself be guilty of such gross and unpardonable negligence, 
 looks so very much like an insensibility to shame, that we should be loth to 
 characterize his conduct by the severe epithets which it appears to merit, 
 and which, we are quite certain Sir Patrick, the defendee, would have been 
 the first to bestow upon it. 
 
 The next passage in Mr Fox's work, objected to, is that which charges 
 Monk, at the trial of Argyle, ' ' with having produced letters of friendship 
 and confidence to take away the life of a nobleman, the zeal and cordiality
 
 236 CHARLES FOX. 
 
 of whose co-operation with him, proved by such documents, was the chief 
 ground of his execution." This accusation, says Mr Rose, rests upon the 
 sole authority of Bishop Burnet ; and yet no sooner has he said this, than 
 he tells us, Mr Laing considers the bishop's authority to be confirmed hy 
 Cunningham and Baillie, both contemporary writers. Into Cunningham 
 or Baillie, Mr Rose never looks to see whether or not they do really confirm 
 the authority of the bishop ; and so gross is his negligence, that the very 
 misprint from Mr Laing's work is copied, and page 431 of Baillie is cited, 
 instead of 451. If Mr Rose had really taken the trouble of referring to 
 these books, all doubt of the meanness and guilt of Monk must have been 
 instantly removed. " Monk was moved," says Baillie, "to send down four 
 or five of Argylfs letters to himself and others, promising his full compliance 
 wit A them, that the King should not reprieve him." (Baillie's Letters, p. 
 451.) " He endeavoured to make his defence," says Cunningham; "fat, 
 chiefly by the discoveries of Monk, was condemned of high treason, and lost 
 his head." Cunningham's History, i. p. 13. 
 
 Would it have been more than common decency required, if Mr Rose, 
 who had been apprised of the existence of these authorities, had had recourse 
 to them, before he impugned the accuracy of Mr Fox? Or is it possible to 
 read, without some portion of contempt, this slovenly and indolent corrector 
 of supposed inaccuracies in a man, not only so much greater than himself 
 in his general nature, but a man who, as it turns out, excels Mr Rose in his 
 own little arts of looking, searching, and comparing ; and is as much his 
 superior in the retail qualities which small people arrogate to themselves, 
 as he was in every commanding faculty to the rest of his fellow-creatures ? 
 
 Mr Rose searches Thurloe's State Papers ; but Serjeant Heywood 
 searches them after Mr Rose : and, by a series of the plainest references, 
 proves the probability there is that Argyle did receive letters which might 
 materially have affected his life. 
 
 To Monk's duplicity of conduct may be principally attributed the de- 
 struction of his friends, who were prevented, by their confidence in him, 
 from taking measures to secure themselves. He selected those among 
 them whom he thought fit for trial sat as a commissioner upon their trial 
 and interfered not to save the lives even of those with whom he had lived 
 in habits of the greatest kindness. 
 
 "I cannot," says a witness of the most unquestionable authority, "I 
 cannot forget one passage that I saw. Monk and his wife, before they were 
 removed to the Tower, while they were yet prisoners at Lambeth House, 
 came one evening to the garden, and caused them to be brought down, 
 only to stare at them ; which was such a barbarism, for that man who had 
 betrayed so many poor men to death and misery, that never hurt him, but 
 had honoured him, and trusted their lives and interests with him, to glut 
 his bloody eyes with beholding them in their bondage, as no story can 
 parallel the inhumanity of." (p. 83.) Ilutchinson's Memoirs, 378. 
 
 This, however, is the man whom Mr Fox, at the distance of a century 
 and a half, may not mark with infamy, without incurring, from the candour 
 of Mr Rose, the imputation of republican principles ; as if attachment to 
 monarchy could have justified, in Monk, the coldness, cruelty, and treachery 
 of his character, as if the historian became the advocate or the enemy of 
 any form of government, by praising the good, or blaming the bad men 
 which it might produce. Serjeant Heywood sums up the whole article ns 
 follows : 
 
 "Having examined and commented upon the evidence produced by Mr
 
 CHARLES FOX. 2 J7 
 
 Rose, than winch 'it is hardly possible,' he says, 'to conceive that 
 stranger could be formed in any case, to establish a negative,' we now 
 safely assert, that Mr Fox had fully informed himself upon the subject 
 before he wrote, and was amply justified in the condemnation of Monk, and 
 the consequent severe censures upon him. It has been already demonstrated, 
 that the character of Monk had been truly given, when of him he said, 'the 
 army had fallen into the hands of one, than whom a baser could not be 
 found in its lowest ranks.' The transactions between him and Argyle for 
 a certain period of time, were such as must naturally, if not necessaiiiy, 
 have led them into an epistolary correspondence ; and it was in exact con- 
 formity with Monk's character and conduct to the regicides, that he should 
 betray the letters written to him, in order to destroy a man whom he had, 
 in the latter part of his command in Scotland, both feared and hated. If 
 the fact of the production of these letters had stood merely on the testimony 
 of Bishop Burnet, we have seen that nothing has been produced by Mi- 
 Rose and Dr Campbell to impeach it ; on the contrary, an inquiry into the 
 authorities and documents they have cited strongly confirm it. But, as 
 before observed, it is a surprising instance of Mr Ruse's indolence, that he 
 should state the question to depend now, as it did in Dr Campbell's time, 
 on the bishop's authority solely. But that authority is, in itself, no light 
 one. Burnet was almost eighteen years of age at the time of Argyle's trial ; 
 he was never an unobserving spectator of public events ; he was probably 
 at Edinburgh, and, for some years afterwards, remained in Scotland, with 
 ample means of information respecting events which had taken place so 
 recently. Baillie seems also to have been upon the spot, and expressly 
 confirms the testimony of Burnet. To these must be added Cunningham, 
 who, writing as a person perfectly acquainted with the circumstances of the 
 transaction, says it was owing to the interference of Monk, who had been 
 his great friend in Oliver's time, that he was sent back to Scotland, and 
 brought to trial; and that he was condemned chiefly by his discovoiics. 
 We may now ask where is the improbability of this story, when related 
 of such a man ? and what ground there is for not giving credit to a fact 
 attested by three witnesses of veracity, each writing at a distance, and 
 separate from each other? In this instance Bishop Burnet is so confirmed, 
 that no reasonable being, who will attend to the subject, can doubt of the 
 fact he relates being true ; and we shall hereafter prove, that the general 
 imputation against his accuracy, made by Mr Rose, is totally without founda- 
 tion. If facts so proved are not to be credited, historians may lay aside 
 their pens, and every man must content himself with the scanty pittance of 
 knowledge he may be able to collect for himself, in the very limited sphere 
 of his own immediate observation." (pp. 86 88.) 
 
 This, we think, is conclusive enough : but we are happy to be enabled, out 
 of our own store, to set this part of the question finally to rest, by an authority 
 which Mr Rose himself will probably admit to be decisive. Sir George 
 Mackenzie, the great Tory lawyer of Scotland in that day, and Lord 
 Advocate to Charles II., through the greater part of his reign, was the 
 leading counsel for Argyle on the trial alluded to. In 1678, this learned 
 person, who was then Lord Advocate to Charles, published an elaborate 
 treatise on the criminal law of Scotland, in which, when treating of Proba- 
 tion, or Evidence, he observes, that missive letters, not written, but only 
 signed by the party, should not be received in evidence ; and immediately 
 adds, "And yet, The Marquess of Argyle was convict of treason, UPON 
 LETTERS WRITTEN BY HIM TO GENERAL MONK ; these letters being only 
 subscribed by him, and not holograph, and the subscription being proved
 
 233 CHARLES FOX. 
 
 per comparatiotiem literarwn ; which were very hard in other cases," c. 
 (Mackenzie's Criminals, first edit. p. 524. Part II. tit. 25. 3.) Now this, 
 we conceive, is nothing more nor less than a solemn professional report of 
 the case, and leaves just as little room for doubt as to the fact, as if the 
 original record of the trial had been recovered. 
 
 Mr Rose next objects to Mr Fox's assertion, that ' ' the King kept from 
 his Cabal Ministry the real state of his connection with France and from 
 some of them the secret of what he was pleased to call his religion ; " and 
 Mr Fox doubts whether to attribute this conduct to the habitual treachery 
 of Charles, or to an apprehension, that his ministers might demand for 
 themselves some share of the French money ; which he was unwilling to 
 give them. In answer to this conjecture, Mr Rose quotes Barillon's Letters 
 to Lewis XIV. to show that Charles's ministers were fully apprised of his 
 money transactions with France. The letters so quoted were, however, 
 written seven years after the Cabal Ministry lucre in power for Barillon did 
 not come to England as ambassador till 1677 and these letters were not 
 written till after that period. Poor Sir Patrick It was for thee and thy 
 defence this book was written ! !! ! 
 
 Mr Fox has said, that from some of the ministers of the Cabal the secret 
 of Charles's religion was concealed. It was known to Arlington, admitted 
 by Mr Rose to be a concealed Catholic ; it was known to Clifford, an avowed 
 Catholic : Mr Rose admits it not to have been known to Buckingham, 
 though he explains the reserve, with respect to him, in a different way. He 
 has not, however, attempted to prove that Lauderdale or Ashley were con- 
 sulted ; on the contrary, in Colbert's Letter of the 25th August, 1670, cited 
 by Mr Rose, it is stated that Charles had proposed the traitt simutt, which 
 should be a repetition of the former one in all things, except the article 
 relative to the King's declaring himself a Catholic, and that the Protestant 
 Ministers, Buckingham, Ashley, Cooper, and Lauderdale, should be brought 
 to be parties to it . ' ' Can there be a stronger proof (asks Serjeant Heywood), 
 that they were ignorant of the same treaty made the year before, and re- 
 maining then in force?" Historical research is certainly not the peculiar 
 talent of Mr Rose ; and as for the official accuracy of which he is so apt to 
 boast, we would have Mr Rose to remember, that the term official accuracy 
 has of late days become one of very ambiguous import. Mr Rose, we can 
 see, would imply by it the highest possible accuracy as we see office fens 
 advertised in the window of a shop, by way of excellence. The public 
 reports of those, however, who have been appointed to look into the manner 
 in which public offices are conducted, by no means justify this usage of the 
 term ; and we are not without apprehensions, that Dutch politeness, 
 Carthaginian faith, Boeotian genius, and official accuracy, may be terms 
 equally current in the world ; and that Mr Rose may, without intending it, 
 have contributed to make this valuable addition to the mass of our ironical 
 phraseology. 
 
 Speaking of the early part of James's reign, Mr Fox says, it is by no 
 means certain that he had yet thoughts of obtaining for his religion any thing 
 more than a complete toleration ; and if Mr Rose had understood the 
 meaning of the French word elablissement, one of his many incorrect correc- 
 tions of Mr Fox might have been spared. A system of religion is said to be 
 established when it is enacted and endowed by Parliament ; but a toleration 
 (as Serjeant Heywood observes) is established when it is recognised and 
 protected by the supreme power. And hi the letters of Barillon, to which 
 Mr Rose refers for the justification of his attack upon Mr Fox, it is quite 
 manifest that it is in this latter sense that the word itablissement is used ; 
 and that the object in view was, not the substitution of the Catholic religion
 
 CHARLES FOX. 
 
 239 
 
 for the Established Church, but merely its toleration. In the first letter 
 cited by Mr Rose, James says, that "he knew well he should never be in 
 safety unless liberty of conscience for them should be fully established in 
 England." The letter of the 24th of April is quoted by Mr Rose, as if the 
 French King had written, the establishment of the Catholic religion ; whereas 
 the real words are, the establishment of the free exercise of the Catholic religion, 
 The world are so inveterately resolved to believe that a man who has no 
 brilliant talents must be accurate, that Mr Rose, in referring to authorities, has 
 a great and decided advantage. He is, however, in point of fact, as lax and 
 incorrect as a poet ; and it is absolutely necessary, in spite of every parade 
 of line, and page, and number, to follow him hi the most minute particular. 
 The Serjeant, like a bloodhound of the old breed, is always upon his track ; 
 and always looks if there are any such passages in the page quoted, and if 
 the passages are accurately quoted or accurately translated. Nor will he 
 by any means be content with official accuracy, nor submit to be treated, in 
 historical questions, as if he were hearing financial statements in the House 
 of Commons. 
 
 Barillon writes, in another letter to Lewis XIV. "What your Majesty 
 has most besides at heart, that is to say, for the establishment of a free 
 exercise of the Catholic religion." On the gth of May Lewis writes to 
 Barillon, that he is persuaded Charles will employ all his authority to 
 establish the free exercise of the Catholic religion : he mentions also, in the 
 same letter, the Parliament consenting to the free exercise of our religion. 
 On the I $th of June, he writes to Barillon "There now remains only to 
 obtain the repeal of the penal laws in favour of the Catholics, and the free 
 exercise of our religion in all his states." Immediately after Monmouth's 
 execution, when his views of success must have been as lofty as they ever 
 could have been, Lewis writes " It will be easy to the King of England, 
 and as useful for the security of his reign as for the repose of his conscience, 
 to re-establish the exercise of the Catholic religion." In a letter of Barillon, 
 July i6th, Sunderland is made to say, that the King would always be ex- 
 posed to the indiscreet zeal of those who would inflame the people against 
 the Catholic religion, so long as it sJwuld not be more fully established. The 
 French expression is tant qrfclle ne sera pas plus pleinement etablie ; and 
 this Mr Rose has had the modesty to translate, till it shall be completely 
 established, and to mark the passage with italics, as of the greatest import- 
 ance to his argument. These false quotations and translations being de- 
 tected, and those passages of early writers, from which Mr Fox had made 
 up his opinion, brought to light, it is not possible to doubt, but that the 
 object of James, before Monmouth's defeat, was, not the destruction of the 
 Protestant, but the toleration of the Catholic, religion ; and, after the 
 execution of Monmouth, Mr Fox admits, that he became more bold and 
 sanguine upon the subject of religion. 
 
 We do not consider those observations of Serjeant Heywood to be the 
 most fortunate in his book, where he attempts to show the republican ten- 
 dency of Mr Rose's principles. Of any disposition to principles of this 
 nature, we most heartily acquit that right honourable gentleman. He has 
 too much knowledge of mankind to believe their happiness can be pro- 
 moted in the stormy and tempestuous regions of republicanism ; and, 
 besides this, that system of slender pay, and deficient perquisites, to which 
 the subordinate agents of Government are confined hi republics, is much 
 too painful to be thought of for a single instant. 
 
 We are afraid of becoming tedious by the enumeration of blunders into 
 which Mr Rose has fallen, and which Serjeant Heywood has detected. 
 But the burthen of this sole excecutor's song is accuracy his own official
 
 240 CHARLES FOX. 
 
 accuracy and the little dependence which is to be placed on the accuracy 
 of Mr Fox. We will venture to assert, that, in the whole of his work, he 
 has not detected Mr Fox in one single error. Whether Serjeant Heywood 
 has been more fortunate with respect to Mr Rose, might be determined, 
 perhaps, with sufficient certainty, by our previous extracts from his re- 
 marks. But for some indulgent readers, these may not seem enough : and 
 we must proceed in the task, till we have settled Mr Rose's pretensions to 
 accuracy on a still firmer foundation. And if we be thought minutely 
 severe, let it be remembered that Mr Rose is himself an accuser ; and if 
 there be justice upon earth, every man has a right to pull stolen goods out 
 of the pocket of him who cries, "Stop thief)" 
 
 In the story which Mr Rose states of the seat in Parliament sold for five 
 pounds (Journal of the Commons, vol. v.), he is wrong, both in the sum 
 and the volume. The sum is four pounds ; and it is told, not in the fifth 
 volume, but the first. Mr Rose states, that a perpetual excise was granted 
 to the Crown, in lieu of the profits of the Court of \Yards ; and adds, that 
 the question in favour of the Crown was carried by a majority of two. 
 The real fact is, that the half only of an excise upon certain articles was 
 granted to Government in lieu of these profits ; and this grant was carried 
 without a division . An attempt was made to grant the other half, and this 
 was negatived by a majority of two. The Journals are open ; Mr Rose 
 reads them ; he is officially accurate. What can the meaning be of these 
 most extraordinary mistakes ? 
 
 Mr Rose says, that, in 1679, ^ ie writ de haretico comburendo had been a 
 dead letter for more than a century. It would have been extremely agree- 
 able to Mr Bartholomew Legate, if this had been the case ; for, in 1612, 
 he was burnt at Smithfield for being an Arian. Mr Wightman would prob- 
 ably have participated in the satisfaction of Mr Legate ; as he was burnt 
 also, the same year, at Lichfield, for the same offence. With the same 
 correctness, this scourge of historians makes the Duke of Lauderdale, who 
 died in 1682, a confidential adviser of James II. after his accession in 1689. 
 In page 13 he quotes, as written by Mr Fox, that which was written by 
 Lord Holland. This, however, is a familiar practice with him , Ten pages 
 afterwards, in Mr Fox's history, he makes the same mistake. " Mr Fox 
 added," whereas it was Lord Holland that added. The same mistake 
 again in p. 147 of his own book ; and after this, he makes Mr Fox the 
 person who selected the Appendix to Barillon's papers ; whereas it is par- 
 ticularly stated in the Preface to the History, that this Appendix was 
 selected by Mr Laing. 
 
 Mr Rose affirms, that compassing to levy war against the king was made 
 high treason by the statute of 25 Edward III. ; and, in support of this affir- 
 mation, he cites Coke and Blackstone. His stern antagonist, a professional 
 man, is convinced he has read neither. The former says, "a compassing to 
 Ifvy war is no treason" (Inst. 3, p. 9) ; and Blackstone, "a bare conspiracy 
 to levy war does not amount to this species of treason." (Com. iv. p. 82.) 
 This really does look as if the Serjeant had made out his assertion. 
 
 Of the bill introduced in 1685 for the preservation of the person of James 
 II., Mr Rose observes "Mr Fox has not told us for which of our modem 
 sta'.utes this bill was used as a model ; and it will be difficult for any one 
 to show such an instance." It might have been thought, that no prudent 
 man would have made such a challenge, without a tolerable certainty of the 
 ground upon which it was made. Serjeant Heywood answers the challenge 
 by citing the 36 Geo. III. c. 7, which is a mere copy of the act of James. 
 
 In the fifth section of Mr Rose's work is contained his grand attack upon 
 Mr Fox for his abuse of Sir Patrick Hume ; and his observations upon this
 
 CHARLES FOX. 
 
 241 
 
 point admit of a fourfold answer. 1st, Mr Fox does not use the words 
 quoted by Mr Rose ; 2dly, He makes no mention whatever of Sir Patrick 
 Hume hi the passage cited by Mr Rose ; 3clly, Sir Patrick Hume is attacked 
 by nobody in that history ; 4thly, If he had been so attacked, he would 
 have deserved it. The passage from Mr Fox is this : 
 
 "In recounting the failure of his expedition, it is impossible for him not 
 to touch upon what he deemed the misconduct of his friends ; and this is the 
 subject upon which, of all others, his temper must have been most irritable. 
 A certain description of friends (the words describing them are omitted) 
 were all of them, without exception, his greatest enemies, both to betray 
 
 and destroy him ; and and (the names again omitted) were the 
 
 greatest cause of his rout, and his being taken, though not designedly, he 
 acknowledges, but by ignorance, cowardice, and faction. This sentence 
 had scarce escaped him, when, notwithstanding the qualifying words with 
 which his candour had acquitted the last-mentioned persons of intentional 
 treachery, it appeared too harsh to his gentle nature ; and, declaring him- 
 self displeased with the hard epithets he had used, he desires that they may 
 be put out of any account that is to be given of these transactions." Hey- 
 -i'ood, pp. 365, 366. 
 
 Argyle names neither the description of friends who were his greatest 
 enemies, nor the two individuals who were the principal cause of the failure 
 of his scheme. Mr Fox leaves the blanks as he finds them. But two notes 
 are added by the editor, which Mr Rose might have observed are marked 
 with an E. In the latter of them we are told, that Mr Fox observes, in a 
 private letter, "Cochrane and Hume certainly filled up the two principal 
 blanks." But is this communication of a private letter any part of Mr 
 Fox's history ? And would it not have been equally fair in Mr Rose to 
 have commented upon any private conversation of Mr Fox, and then to 
 have called it his history? Or, if Mr Fox had filled up the blanks in the 
 body of his history, does it follow that he adopts Argyle's censure, because 
 he shows against whom it is levelled ? Mr Rose has described the charge 
 against Sir Patrick Hume to be, of faction, cowardice, and treachery. Mr 
 Rose has more than once altered the terms of a proposition before he has 
 proceeded to answer it ; and, in this instance, the charge of treachery 
 against Sir Patrick Hume is not made either in Argyle's letter, Mr Fox's 
 text, or the editor's note, or any where but in the imagination of Mr Rose. 
 The sum of it all is, that Mr Rose first supposes the relation of Argyle's 
 opinion to be the expression of the relator"s opinion, that Mr Fox adopts 
 Argyle's insinuations because he explains them ; then he looks upon 
 a quotation from a private letter, made by the editor, to be the same as 
 if included in a work intended for publication by the author; then he 
 remembers that he is the sole executor of Sir Patrick's grandson, whose 
 blank is so filled up ; and goes on blundering and blubbering grateful 
 and inaccurate teeming with false quotations and friendly recollections to 
 the conclusion of his book. Multa gemens ignominiam. 
 
 Mr Rose came into possession of the Earl of Marchmont's papers, con- 
 taining, among other things, the narrative of Sir Patrick Hume. He is 
 very severe upon Mr Fox, for not having been more diligent in searching for 
 original papers ; and observes that, if any application had been made to 
 him (Mr Rose), this narrative should have been at Mr Fox's service. We 
 should be glad to know, if Mr Rose saw a person tumbled into a ditch, 
 whether he would wait for a regular application till he pulled him out ? 
 Or, if he happened to espy the lost piece of silver for which the good 
 woman was diligently sweeping the house, would he wait for formal inter. 
 
 Q
 
 242 CHARLES FOX. 
 
 rogation before he imparted his discovery, and suffer the lady to sweep on 
 till the question had been put to him in the most solemn forms of polite- 
 ness ? The established practice, we admit, is to apply, and to apply vigor- 
 ously and incessantly, for sinecure places and pensions or they cannot be 
 had. This is true enough. But did any human being ever think of carry- 
 ing this practice into literature, and compelling another to make interest for 
 papers essential to the good conduct of his undertaking ? We are perfectly 
 astonished at Mr Rose's conduct in this particular ; and should have thought 
 that the ordinary exercise of his good -nature would have led him to a very 
 different way of acting. 
 
 " On the whole, and upon the most attentive consideration of erery thing 
 which has been -written upon the subject, there does not appear to have been 
 any intention of applying torture in the case of the Earl of Argyle." (Rose, 
 p. 182.) If this every thing\aA included the following extract from Baril- 
 lon, the above cited, and very disgraceful, inaccuracy of Mr Rose would 
 have been spared. " The Earl of Argyle has been executed at Edinburgh, 
 and has left a full confession in writing, in which he discovers all those who 
 have assisted him with money, and have aided his designs. This //< 
 him from the terture." And Argyle, in his letter to Mrs Smith, confesses 
 he has made discoveries. In his very inaccurate history of torture in the 
 southern part of this island, Mr Rose says, that except in the case of Felton, 
 in the attempt to Introduce the civil law in Hen. VI.'s reign, and in 
 some cases of treason in Mary's reign, torture was never attempted in this 
 country. The fact, however, is, that in the reign of Henry VIII. Anne 
 Askew was tortured by the chancellor himself. Simson was tortured in 
 1558 ; Francis Throgmorton in 1571 ; Charles Baillie, and Banastie, the Duke 
 of Norfolk's servant, were tortured in 1581 ; Campier, the Jesuit, was put 
 upon the rack ; and Dr Astlow is supposed to have been racked in 1558. So 
 much for Mr Rose as the historian of punishments. We have seen him, a 
 few pages before, at the stake, where he makes quite as bad a figure as he 
 does now upon the rack. Precipitation and error are his foibles. If he 
 were to write the histoiy of sieges, he would forget the siege of Troy ; if 
 he were making a list of poets, he would leave out Virgil : Caesar would 
 not appear in his catalogue of generals ; and Newton would be overlooked 
 in his collection of eminent mathematicians. 
 
 In some cases, Mr Rose is to be met only with flat denial. Mr Fox does 
 not call the soldiers who were defending James gainst Argyle authorised 
 assassins ; but he uses that expression Against the soldiers who were mur- 
 dering the peasants, and committing every sort of licentious cruelty in the 
 twelve counties given up to military execution ; and this Mr Rose must 
 have known, by using the most ordinary diligence in the perusal of the 
 text and would have known it in any other history than that of Mr Fox. 
 
 "Mr Rose, in his concluding paragraph, boasts o.' his speaking 'imper- 
 sonally,' and he hopes it will be allowed justly, when he makes a general 
 observation respecting the proper province of history. But the last sen- 
 tence evidently shows that, though he might be speaking justly, he was not 
 speaking impersonally, if by that word is meant, without reference to any 
 person. His words are, ' But history cannot connect itself with party, 
 without forfeiting its name ; without departing from the truth, the d 
 and the usefulness of its functions.' After the remarks he has made in 
 some of his preceding pages, and the apology he has offered for Mr Fox, 
 in his last preceding paragraph, for having been mistaken in his view of 
 some leading points, there can be no difficulty in concluding, that this gen- 
 eral observation is meant to be applied to the historical work. The charge
 
 CHARLES FOX. r ;3 
 
 intended to be insinuated must be, that, in Mr Fox's hands, history has 
 forfeited the name by being connected with party ; and has departed from 
 the truth, the dignity, and the usefulness of its functions. It were to be 
 wished that Mr Rose had explained himself more fully ; for, after assuming 
 that the application of this observation is too obvious to be mistaken, 
 there still remains some difficulty with respect to its meaning. If it be con- 
 fined to such publications as are written under the title of histories, but 
 are intended to serve the purposes of a party ; and truth is sacrificed, and 
 facts perverted, to defend and give currency to their tenets, we do not dis- 
 pute its propriety ; but if that be the character which Mr Rose would give 
 to Mr Fox's labours, he has not treated him with candour, or even common 
 justice. Mr Rose has never, in any one instance, intimated that Mr Fox 
 has wilfully departed from truth, or strayed from the proper province of 
 history, for the purpose of indulging his private or party feelings. But, if 
 Mr Rose intends that the observation should be applied to all histories, the 
 authors of which have felt strongly the influence of political connections 
 and principles, what must become of most of the histories of England ? Is 
 the title of historian to be denied to Mr Hume ? and in what class are to be 
 placed Echard, Kennet, Rapin, Dalrymple, or Macpherson ? In this point 
 of view the principle laid down is too broad. A person, though connected 
 with party, may write an impartial history of events which occurred a cen- 
 tury before ; and, till this last sentence, Mr Rose has not ventured to inti- 
 mate that Mr Fox has not done so. On the contrary, he has declared his 
 approbation of a great portion of the work ; and his attempts to discover 
 material errors in the remainder have uniformly failed in every particular. 
 If it might be assumed that there existed in the book no faults, besides those 
 which the scrutinising eye of Mr Rose has discovered, it might be justly 
 deemed the most perfect work that ever came from the press ; for not a 
 single deviation from the strictest duty of an historian has been pointed 
 out ; while instances of candour and impartiality present themselves in 
 almost every page ; and Mr Rose himself has acknowledged and applauded 
 many of them." (pp. 422 424.) 
 
 These extracts from both books are sufficient to show the nature of 
 Serjeant Hey wood's examination of Mr Rose the boldness of this latter 
 gentleman's assertions and the extreme inaccuracy of the researches upon 
 which these assertions are founded. If any credit could be gained from 
 such a book as Mr Rose has published, it could be gained from accuracy 
 alone. Whatever the execution of his book had been, the world would 
 have remembered the infinite disparity of the two authors, and the long 
 political opposition in which they lived if that, indeed, can be called oppo- 
 sition where the thunderbolt strikes, and the clay yields. They would 
 have remembered also that Hector was dead ; and that every cowardly 
 Grecian could now thrust his spear into the hero's body. But still, if Mr 
 Rose had really succeeded in exposing the inaccuracy of Mr Fox if he 
 could have fairly shown that authorities were overlooked, or slightly ex- 
 amined, or wilfully perverted the incipient feelings to which such a con- 
 troversy had given birth must have yielded to the evidence of facts ; and 
 Mr Fox, however qualified in other particulars, must have appeared totally 
 defective in that laborious industry and scrupulous good faith so indis- 
 pensable to every historian. But he absolutely comes out of the contest not 
 worse even in a single tooth or nail unvilified even by a wrong date 
 without one misnomer proved upon him immaculate in his years and days 
 of the month blameless to the most musty and limited pedant that ever 
 yellowed himself amidst rolls and records.
 
 244 BISHOP OF LINCOLN'S CHARGE. 
 
 But how fares it with his critic ? He rests his credit with the world as a 
 man of labour and he turns out to be a careless inspector of proofs, and 
 an historical sloven. The species of talent which he pretends to is humble 
 and he possesses it not. He has not done that which all men may do, 
 and which every man ought to do, who rebukes his superiors for not doing 
 it His claims, too, it should be remembered, to these everyday qualities 
 are by no means enforced with gentleness and humility. He is a bragga- 
 docio of minuteness a swaggering chronologer ; a man bristling up with 
 small facts prurient with dates wantoning in obsolete evidence loftily 
 dull, and haughty in his dnidgery ; and yet all this is pretence. Drawing 
 is no very unusual power in animals; but he cannot draw: he is not 
 even the ox which he is so fond of being. In attempting to vilify Mr Fox, 
 he has only shown us that there was no labour from which that great man 
 shrunk, and that no object connected with his history was too minute for his 
 investigation. He has thoroughly convinced us that Mr Fox was as indus- 
 trious, and as accurate, as if these were the only qualities upon which he 
 had ever rested his hope of fortune or of fame. Such, indeed, are the 
 customary results when little people sit down to debase the characters of 
 great men, and to exalt themselves upon the ruins of what they have pulled 
 down. They only provoke a spirit of inquiry, which places every thing in 
 its true light and magnitude shows those who appear little to be still less, 
 and displays new and unexpected excellence in others who were before 
 known to excel. These are the usual consequences of such attacks. The 
 fame of Mr Fox has stood this, and will stand much ruder shocks. 
 
 Non hientes illain, iionflabra ncqite imlres 
 Convellunt; imvtota manet, multosque per annos 
 Mtilta virflw volvens durando stecula vincit. 
 
 BISHOP OF LINCOLN'S CHARGE.* (E. REVIEW, 1813.) 
 
 A Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Lincoln, at the Triennial I'idlation 
 of that Diocese in May, June, and July, 1812. By GEORGE TOMLINR, D.D., F.R.S., 
 Lord Bishop of Lincoln. London : Cadell and Co. 410. 
 
 IT is a melancholy thing to see a man, clothed in soft raiment, lodged in a 
 public palace, endowed with a rich, portion of the product of other men's in- 
 dustry, using all the influence of his splendid situation, hoivever conscien- 
 tiously, to deepen the ignorance, and inflame the fury, of his fellow creatures. 
 These are the miserable results of that policy which has been so frequently pur- 
 sued for these fifty years past, of placing men of mean, or middling abilities, 
 in high ecclesiastical stations. In ordinary times, it is of less importance who 
 fills them ; but when the bitter period arrives, in which the people must give up 
 some of their darling absurdities ; when the senseless clamour, which has been 
 carefully handed 'down from father fool to son fool, can be no longer indulged ; 
 when it is of incalculable importance to turn the people to a better way of 
 thinking ; the greatest impediments to all amelioration are too often found 
 among those to -whose councils, at such periods, the country ought to look for 
 wisdom and peace. We will suppress, however, the feelings of indignation 
 which such productions, from such men, naturally occasion. We will give 
 the Bishop of Lincoln credit for being perfectly sincere ; we will suppose, 
 that every argument he uses has not been used and refuted ten thousand 
 
 * It is impossible to conceive the mischief which this mean and running prelate did at 
 this period.
 
 BISHOP OF LINCOLN'S CHARGE. 245 
 
 tnnes before ; and we will sit down as patiently to defend the religious 
 liberties of mankind, as the Reverend Prelate has done to abridge them. 
 
 We must begin with denying the main position upon which the Lishpp 
 of Lincoln has built his reasoning. The Catholic religion is not tolerated 
 in England. No man can be fairly said to be permitted to enjoy his own 
 worship who is punished for exercising that worship. His Lordship seems 
 to have no other idea of punishment than lodging a man in the Poultry 
 Compter, or flogging him at the cart's tail, or fining him a sum of money ; 
 just as if incapacitating a man from enjoying the dignities and emolu- 
 ments to which men of similar condition and other faith may fairly aspire, 
 was not frequently the most severe and galling of all punishments. This 
 limited idea of the nature of punishment is the more extraordinary, as 
 incapacitation is actually one of the most common punishments in some 
 branches of our law. The sentence of a court-martial frequently purports, 
 that a man is rendered for ever incapable of serving his Majesty, &c. &c. ; 
 and a person not in holy orders, who performs the functions of a clergyman, 
 is rendered for ever incapable of holding any preferment in the church. 
 There are indeed many species of offence for which no punishment more 
 apposite and judicious could be devised. It would be rather extraordinary, 
 however, if the Court, in passing such a sentence, were to assure the 
 culprit, " that such incapacitation was not by them considered as a punish- 
 ment ; that it was only exercising a right inherent in all governments, of 
 determining who should be eligible for office and who ineligible." His 
 Lordship thinks the toleration complete, because he sees a permission in 
 the statutes for the exercise of the Roman Catholic worship. He sees the 
 permission but he does not choose to see the consequences to which they 
 are exposed who avail themselves of this permission. It is the liberality of 
 a father who says to a son, " Do as you please, my dear boy ; follow your 
 own inclination. Judge for yourself, you are free as air. But remember, 
 if you marry that lady, I will cut you off with a shilling." We have 
 scarcely ever read a more solemn and frivolous statement, than the Bishop 
 of Lincoln's antithetical distinction between persecution and the denial of 
 political power. 
 
 "It is sometimes said, that Papists, being excluded from Power, are 
 consequently persecuted ; as if exclusion from Power and religious Perse- 
 cution were convertible terms. But surely this is to confound things totally 
 distinct in their nature. Persecution inflicts positive punishment upon per- 
 sons who hold certain religious tenets, and endeavours to accomplish the 
 renunciation and extinction of those tenets by forcible means : exclusion 
 from Power is entirely negative in its operation it only declares that those 
 who hold certain opinions shall not fill certain situations ; but it acknow- 
 ledges men to be perfectly free to hold those opinions. Persecution com- 
 pels men to adopt a prescribed Faith, or to suffer the loss of liberty, 
 property, or even life : exclusion from Power prescribes no Faith ; it allows 
 men to think and believe as they please, without molestation or interference. 
 Persecution requires men to worship God in one and in no other way : ex- 
 clusion from Power neither commands nor forbidi any mode of Divine 
 worship it leaves the business of religion, where it ought to be left, to 
 every man's judgment and conscience. Persecution proceeds from a bigoted 
 and sanguinary spirit of Intolerance ; exclusion from power is founded in 
 the natural and rational principle of self-protection and self-preservation, 
 equally applicable to nations and to individuals. History informs us of tfie 
 mischievous and fatal effects of the one, and proves the expediency and 
 necessity of the other." (pp. 16, 17.)
 
 BISHOP OF LINCOLN'S CHARGE. 
 
 We 'will venture to say, there is no one sentence in this extract which 
 does not contain either a contradiction, or a mis-statement. For how can 
 that law acknowledge men to be perfectly free to hold an opinion, which 
 excludes from desirable situations all who do hold that opinion ? How can 
 that law be said neither to molest, nor interfere, which meets a man in 
 every branch of industry and occupation, to institute an inquisition into his 
 religious opinions ? And how is the business of religion left to every man's 
 judgment and conscience, where so powerful a bonus is given to one set of 
 religious opinions, and such a mark of infamy and degradation fixed upon 
 all other modes of belief ? But this is comparatively a very idle part of the 
 question. Whether the present condition of the Catholics is or is not to be 
 denominated a perfect state of toleration, is more a controversy of words 
 than things. That they are subject to some restraints, the Bishop will 
 admit : the important question is, whether or not these restraints are neces- 
 sary ? For his Lordship will of course allow, that every restraint upon 
 human liberty is an evil in itself ; and can only be justified by the superior 
 good which it can be shown to produce. My Lord's fears upon the subject 
 of Catholic emancipation are conveyed in the following paragraph : 
 
 " It is a principle of our constitution, that the King should have advisers 
 in the discharge of every part of his royal functions and is it to be imagined, 
 that Papists would advise measures in support of the cause of Protestantism ? 
 A similar observation may be applied to the two Houses of Parliament : 
 would Popish peers or Popish members of the House of Commons, enact 
 laws for the security of the Protestant government ? Would they not rather 
 repeal the whole Protestant code, and make Popery again the established 
 religion of the country ?" (p. 14.) 
 
 And these are the apprehensions which the clergy of the diocese have 
 prayed my Lord to make public. 
 
 Kind providence never sends an evil without a remedy : and arithmetic 
 is the natural cure for the passion of fear. If a coward can be made to 
 count his enemies, his terrors may be reasoned with, and he may think ot 
 ways and means of counteraction. Now, might it not have been expedient 
 that the Reverend Prelate, before he had alarmed his Country Clergy with 
 the idea of so large a measure as the repeal of Protestantism, should have 
 counted up the probable number of Catholics who would be seated in both 
 Houses of Parliament ? Does he believe that there would be ten Catholic 
 Peers, and thirty Catholic Commoners ? But, admit double that number 
 (and more, Dr Duigenan himself would not ask) will the Bishop of 
 Lincoln seriously assert, that he thinks the whole Protestant code in danger 
 of repeal from such an admixture of Catholic legislators as this ? Does he 
 forget, amid the innumerable answers which may be made to such sort of 
 apprehensions, what a picture he is drawing of the weakness and versatility 
 of Protestant principles? that a handful of Catholics, in the bosom of a 
 Protestant legislature, are to overpower the ancient jealousies, the fixed 
 opinions, the inveterate habits of twelve millions of people ? that the King 
 is to apostatize, the Clergy to be silent, and the parliament be taken by 
 surprise ? that the nation are to go to bed over night, and to see the Pope 
 walking arm in arm with Lord Castlereagh the next morning? One would 
 really suppose, from the Bishop's fears, that the civil defences of mankind 
 were, like their military bulwarks, transferred by superior skill and courage, 
 in a few hours, from the vanquished to the victor that the destruction of 
 a church was like the blowing up of a mine deans, prebendaries, church- 
 wardens, and overseers, all up in the air in an instant. Does his Lordship 
 really imagine, when the mere dread of the Catholics becoming ICL;
 
 BISHOP OF LINCOLN'S CHARGE. c 47 
 
 has induced him to charge his clergy, and his agonized clergy to extort from 
 their prelate the publication of the Charge, that the full and mature danger 
 will produce less alarm, than the distant suspicion of it has done in the 
 present instance ? that the Protestant writers, whose pens are now up to 
 the feather in ink, will, at any future period, yield up their Church, without 
 passion, pamphlet, or pugnacity ? We do not blame the Bishop of Lincoln 
 for being afraid : but we blame him for not rendering his fears intelligible 
 and tangible for not circumscribing and particularising them by some 
 individual case for not showing us how it is possible that the Catholics 
 (granting their intentions to be as bad as possible) should ever be able to 
 ruin the Church of England. His Lordship appears to be in a fog ; and, 
 as daylight breaks in upon him, he will be rather disposed to disown his 
 panic. The noise he hears is not roaring but braying ; the teeth and the 
 mane are all imaginary ; there is nothing but ears. It is not a lion that 
 stops the way, but an ass. 
 
 One method his Lordship takes, in handling this question, is by pointing 
 out dangers that are barely possible, and then treating of them as if they 
 deserved the active and present attention of serious men. But if no measure 
 is to be carried into execution, and if no provision is safe in which the 
 minute inspection of an ingenious man cannot find the possibility of danger, 
 then all human action is impeded, and no human institution is safe or com- 
 mendable. The King has the power of pardoning, and so every species 
 of guilt may remain unpunished : he has a negative upon legislative acts, 
 and so no law may pass. None but Presbyterians may be returned to the 
 House of Commons and so the Church of England may be voted down. The 
 Scottish and Irish members may join together in both Houses, and dissolve 
 both Unions. If probability is put out of sight and if, in the enumeration 
 of dangers, it is sufficient to state any which, by remote contingency, may 
 happen, then is it time that we should begin to provide against all the host 
 of perils which we have just enumerated, and which are many of them as 
 likely to happen, as those which the Reverend Prelate has stated- hi his 
 Charge. His Lordship forgets that the Catholics are not asking for elec- 
 tion, but for eligibility not to be admitted into the Cabinet, but not to be 
 excluded from it. A century may elapse before any Catholic actually 
 becomes a member of the Cabinet ; and no event can be more utterly desti- 
 tute of probability, than that they should gain an ascendency there, and 
 direct that ascendency against the Protestant interest. If the Bishop really 
 wishes to know upon what our security is founded : it is upon the pro- 
 digious and decided superiority of the Protestant interest in the British nation, 
 and in the United Parliament. No Protestant King would select such a 
 Cabinet, or countenance such measures ; no man would be mad enough to 
 attempt them ; the English Parliament and the English people would not 
 endure it for a moment. No man indeed, but under the sanctity of the 
 mitre, would have ventured such an extravagant opinion. Woe to him, if 
 he had been only a Dean. But, in spite of his venerable office, we must 
 express our decided belief, that his Lordship (by no means averse to a 
 good bargain) would not pay down five pounds, to receive fifty millions for 
 his posterity, whenever the majority of the Cabinet should be (Catholic 
 emancipation carried) members of the Catholic religion. And yet, upon 
 such terrors as these, which, when put singly to him, his better sense would 
 laugh at, he has thought fit to excite his clergy to petition, and done all in 
 his power to increase the mass of hatred against the Catholics. 
 
 It is true enough, as his Lordship remarks, that events do not depend 
 upon laws alone, but upon the wishes and intentions of those who adminis- 
 ter these laws. But then his Lordship totally puts out of sight two con-
 
 248 BISHOP OF LINCOLN'S CHARGE. 
 
 sideiations the improbability of Catholics ever reaching the highest offices 
 of the state and those fixed Protestant opinions of the country, which would 
 render any attack upon the Established Church so hopeless, and therefore 
 so improbable. Admit a supposition (to us perfectly ludicrous, but still 
 necessary to the Bishop's argument) that the Cabinet Council consisted 
 entirely of Catholics, we should even then have no more fear of their 
 making the English people Catholics, than we should have of a Cabinet of 
 Butchers making the Hindoos eat beef. The Bishop has not stated the true 
 and great security for any course of human actions. It is not the word of 
 the law, nor the spirit of the Government, but the general way of thinking 
 among the people, especially when that way of thinking is ancient, exercised 
 upon high interests, and connected with striking passages in history. The 
 Protestant Church does not rest upon the little narrow foundations where 
 the Bishop of Lincoln supposes it to be placed ; if it did, it would not be 
 worth saving. It rests upon the general opinion entertained by a free and 
 reflecting people, that the doctrines of the Church are true, her pretentious 
 moderate, and her exhortations useful. It is accepted by a people who 
 have, from good taste, an abhorrence of sacerdotal mummery ; and from 
 good sense, a dread of sacerdotal ambition. Those feelings, so generally 
 diffused, and so clearly pronounced on all occasions, are our real bulwarks 
 against the Catholic religion ; and the real cause which makes it so safe for 
 the best friends of the church to diminish (by abolishing the Test Laws) so 
 very fertile a source of hatred to the State. 
 
 In the I5th page of his Lordship's Charge, there is an argument of a very 
 curious nature. 
 
 " Let us suppose" (says the Bishop of Lincoln), " that there had been no 
 Test Laws, no disabling statutes, in the year 1 745, when an attempt was 
 made to overthrow the Protestant Government, and to place a Popish 
 Sovereign upon the throne of these kingdoms ; and let us suppose, that the 
 leading men in the Houses of Parliament, that the Ministers of State, and 
 the Commanders of our Armies, had then been Papists. Will any one con- 
 tend, that that formidable Rebellion, supported as it was by a foreign enemy, 
 would have been resisted with the same zeal, and suppressed with the same 
 facility, as when all the measures were planned and executed by sincere 
 Protestants? (p. 15.) 
 
 And so his Lordship means to infer, that it would be foolish to abolish 
 the laws against the Catholics now, because it would have been foolish to 
 have abolished them at some other period ; that a measure must be bad, 
 because there was formely a combination of circumstances, when it would 
 have been bad. His Lordship might, with almost equal propriety, debate 
 what ought to be done if Julius Caesar were about to make a descent upon 
 our coasts ; or lament the impropriety of emancipating the Catholics, 
 because the Spanish Armada was putting to sea. The fact is, that Julius 
 Caesar is dead the Spanish Armada was defeated in the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth for half a century there has been no disputed succession the 
 situation of the world is changed and, because it is changed, we can do 
 now what we could not do then. And nothing can be more lamentable 
 than to see this respectable Prelate wasting his resources in putting imaginery 
 and inapplicable cases, and reasoning upon their solution, as if it had any 
 thing to do with present affairs. 
 
 These remarks entirely put an end to the common mode of arguing & 
 Gulielnto. What did King William do ? what would King William say ? 
 &c. King William was in a very different situation from that in which we 
 are placed. The whole world was in a very different situation. The great
 
 BISHOP OF LINCOLN'S CHARGE. 249 
 
 and glorious Authors of the Revolution (as they are commonly denominated) 
 acquired their greatness and their glory, not by a superstitious reverence fur 
 inapplicable precedents, but by taking hold of present circumstances to lay 
 a deep foundation for Liberty ; and then using old names for new things, 
 they left the Bishop of Lincoln, and other good men, to suppose that they 
 had been thinking all the time about ancestors. 
 
 Another species of false reasoning, which pervades the Bishop of Lincoln's 
 Charge, is this : He states what the interests of men are, and then takes it 
 for granted that they will eagerly and actively pursue them ; laying totally 
 out of the question the probability or improbability of their effecting their 
 object, and the influence which this balance of chances must produce upon 
 their actions. For instance, it is the interest of the Catholics that our Church 
 should be subservient to theirs. Therefore, says his Lordship, the Catholics 
 will enter into a conspiracy against the English Church. But, is it not also 
 the decided interest of his Lordship's butler that he should be Bishop, and 
 the Bishop, his butler? That the crozier and the corkscrew should change 
 hands, and the washer of the bottles which they had emptied become the 
 diocesan of learned divines ? What has prevented this change, so beneficial 
 to the upper domestic, but the extreme improbability of success, if the 
 attempt were made ; an improbability so great, that we will venture to say, 
 the very notion of it has scarcely once entered into the understanding of the 
 good man. Why then is the Reverend Prelate, who lives on so safely and 
 contentedly with John, so dreadfully alarmed at the Catholics ? And why 
 does he so completely forget, in their instance alone, that men do not 
 merely strive to obtain a thing because it is good, but always mingle with 
 the excellence of the object a consideration of the chance of gaining it. 
 
 The Bishop of Lincoln (p. 19) states it as an argument against conces- 
 sion to the Catholics, that we have enjoyed "internal peace and entire free- 
 dom from all religious animosities and feuds since the Revolution." The 
 fact, however, is not more certain than conclusive again.st his view of the 
 question. For, since that period, the worship of the Church of England 
 has been abolished in Scotland the Corporation and Test Acts repealed 
 in Ireland and the whole of this King's reign has been one series of con- 
 cessions to the Catholics. Relaxation then (and we wish this had been 
 remembered at the Charge) of penal laws, on subjects of religious opinion, 
 is perfectly compatible with internal peace, and exemption from religious 
 animosity. But the Bishop is always fond of lurking in generals, and 
 cautiously avoids coming to any specific instance of the dangers which he 
 fears. 
 
 "It is declared in one of the 39 Articles, that the King is Head of our 
 Church, without being subject to any Foreign Power ; and it is expressly 
 said that the Bishop of Rome has no jurisdiction within these realms. On 
 the contrary, Papists assert, that the Pope is supreme Head of the whole 
 Christian Church, and that Allegiance is due to him from every Individual 
 member, in all spiritual matters. This direct opposition to one of the fun- 
 damental Principles of the Ecclesiastical part of our Constitution, is alone 
 sufficient to justify the exclusion of Papists from all situations of authority. 
 They acknowledge indeed that obedience hi civil matters is due to the 
 king. But cases must arise, in which civil and religious Duties will clash ; 
 and he knows but little of the Influence of the Popish Religion over the 
 minds of its votaries, who doubts which of these Duties would be sacrificed 
 to the other. Moreover, the most subtle casuistry cannot always discrimi- 
 nate between temporal and spiritual things ; and in truth the concerns of 
 this life not unfrequently partake of both characters." (pp. 21, 22.)
 
 250 BISHOP OF LINCOLN'S CHARGE. 
 
 We deny entirely that any case can occur, where the exposition of a doc- 
 trine purely speculative, or the arrangement of a mere point of Church dis- 
 cipline, can interfere with civil duties. The Roman Catholics are Irish 
 and English citizens at this moment; but no such case has occurred. 
 There is no instance in which obedience to the civil magistrate has been 
 prevented, by an acknowledgment of the spiritual supremacy of the Pope. 
 The Catholics have given (in an oath which we suspect the Bishop never to 
 have read) the most solemn pledge, that their submission to their spiritual 
 ruler should never interfere with their civil obcdionce. The hypothesis of 
 the Bishop of Lincoln is, that it must very often do so. The fact is, that 
 it has never done so. 
 
 His Lordship is extremely angry with the Catholics, for refusing to the 
 Crown a veto upon the appointment of their Bishops. He forgets, that in 
 those countries of Europe where the Crown interferes with the appointment 
 of Bishops, the reigning monarch is a Catholic, which makes all the dif- 
 ference. We sincerely wish that the Catholics would concede this point ; 
 but we cannot be astonished at their reluctance to admit the interference of 
 a Protestant Prince with their Bishops. What would his Lordship say to 
 the interference of any Catholic power with the appointment of the Eng- 
 lish sees ? 
 
 Next comes the stale and thousand times refuted charge against the 
 Catholics, that they think the Pope has the power of dethroning heretical 
 Kings ; and that it is the duty of every Catholic to use every possible means 
 to root out and destroy heretics, &c. To all of which may be returned this 
 one conclusive answer, that the Catholics are ready to deny these doctrines 
 upon oath. And as the whole controversy is, whether the Catholics shall, 
 by means of oaths, be excluded from certain offices in the State : those 
 who contend that the continuation of these excluding oaths are essential to 
 the public safety, must admit, that oaths are binding upon Catholics, and a 
 security to the State that what they swear to is true. 
 
 It is right to keep these things in view and to omit no opportunity of 
 exposing and counteracting that spirit of intolerant zeal or intolerable time- 
 serving, which has so long disgraced and endangered this country. But the 
 truth is, that we look upon this cause as already gained ; and while we 
 warmly congratulate the nation on the mighty step it has recently made 
 towards increased power and entire security, it is impossible to avoid saying 
 a word upon the humiliating and disgusting, but at the same time most 
 edifying spectacle, which has lately been exhibited by the Anticatholic 
 addressers. That so great a number of persons should have been found 
 with such a proclivity to servitude (for honest bigotry had but little to do 
 with the matter), as to rush forward with clamours in favour of intolerance, 
 upon a mere surmise that this would be accounted as acceptable service by 
 the present possessors of patronage and power, affords a more humiliating 
 and discouraging picture of the present spirit of the country, than any thing 
 else that has occurred in our remembrance. The edifying part of the spec- 
 tacle is the contempt with which their officious devotions have been received 
 by those whose favour they were intended to purchase, and the universal 
 scorn and derision with which they were regarded by independent men of 
 all parties and persuasions. The catastrophe, we think, teaches two lessons ; 
 one to the time-servers themselves, not to obtrude their servility on the 
 Government, till they have reasonable ground to think it is wanted ; and 
 the other to the nation at large, not to imagine that a base and interested 
 clamour in favour of what is supposed to be agreeable to Government, how- 
 ever loudly and extensively sounded, affords any indication at all, either of 
 the general sense of the country, or even of what is actually contemplated
 
 LETTERS FROM A MAHRATTA CAMP. 251 
 
 by those in the administration of its affairs. The real sense of the country has 
 been proved, on this occasion, to be directly against those who presump- 
 tuously held themselves out as its organs ; and even the Ministers have 
 made a respectable figure, compared with those who assumed the character 
 of their champions. 
 
 LETTERS WRITTEN IN A MAHRATTA CAMP DURING 
 THE YEAR 1809. (E. REVIEW, 1813.) 
 
 Letters written in a Mahratta Camp during the Year 1809. By THOMAS DUER 
 BROUGHTON. 1813. Murray, Albemarle Street 
 
 THIS is a lively, entertaining, well-written book ; and we can conscien- 
 tiously recommend it to our readers. Mr Thomas Duer Broughton does 
 not, it is true, carry any great weight of metal ; but, placed in a curious 
 and novel scene, he has described what he saw from day to day, and 
 preserved, for the amusement of his readers, the impressions which those 
 scenes made upon him, while they were yet strong and fresh. The 
 journals of military men are given to the public much more frequently than 
 they used to be ; and we consider this class of publications as one of great 
 utility and importance. The duties of such men lead them into countries 
 very little known to Europeans, and give to them the means of observing 
 and describing very striking peculiarities in manners, habits, and govern- 
 ments. To lay these before the public is a praiseworthy undertaking; and, 
 if done simply and modestly (as is the case with this publication), deserves 
 great encouragement. Persons unaccustomed to writing, are prevented 
 from attempting this by the fear of not writing sufficiently well ; but where 
 there is any thing new and entertaining to tell, the style becomes of com- 
 paratively little importance. He who lives in a Mahratta camp, and tells 
 us what he hears and sees, can scarcely tell it amiss. As far as mere style 
 is concerned, it matters very little whether he writes like C&sar or Nullits. 
 Though we praise Mr Broughton for his book, and praise him very sincerely, 
 we must warn him against that dreadful propensity which young men have 
 for writing verses. There is nothing of which Nature has been more 
 bountiful than poets. They swarm like the spawn of cod-fish, with a 
 vicious fecundity, that invites and requires destruction. To publish verses 
 is become a sort of evidence that a man wants sense ; which is repelled not 
 by writing good verses, but by writing excellent verses ; by doing what 
 Lord Byron has done ; by displaying talents great enough to overcome the 
 disgust which proceeds from satiety, and showing that all things may be- 
 come new under the reviving touch of genius. But it is never too late to 
 repent and do well : we hope Mr Broughton will enter into proper securi- 
 ties witli his intimate friends to write no more verses. 
 
 The most prominent character in the narrative of Mr Broughton seems 
 to be that of Scindia, whom he had every opportunity of observing, and 
 whose character he appears perfectly to have understood ; a disgraceful 
 liar, living with buffoons and parasites unsteady in his friendships a 
 babbling drunkard equally despised by his enemies and his pretended 
 friends. Happy the people who have only to contemplate such a prince in 
 description, and at a distance. The people over whom he reigns seem, by 
 the description of Mr Broughton, to be well worthy of such a monarch. 
 Treacherous, cruel, false robbing, and robbed deceiving and deceived ; 
 it seems very difficult to understand by what power such a society is held 
 together, and why ever}' thing in it is not long since resolved into its primi- 
 tive L
 
 25-: LETTERS FROM A MAHRATTA CAMP. 
 
 "A very distinguished corps in this motley camp," says Mr Broughton, 
 " is the Shohdas literally the scoundrels. They form a regularly organised 
 body, under a chief named Fazil Khan ; to whose orders they pay implicit 
 obedience. They are the licensed thieves and robbers of the camp ; and, 
 from the fruits of their industry, their principal derives a very considerable 
 revenue. On marching days they are assembled under their leader, and act 
 as porters for the Muha Raj's baggage. At sieges they dig the trenches, 
 erect the batteries, and carry the scaling ladders. But their grand concern 
 is the gambling houses, which are placed under their immediate control and 
 superintendence, and where they practise all the refinements of accomplished 
 villany to decoy and impose upon the unwary, which you perhaps fondly 
 flatter yourself are the distinguished excellencies of these establishments in 
 Europe. Baboo Khan, a Mahratta chief of some rank and consideration, 
 is an avowed patron of this curious society ; and is, in fact, though in a 
 higher sphere, as accomplished a Shohda as any of the band. About a 
 year ago, a merchant came to the camp with horses for sale. The Khan 
 chose out some of the most valuable, and paid down the merchant's own 
 price for them on the spot ; desiring him, at the same time, to bring more, 
 as he was about to increase the numbers of his own Risalu. Such 
 unheard-of honesty and liberality induced other merchants to bring their 
 horses also for sale. The Mahratta took them all at the prices demanded ; 
 but, when the owners came for payment, he scoffed at them for their 
 credulity, and had them actually beaten away from his tent by the rascally 
 crew who always attend upon him. The merchants carried their complaint 
 to the Muha Raj ; and after waiting for several months in expectation of 
 justice being done them, were paid at the rate of seven annas in the rupee ; 
 besides a deduction for the Biiniyas, with whom the unfortunate fellows had 
 been obliged to run in debt for subsistence during their stay in camp. The 
 whole transaction lasted about a twelvemonth ; at the end of which time 
 they were obliged to decamp, with less . than one third of what was strictly 
 their due. 
 
 " Where such acts of injustice and oppression are committed with 
 impunity, it is not wonderful that there should be much misery among the 
 poorer orders of the community. When grain is dear, hundreds of poor 
 families are driven to the most distressing shifts to obtain a bare subsistence. 
 At such times I have often seen women and children employed in picking 
 out the undigested grains of corn from the dung of the different animals 
 about the camp. Even now, when grain is by no means at a high price 
 (wheat being sold in the market for thirteen seers for the rupee), it is 
 scarcely possible to move out of the limits of our own camp, without wit- 
 nessing the most shocking proofs of poverty and wretchedness. I was 
 returning from a ride the other morning, when two miserable-looking 
 women followed me for charity ; each had a little infant in her arms ; and 
 one of them repeatedly offered to sell hers for the trifling sum of two rupees. 
 Many of our Sipahees and servants have children, whom they have either 
 purchased in this manner, or picked up begging among our tents. In 
 adopting these little wretches, however, they have so often been taken in, 
 that they are now more cautious in indulging their charitable propensities. 
 The poor people of the army, finding that a child, who told a piteous tale, 
 and appeared to be starving, was sure to find a protector in our camp, used, 
 in hard times, to send their children out to beg ; and when better able to 
 support them themselves, would pretend to discover their lost infants, and 
 reclaim them. (pp. 32 34.) 
 
 The passage of a Mahratta army over an hostile country, seems to be the
 
 LETTERS FROM A MAHRATTA CAMP. 253 
 
 greatest curse which can happen to any people where French armies are 
 unknown. We are always glad to bring the scenery of war before the eyes 
 of those men who sit at home with full stomachs and safe bodies, and are 
 r.hvays ready with vote and clamour to drive their country into a state of 
 warfare with every nation in the world. 
 
 " We observed several fine villages on the Kota side of the river, situated 
 upon level spots among the ravines which intersect the country for a mile 
 from the bank. By the route we went, our march was protracted to nearly 
 twenty-two miles ; the road lay over a continued plain, covered with fields 
 of young corn, affording fine forage for the Mahrattas, who were to be 
 seen in every direction, men, women, and children, tearing it up by the 
 roots; while their cattle were turned loose to graze at liberty, and make the 
 most of such an abundant harvest. We also fell in with large ricks of 
 A'ltfl'iY, the dried stalks of Bajiru and Jooar, two inferior kinds of grain ; an 
 excellent fodder for the camels. To each of these three or four horsemen 
 immediately attached themselves, and appropriated it to their own use : so 
 that when our cattle went out for forage after the march, there was as much 
 difficulty in procuring it as if we had halted near 'he spot for a month. 
 The villages around the camp are all in ruins ; and in some of them I have 
 seen a few wretched villagers, sheltered under the mud walls or broken roofs, 
 and watching over an herd of miserable half-starved cattle. They assured 
 me that the greatest part of the peasantry of the province had been driven 
 to Kota or Boondee, to seek shelter from the repeated ravages of different 
 Mahratta armies ; and that, of those who remained, most had perished by 
 want and variety of misery. Their tale was truly piteous, and was accom- 
 panied with hearty curses invoked upon the whole Mahratta race, whom 
 they justly regard as the authors of all their misery. You, my dear brother, 
 will, I dare say, ere this, be inclined to join these poor people in detestation 
 of a tribe, whose acts I have endeavoured to make you acquainted with 
 throughout one whole year. Unless we should go to Ajmeer, of which by 
 the by there is now some prospect, I shall, with that year, close my regular 
 communications. To continue them would only be to go over again the 
 same unvaried ground ; to retrace the same acts of oppression and fraud ; 
 detail the same chicanery, folly, and intrigues ; and to describe the same 
 festivals and ceremonies. If I may judge of your feelings by my own, you 
 are already heartily sick of them all ; and will hail the letter that brings you 
 the conclusion of their history, as I shall the day when I can turn my back 
 on'a people, proud and jealous as the Chinese, vain and unpolished as the 
 Americans, and as tyrannical and perfidious as the French." (pp. 53, 336, 
 337-) 
 
 The justice cf these Hindoo highwaymen seems to be as barbarous as 
 their injustice. The prime minister himself perambulates the bazaar or 
 market ; and when a tradesman is detected selling by false weight or meas- 
 ure, this great officer breaks the culprit's head with a large wooden mallet 
 kept especially for that purpose. Their mode of recovering debts is not less 
 extraordinary. When the creditor cannot recover his money, and begins to 
 feel a little desperate, he sits dJnirna upon his debtor ; that is, he squats 
 down at the door of the tent, and becomes in a certain degree the master of 
 it. Nobody goes in or comes out without his approbation : he neither eats 
 himself, nor suffers his debtor to eat ; and this hungry contest is carried on 
 till the debt is paid, or till the creditor begins to think that the want of food 
 is a greater evil than the want of money. 
 
 " This curious mode of enforcing a demand is in universal practice among 
 the Mahrattas ; Seendhiya himself not being exempt from it. The man who
 
 :54 LETTERS FROM A MAHRATTA CAMP. 
 
 sits the dJiurna, goes to the house or tent of him whom he wishes to bring 
 to terms, and remains there till the affair is settled : during which time the 
 one under restraint is confined to his apartment, and not suffered to com- 
 :e with any persons but those whom the other mr, v i :". The 
 
 laws by which the dhurna is regulated are as well denned and understood 
 as those of any other custom whatever. \Yhen it is meant to be very 
 the claimant carries a number of bis followers, who surround the tent, some- 
 tunes ever the bed, of his adversary, and deprive him altogether of food ; 
 in which case, however, etiquette prescribes the same abstinence to himself : 
 the stror gest stomach of course carries the day. A custom of this kind was 
 once so prevalent in the province and city of Benares, that Brahmu 
 trained to remain a long time without food. They were then sent to the 
 door of some rich individual, where they made a vow to remain withont eat- 
 ing till they should obtain a certain sum of money. To preserve the life of 
 n BraLmun is so absolutely a duty, that the money was generally paid ; but 
 never till a good struggle had taken place to ascertain whether the : 
 staunch or not : for money is the life and soul of all Hindoos. In this camp 
 there are many Brahmuns, who hire themselves out to sit dhurtia for those 
 who do not like to expose themselves to so great an inconvenience." (pp. 
 42, 43-) 
 
 Amidst the villanies of this atrocious and disgusting people, we were 
 agreeably surprised with this virtuous exception in a young Mahratta female. 
 
 " It was in one of these battalions than an interesting young girl was dis- 
 covered, about a twelvemonth ago, who had served with it for two or three 
 years as a Sipahee ; in which capacity she had acquired the favour of her 
 superiors, and the regard of all her comrades, by her quiet and inoffensive 
 behaviour, and regular attention to the duties of her station. It was c 
 that she always dressed her own dinner, and ate it, and performed her 
 ablutions, by herself : but not the slightest suspicion of her sex was enter- 
 tained, till about the time I mentioned, when it was discovered by the 
 curiosity of a young Sipahee, who followed her when she went to bathe. 
 After this she continued to serve for some months, resolutely decli:. 
 patronage of the Baee, who proposed to receive her into her own fa: 
 well as the offers of the Muha Raj to promote her in the corps she belonged 
 to. The affair soon became the general subject of conversation in camp ; 
 and I having expressed a strong wish to see Junior SingTi, the name by 
 which this Indian D'Eon went, one of our Sipahees, who was acquainted 
 with her, brought her to my tent. She appeared to be about twenty-two 
 years of age, was very fair, and though not handsome, possessed a most 
 interesting countenance. She spoke freely of her profession and her imme- 
 diate situation : but betrayed neither the affected bashfulness nor forward 
 boldness which such a situation was likely to have produced : and let it be 
 recorded, to the honour of every party concerned, that from the moment 
 when her sex was discovered, she met only with increased respect and atten- 
 tion from her comrades ; not an individual presuming to utter a word that 
 might insult her, or breathing a doubt that could affect her reputa: 
 
 "At length, her motive for enlisting and remaining in the servu: was dis- 
 covered. An only brother was confined for debt at Bopal ; and \. 
 teresting young creature had the courage to enrol herself as a common sol- 
 dier, and afterwards persisted in exposing her person to the dangers and 
 difficulties of a military life, with the generous idea of raising money suffi- 
 cient to liberate this loved relation from confinement." (pp. 264 266.) 
 
 These extracts will give a good idea of the sort of entertainment which
 
 MAD QUAKERS. 255 
 
 this book affords. We wish t;.e /Viv (when they get hold of a young man 
 H made notes for a book) would be less splendid in their productions ; 
 ieave out pictures, lessen margins, and put books more within the power 
 of those who want then most, and use them best.* 
 
 MAD QUAKERS. (E. REVIEW, 1814.) 
 
 Description of the Retreat, . for Insane Persons of the Society 
 
 of Friends, Containing an Account of its Origin and Progress, the Modes ef 
 Treatment, and a Statement of Cases. By SAMUEL TUKE. York : 1813. 
 
 THE Quakers always seem to succeed in any institution which they under- 
 take. The gaol at Philadelphia will remain a lasting monument of their 
 
 ..d patience ; and, in the plan and conduct of this retreat for the 
 insane, they have evinced the same wisdom and perseverance. 
 
 The present account is given us by Mr Tuke, a respectable tea-dealer, 
 living in York and given in a manner which we are quite sure the most 
 opulent and important of his customers could not excel. The long account 
 of the subscription, at the beginning of the book, is evidently made tedious 
 for the Quaker market ; and Mr Tuke is a little too much addicted to quot- 
 ing. But, with these trifling exceptions, his book does him very great credit ; 
 it is lull of good sense and humanity, right feelings and rational views. 
 The Retreat for insane Quakers is situated about a mile from the city of 
 upon an eminence commanding the adjacent country, and hi the 
 midst of a garden and fields belonging to the instkution. The great prin- 
 ciple on which it appears to be conducted is that of kindness to the patients. 
 
 - not appear to them, because a man is mad upon one particular sub- 
 ject, that he is to be considered in a state of complete mental degradation, 
 or insensible to the feelings of kindness and gratitude. When a madman 
 tloes not do what he is bid to do, the shortest method, to be sure, is to 
 knock him down ; and straps and chains are the species of prohibitions 
 which are the least frequently disregarded. But the Society of Friends 
 seems rather to consult the interest of the patient than the ease of his keeper ; 
 and to aim at the government of the insane, by creating in them the kindest 
 disposition towards those who have the command over them. Nor can any 
 
 * I a.-.i sorry that I did not, in the execution of my self-created office as a reviewer, 
 take an opportunity in this, or some other military work, to descant a little upon the 
 ^f war ; and 1 think this has been unaccountably neglected in a work abounding 
 . essays, and ever on the watch to propagate good and wise principles. It is not 
 that human bein^ can live without occasional wars, but they may live with fewer wars, 
 and take more just views of the evils which war inflicts upon mankind. If three men 
 were to .3 and arms broken, and were to remain all i.i -to the 
 
 inclemency of weather, the whole country would be in a state of the most dreadful agita- 
 tion. Look at the wholesale death of a field of battle, ten acres covered with dead, and 
 half dead, and dying ; and the shrieks and agonies of many thousand human beings. 
 There is more of mi . ;pon mankind b;- one year of war, than by all the civil 
 
 of a century. Yet it 13 a state into which the mass of rnan- 
 h with the greatest avidity, hailing official murderers, in scarlet, gold, and cocks' 
 i most glorious of human creatures. It is the business of 
 
 . ise and good man to set himself against this passion for military glory, which 
 b: the most fruitful source of human misery. 
 
 I of a party of gentlemen who were to sit very peaceably conversing 
 
 ;hen were to fight for another half hour, then shake hands, and at 
 
 . of thirty minutes fight again? Yet such has been the state of the world 
 
 1714 and 1815, a period in which there was in England as many years of war as 
 
 peace. Societies have been instituted for the preservation of peace, and for lessening the 
 
 popular love of war. They deserve every encouragement. The highest praise is due to 
 
 Louis I'i. : efforts to keep Europe in peace.
 
 256 MAD QUAKERS. 
 
 thing be more wiae, humane, or interesting, than the strict attention to the 
 feelings of their patients which seems to prevail in their institutions. The 
 following specimens of their disposition upon this point we have great pleas- 
 ure in laying before our readers : 
 
 " The smallness of the court," says Mr Tuke, " would be a serious defect, 
 if it was not generally compensated by taking such patients as are suitable 
 into the garden ; and by frequent excursions into the city, or the surround- 
 ing country, and into the fields of the institution. One of these is surrounded 
 by a walk, interspersed with trees and shrubs. 
 
 " The superintendent has also endeavoured to furnish a source of amuse- 
 ment, to those patients whose walks are necessarily more circumscribed, by 
 supplying each of the courts with a number of animals, such as rabbits, sea 
 gulls, hawks, and poultry. These creatures are generally very familiar 
 with the patients ; and it is believed they are not only the means of inno- 
 cent pleasure, but that the intercourse with them sometimes tends to awaken 
 the social and benevolent feelings.'' (pp. 95, 96.) 
 
 Chains are never permitted at the Retreat ; nor is it left to the option of 
 the lower attendants when they are to impose an additional degree of 
 restraint upon the patients ; and this compels them to pay attention to the 
 feelings of the patients, and to attempt to gain an influence over them by 
 kindness. Patients who are not disposed to injure themselves are merely 
 confined by the strait waistcoat, and left to walk about the room, or lie 
 down on the bed, at pleasure ; and even in those cases where there is a 
 strong tendency to self-destruction, as much attention is paid to the feelings 
 and ease of the patient as is consistent with his safety. 
 
 " Except in cases of violent mania, which is far from being a frequent 
 occurrence at the Retreat, coercion, when requisite, is considered as a 
 necessary evil ; that is, it is thought abstractedly to have a tendency to 
 retard the cure, by opposing the influence of the moral remedies employed. 
 It is therefore used very sparingly ; and the superintendent has often assured 
 me, that he would rather run some risk, than have recourse to restraint 
 where it was not absolutely necessary, except in those cases where it was 
 likely to have a salutary moral tendency. 
 
 " I feel no small satisfaction in stating, upon the authority of the super- 
 intendents, that dining the last year, in which the number of patients has 
 generally been sixty-four, there has not been occasion to seclude, on an 
 average, two patients at one time. I am also able to state, that although 
 it is occasionally necessary to restrain, by the waistcoat, straps, or other 
 means, several patients at one time, yet that the average number so restrained 
 does not exceed four, including those who are secluded. 
 
 " The safety of those who attend upon the insane is certainly an object of 
 great importance ; but it is worthy of inquiry whether it may not be attained 
 without materially interfering with another object the recovery of the 
 patient. It may also deserve inquiry, whether the extensive practice of 
 coercion, which obtains in some institutions, does not arise from erroneous 
 views of the character of insane persons ; from indifference to their comfort ; 
 or from having rendered coercion necessary by previous unkind treatment. 
 
 " The power of judicious kindness over this unhappy class of society is 
 much greater than is generally imagined. It is, perhaps, not too much, to 
 apply to kind treatment the words of our great poet, 
 
 ' She can unlock 
 The clasping charm, and thaw the numbing spell.' 
 
 MII.TON.
 
 MAD QUAKERS. 257 
 
 "In no instances lias this power been more strikingly displayed, or 
 exerted with more beneficial effects, than in those deplorable cases in which 
 the patient refuses to take food. The kind persuasions and ingenious arts 
 of the superintendents have been singularly successful in overcoming this 
 distressing symptom ; and very few instances now occur in which it is neces- 
 sary to employ violent means for supplying the patient with food. 
 
 " Some patients, who refuse to partake of the family meals, are induced 
 to eat by being taken into the larder, and there allowed to help themselves. 
 Some are found willing to eat when food is left with them in their rooms, 
 or when they can obtain it unobserved by their attendants. Others, whose 
 determination is stronger, are frequently induced, by repeated persuasion, 
 to take a small quantity of nutritious liquid ; and it is equally true in these, 
 as in general cases, that every breach of resolution weakens the power and 
 disposition to resistance. 
 
 " Sometimes, however, persuasion seems to strengthen the unhappy 
 determination. In one of these cases, the attendants were completely 
 wearied with their endeavours ; and, on removing the food, one of them 
 took a piece of the meat, which had been repeatedly offered to the patient, 
 and threw it under the fire-grate ; at the same time exclaiming, that she 
 should not have it. The poor creature, who seemed governed by the rule 
 of contraries, immediately rushed from her seat, seized the meat from the 
 ashes, and devoured it. For a short time she was induced to eat, by the 
 attendants availing themselves of this contrary disposition ; but it was soon 
 rendered unnecessary, by the removal of this unhappy feature of the dis- 
 order." (pp. 1 66, 167, 1 68, 169.) 
 
 When it is deemed necessary to apply any mode of coercion, such an 
 overpowering force is employed as precludes all possibility of successful 
 resistance ; and most commonly, therefore, extinguishes every idea of 
 making any at all. An attendant upon a madhouse exposes himself to 
 some risk and to some he ought to expose himself, or he is totally unfit 
 for his situation. If the security of the attendants were the only object, 
 the situation of the patients would soon become truly desperate. The 
 business is, not to risk nothing, but not to risk too much. The generosity 
 of the Quakers and their courage in managing mad people, are placed, by 
 this institution, in a very striking point of view. This cannot be better 
 illustrated than by the two following cases : 
 
 " The superintendent was one day walking in a field adjacent to the 
 house, in company with a patient who was apt to be vindictive on very 
 slight occasions. An exciting circumstance occurred. The maniac retired 
 a few paces, and seized a large stone, which he immediately held up, as in 
 the act of throwing at his companion. The superintendent, in no degree 
 raffled, fixed his eye upon the patient, and in a resolute tone of voice, at 
 the same time advancing, commanded him to lay down the stone. As he 
 approached, the hand of the lunatic gradually sunk from its threatening 
 position, and permitted the stone to drop to the ground. He then submitted 
 to be quietly led to his apartment." 
 
 " Some years ago, a man, about thirty- four years of age, of almost 
 herculean size and figure, was brought to the house. He had been afflicted 
 several times before ; and so constantly, during the present attack, had he 
 been kept chained, that his clothes were contrived to be taken off and put 
 on by means of strings, without removing his manacles. They were, how- 
 ever, taken off when he entered the Retreat, and he was ushered into the 
 apartment where the superintendents were supping. He was calm ; his 
 attention appeared to be arrested by his new situation. He was desired to 
 
 &
 
 *5S MAD QUAKERS: 
 
 join in the repast, during which he behaved with tolerable propriety. 
 After it was concluded, the superintendent conducted him to his apartment, 
 and told him the circumstances on which his treatment would depend ; that 
 it was his anxious wish to make every inhabitant in the house as comfortable 
 as possible ; and that he sincerely hoped the patient's conduct would render 
 it unnecessary for him to have recourse to coercion. The maniac was 
 sensible of the kindness of his treatment. He promised to restrain himself ; 
 and he so completely succeeded, that, during his stay, no coercive means 
 were ever employed towards him. This case affords a striking example of 
 the efficacy of mild treatment. The patient was frequently very vociferous, 
 and threatened his attendants, who, in their defence, were very desirous of 
 restraining him by the jacket. The superintendent on these occasions went 
 to his apartment ; and though the first sight of him seemed rather to in- 
 crease the patient's irritation, yet, after sitting some time quietly beside him, 
 the violent excitement subsided, and he Avould listen with attention to the 
 persuasions and arguments of his friendly visitor. After such conversations, 
 the patient was generally better for some days or a week : and in about four 
 months he was discharged perfectly recovered. 
 
 " Can it be doubted that, in this case, the disease had been greatly exas- 
 perated by the mode of management ? or that the subsequent kind treatment 
 had a great tendency to promote his recovery?" (pp. 146, 147, 172, 173.) 
 
 And yet, in spite of this apparent contempt of danger, for eighteen years 
 not a single accident has happened to the keepers. 
 
 In the day-room the sashes are made of cast-iron, and give to the build- 
 ing the security of bars, without their unpleasant appearance. With the 
 same laudable attention to the feelings of these poor people, the straps of 
 their strait-waistcoats are made of some showy colour, and are not in- 
 frequently considered by them as ornaments. No advantage whatever 
 lias been found to arise from reasoning with patients on their particular 
 delusions : it is found rather to exasperate than convince them. Indeed, 
 that state of mind would hardly deserve the name of insanity where argu- 
 ment was sufficient for the refutation of error. 
 
 The classification of patients according to their degree of convalescence 
 is very properly attended to at the Retreat, and every assistance given to 
 returning reason by the force of example. We were particularly pleased 
 with the following specimens of Quaker sense and humanity : 
 
 " The female superintendent, who possesses an uncommon share of 
 "benevolent activity, and who has the chief management of the female 
 patients, as well as of the domestic department, occasionally gives a general 
 invitation to the patients to a tea-party. All who attend, dress in their 
 best clothes, and vie with each other in politeness and propriety. The best 
 fare is provided, and the visitors are treated with all the attention of 
 strangers. The evening generally passes in the greatest harmony and 
 enjoyment. It rarely happens that any unpleasant circumstance occurs. 
 The patients control, in a wonderful degree, their different propensities ; 
 and the scene is at once curious and affectingly gratifying. 
 
 " Some of the patients occasionally pay visits to their friends in the city ; 
 and female visitors are appointed every month, by the committee, to pay 
 visits to those of their own sex, to converse with them, and to propose to 
 the superintendents, or the committee, any improvements which may occur 
 to them. The visitors sometimes take tea with the patients, who are much 
 gratified with the attention of their friends, and mostly behave with propriety. 
 
 " It will be necessary here to mention, that the visits of former intimate 
 friends have frequently been attended with disadvantage to the patients,
 
 MAD QUAKERS. 259 
 
 except when convalescence had so far advanced as to afford a prospect of a 
 speedy return to the bosorn of society. It is, however, very certain that, as 
 soon as reason begins to return, the conversation of judicious indifferent 
 persons greatly increases the comfort, and is considered almost essential to 
 the recovery, of many patients. On this account, the convalescents of every 
 class are frequently introduced into the society of the rational parts of the 
 family. They are also permitted to sit up till the usual time for the family 
 to retire to rest, and are allowed as much liberty as their state of mind will 
 admit." (pp. 178, 179.) 
 
 To the effects of kindness in the Retreat are superadded those of constant 
 employment. The female patients are employed as much as possible in 
 sewing, knitting, and domestic affairs ; and several of the convalescents assist 
 the attendants. For the men are selected those species of bodily employ- 
 ments most agreeable to the patient, and most opposite to the illusions of 
 his disease. Though the effect of fear is not excluded from the institution, 
 yet the love of esteem is considered as a still more powerful principle. 
 
 ' ' That fear is not the only motive which operates in producing self-restraint 
 in the minds of maniacs is evident from its being often exercised in the pres- 
 ence of strangers who are merely passing through the house ; and which, 
 I presume, can only be accounted for from that desire of esteem which has 
 been stated to be a powerful motive to conduct. 
 
 "It is, probably, from encouraging the action of this principle, that so 
 much advantage has been found, in this institution, from treating the patient 
 as much in the manner of a rational being as the state of his mind will 
 possibly allow. The superintendent is particularly attentive to this point 
 in his conversation with the patients. He introduces such topics as he knows 
 will most interest them ; and which, at the same time, allows them to display 
 their knowledge to the greatest advantage. If the patient is an agriculturist, 
 he asks him questions relative to his art ; and frequently, consults him upon 
 any occasion in which his knowledge may be useful. I have heard one of 
 the worst patients in the house, who, previously to his indisposition, had 
 been a considerable grazier, give very sensible directions for the treatment 
 of a diseased cow. 
 
 " These considerations are undoubtedly very material as they regard the 
 comfort of insane persons ; but they are of far greater importance as they 
 relate to the cure of the disorder. The patient, feeling himself of some 
 consequence, is induced to support it by the exertion of his reason, and by 
 restraining those dispositions which, if indulged, would lessen the respectful 
 treatment he receives, or lower his character in the eyes of his companions 
 and attendants. 
 
 "They who are unacquainted with the character of insane persons are 
 very apt to converse with them in a childish, or, which is worse, in a domi- 
 neering manner ; and hence it has been frequently remarked by the patients 
 at the Retreat, that a stranger who has visited them seemed to imagine they 
 were cliildren. 
 
 " The natural tendency of such treatment is to degrade the mind of the 
 patient, and to make him indifferent to those moral feelings which, under 
 judicious direction and encouragement, are found capable, hi no small degree, 
 to strengthen the power of self-restraint, and which render the resort to 
 coercion in many cases unnecessary. Even when it is absolutely requisite to 
 employ coercion, if the patient promises to control himself on its removal, 
 great confidence is generally placed upon his word. I have known patients, 
 such is their sense of honour and moral obligation under this kind of engage- 
 ment, hold, for a long time, a successful struggle with the violent propen-
 
 2 6o MAD QUAKERS. 
 
 sides of their disorder; and such attempts ought to be sedulously encouraged 
 by the attendant. 
 
 "Hitherto, we have chiefly considered those modes of inducing the 
 patient to control his disordered propensities which arise from an application 
 to the general powers of the mind ; but considerable advantage may cer- 
 tainly be derived, in this part of moral management, from an acquaintance 
 with the previous habits, manners, and prejudices of the individual. Xor 
 must we forget to call to our aid, in endeavouring to promote self-restraint, 
 the mild but powerful influence of the precepts of our holy religion. Where 
 these have been strongly imbued in early life, they become little less than 
 principles of our nature : and their restraining power is frequently felt, even 
 under the delirious excitement of insanity. To encourage the influence of 
 religious principles over the mind of the insane is considered of great con- 
 sequence as a means of cure. For this purpose, as well as for others still 
 more important, it is certainly right to promote in the patient an attention 
 to his accustomed modes of paying homage to his Maker. 
 
 "Many patients attend the religious meetings of the society held in the 
 city ; and most of them are assembled, on a first day afternoon, at which 
 time the superintendent reads to them several chapters in the Bible. A 
 profound silence generally ensues ; during which, as well as at the time of 
 reading, it is very gratifying to observe their orderly conduct, and the degree 
 in which those who are much disposed to action restrain their different pro- 
 pensities, "{pp. 158161.) 
 
 Very little dependence is to be placed on medicine alone for the cure of 
 insanity. The experience, at least, of this well-governed institution is very 
 unfavourable to its efficacy. Where an insane person happens to be diseased 
 in body as well as mind, medicine is not only of as great importance to him 
 as to any other person, but much greater ; for the diseases of the body are 
 commonly found to aggravate those of the mind ; but against mere insanity, 
 unaccompanied by bodily derangement, it appears to be almost powerless. 
 
 There is one remedy, however, which is very frequently employed at the 
 Retreat, and which appears to have been attended with the happiest effect, 
 and that is the warm bath, the least recommended and the most important 
 of all remedies in melancholy madness. Under this mode of treatment, the 
 number of recoveries, in cases of melancholia, has been very unusual ; though 
 no advantage has been found from it in the case of mania. 
 
 At the end of the work is given a table of all the cases which have occurred 
 in the institution from its first commencement. It appears that, from its 
 opening in the year 1796 to the end of 1811, 149 patients have been admitted. 
 Of this number 61 have been recent cases : 31 of these patients have been 
 maniacal ; of whom 2 have died, 6 remain, 21 have been discharged per- 
 fectly recovered, 2 so much improved as not to require further confinement. 
 The remainder, 30 recent cases, have been those of melancholy madness ; 
 of whom 5 have died, 4 remain, 19 have been discharged cured, and 2 so 
 much improved as not to require further confinement. The old cases, or, 
 as they are commonly termed, incurable cases, are divided into 61 cases of 
 mania, 21 of melancholia, and 6 of dementia ; affording the following 
 tables : 
 
 "Mania. 
 " 1 1 died. 
 
 31 remain in che house. 
 
 5 have been removed by their friends improved. 
 IO have been discharged perfectly recovered. 
 4 so much improved as not to require further confinement.
 
 MAD QUAKERS. 261 
 
 " Melancholia. 
 " 6 died. 
 6 remain. 
 
 1 removed somewhat improved. 
 6 perfectly cured. 
 
 2 so much improved as not to require further confinement. 
 
 " Dementia. 
 " 2 died. 
 2 remain. 
 2 discharged as unsuitable objects." 
 
 The following statement shows the ages of patients at present in the 
 house : 
 
 " 15 to 20 inclusive 2 
 
 20 to 30 8 
 
 301040 12 
 
 40 to 50 7 
 
 60 to 70 ii 
 
 70 to So 4 
 
 8O tO 90 2 
 
 Of 79 patients it appears that 
 
 "12 went mad from disappointed affections. 
 
 2 from epilepsy. 
 49 from constitutional causes. 
 8 from failure in business. 
 4 from hereditary disposition to madness. 
 2 from injury of the skull. 
 I from mercury. 
 I from parturition." 
 
 The following case is extremely curious j and we wish it had been 
 authenticated by name, place, and signature. 
 
 " A young woman who was employed as a domestic servant by the father 
 uf the relater, when he was a boy, became insane, and at length sunk into 
 a state of perfect idiotcy. In this condition she remained for many years, 
 when she was attacked by a typhus fever : and my friend, having then 
 practised some time, attended her. He was surprised to observe, as the 
 fever advanced, a development of the mental powers. During that period 
 of the fever, when others were delirious, this patient was entirely rational. 
 She recognised in the face of her medical attendant the son of her old 
 master, whom she had known so many years before ; and she related many 
 circumstances respecting his family, and others which had happened to her- 
 self in her earlier days. But, alas ! it was only the gleam of reason. As 
 the fever abated, clouds again enveloped the mind: she sunk into her former 
 deplorable state, and remained in it until her death, which happened a few 
 years afterwards. I leave to the metaphysical reader further speculation on 
 this, certainly very curious, case." (p. 137.) 
 
 Upon the whole, we have little doubt that this is the best managed 
 r.sylum for the insane that has ever yet been established ; and a part of the 
 explanation no doubt is, that the Quakers take more pains than other 
 people with their madmen. A mad Quaker belongs to a small and rich 
 sect ; and is, therefore, of greater importance than any other mad person of 
 the same degree in life. After every allowance, however, which can be 
 made for the feelings of sectaries, exercised towards their own disciples, the
 
 2 62 MADAME D'EPIiVAl. 
 
 Quakers, it must be allowed, are a very charitable and humane people. 
 They are always ready with their money, and, what is of far more import- 
 ance, with their time and attention for eveiy variety of human misfortune. 
 
 They seem to set themselves down systematically before the difficulty, 
 with the wise conviction that it is to be lessened or subdued only by great 
 labour and thought ; and that it is always increased by indolence and 
 neglect. In this instance, they have set an example of courage, patience, 
 and kindness, which cannot be too highly commended, or too widely 
 diffused ; and which, we are convinced, will gradually bring into repute a 
 milder and better method of treating the insane. For the aversion to 
 inspect places of this sort is so great, and the temptation to neglect and 
 oppress the insane so strong, both from the love of power, and the impro- 
 bability of detection, that we have no doubt of the existence of great abuses 
 in the interior of many madhouses. A great deal has been done for prisons ; 
 but the order of benevolence has been broken through by this preference ; 
 for the voice of misery may sooner come up from a dungeon, than the 
 oppression of a madman be healed by the hand of justice.* 
 
 MADAME D'EPINAY. (E. REVIEW, 1818.) 
 
 Memoires et Correspondance de Madame D'Epinay. 3 vols. Svo. Paris : 1818. 
 
 THERE used to be in Paris, under the ancient regime, a few women of 
 brilliant talents, who violated all the common duties of life, and gave very 
 pleasant little suppers. Among these supped and sinned Madame d'Epinay 
 the friend and companion of Rousseau, Diderot, Grimm, Ilolbach, and 
 many other literary persons of distinction of that period. Her principal 
 lover was Grimm ; with whom was deposited, written in feigned names, 
 the history of her life. Grimm died his secretary sold the history the 
 feigned names have been exchanged for the real ones and her works now 
 appear abridged in three volumes octavo. 
 
 Madame d'Epinay, though far from an immaculate character, has some- 
 thing to say in palliation of her irregularities. Her husband behaved 
 abominably ; and alienated, by a series of the most brutal injuries, an 
 attachment which seems to have been very ardent and sincere, and which, 
 with better treatment, would probably have been lasting. For, in all her 
 aberrations, Madame d'Epinay seems to have had a tendency to be con- 
 stant. Though extremely young when separated from her husband, she 
 indulged herself with but two lovers for the rest of her life ; to the first 
 of whom she seems to have been perfectly faithful, till he left her at the 
 end of ten or twelve years ; and to Grimm, by whom he was suc- 
 ceeded, she appears to have given no rival till the day of her death. The 
 account of the life she led, both with her husband and her lovers, brings 
 upon the scene a great variety of French characters, and lays open very 
 completely the interior of French life and manners. But there are some 
 letters and passages which ought not to have been published ; which a sense 
 of common decency and morality ought to have suppressed ; and which, we 
 feel assured, would never have seen the light in this country. 
 
 A French woman seems almost always to have wanted the flavour of 
 
 * The Society of Friends have been extremely fortunate in the choice of their male 
 and female superintendents at the asylum, Mr and Mrs Jephson. It is not easy to find 
 a greater combination of good sense and good feeling than these two persons possess : 
 but then the merit of selecting them rests with their employers.
 
 MADAME D 'EPINA Y. 263 
 
 prohibition, as a necessary condiment to human life. The provided hus- 
 band was rejected, and the forbidden husband introduced in ambiguous 
 light, through posterns and secret partitions. It was not the union to one 
 man that was objected to for they dedicated themselves with a constancy 
 which the most household and parturient woman in England could not ex- 
 ceed ; but the thing wanted was the wrong man, the gentleman without 
 the ring the master unsworn to at the altar the person unconsecrated by 
 priests 
 
 " Oh ! let me taste thee unexcis'd by Icings." 
 
 The following strikes us as a very lively picture of the ruin and extrava- 
 gance of a fashionable house in a great metropolis. 
 
 " M. d'Epinay a complete son domestique. II a trois laquais, et moi 
 deux ; je n'en ai pas voulu davantage. II a un valet de chambre ; et il vouloit 
 aussi que je prisse une seconde femme ; mais, comme je n'en ai que faire, 
 j'ai tenu bon. Enfin les officiers, les femmes, les valets se montent au 
 nombre de seize. Quoique la vie que je mene soit assez uniforme, j'espere 
 n'etre pas obligee d'en changer. Celle de M. d'Epinay est differente. 
 Lorsqu'il este leve, son valet de chambre se met en devoir de 1'accommoder. 
 Deux laquais sont debout . attendre les ordres. Le premier secretaire 
 vient avec 1'intention de lui rendre compte des lettres qu'il a re9ues de son 
 departement, et qu'il est charge d'ouvrir ; il doit lire les re'ponses et les faire 
 signer ; mais il est interrompu deux cents fois dans cette occupation par 
 toutes sortes d'especes imaginables. C'est un maquignon qui a des chevaux 
 uniques a vendre, mais qui sont retenus par un seigneur ; ainsi il est venu 
 pour ne pas manquer a sa parole ; car on lui en donneroit le double, qu'on 
 ne pourroit faire affaire. II en fait une description' seduisante, on demande 
 le prix. Le seigneur un tel en offre soixante louis. Je vous en donne cent. 
 Cela est inutile, a moins qu'il ne se dedise. Cependant Ton conclut a 
 cent louis sans les avoir vus, car le lendemain le seigneur ne manque pas 
 de se de'dire : voila ce que j'ai vu et entendu la semaine derniere. 
 
 " Ensuite c'est un polisson qui vient brailler un air, et a qui on accorde 
 sa protection pour le faire entrer a 1'Opera, apres lui avoir donne quelques 
 legons de bon gout, et lui avoir appris ce que c'est que la proprete du chant 
 francois ; c'est une demoiselle qu'on fait attendre pour savoir si je suis encore 
 la. Je me leve et je m'en vais ; les deux laquais ouvrent les deux battans 
 pour me laisser sortir, moi qui passerois alors par le trou d'une aiguille ; et 
 les deux estafhers crient dans 1'antichambre : Madame, messieurs ; voila 
 madame. Tout le monde se range en haie, et ces messieurs sont des mar- 
 chands d'etoffes, des marchands d'instrumens, des bijoutiers, des colpor- 
 teurs, des laquais, des decrotteurs, des creanciers ; enfin tout ce que vous 
 pouvez imaginer de plus ridicule ct de plus affligeant. Midi ou une heure 
 sonne avant que cette toilette soit achevee, et le secretaire, qui, sans doute, 
 saic par experience 1'impossibilite de rendre un compte detaUle des affaires, 
 a un petit bordereau qu'il remet entre les mains de son maitre, pour 1'in- 
 struire de ce qu'il doit dire a 1'assemble'e. Une autre fois il sort a pied ou 
 en fiacre, rentre a deux heures, fait comme un bruleur de maison, dine tete 
 a tete avec moi, ou admet en tiers son premier secretaire, qui lui parle de la 
 tiecessite de fixer chaque article de depense, de donner des delegations pour 
 tel ou tel objet. La seule reponse est : Nous verrons cela. Ensuite il 
 court le monde et les spectacles ; et il soupe en ville quand il n'a personne 
 a souper chez lui. Je vois que mon temps de repos est fini." (I. pp. 
 308310.) 
 
 A very prominent person among the early friends of Madame d'Epinay,
 
 364 MADAME D "EPINA Y. 
 
 is Mademoiselle d'Ette, a woman of great French respectability, and circu- 
 lating in the best society ; and, as we are painting French manners, we shall 
 make no apology to the serious part of our English readers, for inserting this 
 sketch of her history and character by her own hand. 
 
 "Jeconnois, me clit-elle ensuite, votre franchise et votre discretion: 
 dites-moi naturellement quelle opinion on a de moi dans le monde. La 
 meilleure, lui dis-je, et tclle que vous ne pourriez la conserver si vous pra- 
 tiquiez la morale que vous venez de me precher. Voila ou je vous attendois, 
 ine dit-elle. Depuis dix ans que j'ai perdu ma mere, je fus seduite par le 
 Chevalier de Valory, que m'avoit vu, pour ainsi dire, clever ; mon extreme 
 jeunesse et la confiance que j'avois en lui ne me permirent pas d'abord de me 
 defier de ses vues. Je fus longtemps a m'en apercevoir, et lorsque je m'en 
 apergus, j'avois pris tant de gout pour lui, que je n'eus pas la force de lui 
 resister. II me vint des scrupules ; il les leva, en me promettant de 
 m'epouser. II y travailla en effet ; mais voyant "opposition que sa famille 
 y apportoit, a cause de la disproportion d'age et de mon pen de fortune ; 
 et me trouvant, d'ailleurs, heureuse comme j'etois, je fus la premiere a 
 etouffer mes scrupules, d'autant plus qu'il est assez pauvre. II commen9oit 
 a faire des reflexions, je lui proposal de continuer a vivre comme nous 
 etions ; il 1'accepta. Je quittai ma province, et je le suivis a Paris : vous 
 voyez comme j'y vis. Quatre fois la semaine il passe sa journee chez moi ; 
 le reste du temps nous nous contentons reciproquement d'apprendre de nos 
 nouvelles, a moins que le hasard ne nous fasse rencontrer. Nous vivons 
 heureux, contens ; peut-etre ne le serions-nous'pas tant si nous etions marie's." 
 (I. pp. in, 112.) 
 
 This seems a very spirited, unincumbered way of passing through life ; 
 and it is some comfort, therefore, to a matrimonial English reader, to find 
 Mademoiselle d'Ette kicking the Chevalier out of doors towards the end of 
 the second volume. As it is a scene very edifying to rakes, and those who 
 decry the happiness of the married state, we shall give it in the words of 
 Madame d'Epinay. 
 
 " Une nuit, dont elle avoit passe la plus grande partie dans 1'inquietude, 
 elle entre chez le chevalier : il dormoit ; elle le reveille, s'assied sur son lit, 
 et entame une explication avec toute la violence et la fureur qui 1'animoient. 
 Le chevalier, apres avoir employe vainement, pour la calmer, tous les moyens 
 que sa bonte naturelle lui suggera, lui sigmna enfin tres-precisement qu'il 
 alloit se separer d'elle pour toujours, et fuir un enfer auquel il ne pouvoit 
 plus tenir. Cette confidence, qui n'etoit pas faite pour 1 apaiser, redoubla 
 sa rage. Puisqu'il est ainsi, dit-elle, sortez tout a 1'heure de chez moi ; vous 
 deviez partir dans quatre jours, c'est vous rendre service de vous faire partir 
 dans 1'instant. Tout ce qui est ici m'appartient ; le bail est en mon nom ; 
 il ne me convient plus de vous souffrir chez moi : levez-vous, monsieur, et 
 songez a ne rien emporter sans ma permission." (II. pp. 193, 194.) 
 
 Our English method of asking leave to separate from Sir "William Scott 
 and Sir John Nichol is surely better than this. 
 
 Any one who provides good dinners for clever people, and remembers 
 what they say, cannot fail to write entertaining Memoirs. Among the early 
 friends of Madame d'Epinay was Jean Jacques Rousseau she lived with 
 him in considerable intimacy ; and no small part of her book is taken up 
 with accounts of his eccentricity, insanity, and vice. 
 
 " Nous avons debute par F Engagement t&mtraire, comedie nouvelle, dc
 
 MADAME D 'EPINA Y. 265 
 
 M. Rousseau, ami de Francueil, qui nous 1'a prc'sente. L'auteur a joue un 
 role dans sa piece. Quoique ce ne soit qu'une comedie de societe, elle a eu 
 un grand succes. Je doute cependant qu'elle put reussir au theatre ; mais c'est 
 i'ouvraged'un homme de beaucoup d'esprit, et peut-etred'un homme singulier. 
 Je ne sais pas trop cependant si c'est ce que j'ai vu de 1'auteur ou de la piece 
 qui me fait juger ainsi. II est complimenteur sans etre poli, ou au moins sans 
 en avoir 1'air. II paroit ignorer les usages du monde ; mais il est aise de voir 
 qu'il a infiniment d'esprit. II a le teint bum, et des yeux pleins de feu animent 
 sa physionomie. Lorsqu'il a parle et qu'on le regarde, il paroit joli ; mais 
 lorsqu'on se le rappelle, c'est toujours en laid. On dit qu'il est d'une mauvaise 
 sante, et qu'il a des souffrances qu'il cache avec soin, par je ne sais quel 
 
 je me promets de profiler beaucoup de sa conversation. (I. pp. 175, 176.) 
 
 Their friendship, so formed, proceeded to a great degree of intimacy. 
 Madame d'Epinay admired his genius, and provided him with hats and 
 coats ; and, at last, was so far deluded by his declamations about the coun- 
 try, as to fit him up a little hermit cottage, where there were a great many 
 birds, and a great many plants and flowers and where Rousseau was, as 
 might have been expected, supremely miserable. His friends from Paris 
 did not come to see him. The postman, the butcher, and the baker, hate 
 romantic scenery duchesses and marchionesses were no longer found to 
 scramble for him. Among the real inhabitants of the country, the reputa- 
 tion of reading and thinking is fatal to character ; and Jean Jacques cursed 
 his own successful eloquence which had sent him from the suppers and flat- 
 tery of Paris to smell to daffodils, watch sparrows, or project idle saliva into 
 the passing stream. Very few men who have gratified, and are gratifying 
 their vanity in a great metropolis, are qualified to quit it. Few have the 
 plain senSe to perceive, that they must soon inevitably be forgotten, or 
 the fortitude to bear it when they are. They represent to themselves ima- 
 ginary scenes of deploring friends and dispirited companies but the ocean 
 might' as well regret the drops exhaled by the sunbeams. Life goes on ; 
 rmd whether the absent have retired into a cottage or a grave, is much the 
 same thing. In London, as in Law, de non api>arentibus t et non existcn- 
 tibus cadcm est ratio. 
 
 This is the account Madame d'Epinay gives of Rousseau soon after he 
 had retired into the hermitage. 
 
 "J'ai etc il y a deux jours a la Chevrette, pour terminer quelques afiaires 
 avant de m'y etablir avcc mes enfans. J'avois fait prevenir Rousseau de 
 mon voyage : il est venu me voir. Je crois qu'il a besoin de ma presence, 
 et que la solitude a deja agite sa bile. II se plaint de tout le monde. Diderot 
 doit toujours aller, et ne va jamais le voir ; M. Grimm le neglige ; le baron 
 d'Holbach 1'oublie ; Gauffecourt et moi seulement avons encore des egards 
 pour lui, dit-il ; j'ai voulu les justifier ; cela n'a pas reussi. J'espere qu'il 
 sera beaucoup plus a la Chevrette qu'a 1'Hermitage. Je suis persuadee 
 qu'il n'y a que fa9on de prendre cet homme pour le rendre heurmx ; c'est 
 de feindre de ne pas prendre, garde a lui, et s'en occuper sans cesse; c'est 
 pour ccla que je n'insistai point pour le retenir, lorsqu'il m'eut dit qu'il 
 vouloit s'en retourner h. 1'Hermitage, quoiqu'il fut tard et malgre le mauvais 
 temps." (II. pp. 253, 254.) 
 
 Jean Jacques Rousseau seems, as the reward of genius and fine writing, 
 to have claimed an exemption from all moral duties. He borrowed and
 
 866 MADAME D 'EPIXA Y. 
 
 begged, r.nd never paid ; put his children in a poor house betrayed his 
 friends insulted his benefactors and was guilty of every species of mean- 
 ness and mischief. His vanity was so great, that it was almost impossible 
 to keep pace with it by any activity of attention ; and his suspicion of all 
 mankind amounted nearly, if not altogether, to insanity. The following 
 anecdote, however, is totally clear of any symptom of derangement, and 
 carries only the most rooted and disgusting selfishness. 
 
 " Rousseau vous a done dit qu'il n'avoit pas porte son ouvrage a Paris ? 
 II en a menti, car il n'a fait son -voyage que pour cela. J'ai recu hier 
 une lettre de Diderot, qui peint votre hermite comme si je le voyois. II a 
 fait ces deux lieues a pied, est venu s'e'tablir chez Diderot sans 1' avoir pre- 
 venu, le tout pour faire avec lui la revision de son ouvrage. Au point ou 
 ils en e'toient ensemble, vous conviendrez que cela est assez e'trange. Je 
 vois, par certains mots e'chappes a mon ami dans sa lettre, qu'il y a quelque 
 sujet de discussion entre eux ; mais comme il ne s'explique point, je n'y 
 comprends rien. Rousseau 1'a tenu impitoyablement a 1'ouvrage depuis le 
 samedi dix heures du matin jusqu'au lundi onze heures du soir, sans lui 
 donner a peine le temps de boire ni manger. La revision finie, Diderot 
 cause avec lui d'un plan qu'il a clans la tete, et prie Rousseau de 1'aider a 
 arranger un incident qui n'est pas encore trouve a sa fantaisie. Cela est 
 trop difficile, repond froidement Thermite ; il est tard, je ne suis point 
 accoutume a veiller. Bon soir, je pars demain a six heures du matin, il est 
 temps de dormir. II se leve, va se coucher, et laisse Diderot pe'trifie de 
 son procede. Voila cet homme que vous croyez si penetre de vos lecons. 
 Ajoutez a cette reflexion un propos singulier de la femme de Diderot, dont 
 je vous prie de faire votre profit. Cette femme n'est qu'une bonne femme, 
 mais elle a le tact juste. Voyant son man de'sole le jour du depart de 
 Rousseau, elle lui en demanda la raison ; il la lui dit : C'est le manque.de 
 dclicatesse de cet homme, ajoute-t-il, qui m'afflige ; il me fait travailler 
 comme un manoeuvre ; je ne m'en serois, je crois, pas aperju, s'il ne m'avoit 
 refuse aussi sechement de s'occuper pour moi un quart d'heure. . . . Vous 
 tes etonne de cela, lui repond sa femme, vous ne le connoissez 'done pas ? 
 II est deVore d'envie ; il enrage quand il paroit quelque chose de beau qui 
 n'est pas de lui. On lui verra faire un jour quelques grands forfaits plutot 
 que de se laisser ignorer. Tenez, je ne jurerois pas qu'il ne se range&t du 
 parti des Je'suites, et qu'il n'entreprit leur apologie." (III. pp. 60, 61.) 
 
 The horror which Diderot ultimately conceived for him, is strongly 
 expressed in the following letter to Grimm, written after an interview 
 which compelled him, with many pangs, to renounce all intercourse with a 
 man who had, for years, been the object of his tenderest and most partial 
 feelings. 
 
 "Cet homme est un forcene. Je 1'ai vu, je lui ai reproche, avec toute la 
 force que donne 1'honnetcte et une sorte d'interet qui reste au fond du coeur 
 d'un ami qui lui est de'voue depuis longtemps, 1'e'normite' de sa conduite ; 
 les pleurs verses aux pieds de Madame d'Epinay, dans le moment mcme oil 
 il la chargeoit pres de moi des accusations les plus graves ; cette odieuse 
 apologie qu'il vous a envoye'e, ct ou il n'y a pas une seule des raisons qu'il avoit 
 a dire ; cette lettre projetee pour Saint- Lambert, qui devoit le tranquilliser 
 sur des sentimens qu'il se reprochoit, et ou, loin d'avouer une passion ne'e 
 dans son cceur malgre' lui, il s'excuse d'avoir alarme Madame d'Houdetot 
 sur la sienne. Que sais-je encore? Je ne suis point content de ses 
 reponses ; je n'ai pas eu le courage de le lui temoigner ; j'ai mieux aime 
 lui laisser la miserable consolation de croire qu'il m'a trampe*. Qu'il vive 1
 
 MADAME D 'EPINA F. 267 
 
 II a mis dans sa defense un emportement froid qui m'a afm'ge. J'ai peur 
 qu'irne soit endurci. 
 
 "Adieu, mon ami ; soyons et continuons d'etre honnetes gens : 1'etat de 
 ceux qui ont cesse de 1'etre me fait peur. Adieu, mon ami ; je vous 
 
 embrasse bien tcndrement Je me jette dans vos bras comme un 
 
 homme effraye ; je tache en vain de faire de la poesie, mais cet homme 
 me revient tout a travers mon travail ; il me trouble, et je suis comme si 
 j'avois & cote de moi un damne ; il est damne, ccla est sur. Adieu, mon 
 
 ami Grimm, voila 1'efFet que je ferois sur vous, si je devenois jamais 
 
 un mediant : en verite, j'aimerois mieux etre mort. II n'y a peut-etre pas 
 le sens commun dans tout ce que je vous ecris, mais je vous avoue que je 
 n'ai jamais eprouve un trouble d'ame si terrible que celui que j'ai. 
 
 "Oh! mon ami, quel spectacle que celui d'un homme mediant et 
 bourrele ! Brulez, dechirez ce papier, qu'il ne retombe plus sous vos yeux ; 
 que je ne revoie plus cet homme-la, il me feroit croire aux diables et a 
 1'enfer. Si je suis jamais force de retourner chez lui, je suis sur que je 
 fremirai tout le long du chemin : j'avois la fievre en revenant. Je suis fache 
 de ne lui avoir pas laisse voir 1'horreur qu'il m'inspiroit, et je ne me 
 reconcilie avec moi qu'en pensant, que vous, avec toute votre fermete, vous 
 ne 1'auriez pas pu k ma place ; je ne sais pas s'il ne m'auroit pas tue. On 
 entendoit ses cris jusqu'au bout du jardin ; et je le voyois ! Adieu, mon 
 ami, j'irai demain vous voir ; j'irai chercher un homme de bien, aupres 
 duquel je m'asseye, qui me rassure, et qui chasse de mon ame je ne sais quoi 
 d'infemal qui la tourmente et qui s'y est attache. Les poetes ont bien fait 
 de mettre un intervalle immense entre le ciel et les enfers. En verite, la 
 main me tremble." (III. pp. 148, 149.) 
 
 Madame d'Epinay lived, as we before observed, with many persons of 
 great celebrity. We could not help smiling, among many others, at this 
 anecdote of our countryman David Hume. At the beginning of his splendid 
 career of fame and fashion at Paris, the historian was persuaded to appear 
 in the character of a Sultan ; and was placed on a sofa between two of the 
 most beautiful women of Paris, who acted for that evening the part of 
 inexorables, whose favour he was supposed to be soliciting. The absurdity 
 of this scene can easily be conceived. 
 
 "Le celebre David Hume, grand et gros historiographe d'Angleterre, 
 connu et estime par ses cents, n'a pas autant de talens pour ce genre 
 d'amusemens auquel toutes nos jolies femmes 1'avoient decide propre. II 
 fit son debut chez Madame de T* * * ; on lui avoit destine le role d'un 
 sultan assis entre deux esclaves, employant toute son eloquence pour s'en 
 faire aimer ; les trouvant inexorables, il devoit chercher le sujet de leurs 
 peines et de leur resistance : on le place sur un sopha entre les deux plus 
 jolies femmes de Paris, il les regarde attentivement, il se frappe le venire 
 et les genoux & plusieurs reprises, et ne trouve jamais autre chose a leur 
 dire que: Eh bien 1 vies demoiselles .... Ehbien! vous voilb done .... 
 Eh bien I vous voifa .... vous voild, id? .... Cette phrase dura un 
 quart d'heure, sans qu'il put en sortir. Une d'elles se leva d'impatience : 
 Ah ! dit-elle, je m'en etois bien doutee, cet homme n'est bon qu'a manger 
 du veau ! Depuis ce temps il est relegue au role de spectateur, et n'en est 
 pas moins fete et cajole. C'est en verite une chose plaisante que le r&le 
 qu'il joue ici ; malheureusement pour lui, ou plutot pour la dignite philoso- 
 phique, car, pour lui, il parott s accommoder forte de ce train de vie j il 
 n'y avoit aucune manie dominante dans ce pays lorsqu'il y est arrive ; on 
 1'a regarde comme une trouvaille dans cette circonstance, et 1'effervescence 
 de nos jeunes tetes s'est toumee de son c6te. Toutes les jolies femmes s'en
 
 268 MADAME D 'EPINA Y. 
 
 sont emparees ; il est de tous les soupers fin?, et il n'est point de bonne fote 
 sans lui : en un mot, il est pour nos agreablesce que les Genevois sont pour 
 moi." (III. pp. 284, 285.) 
 
 There is always some man, of whom the human viscera stand in greater 
 dread than of any other person, who is supposed, for the time being, to be 
 the only person who can dart his pill into their inmost recesses ; and bind 
 them over, in medical recognisance, to assimilate and digest. In the Trojan 
 war, Podalirius and Machaon were what Dr Baillie and Sir Henry Halford 
 now are they had the fashionable practice of the Greek camp ; and, in all 
 probability, received many a guinea from Agamemnon dear to Jove, and 
 and Nestor the tamer of horses. In the time of Madame d'Epinay, Dr 
 Tronchin of Geneva was in vogue, and no lady of fashion could recover 
 without writing to him or seeing him in person. To the Esculapius of this 
 very small and irritable republic Madame d'Epinay repaired ; and, after a 
 struggle between life and death, and Dr Tronchin, recovered her health. 
 During her residence at Geneva, she became acquainted with Voltaire, of 
 whom she has left the following admirable and original account the truth, 
 talent, and simplicity of which, are not a little enhanced by the tone of 
 adulation or abuse which has been so generally employed in speaking of 
 this celebrated person. 
 
 " Eh bien ! mon ami, je n'aimerois pas a vivre de suite avec lui ; il n'a 
 mil principe arrete, il compte trop sur sa memoire, et il en abuse souvent ; 
 je trouve qu'elle fait tort quelquefois a sa conversation ; il redit plus qu'il 
 ne dit, et ne laisse jamais rien h, faire aux autres. II ne sait point causer, 
 et il humilie 1' amour-propre ; il dit le pour et le centre, tant qu'on veut, 
 toujours avec de nouvelles graces a la verite, et neanmoins il a toujours Fair 
 de se moquer de tout jusqu'a lui-meme. II n'a nulle philosophic dans la 
 tete ; il est tout herisse de petits prejuges d'enfans : on les lui passeroit 
 peut-etre en faveur de ses graces, du brillant de son esprit et de son 
 originalite, s'il ne s'affichoit pas pour les secouer tous. II a des inconse- 
 quences plaisantes, et il est au milieu de tout cela tres-amusant a- voir. Mais 
 je n'aime point les gens qui ne font que m'amuser. Pour madame sa niece, 
 elle est tout-a-fait comique. 
 
 " II paroit ici depuis quelques jours un livre qui a vivement tchauffc les 
 tStes, et qui cause des discussions fort interessantes entre differentes per- 
 sonnes de ce pays, parce que Ton pretend que la constitution de leur 
 gouvernement y est interessee : Voltaire s'y trouve mele pour des propos 
 assez vifs qu'il a tenu a ce sujet contre les pretres. La grosse niece trouve 
 fort mauvais que tous les magistrate n'ayent pas pris fait et cause pour son 
 oncle. Elle jette tour a tour ses grosses mains et ses petits bras par-dessus 
 sa tete, maudissant avec des cris inhumains les lois, les republiques, et 
 surtout ces polissons de republicains qui vont a pied, qui sont obliges de 
 souffrir les criailleries de leurs pretres, et qui se croient libres. (. \ 
 tout-a-fait bon a entendre et a voir." (III. pp. 196, 197.) 
 
 Madame d'Epinay was certainly a woman of very considerable talent. 
 Rousseau accuses her of writing bad plays and romances. This may be ; 
 but her epistolary style is excellent her remarks on passing events lively, 
 acute, and solid and her delineation of character admirable. As a proof 
 of this, we shall give her portrait of the Marquis de Croismare, one of the 
 friends of Diderot and the Baron d'Holbach. 
 
 "Je lui crois bien soixante ans ; il ne les paroit pourtant pas. II est 
 d'une taille mediocre, sa figure a du etre tres-agreable : elle se distingue 
 encore par un air de noblesse et d'aisance, qui repand de la grace sur toute
 
 AMERICA. 269 
 
 sa personne. Sa physionomie a de la finesse. Ses geslcs, ses altitudes ne 
 sont jamais recherches ; mais ils sont si bien d'accord avec la toumure le 
 son esprit, qu'ils semblent ajouter a son originalite. II parle dcs choscs les 
 plus serieuses et les plus importante d'un ton si gai, qu'on est souvent tente 
 de ne rien croire de ce qu'il dit. On n'a presque jamais rien a citer de ce 
 qu'on lui entend dire ; mais lorsqu'il parle, on ne veut rien perdre de ce 
 qu'il dit ; s'il se tait, on desire qu'il parle encore. Sa prodigieuse vivacite, 
 et une singuliere aptitude a toutes sortes de talens et de connoissances, 1'ont 
 porte a tout voir et a tout connoitre ; au moyen de quoi vous comprenez 
 qu'il est fort instrait. II a bien lu, bien vu, et n'a retenu que ce qui valoit 
 la peine de 1'etre. Son esprit annonce d'abord plus d'agrement que de 
 solidite, mais je crois que quiconque le jugeroit frivole lui feroit tort. Je le 
 soup9onne de renfermer dans son cabinet les epines des roses qu'il distribue 
 dans la societe : assez constamment gai dans le moncle, seul je le crois 
 me'lancolique. On dit qu'il a 1'ame aussi tendre qu'honnete ; qu'il sent 
 vivemcnt et qu'il se livre avcc impetuosite a ce qui trouve le cliemin de son 
 coeur. Tout le monde ne lui plait pas ; il faut pour eel a de 1'originalite, 
 ou dcs vertus distinguees, ou de certains vices qu'il appelle passions ; nean- 
 moins dans le courant de la vie, il s'accommode de tout. Beaucoup de 
 curiosite et de la facilite dans le caractere (ce qui va jusqu'a la foiblesse) 
 1'entrainent souvent a negliger ses meilleurs amis et a les perdre de vue, 
 pour se livrer a des gouts factices et passagers : il en rit avec eux ; mais on 
 voit si clairement qu'il en rougit avec lui-meme, qu'on ne peut lui savoir 
 mauvais gre de ses disparates." (II. pp. 324 326.) 
 
 The portrait of Grimm, the French Boswell, vol. iii. p. 97, is equally 
 good, if not superior ; but we have already extracted enough, to show the 
 nature of the work, and the talents of the author. It is a lively, entertain- 
 ing book relating in an agreeable manner the opinions and habits of manj 
 remarkable men mingled with some very scandalous and improper passages, 
 which degrade the whole work. But if all the decencies and delicacies of 
 life were in one scale, and five francs in- the other, what French bookseller 
 would feel a single moment of doubt in making his election ? 
 
 AMERICA. (E. REVIEW, 1818.) 
 
 1. Travels in Canada and the United States, in 1816 and 1817. By Lieutenant 
 
 FRA NCIS HALL, i4th Light Dragoons, H.P. London : Longman & Co. 1818. 
 
 2. Journal of Travels in the United States of North America, and in Lower Canada, 
 
 performed in the Year 1817, d-V. &>c. By JOHN PALMER. London : Sherwood, 
 Neely, & Jones. 1818. 
 
 3. A Narrative of a Journey of Five Thousand Miles through the Eastern and 
 
 Western States of A merica : contained in Eight Reports, adaretsed to the Thirty- 
 nine English Families ly whom the Author was deputed, in June 1817, to ascer- 
 tain whether any, and what Part of the United States would be suitable for their 
 Residence. * With Remarks on Mr BirkbecVs ' ' Notes " and " Letters. " By HENRY 
 BRADSHAW FEARON. London : Longman & Co. 1818. 
 
 4. Travels in the Interior of America, in the Years 1800, 1810, and 1811, &*c. By 
 
 JOHN BRADBURY, F.L.S. London. 8vo. London: Sherwood, Neely, & Jones. 
 1817. 
 
 THESE four books are al> very well worth reading to any person who feels, 
 as we do, the importance and interest of the subject of which they treat. 
 They contain a great deal of information and amusement ; and will probably 
 decide the fate, and direct the footsteps, of many human beings, seeking a 
 better lot than the Old World can afford them. Mr Hall is a clever, lively
 
 270 
 
 AMERICA. 
 
 man, very much above the common race of writers ; with very liberal and 
 reasonable opinions, which he expresses, with great boldness, and an in- 
 exhaustible fund of good humour. He has the elements of wit in him ; but 
 sometimes is trite and flat when he means to be amusing. lie writes verses, 
 too, and is occasionally long and metaphysical ; but, upon the whole, we 
 think highly of Mr Hall, and deem him, if he is not more than twenty-five 
 years of age, an extraordinary young man. He is not the less extraordinary 
 for being a Lieutenant of Light Dragoons as it is certainly somewhat rare 
 to meet with an original thinker, an indulgent judge of manners, and a man 
 tolerant of neglect and familiarity, in a youth covered with tags, feathers, 
 and martial foolery. 
 
 Mr Palmer is a plain man, of good sense and slow judgment. Mr Brad- 
 bury is a botanist, who lived a good deal among the savages, but worth 
 attending to. Mr Fearon is a much abler writer than either of the two last, 
 but no lover of America and a little given to exaggeration in his views of 
 vices and prejudices. 
 
 Among other faults with which our government is chargeable, the vice 
 of impertinence has lately crept into our cabinet ; and the Americans have 
 been treated with ridicule and contempt. But they are becoming a little 
 too powerful, we take it, for this cavalier sort of management ; and are 
 increasing with a rapidity which is really no matter of jocularity to us, or 
 the other powers of the Old World. In 1791, Baltimore contained 13,00x3 
 inhabitants; in 1810, 46,000; in 1817, 60,000. In 1790, it possessed 
 13,000 tons of shipping; in 1798, 59,000; in 1805, 72,000; in 1810, 
 103,444. The progress of Philadelphia is as follows : 
 
 Houses. Inhab. 
 
 "In 1683 there were in the city . 80 and 600 
 
 1700 . . 700 5,ooo 
 
 1749 . 2,076 15,000 
 
 1760 . 2,969 20,000 
 
 1769 . 4,474 30,000 
 
 1776 . 5,460 40,000 
 
 1783 . 6,000 42,000 
 
 1806 . 13,000 90,000 
 
 1810 . 22,769 100,000 
 
 " Now, it is computed there are at least 120,000 inhabitants in the city 
 and suburbs, of which 10,000 are free coloured people." Palmer, pp. 254, 
 255. 
 
 The population of New York (the city), in 1805, was 60,000 ; it is now 
 120,000. Their shipping, at present, amounts to 300,000 tons. The 
 population of the state of New York was, at the accession of his present 
 Majesty, 97,000, and is now near 1,000,000. Kentucky, first settled in 
 1773, had, in 1792, a population of 100,000; and in 1810, 406, oop. Morse 
 reckons the whole population of the western territory, in 1790, at 6,000 , 
 in 1810 it was near half a million ; and will probably exceed a million in 
 1820. These, and a thousand other equally strong proofs of their increasing 
 strength, tend to extinguish pleasantry, and provoke thought. 
 
 We were surprised and pleased to find from these accounts, that the 
 Americans on the Red River and the Arkansas River have begun to make 
 sugar and wine. Their importation of wool into this country is becoming 
 also an object of some consequence ; and they have inexhaustible supplies 
 of salt and coal. But one of the great sources of wealth in America is and 
 will be an astonishing command of inland navigation. The Mississippi, 
 flowing from the north to the Gulf of Mexico, through seventeen degrees
 
 AMERICA. 271 
 
 of latitude ; the Ohio and the Alleghany almost connecting it with the 
 Northern Lakes ; the Wabash, the Illinois, the Missouri, the Arkansas, 
 the Red River, flowing from the confines of New Mexico ; these rivers, 
 all navigable, and most of them already frequented by steam-boats, consti- 
 tute a facility of internal communication, not, we believe, to be paralleled 
 in the whole vroiicl. 
 
 One of the great advantages of the American government is its cheapness. 
 The American king has about ^5000 per annnm, the vice-king ^1000. 
 They hire their Lord Liverpool at about a thousand per annum, and their 
 Lord Sidmouth (a good bargain) at the same sum. Their Mr Crokers are 
 inexpressibly reasonable, somewhere about the price of an English door- 
 keeper, or bearer of a mace. Life, however, seems to go on very well, In 
 spite of these low salaries; and the purposes of government to be very 
 fairly answered. Whatever may be the evils of universal suffrage in other 
 countries, they have not yet been felt in America ; and one thing at least is 
 established by her experience, that this institution is not necessarily followed 
 by those tumults, the dread of which excites so much apprehension in this 
 country. In the most democratic states, where the payment of direct taxes 
 is the only qualification of a voter, the elections are carried on with the 
 utmost tranquillity ; and the whole business, by taking votes in each parish 
 or section, concluded all over the state in a single day. A great deal is 
 said by Fearon about Caucus, the cant word of the Americans for the com- 
 mittees and party meetings in which the business of the elections is prepared 
 the influence of which he seems to consider as prejudicial. To us, how- 
 ever, it appears to be nothing more than the natural, fair, and unavoidable 
 influence, which talent, popularity, and activity, always must have upon 
 such occasions. What other influence can the leading characters of the 
 democratic party in Congress possibly possess ? Bribery is entirely out of 
 the question equally so is the influence of family and fortune. What then 
 can they do, with their Caucus or without it, but recommend ? And what 
 charge is it against the American government to say, that those members 
 of whom the people have the highest opinion meet together to consult 
 whom they shall recommend for Presideat, and that their recommendation 
 is successful in their different states ? Could any friend to good order wish 
 other means to be employed, or other results to follow? No statesman can 
 to exclude influence, but only bad influence; not the influence of 
 sense and character, but the influence of money and punch. 
 
 A very disgusting feature in the character of the present English govern- 
 ment is its extreme timidity, and the cruelty and violence to which its timidity 
 gives birth. Some hot-headed young person, in defending the principles 
 of liberty, and attacking those abuses to which all governments are liable, 
 passes the bounds of reason and moderation, or is thought to have passed 
 them by those whose interest it is to think so. What matters it whether 
 he has or not ? You are strong enough to let him alone. With such insti- 
 tutions as ours he can do no mischief; perhaps he may owe his celebrity to 
 your opposition ; or, if he must be opposed, write against him, set Can- 
 didus, Scrutator, Vindex, or any of the conductitious penmen of govern- 
 ment to write him down ; any thing but the savage spectacle of a poor 
 wretch, perhaps a very honest man, contending in vain against the weight 
 of an immense government, pursued by a zealous attorney, and sentenced 
 by some candidate, perhaps, for the favour of the crown, to the long 
 miseries of the dungeon.* A still more flagrant instance may be found in 
 
 * A great deal is said about the independence [and integrity of English judges. In 
 
 causes between individuals they are strictly independent .and upright : but they have 
 
 temptations to be othenvise, in cases where the Crown prosecutes for libel. Such
 
 272 AMERICA. 
 
 our late suspensions of the Habeas Corpus Act. Nothing was trusted to 
 tlie voluntary activity of a brave people thoroughly attached to their govern- 
 ment nothing to the good sense and prudence of the gentlemen and yeo- 
 men of the country nothing to a little forbearance, patience, and watch- 
 fulness. There was no other security but despotism ; nothing but the 
 alienation of that right which no king nor minister can love, and which no 
 human beings but the English have had the valour to win, and the pru- 
 dence to keep. The contrast between our government and that of the 
 Americans upon the subject of suspending the Habeas Corpus, is drawn 
 in so very able a manner by Mr Hall, that we must give the passage at 
 large. 
 
 " It has ever been the policy of the Federalists to ' strengthen the hands of 
 government. ' Xo measure can be imagined more effectual for this purpose, 
 than a law which gifts the ruling powers with infallibility ; but no sooner 
 was it enacted, than it revealed its hostility to the principles of the 
 American system, by generating oppression under the cloak of defending 
 social order. 
 
 " If there ever was a period when circumstances seemed to justify what 
 are called energetic measures, it was during the Administration of Mr Jef- 
 ferson and his successor. A disastrous war began to rage not only on the 
 frontiers, but in the very penetralia of the republic. To oppose veteran 
 troops, the ablest generals, and the largest fleets in the world, the American 
 Government had raw recruits, officers who had never seen an enemy, half 
 a dozen frigates, and a population unaccustomed to sacrifices, and impa- 
 tient of taxation. To crown these disadvantages, a most important section 
 of the Union, the New England States, openly set up the standard of 
 separation and rebellion. A convention sat for the express purpose of 
 thwarting the measures of government ; while the press and pulpit thundered 
 every species of denunciation against whoever should assist their own 
 country in the hour of danger.* And this was the work, not of Jacobins 
 and democrats, but of the staunch friends of religion and social order, who 
 had been so zealously attached to the government, while it was adminis- 
 tered by their own party, that they suffered not the popular breath ' to visit 
 the President's breech too roughly.' 
 
 " The course pursued, both by Mr Jefferson and Mr Maddison, through- 
 out this season of difficulty, merits the gratitude of their country, and the 
 imitation of all governments pretending to be free. 
 
 cases often involve questions of party, and are viewed with great passion and agitation 
 by the minister and his friends. Judges have often favours to ask for their friends and 
 families, and dignities to aspire to for themselves. It is human nature, that such power- 
 ful motives should create a great bias against the prisoner. Suppose the chief justice of 
 any court to be in an infirm state of health, and a government libel-cause to be tried by 
 one of the puisne judges of what immense importance is it to that man to be called a 
 strong friend to government how injurious to his natural and fair hopes to be called 
 lukewarm, or addicted to popular notions and how easily the runners of the govern- 
 ment would attach such a character to him ! The useful inference from these observa- 
 tions is, that, in all government cases, the jury, instead of being influenced by the cant 
 phrases about the integrity of English judges, should suspect the operation of such 
 motives watch the judije with the most acute jealousy and compel him to be honest, 
 by throwing themselves into the opposite scale whenever he is inclined to be otherwise. 
 * " In Boston, associations were entered into for the purpose of preventing the filling 
 up of government loans. Individuals disposed to subscribe were obliged to do it in secret, 
 and conceal their names, a_s if tho action had been dishonest." ( Vide " Olive Branch," p. 
 307.) At the same time, immense runs were made by the Boston banks on those of the 
 Central and Southern States ; while the specie thus drained was transmitted to Canada, 
 in payment for smuggled goods and British Government bills, which were drawn in 
 Quebec, and disposed of in great numbers, on advantageous terms, to monied men in 
 the states. Mr Henry's mission is the best proof of the result anticipated by our govern- 
 ment from these proceedings in New England.
 
 AMERICA. 273 
 
 " So far were they from demanding any extraordinary powers from Con- 
 gress, that they did not even enforce, to their full extent, those with which 
 they were by the constitution invested. The process of reasoning, on 
 which they probably acted, may be thus stated. The majority of the nation 
 i.s with us, because the war is national. The interests of a minority suffer ; 
 and self-interest is clamorous when injured. It carries its opposition to an 
 extreme inconsistent with its political duty. Shall we leave it an undis- 
 turbed career of faction, or seek to put it down with libel and sedition laws ? 
 In the first case it will grow bold from impunity ; its proceedings will be 
 more and more outrageous : but every step it takes to thwart us will be a 
 step in favour of the enemy, and, consequently, so much ground lost in 
 public opinion. But, as public opinion is the only instrument by which a 
 ininority can convert a majority to its views, impunity, by revealing its 
 motives, affords the surest chance of defeating its intent. In the latter case, 
 we quit the ground of reason to take that of force ; we give the factious the 
 advantage of seeming persecuted : by repressing intemperate discussion, we 
 confess ourselves liable to be injured by it. If we seek to shield our repu- 
 tation by a libel-law, we acknowledge either that our conduct will not bear 
 investigation, or that the people are incapable of distinguishing betwixt 
 truth and falsehood ; but for a popular government to impeach the sanity 
 of the nation's judgment is to overthrow the pillars of its own elevation. 
 
 " The event triumphantly proved the correctness of this reasoning. The 
 Federalists awoke from the delirium of factious intoxication, and found 
 themselves covered with contempt and shame. Their country had been in 
 danger, [and they gloried in her distress. She had exposed herself to priva- 
 tions from which they had extracted profit. In her triumphs they had no 
 part, except that of having mourned over and depreciated them. Since the 
 war Federalism has been scarcely heard of." (Hall, 508 511.) 
 
 The Americans, we believe, are the first persons who have discarded the 
 tailor in the administration of justice, and his auxiliary the barber two 
 persons of endless importance in the codes and pandects of Europe. A 
 judge administers justice, without a calorific wig and parti-coloured gown, 
 in a coat and pantaloons. He is obeyed, however ; and life and property 
 are not badly protected hi the United States. We shall be denounced by 
 the Laureate as atheists and Jacobins ; but we must say, that we have doubts 
 whether one atom of useful influence is added to men in important situa- 
 tions by any colour, quantity, or configuration of cloth and hair. The true 
 progress of refinement, we conceive, is to discard all the mountebank 
 drapery of barbarous ages. One row of gold and fur falls off after another 
 from the robe of power, and is picked up and worn by the parish beadle 
 and the exhibitor of wild beasts. Meantime, the afflicted wiseacre mourns 
 over equality of garment ; and wotteth not of two men, whose doublets 
 have cost alike, how one shall command and the other obey. 
 
 The dress of lawyers, however, is, at all events, of less importance than 
 their charges. Law is cheap in America : in England, it is better, in a 
 mere pecuniary point of view, to give up forty pounds than to contend for 
 it in a court of common law. It costs that sum in England to win a cause ; 
 and, in the court of equity, it is better to abandon five hundred or a thou- 
 sand pounds than to contend for it. We mean to say nothing disrespectful 
 of the chancellor who is an upright judge, a very great lawyer, and zealous 
 to do all he can ; but we believe the Court of Chancery to be in a state 
 which imperiously requires legislative correction. We do not accuse it of 
 any malversation, but of a complication, formality, entanglement, and delay, 
 which the life, the wealth, and the patience of man cannot endure. How
 
 174 AMERICA. 
 
 such a subject comes not to have been taken up in the House of Commons, 
 we are wholly at a loss to conceive. We feel for climbing boys as much as 
 anybody can do ; but what is a climbing boy in a chimney to a full-grown 
 suitor in the Master's office ? And whence comes it, in the midst of tea 
 thousand compassions and charities, that no Wilberforce, or Sister Fry, has 
 started up for the suitors in Chancery ? * and why, in the name of these 
 afflicted and attorney- worn people, are there -united in their judge three or 
 four offices, any one of which is sufficient to occupy the whole time of a 
 very able and active man ? 
 
 There are no very prominent men at present in America ; at least none 
 whose fame is strong enough for exportation. Munro is a man of plain un- 
 affected good sense. Jefferson, we believe, is still alive ; and has always 
 been more remarkable, perhaps, for the early share he took in the formation 
 of the republic, than from any very predominant superiority of understand- 
 ing. Mr Hall made him a visit : 
 
 "I slept a night at Mouticello, and left it in the morning with such a 
 feeling as the traveller quits the mouldering remains of a Grecian temple, or 
 the pilgrim a fountain in the desert. It would indeed argue great torpor, 
 both of understanding and heart, to have looked without veneration and 
 interest on the man who drew up the declaration of American independence ; 
 who shared in the councils by which her freedom was established ; whom 
 the unbought voice of his fellow-citizens called to the exercise of a dignity 
 from which his own moderation impelled him, when such example was most 
 salutary, to withdraw ; and who, while he dedicates the evening of his 
 glorious days to the pursuits of science and literature, shuns none of the 
 humbler duties of private life ; but, having filled a seat higher than that of 
 kings, succeeds with graceful dignity to that of the good neighbour, and 
 becomes the friendly adviser, lawyer, physician, and even gardener, of his 
 vicinity. This is the ' still small voice ' of philosophy, deeper and holier 
 than the lightnings and earthquakes which have preceded it. What monarch 
 would venture thus to exhibit himself in the nakedness of his humanity? 
 On what royal brow would the laurel replace the diadem ? " (Hall, pp. 
 384, 38S-) 
 
 Mr Fearon dined with another of the Ex-Kings, Mr Adams. 
 
 " The ex-president is a handsome old gentleman of eighty-four ; his lady 
 is seventy-six : she has the reputation of superior talents, and great literary 
 acquirements. I was not perfectly a stranger here ; as, a few clays previous 
 to this, I had received the honour of an hospitable reception at their 
 mansion. Upon the present occasion the minister (the day being Sunday) 
 was of the dinner party. As the table of a ' latticing' may amuse some of 
 you, take the following particulars : first course, a pudding made of Indian 
 corn, molasses, and butter ; second, veal, bacon, neck of mutton, potatoes, 
 cabbages, carrots, and Indian beans ; Madeira wine, of which each drank 
 two glasses. We sat down to dinner at one o'clock ; at two, nearly all went 
 a second time to church. For tea, we had pound-cake, sweet bread and 
 butter, and bread made of Indian corn and rye (similar to our brown home- 
 made). Tea was brought from the kitchen and handed round by a neat, 
 
 * This is still one of the great uncorrected evils of the country. Nothing can be so 
 
 the House of Lords ; he might as well be made Archbishop of Canterbury ; it is one of 
 the greatest of existing follies.
 
 275 
 
 AMERICA. 
 
 white servant girl. The topics of conversation were various. 
 America,|religion, politics, literature, science, Dr Priestley, Miss Edgeworth] 
 Mrs Siddons, Mr Kean, France, Shakspeare, Moore, Lord Byron, Cobbetr, 
 American revolution, the traitor General Arnold. 
 
 "The establishment of this political patriarch consists of a house two 
 storeys high, containing, I believe, eight rooms ; of two men and three maid- 
 servants ; three horses and a plain carriage, i. How great is the contrast be- 
 tween this individual a man of knowledge and information without pomp, 
 parade, or vicious and expensive establishments, as compared with the 
 costly trappings, the depraved characters, and the profligate expenditure of 
 
 House, and ! \Vhat a lesson in this does America teach ! There 
 
 are now in this land no less than three Cincinnati ! " {Fearon, pp. 1 1 1 
 "3-) 
 
 The travellers agree, we think, in complaining of the insubordination ot 
 American children and do not much like American ladies. In their 
 criticisms upon American gasconade, they forget that vulgar people of all 
 countries are full of gasconade. The Americans love titles. The following 
 extract from the Boston Sentinel of last August (1817) is quoted by Mr 
 Fearon. 
 
 " ' Dinner to Mr Adams. Yesterday a public dinner was given to the 
 Hon. John Q. Adams, in the Exchange Coffee-house, by his fellow-citizens 
 of Boston. The Hon. Wm. Gray presided, assisted by the Hon. Harrison 
 Gray Otis, George Blake, Esq., and the Hon. Jonathan Mason, vice-presi- 
 dents. Of the guests were, the Hon. Mr Adams, late president of the 
 United States, his Excellency Governor Brooks, his Honor Lt. Gov. Phillips, 
 Chief Justice Parker, Judge Story, President Kirkland, Gen. Dearborn, 
 Com. Hull, Gen. Miller, several of the reverend clergy, and many public 
 officers, and strangers of eminence.' " 
 
 They all, in common with Mr Birkbeck, seem to be struck with the 
 indolence of the American character. Mr Fearon makes the charge ; and 
 gives us below the right explanation of its cause. 
 
 " The life of boarders at an American tavern presents the most senseless 
 and comfortless mode of killing time which I have ever seen. Every house 
 of this description that I have been in is thronged to excess ; and there 
 is not a man who appears to have a single earthly object in view, except 
 spitting, and smoking cigars. I have not seen a book in the hands of any 
 person since I left Philadelphia. Objectionable as these habits are, they 
 afford decided evidence of the prosperity of that country, which can admit 
 so large a body of its citizens to waste in indolence three-fourths of their 
 lives, and would also appear to hold out encouragement to Englishmen 
 with English habits, who could retain their industry amid a nation of indo- 
 lence, and have sufficient firmness to live in America, and yet bid defiance 
 to the deadly example of its natives. {Fearon, pp. 252, 253.) 
 
 Yet this charge can hardly apply to the north-eastern parts of the Union. 
 The following sample of American vulgarity is not unentertaining. 
 
 " On arriving at the tavern door the landlord makes his appearance. 
 Landlord. Your servant, gentlemen, this is a fine day. Answer. Very 
 fine. Land. You 've got two nice creatures, they are right elegant matches. 
 Ans. Yes, we bought them for matches. Land. They cost a heap of 
 dollars (a pause, and knowing look) ; 200 1 calculate. Ans. Yes, they cost 
 a good sum. Land. Possible ! (a pause) ; going westward to Ohio, gentle-
 
 376 AMERICA. 
 
 men? Ans. \Ve are going to Philadelphia. Land. Philadelphia, ah 1 
 that's a dreadful large place, three or four times as big as Lexington. 
 Ans. Ten times as large. Land. Is it by George ! what a mighty heap of 
 houses ! (a pause) ; but I reckon you was not reared 'va. Philadelphia. Ans. 
 Philadelphia is not our native place. Land. Perhaps away up in Canada. 
 Ans. No, we are from England. Land. Is it possible ! well, \calcuiated 
 you were from abroad (pause) ; how long have you been from the old 
 country? Ans. We left England last March. Land. And in August here 
 you are in Kentuck. Well, I should have guessed you had been in the 
 State some years ; you speak almost as good English as we do ! 
 
 " This dialogue is not a literal copy ; but it embraces most of the frequent 
 and improper applications of words used in the back country, with a few 
 New England phrases. By the loghouse farmer and tavern keeper, they 
 are used as often, and as erroneously as they occur in the above discourse. 
 (Palmer, pp. 129, 130.) 
 
 This is of course intended as a representation of the manners of the low, 
 or, at least, the middling class of people in America. 
 
 The four travellers, of whose works we are giving an account, made 
 extensive tours in every part of America, as well in the old as in the new 
 settlements ; and generally speaking, we should say their testimony is in 
 favour of American manners. We must except, perhaps, Mr Fearon ; 
 and yet he seems to have very little to say against them. Mr Palmer tells 
 us, that he found his companions, officers and farmers, unobtrusive, civil, 
 and obliging ; that what the servants do for you, they do with alacrity ; 
 that at their tables-d'hbte ladies are treated with great politeness. We have 
 real pleasure hi making the following extract from Mr Bradbury's tour. 
 
 " In regard to the manners of the people west of the Alleghanies, it would 
 be absurd to expect that a general character could be now formed, or that it 
 will be, for many years yet to come. The population is at present compounded 
 of a great number of nations, not yet amalgamated, consisting of emigrants 
 from every State in the Union, mixed with English, Irish, Scotch, Dutch, 
 Swiss, Germans, French, and almost from every country in Europe. In 
 some traits they partake in common with the inhabitants of the Atlantic 
 States, which results from the nature of their government. That species of 
 hauteur which one class of society in some countries show in their intercourse 
 with the other is here utterly unknown. By their constitution, the existence 
 of a privileged order, vested by birth with hereditary privileges, honours, or 
 emoluments, is for ever interdicted. If, therefore, we should here expect to 
 find that contemptuous feeling in man for man, we should naturally ex- 
 amine amongst those clothed with judicial or military authority ; but we 
 should search in vain. The justice on the bench, or the officer in the field, 
 is respected and obeyed whilst discharging the functions of his office, as the 
 representative or agent of the law, enacted for the good of all ; but should 
 he be tempted to treat even the least wealthy of his neighbours or fellow- 
 citizens with contumely, he would soon find that he could not do it with 
 impunity. Travellers from Europe, in passing through the western countiy, 
 or indeed any part of the United States, ought to be previously acquainted 
 with this part of the American character ; and more particularly if they have 
 been in the habit of treating with contempt, or irritating with abuse, those 
 whom accidental circumstances may have placed in a situation to administer 
 to their wants. Let no one here indulge himself in abusing the waiter or 
 ostler at an inn : that waiter or ostler is probably a citizen, and does not, nor 
 cannot conceive, that a situation in which he discharges a duty to society, 
 not in itself dishonourable, should subject him to insult : but this feeling, so
 
 AMERICA, 
 
 277 
 
 far as I have experienced, is entirely defensive. I have travelled near 
 10,000 miles in the United States, and never met with the least incivility 
 or affront. 
 
 " The Americans, in general, are accused by travellers of being inquisitive. 
 If this be a crime, the western people are guilty ; but, for my part, I must 
 say that it is a practice that I never was disposed to complain of, because I 
 always found them as ready to answer a question as to ask one, and there- 
 fore I always came off a gainer by this kind of barter ; and if any traveller 
 does not, it is his own fault. As this leads me to notice their general conduct 
 to strangers, I feel myself bound, by gratitude and regard to truth, to speak 
 of their hospitality. In my travels through the inhabited parts of the United 
 States, not less than 2000 miles was through parts where there were no 
 taverns, and where a traveller is under the necessity of appealing to the 
 hospitality of the inhabitants. In no one instance has my appeal been 
 fruitless ; although, in many cases, the furnishing of a bed has been evidently 
 attended with inconvenience, and in a great many instances no remuneration 
 would be received. Other European travellers have experienced this liberal 
 spirit of hospitality, and some have repaid it by calumny." {Bradbury, 
 pp. 304306.) 
 
 We think it of so much importance to do justice to other nations, and to 
 lessen that hatred and contempt which race feels for race, that we subjoin 
 two short passages from Mr Ilall to the same effect. 
 
 ' ' I had bills on Philadelphia, and applied to a respectable store-keeper, 
 that is, tradesman, of the village, to cash me one : the amount, however, was 
 beyond any remittance he had occasion to make, but he immediately offered 
 me whatever sum I might require for my journey, with no better security 
 than my word, for its repayment at Philadelphia : he even insisted on my 
 taking more than I mentioned as sufficient. I do not believe this trait of 
 liberality would suq)rise an American ; for no one in the States, to whom 
 I mentioned it, seemed to consider it as more than any stranger of respect- 
 able appearance might have looked for, in similar circumstances : but it 
 might well surprise an English traveller, who had been told, as I had, that 
 the Americans never failed to cheat and insult every Englishman who 
 travelled through their country, especially if they knew him to be an officer. 
 This latter particular they never failed to inform themselves of, for they are 
 by no means bashful in inquiries : but if the discovery operated in any way 
 upon their behaviour, it was rather to my advantage ; nor did I meet with 
 a single instance of incivility betwixt Canada and Charleston, except at the 
 Shenandoah Point, from a drunken English deserter. My testimony, in 
 this particular, will certainly not invalidate the complaints of many other 
 travellers, who, I doubt not, have frequently encountered rude treatment, 
 and quite as frequently deserved it ; but it will at least prove the possibility 
 of traversing the United States without insult or interruption, and even of 
 being occasionally surprised by liberality and kindness." (Hall, pp. 255, 
 256.) 
 
 " I fell into very pleasant society at Washington. Strangers who intend 
 staying some days in a town usually take lodgings at a boarding-house, in 
 preference to a tavern : in this way they obtain the best society the place 
 affords ; for there are always gentlemen, and frequently ladies, either visi- 
 tors or temporary residents, who live in this manner to avoid the trouble 
 of house-keeping. At Washington, during the sittings of Congress, the 
 boarding-houses are divided into messes, according to the political principles 
 of the inmates ; nor is a stranger admitted without some introduction, and 
 the consent of the whole company. I chanced to join a democratic mess,
 
 278 AMERICA. 
 
 and name a few of its members with gratitude, for the pleasure their society 
 gave me Commodore Decatur and his lady, the Abbe Correa, the great 
 botanist and plenipotentiary of Portugal, the Secretary of the Navy, the 
 Secretary of the Navy Board, known as the author of a humorous publication 
 entitled, 'John Bull and Brother Jonathan,' with eight or ten members of Con- 
 gress, principally from the Western States, which are generally considered as 
 most decidedly hostile to England, but whom I did not on this account find 
 less good-humoured and courteous. It is from thus living in daily intercourse 
 with the leading characters of the country that one is enabled to judge with 
 some degree of certainty of the practices of its government ; for to know the 
 paper theory is nothing, unless it be compared with the instruments employed 
 to carry it into effect. A political constitution may be nothing but a cabalistic 
 form, to extract money and power from the people ; but then the jugglers 
 must be in the dark, and ' no admittance behind the curtain.' This way of 
 living affords, too, the best insight into the best part of society ; for if in a 
 free nation the depositaries of the public confidence be ignorant, or vulgar, 
 it is a very fruitless search to look for the opposite qualities in those they 
 represent ; whereas, if these be well informed in mind and manners, it proves 
 at the least an inclination towards knowledge and refinement in the general 
 mass of citizens by whom they are selected. My own experience obliges 
 me to a favourable verdict in this particular. I found the little circle into 
 which I had happily fallen full of good sense and good humour, and never 
 quitted it without feeling myself a gainer, on the score either of useful infor- 
 mation or of social enjoyment." (Hall, pp. 329 331.) 
 
 In page 252 Mr Hall pays some very handsome compliments to the 
 gallantly, high feeling, and humanity of the American troops. Such passages 
 reflect the highest honour upon Mr Hall. They are full of courage as well 
 as kindness ; and will never be forgiven at home. 
 
 Literature the Americans have none no native literature, we mean. It is 
 all imported. They had a Franklin, indeed ; and may afford to live for half 
 a century on his fame. There is, or was, a Mr Dwight, who wrote some 
 poems ; and his baptismal name was Timothy. There is also a small 
 account of Virginia by Jefferson, and an epic by Joel Barlow : and some 
 pieces of pleasantry by Mr Irving. But why should the Americans write 
 books, when a six weeks' passage brings them, in their own tongue, our 
 sense, science, and genius, in bales and hogsheads ? Prairies, steam-boats, 
 grist-mills, are their natural objects for centuries to come. Then, when 
 they have got to the Pacific Ocean epic poems, plays, pleasures of memory, 
 and all the elegant gratifications of an ancient people who have tamed the 
 wild earth, and set down to amuse themselves. This is the natural march 
 of human affairs. 
 
 The Americans, at least in the old States, are a very religious people : 
 but there is no sect there which enjoys the satisfaction of excluding others 
 from civil offices ; nor does any denomination of Christians take for their 
 support a tenth of produce. Their clergy, however, are respectable, re- 
 spected, and possess no small share of influence. The places of worship in 
 Philadelphia in 1810 were as follows : Presbyterian, 8; Episcopalian, 4; 
 Methodists, 5 ; Catholic, 4 ; Baptist, 5 ; Quakers, 4 ; Fighting Quakers, I ; 
 Lutheran, 3 ; Calvinist, 3 ; Jews, 2 ; Universalists, I ; Swedish Lutheran, 
 I ; Moravian, I j Congrelaticosualists, I ; Unitarians, I ; Covenanters, I ; 
 Black Baptists, I ; Black Episcopalians, I ; Black Methodists, 2. The 
 Methodists, Mr Palmer tells us, are becoming the most numerous sect in 
 the United States. 
 
 Mr Fearon gives us this account of the state of religion at New York.
 
 AMERICA. 
 
 279 
 
 " Upon this interesting topic I would repeat, what indeed you are already 
 acquainted with, that legally there is the most unlimited liberty. There is 
 no state religion, and no government prosecution of individuals for con- 
 science sake. Whether those halcyon days, which I think would attend a 
 similar state of things in England, are in existence here, must be left for 
 future observation. There are five Dutch Reformed churches ; six Presby- 
 terian ; three Associated Refonned ditto ; one Associated Presbyterian ; 
 one Refonned ditto ; five Methodist ; two ditto for blacks ; one German 
 Refonned ; one Evangelical Lutheran ; one Moravian ; four Trinitarian 
 Baptist ; one Universalist ; two Catholic ; three Quaker ; eight Episco- 
 palian ; one Jews' Synagogue : and to this I would add a small Meeting 
 which is but little known, at which the priest is dispensed with, every 
 member following what they call the apostolic plan of instructing each 
 other, and 'building one another up in their most holy faith.' The Pres- 
 byterian and Episcopalian, or Church of England sects, take the precedence 
 in numbers and in respectability. Their ministers receive from two to 
 eight thousand dollais per annum. All the churches are well filled ; they 
 are the fashionable places for display; and the sermons and talents of the 
 minister offer never-ending subjects of interest when social converse has 
 been exhausted upon the bad conduct and inferior nature of niggars 
 (negroes) ; the price of flour at Liverpool; the capture of the Guerriire ; 
 and the battle of New Orleans. The perfect equality of all sects seems to 
 have deadened party feeling : controversy is but little known." (Fearon, 
 pp. 45, 46.) 
 
 The absence of controversy, Mr Fearon seems to imagine, has produced 
 indifference ; and he heaves a sigh to the memory of departed oppression. 
 ' ' Can it be possible (he asks) that the non-existence of religious oppression 
 has lessened religious knowledge, and made men superstitiously dependent 
 upon outward form, instead of internal purity?" To which question (a 
 singular one from an enlightened man like Mr Fearon) we answer, that the 
 absence of religious oppression has not lessened religious knowledge, but 
 theological animosity ; and made men more dependent upon pious actions, 
 and less upon useless and unintelligible wrangling.* 
 
 The great curse of America is the institution of Slavery of itself far 
 more than the foulest blot upon their national character, and an evil which 
 counterbalances all the excisemen, licensers, and tax-gatherers of England. 
 No virtuous man ought to trust his own character, or the character of his 
 children, k to the demoralising effects produced by commanding slaves. 
 Justice, gentleness, pity, and humility, soon give way before them. Con- 
 science suspends its functions. The love of command the impatience of 
 restraint, get the better of every other feeling ; and cruelty has no other 
 limit than fear. 
 
 '"There must doubtless,' says Mr Jefferson, 'be an unhappy influence 
 on the manners of the people produced by the existence of slavery among 
 xis. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise 
 of the most boisterous passions ; the most unremitting despotism on the one 
 part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this and 
 learn to imitate it ; for man is an imitative animal. The parent storms. 
 the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs 
 
 * Mr Fearon mentions a religious lottery for building a Presbyterian church. What 
 will Mr Littleton say to this ? he is hardly prepared, we suspect, for this union of Calvin 
 and the Little Go. Every advantage will be made of it by the wit and eloquence of his 
 fiscal opponent ; nor will it pass unheeded by Mr Bish.
 
 28o AMERICA. 
 
 in the circle of smaller slaves, gives loose to the worst of passions ; and thus 
 nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped 
 by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain 
 his morals and manners undepraved by such circumstances.'" Notes, 
 p. 241. (Hall, p. 459.) 
 
 The following picture of a slave song is quoted by Mr Hall from the 
 "Letters on Virginia." 
 
 " ' I took the boat this morning, and crossed the ferry over to Portsmouth, 
 the small town which I told you is opposite to this place. It was court 
 day, and a large crowd of people was gathered about the door of the court- 
 house. I had hardly got upon the steps to look in, when my ears were 
 assailed by the voice of singing ; and turning round to discover from what 
 quarter it came, I saw a group of about thirty negroes, of different sizes and 
 ages, following a rough-looking white man, who sat carelessly lolling in hU 
 sulky. They had just turned round the corner, and were coming up the 
 main street to pass by the spot were I stood, on their way out of town. As 
 they came nearer, I saw some of them loaded with chains to prevent their 
 escape ; while others had hold of each other's hands, strongly grasped, as 
 if to support themselves in their affliction. I particularly noticed a poor 
 mother, with an infant sucking at her breast as she walked along, while 
 two small children had hold of her apron on either side, almost running to 
 keep up with the rest. They came along singing a little wild hymn, of 
 sweet and mournful melody, flying, by a divine instinct of the heart, to the 
 consolation of religion, the last refuge of the unhappy, to support them in 
 their distress. The sulky now stopped before the tavern, at a little dis- 
 tance beyond the court-house, and the driver got out. 'My clear Sir,' said 
 I to a person who stood near me, ' can you tell me what these poor people 
 have been doing?' ' What is their crime? And what is to be their pun- 
 ishment?' 'O,' said he, 'it's nothing at all, but a parcel of negroes sold 
 to Carolina ; and that man is their driver, who has bought them.' ' But 
 what have they done, that they should be sold into banishment?' 'Done,' 
 said he, 'nothing at all, that I know of; their masters wanted money, I 
 suppose, and these drivers give good prices.' Here the driver, having 
 supplied himself with brandy, and his horse with water (the poor negroes 
 of course wanted nothing), stepped into his chair again, cracked his whip, 
 and drove on, while the miserable exiles followed in funeral procession 
 behind him.'" (Hall, pp. 358 360.) 
 
 The law by which slaves are governed in the Carolinas is a provincial 
 law as old as 1740, but made perpetual in 1783. By this law it is enacted, 
 that every negro shall be presumed a slave, unless the contrary appear. 
 The gth clause allows two justices of the peace, and three freeholders, 
 power to put them to any manner of death ; the evidence against them 
 may be without oath. No slave is to traffic on his own account. Any 
 person murdering a slave is to pay 100 or ^14 if he cuts out the tongue 
 of a slave. Any white man meeting seven slaves together on a high road 
 may give them twenty lashes each. No man must teach a slave to write, 
 under penalty of .100 currency. We have Mr Hall's authority for the 
 existence and enforcement of this law at the present day. Mr Fearon has 
 recorded some facts still more instructive. 
 
 "Observing a great many coloured people, particularly females, in these 
 boats, I concluded that they were emigrants, who had proceeded thus far on 
 their route towards a settlement. The fact proved to be, that fourteen of 
 the flats were freighted with human beings for sale. They had been col-
 
 AMERICA. 281 
 
 lectcd in the several States by slave dealers, and shipped from Kentucky 
 for a market. They were dressed up to the best advantage, on the same 
 principle that jockeys do horses upon sale. The following is a specimen 
 of advertisement on this subject : 
 
 " 'TWENTY DOLLARS REWARD 
 
 Will be paid for apprehending and lodging in gaol, or delivering to the 
 subscribers, the following slaves, belonging to JOSEPH IKVIN, of Iberville. 
 TOM, a very light Mulatto, blue eyes, 5 feet 10 inches high, appears to 
 be about 35 years of age; an artful fellow can read and write, and preaches 
 occasionally. CHARLOTTE, a black wench, round and full-faced, tall, 
 straight, and likely about 25 years of age, and wife of the above named 
 Tom. These slaves decamped from their owner's plantation on the night of 
 the I4th September inst. '" (Fearon, p. 270.) 
 
 " The three ' African churches,' as they are called, are for all those native 
 Americans who are black, or have any shade of colour darker than white. 
 These persons, though many of them are possessed of the rights of citizen- 
 ship, are not admitted into the churches which are visited by whites. 
 There exists a penal law, deeply written in the mind of the whole white 
 population, which subjects their coloured fellow-citizens to unconditional 
 contumely and never-ceasing insult. No respectability, however unques- 
 tionable no property, however large no character, however unblemished, 
 will gain a man, whose body is (in American estimation) cursed with even 
 a twentieth portion of the blood of his African ancestry, admission into 
 society ! ! ! They are considered as mere Pariahs as outcasts and vagrants 
 upon the face of the earth ! I make no reflection upon these things, but 
 leave the facts for your consideration." (Fearon, pp. 168, 169.) 
 
 That such feelings and such practices should exist among men who know 
 the value of liberty, and profess to understand its principles, is the consum- 
 mation of wickedness. Every American who loves his country should dedi- 
 cate his whole life, and every faculty of his soul, to efface this foul stain 
 from its character. If nations rank according to their wisdom and their 
 virtue, what right has the American, a scourger and murderer of slaves, to 
 compare himself with the least and lowest of the European nations ? much 
 more with this great and humane country, where the greatest lord dare not 
 lay a finger upon the meanest peasant? What is freedom, where all are 
 not free ? where the greatest of God's blessings is limited, with impious 
 caprice, to the colour of the body ? And these are the men who taunt the 
 English with their corrupt Parliament, with their buying and selling votes. 
 Let the world judge which is the most liable to censure we who, in the 
 midst of our rottenness, have torn off the manacles of slaves all over the 
 world ; or they who, with their idle purity, and useless perfection, have 
 remained mute and careless, while groans echoed and whips clanked round 
 the very walls of their spotless Congress. We wish well to America we 
 rejoice in her prosperity and are delighted to resist the absurd impertinence 
 with which the character of her people is often treated in this country ; but 
 the existence of slavery in America is an atrocious crime, with which no 
 measures can be kept for which her situation affords no sort of apology 
 which makes liberty itself distrusted, and the boast of it disgusting. 
 
 As for emigration, every man, of course, must determine for himself. A 
 carpenter, under 30 years of age, who finds himself at Cincinnati with an 
 axe over his shoulder, and ten pounds in his pocket, will get rich in 
 America if the change of climate does not kill him. So will a farmer who 
 emigrates early with some capital. But any person with tolerable pros-
 
 282 GAME LA WS. 
 
 perity here lud better remain where he is. There are considerable evils, 
 no doubt, in England : but it would be madness not to admit, that it is, 
 upon the whole, a very happy country, and we are much mistaken if the 
 next twenty years will not bring with it a great deal of internal improve- 
 ment. The country has long been groaning under the evils of the greatest 
 foreign war we were ever engaged in ; and we are just beginning to look 
 again into our home affairs. Political economy has made an astonishing 
 progress since they were last investigated ; and every session of Parliament 
 brushes off some of the cobwebs and dust of our ancestors.* The Appren- 
 tice Laws have been swept away ; the absurd nonsense of the Usury Laws 
 will probably soon follow ; Public Education and Saving Banks have been 
 the invention of these last ten years ; and the strong fortress of lii^otry has 
 been rudely assailed. Then, with all its defects, we have a Parliament of 
 inestimable value. If there be a place in any country where 500 well edu- 
 cated men can meet together, and talk wiih impunity of public affairs, and 
 if what they say is published, that country must improve. It is not pleasant 
 to emigrate into a country of changes and revolution, the size and integrity 
 of whose empire no man can predict. The Americans are a very sensible, 
 reflecting people, and have conducted their affairs extremely well ; but it is 
 scarcely possible to conceive that such an empire should very long remain 
 undivided, or that the dwellers on the Columbia should have common in- 
 terest with the nav.'gators of the Hudson and the Delaware. 
 
 England is, to be sure, a very expensive country ; but a million of millions 
 has been expended in making it habitable and comfortable j and this is a 
 constant source of revenue, or, what is the same thing, a constant diminu- 
 tion of expense to every man living in it. The price an Englishman pays 
 for a turnpike road is not equal to a tenth part of what the delay would cost 
 him without a turnpike. The New River Company brings water to every 
 inhabitant of London, at an infinitely less price than he could dip for it out 
 of the Thames. No country, in fact, is so expensive as one which human 
 beings are just beginning to inhabit ; where there are no roads, no bridges, 
 no skill, no help, no combination of powers, and no force of capital. 
 
 How, too, can any man take upon himself to say, that he is so indifferent 
 to his country that he will not begin to love it intensely, when he is 5000 or 
 6000 miles from it ? And what a dreadful disease Nostalgia must be on 
 the banks of the Missouri ! Severe and painful poverty will drive us all 
 any where : but a wise man should be quite sure he has so irresistible a plea 
 before he ventures on the Great or the Little Wabash. He should be quite 
 sure that he does not go there from ill temper or to be pitied or to be 
 regretted or from ignorance of what is to happen to him or because he is 
 a poet but because he has not enough to eat here, and is sure of abund- 
 ance where he is going. 
 
 GAME LAWS. (E. REVIEW, 1819.) 
 
 Tkret Letters OH the Game Laws. Rest Fennei, Clack & Co. London : 1818. 
 
 THE evil of the Game Laws, in their present state, has long been felt, and 
 of late years has certainly rather increased than diminished. We believe 
 
 * In a scarcity which occurred little more than twenty years ago, every judge (except 
 the Lord Chancellor, then Justice of the Common Pleas, and Seneant Remington), when 
 they charged the Grand Jury, attributed the scarcity to the combinations of the farmers ; 
 and complained of it as a very serious evil. Such doctrines would not now be tolerated 
 in the mouth of a schoolboy.
 
 GAME LAWS. 283 
 
 that they cannot long remain in their present state ; and we are anxious to 
 express our opinion of those changes which they ought to experience. 
 
 We thoroughly acquiesce in the importance of encouraging those field 
 sports which are so congenial to the habits of Englishmen, and which, in 
 the present state of society, afford the only effectual counterbalance to the 
 allurements of great towns. We cannot conceive a more pernicious con- 
 dition for a great nation, than that its aristocracy should be shut up from 
 one year's end to another in a metropolis, while the mass of its rural in- 
 habitants are left to the management of factors and agents. A great man 
 returning from London to spend his summer in the country diffuses intelli- 
 gence, improves manners, communicates pleasure, restrains the extreme 
 violence of subordinate politicians, and makes the middling and lower 
 classes better acquainted with, and more attached to their natural leaders. 
 At the same time, a residence in the country gives to the makers of laws an 
 opportunity of studying those interests which they may afterwards be called 
 upon to protect and arrange. Nor is it unimportant to the character of the 
 higher orders themselves, that they should pass a considerable part of the 
 year in the midst of these their larger families ; that they should occasion- 
 ally be thrown among simple, laborious, frugal people, and be stimulated 
 to resist the prodigality of Courts, by viewing with their own eyes the merits 
 and the wretchedness of the poor. 
 
 Laws for the preservation of Game arc not only of importance, as they 
 increase the amusements of the country, but they may be so constructed as 
 to be perfectly just. The game which my land feeds is certainly mine ; or, 
 in other words, the game which all the land feeds certainly belongs to all 
 the owners of the land ; and the only practical way of dividing it is, to give 
 to each proprietor what he can take on his own ground. Those who con- 
 tribute nothing to the support of the animal, can have no possible right to 
 a share in the distribution. To say of animals, that they a.refer<z A'atura 
 means only, that the precise place of their birth and nurture is not known. 
 How they shall be divided, is a matter of arrangement among those whose 
 collected property certainly has produced and fed them : but the case is 
 completely made out against those who have no land at all, and who cannot 
 therefore have been in the slightest degree instrumental to their production. 
 If a large pond were divided by certain marks into four parts, and allotted 
 to that number of proprietors, the fish contained in that pond would be, 
 in the same sense, ferce Naiurd. Nobody could tell in which particular 
 division each carp had been born and bred. The owners would arrange 
 their respective rights and pretensions in the best way they could : but the 
 clearest of all possible propositions wo'ild be, that the four proprietors, 
 among them, made a complete title to all the fish ; and that nobody but 
 them had the smallest title to the smallest share. This we say, in answer 
 to those who contend that there is no foundation for any system of Game 
 Laws ; that animals born wild are the property of the public ; and that 
 their appropriation is nothing but tyranny and usurpation. 
 
 In addition to these arguments, it is perhaps scarcely necessary to add, 
 that nothing which is worth having, which is accessible, and supplied only 
 in limited quantities, could exist at all, if it was not considered as the pro- 
 perty of some individual. If every body might take game wherever they 
 found it, there would soon be an end of every species of game. The ad- 
 vantage would not be extended to fresh classes, but be annihilated for all 
 classes. Besides all this, the privilege of killing game could not be granted, 
 without the privilege of trespassing on landed property ; an intolerable 
 evil, which would entirely destroy the comfort and privacy of a country life. 
 
 But though a system of Game Laws is of great use in promoting country
 
 284 CAME LAWS. 
 
 amusements, and may, in itself, be placed on a footing of justice, its effects, 
 we are sorry to say, are by no means favourable to the morals of the poor. 
 
 It is impossible to make an uneducated man understand in what manner 
 a bird hatched, nobody knows where to-day living in my field, to-morrow 
 in yours should be as strictly property as the goose whose whole history 
 can be traced, in the most authentic and satisfactory manner, from the egg 
 to the spit. The arguments upon which this depends are so contrary to 
 the notions of the poor so repugnant to their passions and, perhaps, so 
 much above their comprehension, that they are totally unavailing. The 
 same man who would respect an orchard, a garden, or a hen-roost, scarcely 
 thinks he is committing any fault at all in invading the game covers of his 
 richer neighbour ; and as soon as he becomes wearied of honest industry, 
 his first resource is in plundering the rich magazine of hares, pheasants, and 
 partridges the top and bottom dishes, which on every side of his village 
 are running and flying before his eyes. As these things cannot be done 
 with safety in the day, they must be done in the night ; and in this man- 
 ner a lawless marauder is often formed, who proceeds from one infringe- 
 ment of law and property to another, till he becomes a thoroughly bad 
 and corrupted member of society. 
 
 These few preliminary observations lead naturally to the two principal 
 considerations which are to be kept in view, in reforming the Game Laws ; 
 to preserve, as far as is consistent with justice, the amusements of the 
 rich, and to diminish, as much as possible, the temptations of the poor. 
 And these ends, it seems to us, will be best answered, 
 
 I. By abolishing qualifications. 2. By giving to every man a property 
 in the game upon his land. 3. By allowing game to be bought by any body, 
 and sold by its lawful possessors. * 
 
 Nothing can be more grossly absurd than the present state of the Game 
 Laws, as far as they concern the qualification for shooting. In England, 
 no man can possibly have a legal right to kill game, who has not a 100 
 a year in land rent. With us in Scotland, the rule is not quite so inflexible, 
 though in principle not very different. But we shall speak to the case 
 which concerns by far the greatest number : and certainly it is scarcely 
 possible to imagine a more absurd and capricious limitation. For what 
 possible reason is a man, who has only ^90 per annum in land, not to kill 
 the game which his own land nourishes ? If the Legislature really con- 
 ceives, as we have heard surmised by certain learned squires, that a person 
 of such a degree of fortune should be confined to profitable pursuits, and 
 debarred from that pernicious idleness into which he would be betrayed by 
 field sports, it would then be expedient to make a qualification for bowls 
 or skittles to prevent small landowners from going to races, or following 
 a pack of hounds and to prohibit to men of a certain income, every other 
 species of amusement as well as this. The only instance, however, in which 
 this paternal care is exercised, is that in which the amusement of the smaller 
 landowner is supposed to interfere with those of his richer neighbour. He 
 may do what he pleases, and elect any other species of ruinous idleness 
 but that in which the upper classes of society are his rivals. 
 
 Nay, the law is so excessively ridiculous in the case of small landed pro- 
 prietors, that on a property of less than 100 per annum, no human being 
 has the right of shooting. It is not confined, but annihilated. The lord 
 of the manor may be warned off by the proprietor ; and the proprietor 
 may be informed against by any body who sees him sporting. The case is 
 still stronger in the instance of large farms. In Northumberland, and on 
 
 * All this Las since been doac.
 
 GAME LA WS. 285 
 
 the borders of Scotland, there are large capitalists, who farm to the amount 
 of two or three thousand per annum, who have the permission of their dis- 
 tant non-resident landlords to do what they please with the game, and yet 
 who dare not fire off a gun upon their own land. Can any thing be more 
 utterly absurd and preposterous, than that the landlord and the wealthy 
 tenant together cannot make up a title to the hare which is fattened upon 
 the choicest produce of their land ? That the landlord, who can let to farm 
 the fertility of the land for growing wheat cannot let to farm its power of 
 growing partridges? That he may reap by deputy, but cannot on that 
 manor shoot by deputy? Is it possible that any respectable magistrate 
 could fine a fanner for killing a hare upon his own grounds with his land- 
 lord's consent, without feeling that he was violating every feeling of com- 
 mon sense and justice? 
 
 Since the enactment of the Game Laws, there has sprang up an entirely 
 new species of property, which of course is completely overlooked by their 
 provisions. An Englishman may possess a million of money in funds, 
 or merchandise may be the Baring or the Hope of Europe provide to 
 Government the sudden means of equipping fleets and armies, and yet be 
 without the power of smiting a single partridge, though invited by the 
 owner of the game to participate in his amusement. It is idle to say that 
 the difficulty may be got over, by purchasing land : the question is, upon 
 what principle of justice can the existence of the difficulty be defended ? 
 If the right of keeping men-servants were confined to persons who had 
 more than 100 a year in the funds, the difficulty might be got over by 
 every man who could change his landed property to that extent. But 
 what could justify so capricious a partiality to one species of property? 
 There might be some apology for such laws at the time they were made : 
 but there can be none for their not being now accommodated to the changes 
 which time has introduced. If you choose to exclude poverty from this 
 species of amusement, and to open it to wealth, why is it not opened to 
 every species of wealth ? What amusement can there be morally lawful to 
 a holder of turnip land, and criminal in a possessor of Exchequer bills ? 
 What delights ought to be tolerated to Long Annuities, from which wheat 
 and beans should be excluded? What matters it whether it is scrip or 
 short-horned cattle ? If the locus quo is conceded if the trespass is waived 
 and if the qualification for any amusement is wealth, let it be any prove- 
 able wealth 
 
 Dives agris, dive s Jofitis inftcnort aumutts. 
 
 It will be very easy for any country gentleman who wishes to monopo- 
 lise to himself the pleasures of shooting, to let to his tenant every other 
 right attached to the land, except the right of killing game ; and it will be 
 equally easy, in the formation of a new Game Act, to give to the landlord 
 a summary process against his tenant, if such tenant fraudulently exercise 
 the privileges he has agreed to surrender. 
 
 The case which seems most to alarm country gentlemen, is that of a per- 
 son possessing a few acres in the heart of a manor, who might, by planting 
 food of which they are fond, allure the game into his own little domain, and 
 thus reap a harvest prepared at the expense of the neighbour who sur- 
 rounded him. But, under the present Game Laws, if the smaller posses- 
 sion belong to a qualified person, the danger of intrusion is equally great as 
 it would be under the proposed alteration ; and the danger from the poacher 
 would be the same in both cases. But if it be of such great consequence to 
 keep clear from all interference, may not such a piece of land be rented or 
 bought ? Or, may not the food which tempts game be sown in the same
 
 2S6 CAME LAWS. 
 
 abundance in the surrounding as in Ihe enclosed land ? After all, it is only 
 common justice, that he whose property is surrounded on every side by a 
 preserver of game, whose corn and turnips are demolished by animals 
 preserved for the amusement of his neighbour, should himself be entitled to 
 that share of game which plunders upon his land. The complaint which 
 the landed grandee makes is this. " Here is a man who has only a twenty- 
 fourth part of the land, and he expects a twenty-fourth part of the game. 
 He is so captious and litigious, that he will not be contented to supply his 
 share of the food, without requiring his share of what the food produces. 
 I want a neighbourwho has talents only for suffering, not one who evinces 
 such a fatal disposition for enjoying." Upon such principles as these, many 
 of the Game Laws have been constnicted, and are preserved. The inter- 
 ference of a very small property with a very large one ; the critical position 
 of one or two fields, is a very serious source of vexation on many other 
 occasions besides those of game. He who possesses a field in the middle 
 of my premises may build so as to obstruct my view, and may present to me 
 the hinder parts of a barn, instead of one of the finest landscapes in nature. 
 Nay, he may turn his fields into tea-gardens, and destroy my privacy by 
 the introduction of every species of vulgar company. The Legislature, in 
 all these instances, has provided no remedy for the inconveniences which a 
 small property, by such intermixture, may inflict upon a large one, but has 
 secured the same rights to unequal proportions. It is very difficult to conceive 
 why these equitable principles are to be violated in the case of game alone. 
 
 Our securities against that rabble of sportsmen which the abolition of 
 qualifications might be supposed to produce, are, the consent of the owner 
 of the soil as an indispensable preliminary, guarded by heavy penalties 
 and the price of a certificate, rendered perhaps greater than it is at present. 
 It is impossible to conceive why the owner of the soil, if the right of game 
 be secured to him, has not a right to sell, or grant the right of killing it to 
 whom he pleases just as much as he has the power of appointing whom he 
 pleases to kill his ducks, pigeons, and chickens. The danger of making the 
 poor idle, is a mere pretence. It is monopoly calling in the aid of hypo- 
 crisy, and tyranny veiling itself in the garb of philosophical humanity. A 
 poor man goes to wakes, fairs, and horse-races, without pain and penalty ; 
 a little shopkeeper, when his work is over, may go to a bull-bait, or to the 
 cock -pit ; but the idea of his pursuing a hare, even with the consent of the 
 landowner, fills the Bucolic Senator with the most lively apprehensions of 
 relaxed industry, and ruinous dissipation. The truth is, if a poor man does 
 not offend against morals or religion, and supports himself and his family 
 without assistance, the law has nothing to do with his amusements. The 
 real barriers against increase of sportsmen (if the proposed alteration were 
 admitted) are, as we have before said, the prohibition of the landowner ; the 
 tax to the State for a certificate ; the necessity of labouring for support. 
 Whoever violates none of these rights, and neglects none of these duties in 
 his sporting, sports without crime ; and to punish him would be gross and 
 scandalous tyranny. 
 
 The next alteration which we would propose is, that game should be 
 made property ; that is, that every man should have a right to the game 
 found upon his land and that the violation of it should be punished as 
 poaching now is, by pecuniary penalties, and summary conviction before 
 magistrates. This change in the Game Laws Avould be an additional defence 
 of game ; for the landed proprietor has now no other remedy against the 
 qualified intruder upon his game, than an action at law for a trespass on the 
 land ; and if the trespasser have received no notice, this can hardly be called 
 any remedy at all. It is now no uncommon practice for persons who have
 
 GA ME LA WS. 287 
 
 the exterior, and perhaps the fortunes of gentlemen, as they are travelling 
 from place to place, to shoot over manors where they have no property, and 
 from which, as strangers, they cannot have been warned. In such case 
 (which, we repeat again, is by no means one of rare occurrence), it would, 
 under the reformed system, be no more difficult for the lord of the soil to 
 protect his game, than it would be to protect his geese and ducks. But 
 though game should be considered as property, it should still be considered 
 as the lowest species of property because it is in its nature more vague and 
 mutable than any other species of property, and because depredations upon 
 it are carried on at a distance from the dwelling, and without personal 
 alarm to the proprietors. It would be very easy to increase the penalties, 
 in proportion to the number of offences committed by the same individual. 
 
 The punishments which country gentlemen expect by making game pro- 
 perty, are the punishments affixed to offences of a much higher order ; but 
 country gentlemen must not be allowed to legislate exclusively on this, more 
 than on any other subject. The very mention of hares and partridges in the 
 country, too often puts an end to common humanity and common sense. 
 Game must be protected ; but protected without violating those principles 
 of justice, and that adaptation of punishment to crime, which (incredible as 
 it may appear) are of infinitely greater importance than the amusements of 
 country gentlemen. 
 
 'We come now to the sale of game. The foundation on which the pro- 
 priety of allowing this partly rests, is the impossibility of preventing it. 
 There exists, and has sprang up since the Game Laws, an enormous mass 
 of wealth, which has nothinj to do with land. Do the country gentlemen 
 imagine, that it is in the power of human laws to deprive the Three-per- 
 cents of pheasants ? that there is upon earth, air, or sea, a single flavour 
 (cost what crime it may to procure it), that mercantile opulence will not 
 procure ? Increase the difficulty, and you enlist vanity on the side of 
 luxury ; and make that be sought for as a display of wealth, which was 
 before valued only for the gratification of appetite. The law may multiply 
 penalties by reams. Squires may fret and justices commit, and gamekeepers 
 and poachers continue their nocturnal wars. There must be game on Lord 
 Mayor's day, do what you will. You may multiply the crimes by which it 
 is procured ; but nothing can arrest its inevitable progress from the wood of 
 the esquire to the spit of the citizen. The late law for preventing the sale 
 of game produced some little temporary difficulty in London at the begin- 
 ning of the season. The poulterers were alarmed, and came to some resolu- 
 tions. But the alarm soon began to subside, and the difficulties to vanish. 
 In another season, the law will be entirely nugatory and forgotten. The 
 experiment was tried of increased severity ; and a law passed to punish 
 poachers with transportation who were caught poadiing in the night-time 
 with arms. What has the consequence been ? Not a cessation of poaching, 
 but a succession of village guerillas ; an intemecive war between the game- 
 keepers and marauders of game ; the whole country flung into brawls and 
 convulsions, for the unjust and exorbitant pleasures of country gentlemen. 
 The poacher hardly believes he is doing any wrong in taking partridges and 
 pheasants. He would admit the justice of being transported for stealing 
 sheep ; and his courage in such a transaction would be impaired by a con- 
 sciousness he was doing wrong : but he has no such feeling in taking game : 
 and the preposterous punishment of transportation makes him desperate, and 
 not timid. Single poachers are gathered into large companies, for their 
 mutual protection ; and go out, not only with the intention of taking game, 
 but of defending that they take with their lives. Such feelings soon pro- 
 duce a rivalry of personal courage, and a thirst of revenge between the
 
 288 GAME LA WS. 
 
 villagers and the ngents of power. We extract the following passages on 
 this subject from the Three Letters on the Game Laws : 
 
 " The first and most palpable effect has naturally been, an exaltation of 
 all the savage and desperate features in the poacher's character. The war 
 between him and the gamekeeper has necessarily become a bdlitm inter' 
 ncciruiH. A marauder may hesitate perhaps at killing his fellow-man, when 
 the alternative is only six months' imprisonment in the county gaol ; but 
 when the alternative is to overcome the keeper, or to be torn from his 
 family and connections, and sent to hard labour at the Antipodes, we can- 
 not be much surprised that murders and midnight combats have consider- 
 ably increased this season ; or that information such as the following has 
 frequently enriched the columns of the country newspapers. 
 
 "'POACHING. Richard Barnett was on Tuesday convicted before T. 
 Clutterbuck, Esq. , of keeping and using engines or wires for the destruction 
 of game in the parish of Dunkerton, and fined $. He was taken into 
 custody by C. Coates, keeper to Sir Charles Bamfylde, Bart., who found 
 upon him 17 wire-snares. The new act that has just passed against these 
 illegal practices, seems only to have irritated the offenders, and made them 
 more daring and desperate. The following is a copy of an anonymous 
 circular letter, which has been received by several magistrates, and other 
 eminent characters in this neighbourhood. 
 
 " ' TAKE NOTICE. We have lately heard and seen that there is an act 
 passed, and whatever poacher is caught destroying the game, is to be tran- 
 sported for seven years. This is English Liberty I 
 
 " 'Now, we do swear to each other, that the first of our company that 
 this law is inflicted on, that there shall not one gentleman's seat in our 
 country escape the rage of fire. We are nine in number, and we will burn 
 every gentleman's house of note. The first that impeaches shall be shot. 
 We have sworn not to impeach. You may think it a threat, but they will 
 find it reality. The Game Laws were too severe before. The Lord of all 
 men sent these animals for the peasants as well as for the prince. God 
 will not let his people be oppressed. He will assist us in our undertaking, 
 and we will execute it with caution.' (Bath Paper."] 
 
 '"DEATH OF A POACHER. On the evening of Saturday se'ennight, 
 about eight or nine o'clock, a body of poachers, seven in number, assembled 
 by mutual agreement on the estate of the Hon. John Dutton at Sherborne, 
 Gloucestershire, for the purpose of taking hares and other game. With 
 the assistance of two dogs, and some nets and snares which they brought 
 with them, they had succeeded in catching nine hares, and were carrying 
 them away, when they were discovered by the gamekeeper and seven others 
 who were engaged with him in patrolling the different covers, in order to 
 protect the game from nightly depredators. Immediately on perceiving the 
 poachers, the keeper summoned them in a civil and peaceable manner to 
 give up their names, the dogs, implements, &c. they had with them, and 
 the game they had taken ; at the same time assuring them, that his party 
 had fire-arms (which were produced for the purpose of convincing and 
 alarming them), and representing to them the folly of resistance, as, in the 
 event of an affray, they must inevitably be overpowered by superior num- 
 bers, even without fire-arms, which they were determined not to resort to 
 unless compelled in self-defence. Notwithstanding this remonstrance of the 
 keeper, the men unanimously refused to give up on any terms, declaring, that 
 if they were followed they would give them a "brush," and would repel 
 force by force. The poachers then directly took off their great-coats, threw 
 them down with the game, &c., behind them, and approached the keepers
 
 GAME LA WS. 289 
 
 in an attitude of attack. A smart contest instantly ensued, both parties 
 using only the sticks or bludgeons they carried ; and such was the confu- 
 sion during the battle, that some of the keepers were occasionally struck 
 by their own comrades in mistake for their opponents. After they had 
 fought in this manner about eight or ten minutes, one of the poachers, 
 named Robert Simmons, received a violent blow upon his left temple, 
 which felled him to the ground, where he lay, crying out murder, and 
 asking for mercy. The keepers very humanely desired that all violence 
 might cease on both sides : upon which three of the poachers took to 
 flight and escaped, and the remaining three, together with Simmons, were 
 secured by the keepers. Simmons, by the assistance of the other men, 
 walked to the keeper's house, where he was placed in a chair ; but he soon 
 after died. His death was no doubt caused by the pressure of blood upon 
 the brain, occasioned by the rupture of a vessel from the blow he had 
 received. The three poachers who had been taken were committed to 
 Northleach prison. The inquest upon the body of Simmons was taken on 
 Monday, before W. Trigge, gent., Cosoner ; and the above account is 
 extracted from the evidence given upon that occasion. The poachers were 
 all armed with bludgeons, except the deceased, who had provided himself 
 with the thick part of a flail, made of firm knotted crab-tree, and pointed 
 at the extremity, in order to thrust with, if occasion required. The 
 deceased was an athletic, muscular man, very active, and about twenty- 
 eight years of age. He resided at Bowie, in Oxfordshire, and has left a 
 wife, but no child. The three prisoners were heard in evidence ; and all 
 concurred in stating that the keepers were in no way blameable, and attri- 
 buted their disaster to their own indiscretion and imprudence. Several of 
 the keeper's party were so much beat as to be now confined to their beds. 
 The two parties are said to be total strangers to each other, consequently 
 no malice prepense could have existed between them ; and as it appeared 
 to the Jury, after a most minute and deliberate investigation, that the con- 
 fusion during the affray was so great, that the deceased was as likely to 
 be struck by one of his own party as by the keeper's, they returned a verdict 
 of Manslaughter against some person or persons unknown.' 
 
 " Wretched as the first of these productions is, I think it can scarcely be 
 denied, that both its spirit and its probable consequences are wholly to be 
 ascribed to the exasperation naturally consequent upon the severe enactment 
 just alluded to. And the last case is at least a strong proof that severity 
 of enactment is quite inadequate to correct the evil." (Pp. 356 359.) 
 
 Poaching will exist in some degree, let the laws be what they may ; but 
 the most certain method of checking the poacher seems to be by undersell- 
 ing him. If game can be lawfully sold, the quantity sent to market will be 
 increased, the price lowered, and, with that, the profits and temptations of 
 the poacher. Not only would the prices of the poacher be lowered, but 
 we much doubt if he would find any sale at all. Licences to sell game 
 might be confined to real poulterers, and real occupiers of a certain portion 
 of land. It might be rendered penal to purchase it from any but licenced 
 persons ; and in this way the facility of the lawful, and the danger of the 
 unlawful trade, would either annihilate the poacher's trade or reduce his 
 prices so much, that it would be hardly worth his while to carry it on. 
 What poulterer in London, or in any of the large towns, would deal with 
 poachers, and expose himself to indictment for receiving stolen goods, 
 when he might supply his customers at fair prices by dealing with the law- 
 ful proprietor of game ? Opinion is of more power than law. Such con- 
 duct would soon become infamous ; and eveiy respectable tradesman would 
 
 T
 
 290 GAME LAWS. 
 
 be shamed out of it. The consumer himself would rather buy his game of 
 a poulterer at an increase of price, than pick it up clandestinely, and at a 
 great risk, though a somewhat smaller price, from porters and booth-keepers. 
 Give them a chance of getting it fairly, and they will not get it unfairly. 
 At present, no one has the slightest shame at violating a law which every 
 body feels to be absurd and unjust. 
 
 Poultry -houses are sometimes robbed ; but stolen poultry is rarely 
 offered to sale ; at least, nobody pretends that the shops of poulterers, and 
 the tables of monied gentlemen are supplied by these means. Out of one 
 hundred geese that are [consumed at Michaelmas, ninety-nine come in to 
 the jaws of the consumer by honest means ; and yet, if it had pleased the 
 country-gentlemen to have Goose Laws as well as Game Laws ; if goose- 
 keepers had been appointed, and the sale and purchase of this savoury 
 bird prohibited, the same enjoyments would have been procured by the 
 crimes and convictions of the poor ; and the periodical gluttony of Michael- 
 mas have been rendered as guilty and criminal, as it is indigestible and 
 unwholesome. Upon this subjecfr we shall quote a passage from the very 
 sensible and spirited Letters before us : 
 
 "In favourable situations, game would be reared and preserved for the 
 express purpose of regularly supplying the market in fair and open compe- 
 tition ; which would so reduce its price, that I see no reason why a par- 
 tridge should be dearer than a rabbit, or a hare and pheasant than a duck 
 or goose. This is about the proportion of price which the animals bear to 
 each other in France, where game can be legally sold, and is regularly 
 brought to market ; and where, by the way, game is as plentiful as in any 
 cultivated country in Europe. The price so reduced would never be 
 enough to compensate the risk and penalties of the unlawful poacher, who 
 must therefore be driven out of the market. Doubtless the great poulterers 
 of London and the commercial towns, who are the principal instigators of 
 poaching, would cease to have any temptation to continue so, as they could 
 fairly and lawfully procure game for their customers, at a cheaper rate 
 from the regular breeders. They would, as they now do for rabbits and 
 wild-fowl, contract with persons to rear and preserve them for the regular 
 supply of their shops, which would be a much more commodious and satis- 
 factory, and less hazardous way for them, than the irregular and dishonest 
 and corrupting methods now pursued. It is not saying very much in 
 favour of human nature to assert that men in respectable stations of society 
 had rather procure the same ends by honest than dishonest means. Thus 
 would all the temptations to offend against the Game Laws, arising from 
 the change of society, together with the long chain of moral and political 
 mischiefs, at once disappear. 
 
 " But then, in order to secure a sufficient breed of game for the supply 
 of the market, in fair and open competition, it will be necessary to authorise 
 a certain number of persons, likely to breed game for sale, to take and dis- 
 pose of it when reared at their expense. For this purpose, I would suggest 
 the propriety of permitting by law, occupiers of land to take and kill game, 
 for sale or otherwise, on their own occupations only, unless (if tenants) they 
 are specifically prohibited by agreement with their landlord ; reserving the 
 game and the power of taking it to himself (as is now frequently done in 
 leases). This permission should not, of course, operate during the current 
 leases, unless by agreement. With this precaution, nothing could be fairer 
 than such an enactment ; for it is certainly at the expense of the occupier 
 that the game is raised and maintained : and unless he receive an equivalent 
 for it, either by abatement of rent upon agreement, or by permission to take
 
 GAME LAWS. 291 
 
 and dispose of it, he is certainly an injured man ; whereas it is perfectly 
 just that the owner of the land should have the option either to increase his 
 rent by leaving the disposal of his game to his tenant, or vice versa. Game 
 would be held to be (as hi fact it is) an outgoing from the land, like tithe 
 and other burdens, and therefore to be considered in a bargain ; and land 
 would either be let game-free, or a special reservation of it made by agreement. 
 " Moreover, since the breed of game must always depend upon the occu- 
 pier of the land, who may, and frequently does, destroy every head of it, or 
 prevent its coming to maturity, unless it is considered hi his rent ; the 
 licence for which I am now contending, by affording an inducement to pre- 
 serve the breed in particular spots, would evidently have a considerable 
 effect hi increasing the stock of game in other parts, and in the country at 
 large. There would be introduced a general system of protection, depend- 
 ing upon individual interest, instead of a general system of destruction. I 
 have, therefore, very little doubt that the provision here recommended would, 
 upon the whole, add facilities to the amusements of the sportsman, rather 
 than subtract from them. A sportsman without land might also hire from 
 the occupier of a large tract of land the privilege of shooting over it, which 
 would answer to the latter as well as sending his game to the market. In 
 short, he might hi various ways get a fair return, to which he is well entitled 
 for the expense and trouble incurred in rearing and preserving that par- 
 ticular species of stock upon his land." (Pp. 337 339.) 
 
 There are sometimes 400 or 500 head of game killed in great manors on 
 a single day. We think it highly probable the greater part of this harvest 
 (if the Game Laws were altered) would go to the poulterer, to purchase 
 poultry or fish for the ensuing London season. Nobody is so poor and so 
 distressed as men of very large fortunes, who are fond of making an un- 
 wise display to the world ; and if they had recourse to these means of sup- 
 plying game, it is impossible to suppose that the occupation of the poachei 
 could be continued. The smuggler can compete with the spirit-merchant, 
 on account of the great duty imposed by the revenue ; but where there is 
 no duty to be saved, the mere thief the man who brings the article to 
 market with a halter round his neck the man of whom it is disreputable 
 and penal to buy, who hazards life, liberty, and property to procure the 
 articles which he sells ; such an adventurer can never be long the rival of him 
 who honestly and fairly produces the articles hi which he deals. Fines, im- 
 prisonments, concealment, loss of character, are great deductions from the pro- 
 fits of any trade to which they attach, and great discouragements to its pursuit. 
 
 It is not the custom at present for gentlemen to sell their game ; but the 
 custom would soon begin, and public opinion soon change. It is not 
 unusual for men of fortune to contract with their gardeners to supply their 
 own table, and to send the residue to market, or to sell their venison ; and 
 the same thing might be done with the manor. If game could be bought, 
 it would not be sent in presents : barn-door fowls are never so sent, pre- 
 cisely for this reason. 
 
 The price of game would, under the system ol laws of which we are 
 speaking, be further lowered by the introduction of foreign game, the sale 
 of which, at present prohibited, would tend very much to the preservation 
 of English game by underselling the poacher. It would not be just, if it 
 were possible, to confine any of the valuable productions of nature to the 
 use of one class of men, and to prevent them from becoming the subject of 
 barter, when the proprietor wished so to exchange them. It would be just 
 as reasonable that the consumption of salmon should be confined to the pro- 
 prietors of that sort of fishery that the use of char should be limited to the
 
 292 GAME LA WS. 
 
 inhabitants of the lakes that maritime Englishmen should alone eat oysters 
 and lobsters, as that every other class of the community than landowners 
 should be prohibited from the acquisition of game. 
 
 It will be necessary, whenever the Game Laws ue revised, that some of 
 the worst punishments now inflicted for an infringement of these laws should 
 be repealed. To transport a man for seven years on account of partridges, 
 and to harass a poor wretched peasant in the Crown Office, are very pre- 
 posterous punishments for such offences. Humanity revolts against them 
 they are grossly tyrannical and it is disgraceful that they should be suf- 
 fered to remain on our statute books. But the most singular of all abuses, 
 is the new class of punishments which the Squirarchy have themselves 
 enacted against depredations on game. The law says, that an unqualified 
 man who kills a pheasant shall pay five pounds ; but the squire says he 
 shall be shot ; and accordingly he places a spring-gun in the path of the 
 poacher, and does all he can to take away his life. The more humane and 
 mitigated squire mangles him with traps ; and the supra-fine country gen- 
 tleman only detains him in machines, which prevent his escape, but do not 
 lacerate their captive. Of the gross illegality of such proceedings, there 
 can be no reasonable doubt. Their immorality and cruelty are equally 
 clear. If they are not put down by some declaratory law, it will be abso- 
 lutely necessary that the Judges, in their invaluable circuits of oyer and ter- 
 miner, should leave two or three of his Majesty's squires to a fate too vulgar 
 and indelicate to be alluded to in this Journal. 
 
 Men have certainly a clear right to defend their property ; but then it 
 must be by such means as the law allows : their houses by pistols, their 
 fields by actions for trespass, their game by information. There is an end 
 of law, if every man is to measure out his punishment for his own wrong. 
 Nor are we able to distinguish between the guilt of two persons, the one 
 of whom deliberately shoots a man whom he sees in his fields the other of 
 whom purposely places such instruments as he knows will shoot trespassers 
 upon his fields : better that it should be lawful to kill a trespasser face to 
 face, than to place engines which will kill him. The trespasser may be a 
 child a woman a son, or friend : The spring-gun cannot accommodate 
 itself to circumstances, the squire or the gamekeeper may. 
 
 These, then, are our opinions respecting the alterations in the Game 
 Laws, which, as they now stand, are perhaps the only system which could 
 possibly render the possession of game so very insecure as it now is. "We 
 would give to every man an absolute property in the game upon his land, 
 with full power to kill to permit others to kill and to sell ; we would 
 punish any violation of that property by summary conviction, and pecuniary 
 penalties rising in value according to the number of offences. This would 
 of course abolish all qualifications ; and we sincerely believe it would lessen 
 the profits of selling game illegally, so as very materially to lessen the num- 
 ber of poachers. It would make game, as an article of food, accessible to 
 all classes, without infringing the laws. It would limit the amusements of 
 country gentlemen within the boundaries of justice and would enable the 
 magistrate cheerfully and conscientiously to execute laws, of the moderation 
 and justice of which he must be thoroughly convinced. To this conclusion, 
 too, we have no doubt we shall come at the last. After many years ot 
 scutigeral folly loaded prisons* nightly battles poachers tempted and 
 families ruined, these principles will finally prevail, and make law once 
 more coincident with reason and justice. 
 
 * In the course of the last year, no fewer than twelve h undred persons were commute.! 
 for offences against the Game Laws ; besides those who ran away from their families from 
 lh fear of commitment. This is no slight quantity of misery.
 
 BOTANY BAY. 293 
 
 BOTANY BAY. (E. REVIEW, 1819.) 
 
 1. A Statistical, Historical, and Political Description of the Colony of New South 
 
 Wales, and its dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land : with a particular 
 Enumeration of tlte Advantages which these Colonies offer for Emigration, and 
 tiieir Superiority in many respects o'-cr those possessed l>y the United States oj 
 America. By W. C. WENTWORTH, Esq., a Native of the Colony. Whittaker. 
 London : 1819. 
 
 2. Letter to Viscount Sidmonth, Secretary of State for the Home Department, on the 
 
 Transportation Laws, the State of the Hulks, and of the Colonies in New South 
 \Vales. By the Hon. HENRY GREY BENNET, M.P. Ridgway. London : 1819. 
 
 3. O'HARA'S History of New South Wales. Hatchard. London : 1818. 
 
 THIS land of convicts and kangaroos is beginning to rise into a very fine 
 and flourishing settlement : And great indeed must be the natural resources, 
 and splendid the endowments of that land that has been able to survive the 
 system of neglect* and oppression experienced from the mother-country, 
 and the series of ignorant and absurd governors that have been selected for 
 the administration of its affairs. But mankind live and flourish not only in 
 spite of storms and tempests, but (which could not have been anticipated 
 previous to experience) in spite of colonial secretaries expressly paid to 
 watch over their interests. The supineness and profligacy of public officers 
 cannot always overcome the amazing energy with which human beings 
 pursue their happiness, nor the sagacity with which they determine on the 
 means by which that end is to be promoted. Be it our care, however, to 
 record, for the future inhabitants of Australasia, the political sufferings of 
 their larcenous forefathers ; and let them appreciate, as they ought, that 
 energy which founded a mighty empire in spite of the afflicting blunders 
 and marvellous cacoeconomy of their government. 
 
 Botany Bay is situated in a fine climate, rather Asiatic than European, 
 with a great variety of temperature, but favourable on the whole to 
 health and life. It, conjointly with Van Diemen's Land, produces coal in 
 great abundance, fossil salt, slate, lime, plumbago, potter's clay ; iron ; 
 white, yellow, and brilliant topazes ; alum and copper. These are all the 
 important fossil productions which have been hitherto discovered : but the 
 epidermis of the country has hardly as yet been scratched ; and it is most 
 probable that the immense mountains which divide the eastern and western 
 settlements, Bathurst and Sydney, must abound with every species of mine- 
 ral wealth. The harbours are admirable ; and the whole world, perhaps, 
 cannot produce two such as those of Port Jackson and Derwent. The for- 
 mer of these is land-locked for fourteen miles in length, and of the most 
 irregular fonn : its soundings are more than sufficient for the largest ships ; 
 and all the navies of the world might ride in safety within it. In the har- 
 bour of Denvent there is a roadstead forty-eight miles in length, completely 
 land-locked ; varying in breadth from eight to two miles ; in depth from 
 thirty to four fathoms, and affording the best anchorage the whole way. 
 
 The mean heat, during the three summer months, December, January, 
 and February, is about 80 at noon. The heat which such a degree of the 
 thermometer would seem to indicate, is considerably tempered by the sea- 
 breeze, which blows with considerable force from nine in the morning till 
 seven in the evening. The three autumn months are March, April, and 
 May, in which the thermometer varies from 55 at night to 75 a * noon. 
 
 * One, and no small excuse for" the misconduct of colonial secretaries, is the enor- 
 mous quantity of business by which they are distracted. There should be two or three 
 colonial secretaries instead of one ; the office is dreadfully overweighted. The govern- 
 ment of the colonies is commonly a series of blunders.
 
 294 
 
 BOTANY BAY. 
 
 The three winter months [are June, July, and August. During this inter- 
 val, the mornings and evenings are very chilly, and the nights excessively 
 cold ; hoar-frosts are frequent ; ice, half an inch thick, is found twenty 
 miles from the coast ; the mean temperature, at daylight is from 40 to 45, 
 and at noon from 55 to 60. In the three months of spring, the thermo- 
 meter varies from 60 to 70. The climate to the westward of the moun- 
 tains is colder. Heavy falls of snow take place during the winter ; the 
 frosts are more severe, and the winters of longer duration. All the seasons 
 are much more distinctly marked, and resemble much more those of this 
 country. 
 
 Such is the climate of Botany Bay'; and, in this remote part of the earth, 
 Nature (having made horses, oxen, ducks, geese, oaks, elms, and all regular 
 and useful productions for the rest of the world) seems determined to have 
 a bit of play, and to amuse herself as she pleases. Accordingly, she makes 
 cherries with the stone on the outside ; and a monstrous animal, as tall as 
 a grenadier, with the head of a rabbit, a tail as big as a bed-post, hopping 
 along at the rate of five hops to a mile, with three or four young kangaroos 
 looking out of its false uterus, to see what is passing. Then comes a 
 quadruped as big as a large cat, with the eyes, colour, and skin of a mole, 
 and the bill and \veb-feet of a duck puzzling Dr Shaw, and rendering the 
 latter half of his life miserable, from his utter inability to determine whether 
 it was a bird or a beast. Add to this a parrot, with the legs of a sea-gull ; 
 a skate with the head of a shark ; and a bird of such monstrous dimensions, 
 that a side bone of it will dine three real carnivorous Englishmen ; to- 
 gether with many other productions that agitate Sir Joseph, and fill him 
 with mingled emotions of distress and delight. 
 
 The colony has made the following progress : 
 
 Horned Cattle . 
 Horses . . 
 Sheep 
 Hogs 
 Land in cultivation 
 Inhabitants 
 
 Stock in 1788. 
 5 
 7 
 29 
 
 74 
 o acres 
 
 IOOO 
 
 Do. 
 Do. 
 Do. 
 Do. 
 Do. 
 Do. 
 
 Stock in 1817. 
 
 44,753 
 
 3,072 
 
 170,920 
 
 17,842 
 
 47,564 
 20,379 
 
 The colony has a bank, with a capital of ,20,000 ; a newspaper ; and a 
 capital (the town of Sydney) containing about 7000 persons. There is also 
 a Van Diemen's Land Gazette. The pemsal of these newspapers, which 
 are regularly transmitted to England, and may be purchased in London, has 
 afforded us considerable amusement. Nothing can paint in a more lively 
 manner the state of the settlement, its disadvantages, and prosperities, and 
 the opinions and manners which prevail there. 
 
 "On Friday, Mr James Squires, settler and brewer, waited on his 
 Excellency at Government House, with two vines of hops taken from his 
 own grounds, &c. As a public recompense for the unremitted attention 
 shown by the grower in bringing this valuable plant to such a high degree 
 of perfection, his Excellency has directed a cow to be given to Mr Squires 
 from the Government herd." (O'Hara, p. 255.) 
 
 " To Parents and Guardians. 
 
 " A person who flatters herself her character will bear the strictest 
 scrutiny, being desirous of receiving into her charge a proposed number of 
 children of her own sex, as boarders, respectfully acquaints parents and 
 guardians that she is about to situate herself either in Sydney or Paramatta,
 
 BOTANY BAY. 295 
 
 of which notice will be shortly given. She doubts not, at the same time, 
 that her assiduity in the inculcation of moral principles in the youthful mind, 
 joined to an unremitting attention and polite diction, will ensure to her 
 the much-desired confidence of those who may think proper to favour her 
 with such a charge. Inquiries on the above subject will be answered by G. 
 Howe, at Sydney, who will make known the name of the advertiser." 
 (P. 270.) 
 
 "Lost, 
 
 " (supposed to be on the governor's wharf), two small keys, a tortoise-shell 
 comb, and a packet of papers. Whoever may have found them will, on 
 delivering them to the printer, receive a reward of half a gallon of spirits." 
 (P. 272.) 
 
 " To the Public. 
 
 ' ' As we have no certainty of an immediate supply of paper, we cannot 
 promise a publication next week." (P. 290.) 
 
 " Fashionable Intelligence, Sept. *]th. 
 
 " On Tuesday his Excellency the late Governor and Mrs King arrived 
 in town from Paramatta ; and yesterday Mrs King returned thither, ac- 
 companied by Mrs Putland." (Ibid.) 
 
 " To be sold by Private Contract, by Mr Bei'an, 
 
 ' ' An elegant four-wheeled chariot, with plated mounted harness for four 
 horses complete ; and a handsome lady's side-saddle and bridle. May be 
 viewed on application to Mr Bevan." (P. 347.) 
 
 " From the Denoent Star. 
 
 "Lieutenant Lord, of the Royal Marines, who, after the death of Lieu- 
 tenant-Governor Collins, succeeded to the command of the settlement at 
 Hobart Town, arrived at Port Jackson in the Hunter, and favours us with 
 the perusal of the Ninth Number published of the Derwent Star and Van 
 Die men's Land Intelligencer ; from which we copy the following extracts." 
 -(P. 353-) 
 
 "A Card. 
 
 " The Subscribers to the Sydney Race Course are informed, that the 
 Stewards have made arrangements for two balls during the race week, viz., 
 on Tuesday and Thursday. Tickets, at Js. 6</. each, to be had at Mr 
 E. Wills' s, George Street. An ordinary for the subscribers and their friends 
 each day of the races, at Mr Wills's. Dinner on table at five o'clock." 
 (P. 356.) 
 
 " The Ladies' Cup. 
 
 " The ladies' cup, which was of very superior workmanship, won by 
 Chase, was presented to Captain Richie by Mrs M'Quarie ; who, accom- 
 panied by his Excellency, honoured each day's race with her presence, and 
 who, with her usual affability, was pleased to preface the donation with 
 the following short address : ' In the name of the Ladies of New South 
 Wales, I have the pleasure to present you with this cup. Give me leave 
 to congratulate you on being the successful candidate for it ; and to hope 
 that it is a prelude to future success, and lasting prosperity.' " (P. 357.) 
 
 "ButcJiers. 
 
 " Now killing, at Matthew Pimpton's, Cumberland Street, Rocks, beef, 
 mutton, pork, and lamb. By retail, is. $d. per lib. Mutton by the carcass,
 
 296 BOTANY BA F. 
 
 is. per lib. sterling, or I4<Y. currency ; warranted to weigh from 10 lib. to 
 12 lib. per quarter. Lamb per ditto. Captains of ships supplied at the 
 Wholesale price, and with punctuality. N.B. Beef, pork, mutton, and lamb, 
 at E. Lamb's, Hunter Street, at the above prices." (P. 376.) 
 
 " Sa!t Pork and Flair from Otahelte. 
 
 " On Sale, at the warehouse of Mrs S. Willis, 96 George Street, a large 
 quantity of the above articles, well cured, being the Mercury's last importa- 
 tion from Otaheite. The terms per cask are loJ. per lib. sterling, or is. 
 currency. N.B. For the accommodation of families, it will be sold in 
 quantities not less than 112 lib." (P. 377.) 
 
 " Painting. -A Card. 
 
 " Mr J. W. Lewin begs leave to inform his friends and the public in 
 general, that he intends opening an academy for painting on the days of 
 Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from the hours of IO to 12 in the fore- 
 noon. Terms, $s. a lesson: Entrance 2cxr. N.B. The evening academy 
 for drawing continued as usual." (P. 384.) 
 
 " Sale of Rams. 
 
 " Ten rams of the Merino breed, lately sold by auction from the flocks 
 of John M 'Arthur, Esq., produced upwards of 200 guineas." (P. 388.) 
 
 ''Mrsjonefs Vacation Ball, December \2th. 
 
 " Mrs Jones, with great respect, informs the parents and guardians of the 
 young ladies intrusted to her tuition, that the vacation ball is fixed for 
 Tuesday the 22d instant, at the seminary, No. 45, Castlereagh Street, Sydney. 
 Tickets 7*. 6d. each." (P. 388.) 
 
 " Sporting Intelligence. 
 
 " A fine hunt took place the 8th instant at the Nepean, of which the 
 following is the account given by a gentleman present. ' Having cast off 
 by the government hut on the Nepean, and drawn the cover in that neigh- 
 bourhood for a native Dog unsuccessfully, we tried the forest ground for a 
 Kangaroo, which we soon found. It went off in excellent style along the 
 sands by the river side, and crossed to the Cow-pasture Plains, running a 
 circle of about two miles ; then re-crossed, taking a direction for Mr 
 Campbell's stock-yard, and from thence at the back of Badge Allen Hill to 
 the head of Boorroobaham Creek, where he was headed ; from thence he 
 took the main range of hills between the Badge Allen and Badge Allen- 
 abinjee, in a straight direction for Mr Throsbey's farm, where the hounds 
 ran in to him ; and he was killed, after a good run of about two hours.' 
 The weight of the animal was upwards of 120 lib." (P. 380.) 
 
 Of the town of Sydney, Mr Wentworth observes, that there are in it 
 many public buildings, as well as houses of individuals, that would not dis- 
 grace the best parts of London ; but this description we must take the 
 liberty to consider as more patriotic than true. We rather suspect it was 
 penned before Mr Wentworth was in London ; for he is (be it said to 
 his honour) a native of Botany Bay. The value of lands (in the same spirit 
 he adds) is half as great in Sydney as in the best situations in London, and 
 is daily increasing. The proof of this which Mr Wentworth gives, is, that 
 " it is not a commodious house which can be rented for ^100 per annum, un- 
 furnished." The town of Sydney contains two good public schools, for the
 
 BOTANY BAY. 297 
 
 education of 224 children of both sexes. There are establishments also for 
 the diffusion of education in every populous district throughout the colony ; 
 the masters of these schools are allowed stipulated salaries from the Orphans' 
 Fund. Mr Wentworth states that one eighth part of the whole revenue of 
 the colony is appropriated to the purposes of education ; this eighth he 
 computes at ^2500. Independent of these institutions, there are an 
 Auxiliary Bible Society, a Sunday School, and several good private schools. 
 This is all. as it should be : the education of the poor, important everywhere, 
 is indispensable at Botany Bay. Nothing but the earliest attention to the 
 habits of children, can restrain the erratic ringer from the contiguous scrip, 
 or prevent the hereditary tendency to larcenous abstraction. The American 
 arrangements respecting the education of the lower orders is excellent. 
 Their unsold lands are surveyed, and divided into districts. In the centre 
 of every district, an ample and well selected lot is provided for the support 
 of future schools. We wish this had been imitated in New Holland ; for 
 we are of opinion that the elevated nobleman, Lord Sidmouth, should 
 imitate what is good and wise, even if the Americans are his teachers. Mr 
 Wentworth talks of 15,000 acres set apart for the support of the Female 
 Orphan Schools ; which certainly does sound a little extravagant : but then 
 50 or loo acres of this reserve are given as a portion to each female orphan ; 
 so that all this pious tract of ground will be soon married away. This 
 dotation of women, in a place where they are scarce, is amiable and foolish 
 enough. There is a school also for the education and civilisation of the 
 natives, we hope not to the exclusion of the children of convicts, who have 
 clearly a prior claim upon public charity. 
 
 Great exertions have been made in public roads and bridges. The pre- 
 sent Governor has wisely established toll-gates in all the principal roads. 
 No tax can be more equitable, and no money more beneficially employed. 
 The herds of wild cattle have either perished through the long droughts 
 or been destroyed by the remote settlers. They have nearly disappeared ; 
 and their extinction is a good rather than an evil. A very good horse for 
 cart or plough may now be bought for $ to 10 ; working oxen for the 
 same price ; fine young breeding ewes from i to ^3, according to the 
 quality of the fleece. So lately as 1808, a cow and calf were sold by 
 public auction for .105 ; and the price of middling cattle was from So to 
 ^100. A breeding mare was, at the same period, worth from 150 to 200 
 guineas ; and ewes from 10 to 20. The inhabitants of New South 
 Wales have now 2000 years before them of cheap beef and mutton. The 
 price of land is of course regulated by its situation and quality. Four years 
 past an hundred and fifty acres of very indifferent ground, about three 
 quarters of a mile from Sydney, were sold, by virtue of an execution, in lots 
 of 12 acres each, and averaged 14. per acre. This is the highest price 
 given for land not situated in a town. The general average of unimproved 
 land is $ P er acre - In years when the crops have not suffered from flood 
 or drought, wheat sells for <)s. per bushel ; maize for y. 6d. ; barley for 5j. ; 
 oats for 4J 1 . 6d. ; potatoes for 6j. per cwt. By the last accounts received 
 from the colony, mutton and beef were 6d. per lib. ; veal 8d. ; pork gd. 
 Wheat 8j. 8</. per bushel ; oats 4*. , and barley 5-r. per ditto. Fowls 
 4J. 6d. per couple ; ducks 6s. per ditto ; geese 5^. each ; turkeys *js. 6d. 
 each ; eggs 2s. 6</. per dozen ; butter 2s. f)d. per lib. There are manu- 
 factures of coarse woollen cloths, hats, earthenware, pipes, salt, candles, 
 soap. There are extensive breweries and tanneries ; and all sorts of 
 mechanics and artificers necessary for an infant colony. Carpenters, stone- 
 masons, bricklayers, wheel and ploughwrights, and all the most useful 
 descriptions of artificers, can earn from Ss. to los. per day. Great atten.
 
 298 BOTANY BAY. 
 
 tion has been paid to the improvement of wool ; and it is becoming a very 
 considerable article of export to this country. 
 
 The most interesting circumstance in the accounts lately received from 
 Botany Bay, is the discovery of the magnificent river on the western side 
 of the Blue Mountains. The public are aware, that a fine road has been 
 made from Sydney to Bathurst, and a new town founded at the foot of the 
 western side of these mountains, a distance of 140 miles. The country in 
 the neighbourhood of Bathurst has been described as beautiful, fertile, open, 
 and eminently fit for all the purposes of a settlement. The object was to 
 find a river ; and such an one has been found, the description of which it is 
 impossible to read without the most lively interest The intelligence is 
 contained in a despatch from Mr Oxley, Surveyor- General of the settle- 
 ment, to the Governor, dated 3Oth August, 1817. 
 
 " ' On the igth, we were gratified by falling in with a river running 
 through a most beautiful country, and which I would have been well con- 
 tented to have believed the river we were in search of. Accident led us 
 down this stream about a mile, when we were surprised by its junction with 
 a river coming from the south, of such width and magnitude, as to dispel 
 all doubts as to this last being the river we had so long anxiously looked 
 for. Short as our resources were, we could not resist the temptation this 
 beautiful country offered us to remain two days on the junction of the river, 
 for the purpose of examining the vicinity to as great an extent as possible. 
 
 " ' Our examination increased the satisfaction we had previously felt. 
 As far as the eye could reach in every direction, a rich and picturesque 
 country extended, abounding in limestone, slate, good timber, and every 
 other requisite that could render an uncultivated country desirable. The 
 soil cannot be excelled ; whilst a noble river of the first magnitude affords 
 the means of conveying its productions from one part to the other. "Where 
 I quitted it its course was northerly ; and we were then north of the parallel 
 of Port Stevens, being in latitude 32 45' south, and 148 58' east longi- 
 tude. 
 
 " 'It appeared to me that the Macquarrie had taken a north-north-west 
 course from Bathurst, and that it must have received immense accessions of 
 water in its course from that place. We viewed it at a period best calcu- 
 lated to form an accurate judgment of its importance, when it was neither 
 swelled by floods beyond its natural and usual height, nor contracted within 
 its limits by summer droughts. Of its magnitude when it should have 
 received the streams we had crossed, independent of any it may receive from 
 the east, which from the boldness and height of the country, I presume, 
 must be at least as many, some idea may be formed, when at this point it 
 exceeded, in breadth and apparent depth, the Hawkesbury at \Yindsor. 
 Many of the branches were of grander and more extended proportion than 
 the admired one on the Nepean River from the Warragambia to Emu 
 Plains. 
 
 " ' Resolving to keep as near the river as possible during the remainder 
 of our course to Bathurst, and endeavour to ascertain, at least on the west 
 side, what waters fell into it, on the 22d we proceeded up the river, and, 
 between the point quitted and Bathurst, crossed the sources of numberless 
 streams, all running into the Macquarrie. Two of them were nearly as 
 large as that river itself at Bathurst. The country from whence all these 
 streams derive their source was mountainous and irregular, and appeared 
 equally so on the east side of die Macquarrie. This description of country 
 extended to the immediate vicinity of Bathurst ; but to the west of those 
 lofty ranges the country was broken ito low grassy hills, and fine valleys,
 
 BOTANY BAY. 299 
 
 watered by rivulets rising on the west side of the mountains, which, on their 
 eastern side, pour their waters directly into the 'Macquarrie. 
 
 " 'These westerly streams appeared to me to join that which I had at 
 first sight taken for the Macquarrie ; and, when united, fall into it at the 
 point at which it was first discovered on the iQth instant. 
 
 " ' We reached this place last evening, without a single accident having 
 occurred during the whole progress of the expedition, which from this point 
 has encircled, with the parallels of 34 o' south and 32 south, and between 
 the meridians of 149 43' and 143 4C/ east, a space of nearly one thousand 
 miles.'" {IVent-worth, pp. 72 75.) 
 
 The nearest distance from the point at which Mr Oxley left off, to any 
 part of the western coast, is very little short of 2000 miles. The Hawkes- 
 bury, at Windsor (to which he compares his new river in magnitude), is 250 
 yards in breadth, and of sufficient depth to float a 74-gun ship. At this 
 point it has 2000 miles in a straight line to reach the ocean ; and if it wind, 
 as rivers commonly do wind, it has a space to flow over of between 5o 
 and 6000 miles. The course and direction of the river has since become 
 the object of two expeditions, one by land under Mr Oxley ; the other by 
 sea under Lieutenant King, to the results of which we look forward with 
 great interest. Enough of the country on the western side of the Blue 
 Mountains has been discovered to show that the settlement has been made 
 on the wrong side. The space between the Mountains and the Eastern Sea 
 is not above 40 miles in breadth, and the five or six miles nearest the coast 
 are of very barren land. The country, on the other side, is boundless, 
 fertile, well watered, and of very great beauty. The importance of such a 
 river as the Macquarrie is incalculable. We cannot help remarking here, 
 the courtly appellations in which geography delights ; the river Ha-aikes- 
 biiry ; the town of Windsor on its banks ; Bathnrst Plains ; Nepean River. 
 Shall we never hear of the Gulph of Tierney ; Brougham Point; or the 
 straits of Alackintosh on the river Grey ? 
 
 The mistakes which have been made in settling this fine colony are of 
 considerable importance, and such as must very seriously retard its progress 
 to power and opulence. The first we shall mention is the settlement on the 
 Hawkesbury. Every work of nature has its characteristic defects. Marshes 
 should be suspected of engendering disease a volcanic country of eruptions 
 rivers of overflowing. A very little portion of this kind of reflection 
 would have induced the disposers of land in New South Wales to have 
 become a little better acquainted with the Hawkesbury before they granted 
 land on its banks, and gave that direction to the tide of settlement and cul- 
 tivation. It turns out that the Hawkesbury is the embouchure through 
 which all the rain that falls on the eastern side of the Blue Mountains makes 
 its way to the sea ; and accordingly, without any warning, or any fall of 
 rain on the settled part of the river, the stream has often risen from 70 to 90 
 feet above its common level. 
 
 "These inundations often rise seventy or eighty feet above low-water 
 mark ; and in the instance of what is still emphatically termed ' the great 
 flood ' attained an elevation of ninety-three feet. The chaos of confusion 
 and distress that presents itself on these occasions cannot be easily conceived 
 by any one who has not been a witness of its horrors. An immense expanse 
 of water, of which the eye cannot in many directions discover the limits, 
 everywhere interspersed with growing timber, and crowded with poultry, 
 pigs, horses, cattle, stacks, and houses, having frequently men, women, and 
 children clinging to them for protection, and shrieking out in an agony of
 
 Soo BOTANY BAY. 
 
 despair for assistance : such are the principal objects by which these scenes 
 of death and devastation are characterised. 
 
 "These inundations are not periodical, but they most generally happen 
 in the month of March. Within the last two years there have been no 
 fewer than four of them, one of which was nearly as high as the great flood. 
 In the six years preceding, there had not been one. Since the establish- 
 ment of the colony, they have happened, upon an average, about once in 
 three years. 
 
 " The principal cause of them is the contiguity of this river to the Blue 
 Mountains. The Grose and Warragambia rivers, from which two sources 
 it derives its principal supply, issue direct from these mountains ; and the 
 Nepean river, the other principal branch of it, runs along the base of them 
 for fifty or sixty miles, and receives in its progress, from the innumerable 
 mountain torrents connected with it, the whole of the rain which these 
 mountains collect in that great extent. That this is the principal cause of 
 these calamitous inundations has been fully proved ; for shortly after the 
 plantation of this colony, the Hawkesbury overflowed its banks (which are 
 in general about thirty feet in height), in the midst of harvest, when not a 
 single drop of rain had fallen on the Port Jackson side of the mountains. 
 Another great cause of the inundations which take place in this and the 
 other rivers in the colony, is the small fall that is in them, and the conse- 
 quent slowness of their currents. The current in the Hawkesbury, even 
 when the tide is in full ebb, does not exceed two miles an hour. The 
 water, therefore, which during the rains rushes in torrents from the moun- 
 tains, cannot escape with sufficient rapidity ; and from its immense accumu- 
 lation soon overtops the banks of the river, and covers the whole of the low 
 country." {Wcntworth, pp. 24 26.) 
 
 It appears to have been a great oversight not to have built the town of 
 Sydney upon a regular plan. Ground was granted, in the first instance, 
 without the least attention to this circumstance ; and a chaos of pigstyes 
 and houses was produced, which subsequent governors have found it ex- 
 tremely difficult to reduce to a state of order and regularity. 
 
 Regularity is of consequence in planning a metropolis ; but fine buildings 
 are absurd in the infant state of any country. The various governors have 
 unfortunately displayed rather too strong a taste for architecture forgetting 
 that the real Palladio for Botany Bay, in its present circumstances, is he 
 who keeps out the sun, wind, and rain, with the smallest quantity of bricks 
 and mortar. 
 
 The appointment of Governor Bligh appears to have been a very serious 
 misfortune to the colony at such an immense distance from the mother- 
 country, with such an uncertainty of communication, and with a population 
 so peculiarly circumstanced. In these extraordinary circumstances, the 
 usual jobbing of the Treasury should really be laid aside, and some little 
 attention paid to the selection of a proper person. It is common, we know, 
 to send a person who is somebody's cousin ; but, when a new empire is to 
 be founded, the Treasury s/wuld send out, into some other part of the 
 town, for a man of sense and character. 
 
 Another very great absurdity which has been committed at Botany Bay, 
 is the diminution of their strength and resources by the foundation of so 
 many subordinate settlements. No sooner had the settlers unpacked their 
 boxes at Port Jackson, than a fresh colony was settled in Norfolk Island 
 under Lieutenant King, which was afterwards abandoned, after considerable 
 labour and expense, from the want of a harbour : besides four or five settle- 
 ments on the main land, two or three thousand persons, under a lieutenant-
 
 BOTANY BA Y. 301 
 
 governor, and regular officers, are settled in Van Diemen's Land. The 
 difficulties of a new colony are such, that the exertions of all the arms and 
 legs is wanted merely to cover their bodies and fill their bellies : the passage 
 from one settlement to another, necessary for common intercourse, is a great 
 waste of strength : ten thousand men, within a given compass, will do much 
 more for the improvement of a country than the same number spread over 
 three times the space will make more miles of road, clear more acres of 
 wood, and build more bridges. The judge, the windmill, and the school, 
 are more accessible ; and one judge, one windmill, and one school, may do 
 instead of two ; there is less waste of labour. We do not, of course, 
 object to the natural expansion of a colony over uncultivated lands the 
 more rapidly that takes place the greater is the prosperity of the settlement ; 
 but we reprobate the practice of breaking the first population of a colony, 
 by the interposition of government, into small detached portions, placed at 
 great intervals. It is a bad economy of their resources ; and as such, is 
 very properly objected to by the Committee of the I louse of Commons. 
 
 This colony appears to have suffered a good deal from the tyranny as well 
 as the ignorance of its governors. On the 7th of December, 1816, Governor 
 Macquarrie issued the following order : 
 
 "His Excellency is also pleased further to declare, order, and direct, that 
 in consideration of the premises, the under-mentioned sums, amounts, and 
 charges, and no more, with regard to and upon the various denominations 
 of work, labour, and services, described and set forth, shall be allowed, 
 claimed, or demandable within this territory and its dependencies in respect 
 thereof." (WenfavriA, pp. 105, 106.) 
 
 And then follows a schedule of every species of labour, to each of which 
 r. maximum is affixed. We have only to observe, that a good stout inun- 
 dation of the Ilawkesbury would be far less pernicious to the industry of 
 the colony than such gross ignorance and absurdity as this order evinces. 
 Young surgeons are examined in Surgeons' Hall on the methods of cutting 
 off legs and arms before they are allowed to practise surgery. An examin- 
 ation on the principles of Adam Smith, and a license from Mr Ricardo, 
 seem to be almost a necessary preliminary for the appointment of Governors. 
 We must give another specimen of Governor Macquarrie's acquaintance 
 vith the principles of political economy. 
 
 " General Orders. 
 
 'His Excellency has observed, with much concern, that, at the present 
 time of scarcity, most of the gai'den ground attached to the allotments, 
 whereon different descriptions of persons have been allowed to build huts, 
 are totally neglected, and no vegetable growing thereon : as such neglect 
 in the occupiers points them out as unfit to profit by such indulgence, those 
 who do not put the garden ground attached to the allotments they occupy 
 in cultivation, on or before the loth day of July next, will be dispossessed 
 (except in cases wherein ground is held by lease), and more industrious 
 persons put in possession of them, as the present necessities of the settle- 
 ment require every exertion being used to supply the wants of families, by 
 the ground attached to their dwellings being made as productive as possible. 
 By command of his Excellency. G. BLAXWELL, Sec. Gai-eniinent 
 House, Sydney, Jitm 2lst, l8o6."(O'ffara, p. 275.) 
 
 This compulsion to enjoy, this despotic benevolence, is something quite 
 new in the science of government. 
 
 The sale of spirits was first of all monopolised by the Government, anil
 
 302 BOTANY BA Y. 
 
 then lit out to individuals, for the purpose of building aii hospital. Upon 
 this subject Mr Eennet observes 
 
 " Heretofore all ardent spirits brought to the colony were purchased by 
 the Government, and served out at fixed prices to the officers, civil and 
 military, according to their ranks ; hence arose a discreditable and gainful 
 trade on the part of these officers, their wives and mistresses. The price of 
 spirits at times were so high, that one and two guineas have been given for 
 a single bottle. The thirst after ardent spirits became a mania among the 
 settlers : all the writers on the state of the colony, and all who have resided 
 there, and have given testimony concerning it, describe this rage and passion 
 for drunkenness as prevailing in all classes, and as being the principal founda- 
 tion of all the crimes committed there. This extravagant propensity to 
 drunkenness was taken advantage of by the governor to aid him in the 
 building of the hospital. Mr \Vent\vorth, the surgeon, Messrs Riley and 
 Blaxwell, obtained permission to enter a certain quantity of spirits ; they 
 were to pay a duty of five or seven shillings a gallon on the quantity they 
 introduced, which duty was to be set apart for the erection of the hospital. 
 To prevent any other spirits from being landed, a monopoly was given to 
 these contractors. As soon as the agreement was signed, these gentlemen 
 sent off to Rio Janeiro, the Mauritius, and the East Indies, for a large quan- 
 tity of rum and arrack, which they could purchase at about the rate of 2s. 
 or 2s. 6d. per gallon, and disembarked it at Sydney. From there being but 
 few houses that were before permitted to sell this poison, they abounded in 
 every street ; and such was the enormous consumption of spirits, that money 
 was soon raised to build the hospital, which was finished in 1814. Mr Marsden 
 informs us, that in the small town of Paramatta thirteen houses were licensed 
 to deal in spirits, though he should think five at the utmost would be amply 
 sufficient for the accommodation of the public." (Sennet, pp. 77 79.) 
 
 The whole coast of Botany Bay and Va.ii Dienien's Land abounds with 
 whales ; and accordingly the duty levied upon train oil procured by the 
 subjects in New South "Wales, or imported there, is twenty times greater 
 than that paid by the inhabitants of this country ; the duty on spermaceti oil, 
 imported, is sixty times greater. The duty levied on train oil, spermaceti, 
 and head matter, procured by the inhabitants of Newfoundland, is only three 
 times the amount of that which is levied on the same substance procured by 
 British subjects residing in the United Kingdom. The duty levied on oil pro- 
 cured by British subjects residing in the Bahama or Bermuda islands, or in 
 the plantations of North America, is only eight times the amount on train 
 oil, and twelve times the amount on spermaceti, of that which is levied on the 
 same substances taken by British subjects within the United Kingdom. The 
 duty, therefore, which is payable on train oil, in vessels belonging to this 
 colony, is nearly seven tunes greater than that which is payable on the same 
 description of oil taken in vessels belonging to the island of Newfound- 
 land, and considerably more than double of that which is payable on the 
 same commodity taken in vessels belonging to the Bahama or Bermuda 
 islands, or to the plantations in North America ; while the duty which is 
 levied on spermaceti oil, procured in vessels belonging to this colony, is five 
 times the amount of that which is levied on vessels belonging to the above- 
 mentioned places, and twenty times the amount of that which is levied on 
 vessels belonging to Newfoundland. The injustice of this seems to us to be 
 quite enormous. The statements are taken from Mr Wentworth's book. 
 
 The inhabitants of New South Wales have no trial by jury; the governor 
 has not even a council to restrain him. There is imposed in this country 
 a very heavy duty on timber and coals exported ; but for which, says Mr
 
 BOTANY BA Y. 303 
 
 Wentworth, some hundred tons of -these valuable productions would liave 
 been sent annually to the Cape of Good Hope and India, since the vessels 
 which have been in the habit of trading between those countries and the 
 colony have always returned in ballast. The owners and consignees would 
 gladly have shipped cargoes of timbers and coals, if they could have derived 
 the most minute profit from the freight of them. 
 
 The Australasians grow corn ; and it is necessarily their staple. The 
 Cape is their rival in the corn trade. The food of the inhabitants of the 
 East Indies is rice ; the voyage to Europe is too distant for so bulky an 
 article as corn. The supply to the government stores furnished the culti- 
 vators of New South Wales with a market in the first instance, which is 
 now become too insignificant for the great excess of the supply above the 
 consumption. Population goes on with immense rapidity ; but while so 
 much new and fertile land is before them, the supply continues in the same 
 proportion greater than the demand. The most obvious method of afford- 
 ing a market for this redundant corn is by encouraging distilleries within the 
 colony ; a measure repeatedly pressed upon the government at home, but 
 hitherto as constantly refused. It is a measure of still greater importance 
 to the colony, because its agriculture is subjected to the effects both of severe 
 drought and extensive inundations, and the corn raised for the distillers 
 would be a magazine in times of famine. A recommendation to this effect 
 was long since made by a committee of the House of Commons ; but, as it 
 was merely a measure for the increase of human comforts, was stuffed into 
 the improvement baskets, and forgotten. There has been in all governments 
 a great deal of absurd canting about the consumption of spirits. We believe 
 the best plan is to let people drink what they like, and wear what they like ; 
 to make no sumptuary laws either for the belly or the back. In the first 
 place, laws against rum, and rum and water, are made by men who can 
 change a wet coat for a dry one whenever they choose, and who do not often 
 work up to their knees in mud and water ; and, in the next place, if thia 
 stimulus did all the mischief it is thought to do by the wise men of claret, 
 its cheapness and plenty would rather lessen than increase the avidity with 
 which it is at present sought for. 
 
 The governors of Botany Bay have taken the liberty of imposing what 
 taxes they deemed proper, without any other authority than their own ; and 
 it seemed very frivolous and vexatious not to allow this small effusion of 
 despotism in so remote a corner of the globe : but it was noticed by the 
 opposition in the House of Commons, and reluctantly confessed and given up 
 by the administration. This great portion of the earth begins civil life with 
 noble principles of freedom : may God grant to its inhabitants that wisdom 
 and courage which are necessary for the preservation of so great a good \\ 
 
 Mr Wentworth enumerates, among the evils to which the colony is sub- 
 jected, that clause in the last settlement of the East India Company's charter, 
 which prevents vessels of less than 300 tons burden from navigating the 
 Indian seas ; a restriction from which the Cape of Good Hope has been 
 lately liberated, and which ought, in the same manner, to be removed from 
 New South Wales, where there cannot be, for many years to come, sufficient 
 capital to build vessels of so large a burden. 
 
 "The disability," says Mr Wentworth, " might be removed by a simple 
 order in council. Whenever his Majesty's government shall have freed the 
 colonists from this useless and cruel prohibition, the following branches of 
 commerce would then be opened to them. First, they would be enabled 
 to transport, in their own vessels, their coals, timber, spars, flour, meat, 
 &c. . to the Cape of Good Hope, the Isle of France, Calcutta, and many
 
 304 BOTANY BAY. 
 
 other places in the Indian seas ; in all of which, markets more or less ex- 
 tensive exist for those various other productions which the colony might 
 furnish. Secondly, they would be enabled to carry directly to Canton the 
 sandal wood, beche la mer, dried seal-skins, and, in fact, .all the numerous 
 productions which the surrounding seas and islands afford for the China 
 market, and return freighted with cargoes of tea, silks, nankeens, c. ; all 
 of which commodities are in great demand in the colony, and are at present 
 altogether furnished by East India or American merchants, to the great 
 detriment and dissatisfaction of the colonial. And, lastly, they would be 
 enabled, in a short time, from the great increase of capital, which these 
 important privileges would of themselves occasion, as well as attract from 
 other countries, to open the fur-trade with the north-west coast of America, 
 and dispose of the cargoes procured in China, a trade which has hitherto 
 been exclusively carried on by the Americans and Russians, although the 
 colonists possess a local superiority for the prosecution of this valuable 
 branch of commerce, which would insure them at least a successful competi- 
 tion with the subjects of those two nations." (IVentworth, pp. 317, 318.). 
 
 The means which Mr Wentworth proposes for improving the condition 
 of Botany Bay, are trial by jury colonial assemblies, with whom the right 
 of taxation should rest the establishment of distilleries, and the exclusion 
 of foreign spirits alteration of duties, so as to place New South Wales upon 
 the same footing as other colonies removal of the restriction to navigate 
 the Indian seas in vessels of a small burden improvements in the courts 
 of justice encouragement for the growth of hemp, flax, tobacco, and wine ; 
 and, if a colonial assembly cannot be granted, that there should be no 
 taxation without the authority of parliament. 
 
 In general, we agree with Mr Wentworth in his statement of evils, and 
 in the remedies he has proposed for them. Many of the restrictions upon 
 the commerce of New South Wales are so absurd, that they require only to 
 be stated in parliament to be corrected. The fertility of the colony so far 
 exceeds its increase of population, and the difficulty of finding a market for 
 com is so great or rather the impossibility so clear that the measure of 
 encouraging domestic distilleries ought to be had recourse to. The colony, 
 with a soil fit for every thing, must, as Mr Wentworth proposes, grow other 
 things besides corn, and excite that market in the interior which it does not 
 enjoy from without. The want of demand, indeed, for the excess of corn, 
 will soon effect this without the intervention of government. Government, 
 we believe, have already given up the right of taxation, without the sanction 
 of parliament ; and there is an end probably, by this time, to that grievance. 
 A council and a colonial secretary they have also expressed their willingness 
 to concede. Of trial by jury, and a colonial assembly, we confess that we 
 have great doubts. At some future time they must come, and ought to 
 come. The only question is, Is the colony fit for such institutions at present ? 
 Are there a sufficient number of respectable persons to serve that office in 
 the various settlements ? If the English law is to be followed exactly, to 
 compose a jury of twelve persons, a panel of forty-eight must be summoned. 
 Could forty-eight intelligent, unconvicted men be found in every settlement 
 of New South Wales ? or must they not be fetched from great distances, at 
 an enormous expense and inconvenience ? Is such an institution calculated 
 for so very young a colony ? A good government is an excellent thing ; but 
 it is not the first in the order of human wants. The first want is to subsist ; 
 the next to subsist in freedom and comfort ; first to live at all, then to live 
 well. A parliament is still a greater demand upon the wisdom and intelli- 
 gence and opulence of a colony than trial by jury. Among the twenty
 
 BOTANY 13 A Y. 305 
 
 thousand inhabitants of New South Wales, are there ten persons out of the 
 employ of government whose wisdom and prudence could reasonably be 
 expected to advance the interests of the colony without embroiling it with 
 the mother-country? Who has leisure, in such a state of affairs, to attend 
 such a parliament ? Where wisdom and conduct are so rare, every man of 
 character, we will venture to say, has, like strolling players in a barn, six or 
 seven important parts to perform. Mr M 'Arthur, who, from his character 
 and understanding, would probably be among the first persons elected to the 
 colonial legislature, besides being a very spirited agriculturist, is, we have 
 no doubt, justice of the peace, curator and rector of a thousand plans, 
 charities, and associations, to which his presence is essentially necessary. If 
 he could be cut into as many pieces as a tree is into planks, all his subdivisions 
 would be eminently useful. When a member of parliament, and what is 
 called a really respectable country gentleman, sets off to attend his duty in 
 our parliament, such diminution of intelligence as is produced by his absence, 
 is, God knows, easily supplied; but in a colony of 20, coo persons, it is 
 impossible this should be the case. Some time hence, the institution of a 
 colonial assembly will be a very wise and proper measure, and so clearly 
 called for, that the most profligate members of administration will neither 
 be able to ridicule nor refuse it. At present we are afraid that a Botany 
 Bay parliament would give rise to jokes ; and jokes at present have a great 
 agency in human affairs. 
 
 Mr Bennet concerns himself with the settlement of [New Holland, as it is 
 a school for criminals ; and, upon this subject, has written a very humane, 
 enlightened, and vigorous pamphlet. The objections made to this settle- 
 ment by Mr Bennet are, in the first place, its enormous expense. The 
 colony of New South Wales, from 1788 to 1815 inclusive, has cost this 
 country the enormous sum of .3,465,983. In the evidence before the Trans- 
 portation Committee, the annual expense of each convict, from 1791 to 
 1797, is calculated at ^33, 9-r. 5^/. per annum, and the profits of his labour 
 are stated to be 20. The price paid for the transport of convicts has been, 
 on an average, .37, exclusive of food and clothing. It appears, however, 
 says Mr Bennet, by an account laid before parliament, that in the year 
 1814, ^"109,746 were paid for the transport, food, and clothing of 1016 con- 
 victs, which will make the cost amount to about .108 per man. In 1812, 
 the expenses of the colony were 176,000; in 1813, 235,000; in 1814, 
 "231,362 ; but in 1815 they had fallen to ^150,000. 
 
 The cruelty and neglect in the transportation of convicts has been very 
 great and in this way a punishment inflicted which it never was in the con- 
 templation of law to enact. During the first eight years, according to Mr 
 Bennet's statements, one tenth of the convicts died on the passage ; on the 
 arrival of three of the ships, 200 sick were landed, 281 persons having died 
 on board. These instances, however, of criminal inattention to the health 
 of the convicts no longer take place ; and it is mentioned rather as a history 
 of what is past, than a censure upon any existing evil. 
 
 In addition to the expense of Botany Bay, Mr Bennet contends that it 
 wants the very essence of punishment, terror ; that the common people do 
 not dread it ; that instead of preventing crimes, it rather excites the people 
 to their commission, by the hopes it affords of bettering their condition in a 
 new country. 
 
 " All those who have had an opportunity of witnessing the effect of this 
 system of transportation agree in opinion, that it is no longer an object of 
 dread it has, in fact, generally ceased to be a punishment : true it is, to a 
 father of a family, to the mother who leaves her children, this perpetual 
 
 u
 
 3 o6 BOTANY BAY. 
 
 separation from those whom they love and whom they support, is a cruel 
 blow, and, when I consider the merciless character of the law which inflicts 
 it, a severe penalty ; but by far the greater number of persons who suffer 
 this punishment, regard it in quite a different light. Mr Cotton, the Ordi- 
 nary of Newgate, informed the" Police Committee last year, ' That the 
 generality of those who are transported consider it as a party of pleasure 
 as going out to see the world ; they evince no penitence, no contrition, but 
 seem to rejoice in the thing, many of them, to court it. I have heard 
 them, when the sentence of transportation has been passed by the Recorder, 
 return thanks for it, and seem overjoyed at their sentence : the very last 
 party that went off, when they were put into the caravan, shouted and 
 huzzaed, and were very joyous ; several of them called out to the keepers 
 who were there in the yard, the first fine Sunday we will have a glorious 
 Kangaroo hunt at the Bay, seeming to anticipate a great deal of pleasure." 
 He was asked if those persons were married or single, and his answer was, 
 ' By far the greater number of them were unmarried. Some of them arc 
 anxious that their wives and children should follow them : others care nothing 
 about either wives or children, and are glad to get rid of them.' " {BentKt, 
 qp. 60, 61.) 
 
 It is a scandalous injustice in this colony, that persons transported for 
 seven years have no power of returning when that period is expired. A 
 strong active man may sometimes work his passage home ; but what is an 
 old man or an aged female to do ? Suppose a convict were to be con- 
 fined in prison for seven years, and then told he might get out if he could 
 climb over the walls, or break open the locks, what in general would be his 
 chance of liberation ? But no lock nor doors can be so secure a means ot 
 detention as the distance of Botany Bay. This is a downright trick and 
 fraud in the administration of criminal justice. A poor wretch who is ban- 
 ished from his country for seven years, should be furnished with the means 
 of returning to his country when these seven years are expired. If it is 
 intended he should never return, his sentence should have been banishment 
 for life. 
 
 The most serious charge against the colony, as a place for transportation, 
 and an experiment in criminal justice, is the extreme profligacy of manners 
 which prevails there, and the total want of reformation among the convicts. 
 Upon this subject, except in the regular letters, officially varnished and filled 
 with fraudulent beatitudes for the public eye, there is, and there can be, 
 but one opinion. New South Wales is a sink of wickedness, in which the 
 great majority of convicts of both sexes become infinitely more depraved 
 than at the period of their arrival. How, as Mr Bennet very justly observes, 
 can it be otherwise ? The felon transported to the American plantations, 
 became an insulated rogue among honest men. He lived for years in the 
 family of some industrious planter, without seeing a picklock, or indulging 
 in pleasant dialogues on the delicious burglaries of his youth. He imper- 
 ceptibly glided into honest habits, and lost not only the tact for pocket?, 
 but the wish to investigate their contents. But in Botany Bay, the felon, 
 as soon as he gets out of the ship, meets with his ancient trull, with the foot- 
 pad of his heart, the convict of his affections, the man whose hand he has 
 often met in the same gentleman's pocket the being whom he would choose 
 from the whole world to take to the road, or to disentangle the locks of 
 Bramah. It is impossible that vice should not become more intense hi such 
 society. 
 
 Upon the horrid state of morals now prevalent in Botany Bay, we' 
 counsel our readers to cast their eyes upon the account given by Mr Mr.rs-
 
 BOTANY BA Y. 307 
 
 den, in a letter, dated July 1815, to Governor Macquarrie. It is given at 
 length in the Appendix to Mr Bennet's book. A more horrid picture of the 
 state of any settlement was never penned. It carries with it an air of truth 
 and sincerity, and is free from all enthusiastic cant 
 
 " I now appeal to your Excellency " (he says at the conclusion of his 
 Letter), "whether under such circumstances, any man of common feeling, 
 possessed of the least spark of humanity or religion, who stood in the same 
 official relation that I do to these people, as their spiritual pastor and 
 magistrate, could enjoy one happy moment from the beginning to the end 
 of the week ? 
 
 " I humbly conceive that it is incompatible with the character and wish 
 of the British nation, that her own exiles should be exposed to such priva- 
 tions and dangerous temptations, when she is daily feeding the hungry and 
 clothing the naked, and receiving into her friendly, and I may add pious 
 bosom, the stranger, whether savage or civilised, of every nation under 
 heaven. There are, in the whole, under the two principal superintendents, 
 Messrs Rouse and Oakes, one hundred and eight men, and one hundred 
 and fifty women, and several children ; and nearly the whole of them have 
 to find lodgings for themselves when they have performed their government 
 tasks. 
 
 " I trust that your Excellency will be fully persuaded, that it is totally 
 impossible for the magistrate to support his necessary authority, and to 
 establish a regular police, under such a weight of accumulated and accumu- 
 lating evils. I am as sensible as any one can be, that the difficulty of 
 removing these evils will be very great ; at the same time, their number and 
 influence may be greatly lessened, if the abandoned male and female con- 
 victs are lodged in barracks, and placed under the eye of the police, and 
 the number of licensed houses is reduced. Till something of this kind is 
 done, all attempts of the magistrate, and the public administration of reli- 
 gion, will be attended with little benefit to the general good. I have the 
 honour to be, Your Excellency's most obedient humble servant, SAMUEL 
 MARSDEN." (Bennet, p. 134.) 
 
 Thus much for Botany Bay. As a mere colony, it is too distant and too 
 expensive ; and, in future, will of course involve us in many of those just 
 and necessary wars, which deprive Englishmen so rapidly of their comforts, 
 and make England scarcely worth living in. If considered as a place of 
 reform for criminals, its distance, expense, and the society to which it dooms 
 the objects of the experiment, are insuperable objections to it. It is in vain 
 to say, that the honest people in New South Wales will soon bear a greater 
 
 Eroportion to the rogues, and the contamination of bad society will be less 
 ital. This only proves that it may be a good place for reform hereafter, 
 not that it is a good one now. One of the principal reasons for peopling 
 Botany Bay at all, was, that it would be an admirable receptacle, and a 
 school of reform for our convicts. It turns out, that for the first half cen- 
 >ury, it will make them worse than they were before, and that, after that 
 >eriod, they may probably begin to improve. A marsh, to be sure, may be 
 drained and cultivated ; but no man who has his choice, would select it in 
 the mean time for his dwelling-place. 
 
 The three books are all books of merit. Mr O'Hara's is a bookseller's 
 compilation, done in a useful and pleasing manner. Mr Wentworth is full 
 of information on the present state of Botany Bay. The humanity, the exer- 
 tions, and the genuine benevolence of Mr Bennet, are too well known to 
 need our commendation. 
 
 All persons who have a few guineas in their pocket, are now running
 
 303 CHLMNE Y SWEEPERS. 
 
 away from Mr Nicholas Vansittart to settle in every quarter of the globe. 
 Upon the subject of emigration to Botany Bay, Mr Wentworth observes, 
 1st, That any respectable person emigrating to that colony, receives as 
 much land gratis as would cost him ^400 in the United States ; 2dly, He 
 is allowed as many servants as he may require, at one third of the wages 
 paid for labour in America ; 3dly, Himself and family are victualled at the 
 expense of Government for six months. He calculates that a man, wife, 
 and two children, with an allowance of five tons for themselves and baggnge, 
 could emigrate to Botany Bay for ^100, including every expense, provided 
 a whole ship could be freighted ; and that a single man could be taken out 
 thither for y>. These points are worthy of serious attention to those who 
 are shedding their country. 
 
 CHIMNEY SWEEPERS. (E. REVIEW, 1819.) 
 
 Account of the Proceedings of the Society for superseding iJie Necessity sf Climbing 
 Boys. Baldwin, &c. London: 1816. 
 
 AN excellent and well-arranged dinner is a most pleasing occurrence, and 
 a great triumph of civilised life. It is not only the descending morsel, and 
 the enveloping sauce but the rank, wealth, wit, and beauty which surround 
 the meats the learned management of light and heat the silent and rapid 
 services of the attendants the smiling and sedulous host, proffering gusts 
 and relishes the exotic bottles the embossed plate the pleasant remarks 
 the handsome dresses the cunning artifices in fruit and farina ! The 
 hour of dinner, in short, includes every thing of sensual and intellectual 
 gratification which a great nation glories in producing. 
 
 In the midst of all this, who knows that the kitchen chimney caught fire 
 half an hour before dinner ! and that a poor little wretch, of six or seven 
 years old, was sent up in the midst of the flames to put it out? We could 
 not, previous to reading this evidence, have formed a conception of the 
 miseries of these poor wretches, or that there should exist, in a civilised 
 country, a class of human beings destined to such extreme and varied dis- 
 tress. We will give a short epitome of what is developed in the evidence 
 before the two Houses of Parliament. 
 
 Boys are made chimney sweepers at the early age of five or six. 
 
 Little boys for small flues, is a common phrase on the cards left at the door 
 by itinerant chimney sweepers. Flues made to ovens and coppers are often 
 less than nine inches square ; and it may easily be conceived, how slender 
 the frame of that human body must be, which can force itself through such 
 an aperture. 
 
 "What is the age of the youngest boys who have been employed in this 
 trade, to your knowledge ? About five years of age : I know one now be- 
 tween five and six years old ; it is the man's own son in the Strand : now 
 there is another at Somers Town, I think, said he was between four and 
 five, or about five ; Jack Hall, a little lad, takes him about. Did you ever 
 know any female children employed ? Yes, I know one now. About two 
 years ago there was a woman told me she had climbed scores of times, and 
 there is one at Paddington now whose father taught her to climb ; but I 
 have often heard talk of them when I was apprentice, in different places. 
 What is the smallest-sized flue you have ever met with in the course of 
 your experience? About eight inches by nine; these they are always 
 obliged to climb in this posture (describing it), keeping the arms up
 
 CII1MNEV SWEEPERS. 309 
 
 straight ; if they slip their arms down, they get jammed in ; unless they 
 get their arms close over their head they cannot climb." Lords' Minutes, 
 No. I. p. 8. 
 
 The following is a specimen of the manner in which they are taught this 
 art of climbing chimneys. 
 
 " Do you remember being taught to climb chimneys? Yes. What did you 
 feel upon the first attempt to climb a chimney ? The first chimney I went 
 up, they told me there was some plum-pudding and money up at the top of it, 
 and that is the way they enticed me up ; and when I got up, I would not let 
 the other boy get from under me to get at it, I thought he would get it ; I 
 could not get up, and shoved the pot and half the chimney down into the yard. 
 Did you experience any inconvenience to your knees, or your elbows ? 
 Yes, the skin was off my knees and elbows too, in climbing up the new 
 chimneys they forced me up. How did they force you up ? When I got 
 up, I cried out about my sore knees. Were you beat or compelled to go 
 up by any violent means ? Yes, when I went to a narrow chimney, if I 
 could not do it, I durst not go home ; when I used to come down, my 
 master would well beat me with the brush ; and not only my master, but 
 when we used to go with the journeymen, if we could not do it, they 
 used to hit us three or four times with the brush." lords' Minutes, No. 
 I. P . 5. 
 
 In practising the art of climbing, they are often crippled. 
 
 "You talked of the pargetting of chimneys; are many chimneys par- 
 getted ? There used to be more than are now ; we used to have to go and 
 sit all a-twist to parge them, according to the floors, to keep the smoke from 
 coming out ; then I could not straighten my legs ; and that is the reason 
 that many are cripples, from parging and stopping the holes." Lords 1 
 Minutes, No. I. p. 17. 
 
 They are often stuck fast in a chimney, and, after remaining there many 
 hours, are cut out. 
 
 " Ha/e you known, in the course of your practice, boys stick in chimneys 
 at all? Yes, frequently. Did you ever know an instance of a boy being 
 suffocated to death ? No ; I do not recollect any one at present, but I have 
 assisted in taking boys out when they have been nearly exhausted. Did 
 you ever know an instance of its being necessary to break open a chimney 
 to take the boy out? O yes. Frequently? Monthly 1 might say ; it is 
 done with a cloak, if possible, that it should not be discovered : a master 
 in general wishes it not to be known, and therefore speaks to the people 
 belonging to the house not to mention it, for it was merely the boy's 
 neglect ; they often say it was the boy's neglect. Why do they say that? 
 The boy's climbing shirt is often very bad ; the boy coming down, if the 
 chimney be very narrow, and numbers of them are only nine inches, gets 
 his shirt rumpled underneath him, and he has no power after he is fixed in 
 that way (with his hand up). Does a boy frequently stick in the chimney ? 
 Yes ; I have known more instances of that the last twelvemonth than 
 before. Do you ever have to break open in the inside of a room ? Yes, I 
 have helped to break through into a kitchen chimney in a dining room." 
 Lords' Minutes, p. 34. 
 
 To the same effect is the evidence of John Daniels (Minutes, p. 100), and 
 of James Ludford (Lords' Minutes, p. 147).
 
 3 : o CI1IMNE Y S WEEPERS. 
 
 " You have swept the Penitentiary? I have. Did you ever know a boy 
 stick in any of the chimneys there ? Yes, I have. Was it one of your 
 boys ? It was. Was there one or two that stuck ? Two of them. How 
 long did they stick there? Two hours. How were they got out? They 
 were cut out. Was there any danger while they were in that situation ? It 
 was the core from the pargetting of the chimney, and the rubbish that the 
 labourers had thrown down, that stopped them, and when they got it aside 
 them, they could not pass. They both stuck together? Yes." Lords' 
 Minutes, p. 147. 
 
 One more instance we shall give, from the Evidence before the Com- 
 mons. 
 
 "Have you heard of any accidents that have recently happened to 
 climbing boys in the small flues ? Yes ; I have often met with accidents 
 myself when I was a boy ; there was lately one in Mary-le-bone, where the 
 boy lost his life in a flue, a boy of the name of Tinsey (his father was of the 
 same trade) ; that boy I think was about eleven or twelve years old. Was 
 there a coroner's inquest sat on the body of that boy you mentioned ? Yes, 
 there was ; he was an apprentice of a man of the name of Gay. How 
 many accidents do you recollect, which were attended with loss of life to 
 the climbing boys ? I have heard talk of many more than I know of ; I 
 never knew of more than three since I have been at the trade, but I have 
 heard talk of many more. Of twenty or thirty ? I cannot say ; I have 
 been near losing my own life several times." Commons Report, p. 53. 
 
 We come now to burning little chimney sweepers. A large party are 
 invited to dinner a great display is to be made ; and about an hour 
 before dinner, there is an alarm that the kitchen chimney is on fire \ It is 
 impossible to put off the distinguished personages who are expected. It 
 gets very late for the soup and fish, the cook is frantic all eyes are turned 
 upon the sable consolation of the master chimney sweeper and tip into the 
 midst of the burning chimney is sent one of the miserable little infants of the 
 brush 1 There is a positive prohibition of this practice, and an enactment 
 of penalties in one of the acts of Parliament which respect chimney sweepers. 
 But what matter acts of Parliament, when the pleasures of genteel people 
 are concerned ? Or what is a toasted child, compared to the agonies of the 
 mistress of the house with a deranged dinner? 
 
 "Did you ever know a boy get burnt up a chimney? Yes. Is that 
 usual? Yes, I have been burnt myself, and have got the scars on my legs ; 
 a year ago I was up a chimney in Liquor Pond Street ; I have been up 
 more than forty chimneys -where I have been burnt. Did your master or the 
 journeymen ever direct you to go up a chimney that is on fire? Yes, it is~a 
 general case. Do they compel you to go up a chimney that is on fire ? 
 Oh yes, it was the general practice for two of us to stop at home on 
 Sunday to be ready in case of a chimney being a-fire. You say it is general 
 to compel the boys to go up chimneys on fire? Yes, boys get very ill 
 treated if they do not go up." Lords' Minutes, p. 34. 
 
 " Were you ever forced up a chimney on fire ? Yes, I was forced up one 
 once, and, because I could not do it, I was taken home and well hided with 
 a brush by the journeyman. Have you frequently been burnt in ascending 
 chimneys on fire ? Three times. Are such hardships as you have u described 
 common in the trade with other boys? Yes, they are." Ibid. p. 100. 
 
 " What is the price for sending a boy up a chimney badly on lire ? The 
 price allowed is five shillings, but most of them charge half a guinea. Is 
 any part of that given to the boy ? No, but very often the boy gets half a
 
 CHIMNE Y S WEEPERS. 3 1 1 
 
 crown ; and then the journeyman has half, and his iniitress takes the other 
 part to take care of against Sunday. Have you never seen water thrown 
 down from the top of a cl-imney when it is on fire ? Yes. Is not that 
 generally done ? Yes ; I have seen that done twenty times, and the boy in 
 the chimney ; at the time when the boy has hallooed out, ' It is so hot I 
 cannot go any further ; ' and then the expression is, with an oath, ' Stop, 
 and I will heave a pail of water down. ' " Ibid. p. 39. 
 
 Chimney sweepers are subject to a peculiar sort of cancer, which often 
 brings them to a premature death. 
 
 " He appeared perfectly willing to try the machines everywhere? I must 
 say the man appeared perfectly willing ; he had a fear that he and his family 
 would be ruined by them but I must say of him, that he is very different 
 from other sweeps I have seen ; he attends very much to his own business ; 
 he was as black as any boy he had got, and unfortunately in the course of 
 conversation he told me he had got a cancer ; he was a fine, healthy, strong- 
 looking man ; he told me he dreaded having an operation performed, but 
 his father died of the same complaint, and that his father was sweeper to 
 King George the Second." Lords' Minutes, p. 84. 
 
 " What is the nature of the particular diseases? The diseases that we 
 particularly noticed, to which they were subject, were of a cancerous de- 
 scription. In what part? The scrotum in particular, &c. Did you ever 
 hear of cases of that description that were fatal ? No, I do not think them 
 as being altogether fatal, unless they will not submit to the operation ; they 
 have such a urea.', uf the operation that they will not submit to it, and if 
 they do not lot it be perfectly removed, they will be liable to the return of 
 it. To what cause do you attribute that disease ? I think it begins from a 
 want of care : the scrotum being in so many folds or crevices, the soot 
 lodges in them and creates an itching, and I conceive that, by scratching it 
 and tearing it, the soot gets in and creates the irritability ; which disease we 
 know by the name of the chimney sweeper's cancer, and is always lectured 
 upon separately as a distinct disease. Then the Committee understands 
 that the physicians who are intrusted with the care antF management of 
 those hospitals think that disease of such common occurrence, that it is 
 necessary to make it a part of surgical education? Most assuredly; I 
 remember Mr Cline and Mr Cooper were particular on that subject. 
 Without an operation there is no cure ? I conceive not ; I conceive 
 without the operation it is death ; for cancers are of that nature that 
 unless you extirpate them entirely, they will never be cured." Commons' 
 Rep. pp. 60, 6l. 
 
 In addition to the life they lead as chimney sweepers, is superadded the 
 occupation of nightmen. 
 
 " (By a Lord.) Is it generally the custom that many masters are like- 
 wise nightmen ? Yes ; I forgot that circumstance, which is very grievous ; 
 I have been tied round the middle and let down several privies, for the 
 purpose of fetching watches and such things ; it is generally made the 
 practice to take the smallest boy, to let him through the hole without tak- 
 ing up the seat, and to paddle about there until he finds it ; they do not 
 take a big boy, because it disturbs the seat." Lords' Minutes, p. 38. 
 
 The bed of these poor little wretches is often the soot they have swept 
 in the day. 
 
 "How are the boys generally lodged; where do they sleep at night? 
 Some masters may be better than others, but I know I have slept on the
 
 3 1 2 CHIMNE Y S WEEPERS. 
 
 soot that was gathered in the day myself. Where do boys generally sleep? 
 Never on a bed ; I never slept on a bed myself while I was apprentice. 
 Do they sleep in cellars ? Yes, very often ; I have slept in the cellar 
 myself on the sacks I took out. What had you to cover you ? The same. 
 Had you any pillow ? No further than my breeches and jacket under my 
 head. How were you clothed? When I was apprentice we had a pair 
 of leather breeches and a small flannel jacket. Any shoes and stockings ? 
 Oh dear no; no stockings. Had you any other clothes for Sunday? 
 Sometimes we had an old bit of a jacket, that we might wash out ourselves, 
 and a shirt." Lords' Minutes, p. 40. 
 
 Girls are occasionally employed as chimney sweepers. 
 
 "Another circumstance, which has not been mentioned to the Com- 
 mittee, is, that there are several little girls employed ; there are two of the 
 name of Morgan at Windsor, daughters of the chimney sweeper who is 
 employed to sweep the chimneys of the Castle ; another instance at Ux- 
 bridge, and at Brighton, and at Whitechapel (which was some years ago), 
 and at Hadley near Barnet, and William in Essex, and elsewhere." Com* 
 moils' Report, p. 1\. 
 
 Another peculiar danger to which chimney sweepers are exposed, is the 
 rottenness of the pots at the top of chimneys ; for they must ascend to the 
 very summit, and show their brushes above them, or there is no proof that 
 the work is properly completed. These chimney-pots, from their exposed 
 situation, are very subject to decay ; and when the poor little wretch has 
 worked his way up to the top, pot and boy give way together, and are both 
 shivered to atoms. There are many instances of this in the evidence before 
 both Houses. When they outgrow the power of going up a chimney, they 
 are fit for nothing else. The miseries they have suffered lead to nothing. 
 They are not only enormous, but unprofitable : having suffered, in what is 
 called the happiest part of life, every misery which a human being can 
 suffer, they are then cast out to rob and steal, and given up to the law. 
 
 Not the least of their miseries, while their trial endures, is their exposure 
 to cold. It wilf easily be believed that much money is not expended on 
 the clothes of a poor boy stolen from his parents, or sold by them for a few 
 shillings, and constantly occupied in dirty work. Yet the nature of their 
 occupation renders chimney sweepers peculiarly susceptible of cold. And 
 as chimneys must be swept very early, at four or five o'clock of a winter 
 morning, the poor boys are shivering at the door, and attempting by 
 repeated ringings to rouse the profligate footman ; but the more they ring, 
 the more the footman does not come. 
 
 " Do they go out in the winter time without stockings? Oh yes. Always? 
 I never saw one go out with stockings ; I have known masters make their 
 boys pull off their leggings, and cut off the feet to keep their feet warm 
 when they have chilblains. Are chimney sweepers' boys peculiarly subject 
 to chilblains ? Yes ; I believe it is owing to the weather : they often go 
 out at two or three in the morning, and their shoes are generally very bad. 
 Do they go out at that hour at Christmas? Yes ; a man will have 
 twenty jobs at four, and twenty more at five or six. Are chimneys gener- 
 ally swept much about Christmas time ? Yes ; they are in general ; it is 
 left to the Christmas week. Do you suppose it is frequent that, in the 
 Christmas week, boys are out from three o'clock in the morning to nine or 
 ten ? Yes, further than that : I have known that a boy has been only in 
 and out again directly all day till five o'clock in the evening. Do you con- 
 sider the journeymen and masters treat those boys generally with greater
 
 CHIMNEY SWEEPERS. 
 
 3'3 
 
 cruelty than other apprentices in other trades are treated ? They do, most 
 horrid and shocking. 1 ' Lords' Minutes, p. 33. 
 
 The following is the reluctant evidence of a master. 
 
 " At what hour in the morning did your boys go out upon their employ, 
 ment? According to orders. At any time? To be sure ; suppose a noble- 
 man wished to have his chimney done before four or five o'clock in the 
 morning, it was done, or how were the servants to get their things done ? 
 Supposing you had an order to attend at four o'clock in the morning in the 
 month of December, you sent your boy ? I was generally with him, or had 
 a careful follower with him. Do you think those early hours beneficial for 
 him ? I do : and I have heard that ' early to bed and early to rise, is the 
 way to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.' Did they always get in as soon as 
 they knocked? No ; it would be pleasant to the profession if they could. 
 How long did they wait? Till the servants please to rise. How long 
 might that be ? According how heavy they were to sleep. How long was 
 that ? It is impossible to say ; ten minutes at one house, and twenty at 
 another. Perhaps half an hour? We cannot see in the dark how the min- 
 utes go. Do you think it healthy to let them stand there twenty minutes at 
 four o'clock in the morning in the winter time ? He has a cloth to wrap 
 himself in like a mantle, and keep himself warm." Lords' Minutes, pp. 
 138, 139- 
 
 We must not forget sore eyes. Soot lodges on their eyelids, produces 
 irritability, which requires friction ; and the friction of dirty hands of course 
 increases the disease. The greater proportion of chimney sweepers are in 
 consequence blear-eyed. The boys are very small, but they are compelled 
 to carry heavy loads of soot. 
 
 "Are you at all lame yourself? No ; but I am ' knapped-kneed ' with 
 carrying heavy loads when I was an apprentice. That was the occasion of 
 it ? It was. In general, are persons employed in your trade either stunted 
 or knock-kneed by carrying heavy loads during their childhood? It is 
 owing to their masters a great deal ; and when they climb a great deal it 
 makes them weak." Commons 1 Report, p. 58. 
 
 In climbing a chimney, the great hold is by the knees and elbows. A 
 young child of six or seven years old, working with knees and elbows against 
 hard bricks, soon rubs off the skin from these bony projections, and is forced 
 to climb high chimneys with raw and bloody knees and elbows. 
 
 " Are the boys' knees and elbows rendered sore when they first begin to 
 learn to climb? Yes, they are, and pieces out of them. Is that almost 
 generally the case? It is ; there is not one out of twenty who is not ; and 
 they are sure to take the scars to their grave : I have some now. Are they 
 usually compelled to continue climbing while those sores are open ? Yes ; 
 the way they use to make them hard is that way. Might not this severity 
 be obviated by the use of pads in learning to climb ? Yes ; but they con- 
 sider, in the business, learning a boy, that he is never thoroughly learned 
 until the boy's knees are hard after being sore ; then they consider it neces- 
 sary to put a pad on, from seeing the boys have bad knees ; the children 
 generally walk stiff-kneed. Is it usual among the chimney sweepers to teach 
 their boys to learn by means of pads? No ; they learn them with nearly- 
 naked knees. Is it done in one instance in twenty? No, nor one in fifty." 
 Lords' Minnies, p. 32. 
 
 According to the humanity of the master, the soot remains upon the 
 bodies of the children, unwashed off, for any time from a week to a year.
 
 3 i4 CHIMNEYSWEEPERS. 
 
 " Are the boys generally washed regularly? No, unless they wash them- 
 selves. Did not your master take care you were washed ? No. Xot once 
 in three months? No, not once a year. Did not he fiud you soap? No ; 
 I can take my oath on the Bible that he never found me one piece of soap 
 during the time I was apprentice." Lords' Minutes, p. 41. 
 
 The life of these poor little wretches is so miserable, that they often lie 
 sulking in the flues, unwilling to come out. 
 
 " Did you ever see severity used to boys that were not obstinate and per- 
 verse? Yes. Very often? Yes, very often. The boys are rather obsti- 
 nate ; some of them are ; some of them will get halfway up the chimney, 
 and will not go any further, and then the journeyman \\ill swear at them to 
 come down or go on ; but the boys are too frightened to come down ; they 
 halloo out, we cannot get up, and they are afraid to come down ; some- 
 times they will send for another boy and drag them down ; sometimes get 
 up to the top of the chinmey, and throw down water, and drive them down ; 
 then, when they get them down, they will begin to drag, or beat, or kick 
 them about the house ; then, when they get home, the master will beat 
 them all round the kitchen afterwards, and give them no breakfast perhaps." 
 lords' Minutes, pp. 9, 10. 
 
 When a chimney boy has done sufficient work for the master, he must 
 work for the man ; and he thus becomes for several hours after his morn- 
 ing's work a perquisite to the journeyman. 
 
 "It is frequently the perquisite of the journeyman, when the first labour 
 of the day on account of the master is finished, to 'call the streets,' in 
 search of employment on their own account, with the apprentices, whose 
 labour is thus unreasonably extended, and whose limbs are weakened and 
 distorted by the weights which they have to carry, and by the distance 
 which they have to walk. John Lawless says, ' I have known a boy to 
 climb from twenty to thirty chimneys for his master in the morning ; he 
 has then been sent out instantly with the journeyman, who has kept him 
 out till three or four o'clock, till he has accumulated from six to eight 
 bushels of soot.'" Lords' Report, p. 24. 
 
 The sight of a little chimney sweeper often excites pity : and they have 
 small presents made to them at the houses where they sweep. These bene- 
 volent alms are disposed of in the following manner : 
 
 " Do the boys receive little presents of money from people often in your 
 trade ? Yes, it is in general the custom. Are they allowed to keep that 
 for tiieir own use? Not the whole of it, the journeymen take what they 
 think proper. The journeymen are entitled to half by the master's orders ; 
 and whatever a boy may get, if two boys and one journeyman are sent to a 
 large house to sweep a number of chimneys, and after they have done, 
 {here should be a shilling, or eighteen-pence given to the boys, the journey- 
 man has his full half, and the two boys in general have the other. Is it 
 usual or customary for the journeyman to play at chuck farthing or other 
 games with the boys ? Frequently. Do they win the money from the 
 boys ? Frequently ; the children give their money to the journeymen to 
 screen for them. What do you mean by screening? Such a thing as 
 sifting the soot The child is tired, and he says, 'Jem, I will give you 
 twopence if you will sift my share of the soot ; ' there is sometimes twenty 
 or thirty bushels to sift. Do you think the boys retain one quarter of that 
 given them for their own use ? No." Lords' Minutes, p. 35. 
 
 To this most horrible list of calamities is to be added the dreadful deaths
 
 CIIIMNE Y SWEEPERS. 3 ! 5 
 
 by which chimney sweepers are often destroyed. Of these we once thought 
 of giving two examples ; one from London, the other from our own town 
 of Edinburgh : but we confine ourselves to the latter. 
 
 "James Thomson, chimneysweeper. One day in the beginning of June, 
 witness and panel (that is, the master, the party accused), had been sweep- 
 ing vents together. About four o'clock in the afternoon, the panel pro- 
 .posed to go to Albany Street, where the panel's brother was cleaning a 
 vent, with the assistance of Fraser, whom he had borrowed from the panel 
 for the occasion. When witness and panel got to the house in Albany 
 Street, they found Fraser, who had gone up the vent between eleven and 
 twelve o'clock, not yet come down. On entering the house they found a 
 mason making a hole in the wall. Panel said, what was he doing ? I 
 suppose he has taken a lazy fit. The panel called to the boy, ' What are 
 you doing? what's keeping you?' The boy answered that he could not 
 come. The panel worked a long while, sometimes persuading him, some- 
 times threatening and swearing at the boy, to get him down. Panel then 
 said, ' I will go to a hardware shop and get a barrel of gunpowder, and 
 blow you and the vent to the devil, if you do not comedown.' Panel then 
 began to slap at the wall witness then went up a ladder, and spoke to 
 the boy through a small hole in the wall previously made by the mason 
 but the boy did not answer. Panel's brother told witness to come down, 
 as the boy's master knew best how to manage him. Witness then threw 
 off his jacket, and put a handkerchief about his head, and said to the panel, 
 ' Let me go up the chimney to see what 's keeping him. ' The panel made 
 no answer, but pushed witness away from the chimney, and continued 
 bullying the boy. At this time the panel was standing on the grate, so that 
 witness could not go up the chimney ; witness then said to panel's brother, 
 'There is no use for me here,' meaning, that panel would not permit him 
 to use his services. He prevented the mason making the hole larger, 
 saying, Stop, and I '11 bring him clown in five minutes' time. Witness 
 then put on his jacket, and continued an hour in the room, during all 
 which time the panel continued bullying the boy. Panel then desired witness 
 to go to Reid's house to get the loan of his boy Alison. Witness went to 
 Reid's house, and asked Reid to come and speak to panel's brother. Reid 
 asked if panel was there. Witness answered he was ; Reid said he would 
 send his boy to the panel, but not to the panel's brother. Witness and 
 Reid went to Albany Street ; and when they got into the room, panel took 
 his head out of the chimney and asked Reid if he would lend him his boy ; 
 Reid agreed ; witness then returned to Reid's house for his boy, and Reid 
 called after him, ' Fetch down a set of ropes with you.' By' this time wit- 
 ness had been ten minutes in the room, during which time panel was 
 swearing, and asking ' What 's keeping you, you scoundrel ? ' When 
 witness returned with the boy and ropes, Reid took hold of the rope, and, 
 having loosed it, gave Alison one end, and directed him to go up the 
 chimney, saying, ' Do not go farther than his feet, and when you get there 
 fasten it to his foot.' Panel said nothing all this time. Alison went up, 
 and having fastened the rope, Reid desired him to come down ; Reid took 
 the rope and pulled, but did not bring down the boy ; the rope broke ! 
 Alison was sent up again with the other end of the rope, which was 
 fastened to the boy's foot. When Reid was pulling the rope, 'panel said, 
 ' You have not the strength of a cat ; he took the rope into his own hands, 
 pulling as strong as he could. Having pulled about a quarter of an hour, 
 panel and Reid fastened the rope round a crow bar, which they applied to 
 the wall as a lever, and both fulled with all their strength for about a
 
 316 CHIMNEYSWEEPERS. 
 
 quarter of an hour longer, when it broke. During this time witness heard 
 the boy cry, and say, ' My God Almighty ! ' Panel said, ' If I had you 
 here, I would God Almighty you.' Witness thought the cries were in 
 agony. The master of the house brought a new piece of rope, and the 
 panel's brother spliced an eye on it. Reid expressed a wish to have it 
 fastened on both thighs, to have greater purchase. Alison was sent up for 
 this purpose, but came down, and said he could not get it fastened. Panel 
 then began to slap at the wall. After striking a long while at the wall he 
 got out a large stone ; he then put in his head and called to Fraser, ' Do 
 you hear, you sir ? ' but got no answer : he then put in his hands, and 
 threw down deceased's breeches. He then came down from the ladder. 
 At this time the panel was in a state of perspiration : he sat down on a 
 stool, and the master of the house gave him a dram. Witness did not hear 
 panel make any remarks as to the situation of the boy Fraser. "Witness 
 thinks, that, from panel's appearance, he knew the boy was dead." 
 Commons' Report, pp. 136 138. 
 
 We have been thus particular in stating the case of the chimney sweepers, 
 and in founding it upon the basis of facts, that we may make an answer to 
 those profligate persons who are always ready to fling an air of ridicule 
 upon the labours of humanity, because they are desirous that what they 
 have not virtue to do themselves, should appear to be foolish and romantic 
 when done by others. A still higher degree of depravity than this, is to 
 want every sort of compassion for human misery, when it is accompanied 
 by filth, poverty, and ignorance, to regulate humanity by the income tax, 
 and to deem the bodily wretchedness and the dirty tears of the poor a fit 
 subject for pleasantry and contempt. We should have been loth to believe, 
 that such deep-seated and disgusting immorality existed in these days ; but 
 the notice of it is forced upon us. Nor must we pass over a set of 
 marvellously weak gentlemen, who discover democracy and revolution in 
 every effort to improve the condition of the lower orders, and to take oft" a 
 little of the load of misery from those points where it presses the hardest. 
 Such are the men into whose heart Mrs Fry has struck the deepest terror, 
 - who abhor Mr Bentham and his penitentiary ; Mr Bennet and his hulks ; 
 Sir James Mackintosh and his bloodless assizes ; Mr Tooke and his 
 sweeping machines, and every other human being who is great and good 
 enough to sacrifice his quiet to his love for his fellow creatures. Certainly 
 we admit that humanity is sometimes the veil of ambition or of faction ; 
 but we have no doubt that there are a great many excellent persons U> 
 whom it is misery to see misery, and pleasure to lessen it ; and who, by 
 calling the public attention to the worst cases, and by giving birth to 
 judicious legislative enactments for their improvement, have made, and are 
 making, the world somewhat happier than they found it. Upon the>c 
 principles we join hands with the friends of the chimney sweeper?, and most 
 heartily wish for the diminution of their numbers, and the limitation of their 
 trade. 
 
 We are thoroughly convinced there are many respectable master chimney 
 sweepers ; though we suspect their numbers have been increased by the 
 alarm which their former tyranny excited, and by the severe laws made for 
 their coercion : but even with good masters the trade is miserable, with 
 bad ones it is not to be endured ; and the evidence already quoted shows us 
 how many of that character are to be met with in the occupation of sweep- 
 ing chimneys. 
 
 After all, we must own that it was quite right to throw out the bill 
 for prohibiting the sweeping of chimneys by boys because humanity is a
 
 ASHANTEE. 3I y 
 
 modem invention ; and there are many chimneys in old houses which 
 cannot possibly be swept in any other manner. But the construction of 
 chimneys should be attended to in some new building act ; and the treat- 
 ment of boys be watched over with the most severe jealousy of the law. 
 Above all, those who have chimneys accessible to machinery, should 
 encourage the use of machines,* and not think it beneath their dignity to 
 take a little trouble, in order to do a great deal of good. We should have 
 been very glad to have seconded the views of the Climbing Society, and to 
 have pleaded for the complete abolition of climbing boys, if we could 
 conscientiously have done so. But such a measure, we are convinced from 
 the evidence, could not be carried into execution without great injury to 
 property, and great increased risk of fire. The Lords have investigated the 
 matter with the greatest patience, humanity, and good sense ; and they do 
 not venture, in their Report, to recommend to the House the abolition of 
 climbing boys. 
 
 MISSION TO ASHANTEE. (E. REVIEW, 1819.) 
 
 Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, with a Statistical Account of that 
 Kingdom, and Geographical Notices of other Parts of the Interior of Africa. By 
 T. EDWARD BOWDICH, Esq., Conductor. London: Murray. 1819. 
 
 CAPE COAST CASTLE, or Cape Corso, is a factory of Africa, on the Gold 
 Coast. The Portuguese settled here in 1610, and built the citadel; from 
 which, in a few years afterwards, they were dislodged by the Dutch. In 
 1661, it was demolished by the English under Admiral Holmes; and by 
 the treaty of Breda, it was made over to our Government. The latitude of 
 Cape Coast Castle is 5 6' north ; the longitude i 51' west. The capital 
 of the kingdom of Ashantee is Coomassie, the latitude of which is about 
 6 30' 20" north, and the longitude 2 6' 30" west. The mission quitted 
 Cape Coast Castle on the 22d of April, and arrived at Coomassie about the 
 1 6th of May halting two or three days on the route, and walking the whole 
 distance, or carried by hammock-bearers at a foot-pace. The distance 
 between the fort and the capital is not more than 150 miles, or about as far 
 as from Durham to Edinburgh ; and yet the kingdom of Ashantee was, before 
 the mission of Mr Bowdich, almost as much unknown to us as if it had been 
 situated in some other planet. The country which surrounds Cape Coast 
 Castle belongs to the Fan tees ; and, about the year 1807, an Ashantee army 
 reached the coast for the first time. They invaded Fantee again in 1811, 
 and, for the third time, in 1816. To put a stop to the horrible cruelties 
 committed by the stronger on the weaker nation ; to secure their own safety, 
 endangered by the Ashantees ; and to enlarge our knowledge of Africa 
 the Government of Cape Coast Castle persuaded the African Committee to 
 send a deputation to the kingdom of Ashantee : and of this embassy, the 
 publication now before us is the narrative. The embassy walked through a 
 beautiful country, laid waste by the recent wars, and arrived in the time we 
 have mentioned, and without meeting with any remarkable accident, at 
 Coomassie the capital. The account of their first reception there we shall 
 lay before our readers. 
 
 ' ' We entered Coomassie at two o'clock, passing under a fetish, or sacri- 
 fice of a dead sheep, wrapped up in red silk, and suspended between two 
 lofty poles. Upwards of 5000 people, the greater part warriors, met us 
 * The price of a machine is fifteen shillings.
 
 3iS ASHANTEE. 
 
 with awful bursts of martial music, discordant only in its mixture : for horns, 
 drums, rattles, and gong-gongs, were all exerted with a zeal bordering on 
 frenzy, to subdue us by the first impression. The smoke which encircled 
 us from the incessant discharges of musketry, confined our glimpses to the 
 foreground ; and we were halted whilst the captains performed their Pyrrhic 
 dance, in the centre of a circle formed by their warriors ; where a confusion 
 of flags, English, Dutch, and Danish, were waved and flourished in all 
 directions ; the bearers plunging and springing from side to side, with a 
 passion of enthusiasm only equalled by the captains, who followed them, 
 discharging their shining blunderbusses so close, that the flags now and then 
 were in a blaze ; and emerging from the smoke with all the gesture and dis- 
 tortion of maniacs. Their followers kept up the firing around us in the 
 rear. The dress of the captains was a war cap, with gilded rams' horns 
 projecting in front, the sides extended beyond all proportion by immense 
 plumes of eagles' feathers, and fastened under the chin with bands of 
 cowries. Their vest was of red cloth, covered with fetishes and saphies in 
 gold and silver ; and embroidered cases of almost every colour, which 
 flapped against their bodies as they moved, intermixed with small brass 
 bells, the horns and tails of animals, shells, and knives j long leopards' tails 
 hung down their backs, over a small bow covered with fetishes. They 
 wore loose cotton trowsers, with immense boots of a dull red leather, 
 coming half way up the thigh, and fastened by small chains to their car- 
 touch or waist belt ; these were also ornamented with bells, horses' tails, 
 strings of amulets, and innumerable shreds of leather ; a small quiver of 
 poisoned arrows hung from their right wrist, and they held a long iron 
 chain between their teeth, with a scrap of Moorish writing affixed to the 
 end of it. A small spear was in their left hands, covered with red cloth 
 and silk tassels ; their black countenances heightened the effect of this attire, 
 and completed a figure scarcely human. 
 
 This exhibition continued about half an hour, when we were allowed to 
 proceed, encircled by the warriors, whose numbers with the crowds of 
 people, made our movement as gradual as if it had taken place in Cheap- 
 side ; the several streets branching oflf to the right presented long vistas 
 crammed with people ; and those on the left hand being on an acclivity, 
 innumerable rows of heads rose one above another : the large open porche.; 
 of the houses, like the fronts of stages in small theatres, were filled with 
 the better sort of females and children, all impatient to behold white men 
 for the first time ; their exclamations were drowned in the firing and music, 
 but their gestures were in character with the scene. When we reached the 
 
 Ealace, about half a mile from the place where we entered, we were again 
 alted, and an open file was made, through which the bearers were passed, 
 to deposit the presents and baggage in the house assigned to us. Here we 
 were gratified by observing several of the caboceers (chiefs) pass by with 
 their trains, the novel splendour of which astonished us. The bands, prin- 
 cipally composed of horns and flutes, trained to play in concert, seemed to 
 soothe our hearing into its natural tone again by their wild melodies ; whilst 
 the immense umbrellas, made to sink and rise from the jerkings of the 
 bearers, and the large fans waving around, refreshed us with small currents 
 of air, under a burning sun, clouds of dust, and a density of atmosphere 
 almost suffocating. We were then squeezed, at the same funeral pace, up 
 a long street, to an open-fronted house, where we were desired by a royal 
 messenger to wait a further invitation from the king." (pp. 31 33.) 
 
 The embassy remained about four months, leaving one of their members 
 behind as a permanent resident. Their treatment, though subjected to the
 
 ASHANTEE. 
 
 319 
 
 fluctuating passions of barbarians, was, upon the whole, not bad ; and a 
 foundation appears to have been laid of future intercourse with the Ashan- 
 tees, and a mean opened, through them, of becoming better acquainted with 
 the interior of Africa. 
 
 The Moors, who seem (barbarians as they are) to be the civilisers of 
 internal Africa, have penetrated to the capital of the Ashantees : they are 
 bigoted and intolerant to Christians, but not sacrificers of human victims 
 in their religious ceremonies ; nor averse to commerce ; and civilised in 
 comparison to most of the idolatrous natives of Africa. From their mer- 
 chants who resorted from various parts of the interior, Mr Bowdich employed 
 himself in procuring all the geographical details which their travels enabled 
 them to afford. Timbuctoo they described as inferior to Houssa, and not 
 at all comparable to Boornoo. The Moorish influence was stated to be 
 powerful hi it, but not predominant. A small river goes nearly round the 
 town, overflowing in the rains, and obliging the people of the suburbs to 
 move to an eminence in the centre of the town where the king lives. The 
 king, a Moorish negro called THllabahada, had a few double-barrelled guns, 
 which were fired on great occasions ; and gunpowder was as dear as gold. 
 Mr Bowdich calculates Houssa to be X. E. from the Niger 20 days' jour- 
 ney of 1 8 miles each day ; and the latitude and longitude to be 1 8 59' N. 
 and 3 59' E. Boornoo was spoken of as the first empire in Africa. The 
 Mahometans of Sennaar reckon it among the four powerful empires of the 
 world ; the other three being Turkey, Persia, and Abyssinia. 
 
 The Niger is only known to the Moors by the name of the Qttolla, pro- 
 nounced as Quorra by the negroes, who, from whatever countries they 
 come, all spoke of this as the largest river with which they were acquainted ; 
 and it was the grand feature in all the routes to Ashantee, whether from 
 Houssa, Boornoo, or the intermediate countries. The Niger, after leaving 
 the lake Dibbri, was invariably described as dividing into two large streams ; 
 the Quolla, or the greater division, pursuing its course south-eastward, till 
 it joined the Bahr Abiad ; and the other branch running northward of east, 
 near to Timbuctoo, and dividing again soon afterwards the smaller divi- 
 sion running northwards by Yahoodee, a place of great trade, and the larger 
 running directly eastward, and entering the lake Caudi, under the name of 
 Gambaroo. " The variety of this concurrent evidence respecting the Gam- 
 baroo, made an impression on my mind," says Mr Bowdich, "almost 
 amounting to conviction."' The same author add?, that he found the 
 Moors very cautious in their accounts ; declining to speak unless they were 
 positive and frequently referring doubtful points to others whom they knew 
 to be better acquainted with them. 
 
 The character of the present king is, upon the whole, respectable ; but he 
 is ambitious, has conquered a great deal, and is conquering still. He has 
 a love of knowledge ; and was always displeased when the European objects 
 which attracted his attention were presented to him as gifts. His motives, 
 he said, ought to be better understood, and more respect paid to his dignity 
 and friendship. He is acute, capricious, and severe, but not devoid of 
 humanity ; and has incurred unpopularity on some occasions, by limiting 
 the number of human sacrifices more than was compatible with strict ortho- 
 doxy. His general subjects of discourse with the Mission were war, legisla- 
 tion, and mechanics. He seemed very desirous of standing well in the 
 estimation of his European friends ; and put off a conversation, once, because 
 he was a little tipsy, and at another time because he felt himself cross and 
 out of temper. 
 
 The king, four aristocrat ical assessors, and the assembly of captains, are 
 the three estates of the Ashantee government. The noble quartumvirate,
 
 320 ASHANTEE. 
 
 in all matters of foreign policy, have a veto on the king's decisions. They 
 watch, rather than share, the domestic administration ; generally influenc- 
 ing it by their opinion, rather than controlling it by their authority. In 
 exercising his judicial function, the king always retires in private with the 
 aristocracy to hear their opinions. The course of succession in Ashamee 
 is the brother, the sister's son, the son and the chief slave. 
 
 The king's sisters may marry, or intrigue with any person they please, 
 provided he is very strong and handsome ; and these elevated and excellent 
 women are always ready to set an example of submission to the laws of their 
 country. The interest of money is about 300 per cent. A man may kill 
 his own slave ; or an inferior, for the price of seven slaves. Trifling thefts 
 are punished by exposure. The property of the wife is distinct from that 
 of the husband though the king is heir to it. Those accused of witchcraft 
 are tortured to death. Slaves, if ill-treated, are allowed the liberty of trans- 
 ferring themselves to other masters. 
 
 The Ashantees believe that a higher sort of god takes care of the whites, 
 and that they are left to the care of an inferior species of deities. Still the 
 black kings and black nobility are to go to the upper gods after death, where 
 they are to enjoy eternally the state and luxury which was their portion on 
 earth. For this reason a certain number of cooks, butlers, and domestics 
 of every description, are sacrificed on their tombs. They have two sets of 
 priests : the one dwell in the temples, and communicate with the idols ; the 
 other species do business as conjurors and cunning men, tell fortunes, and 
 detect small thefts. Half the offerings to the idols are (as the priests say) 
 thrown into the river, the other half they claim as their own. The doors 
 of the temples are, from motives of the highest humanity, open to run-away 
 slaves ; but shut, upon a fee paid by the master to the priest. Every person 
 has a small set of household gods, bought of the Fetishmen. They please 
 their gods by avoiding particular sorts of meat ; but the prohibited viand is 
 not always the same. Some curry favour by eating no veal ; some seek 
 protection by avoiding pork ; others say, that the real monopoly which the 
 celestials wish to establish is that of beef and so they piously and prudently 
 rush into a course of mutton. They have the customary nonsense of lucky 
 days, trial by ordeal, and libations and relics. The most horrid and detest- 
 able of their customs is their sacrifice of human victims, and the tortures 
 preparatory to it. This takes place at all their great festivals, or Customs, 
 as they are called. Some of these occur every twenty-one days ; and there 
 are not fewer than a hundred victims immolated at each. Besides these, 
 there are sacrifices at the death of every person of rank, more or less bloody 
 according to their dignity. On the death of his mother, the king butchered 
 no less than thrte thousand victims ; and on his own death this number 
 would probably be doubled. The funeral rights of a great captain were 
 repeated weekly for three months ; and 200 persons, it is said, were 
 slaughtered each time, 2400 in all. The author gives an account of the 
 manner of these abominations, in one instance of which he was an unwilling 
 spectator. On the funeral of the mother of Quatchie Quofie, which was by 
 no means a great one, 
 
 "A dash of sheep and rum was exchanged between the king and 
 Quatchie Quofie, and the drums announced the sacrifice of the victims. 
 All the chiefs first visited them in turn ; I was not near enough to distinguish 
 wherefore. The executioners wrangled and struggled for the office : and 
 the indifference with which the first poor creature looked on, in the torture 
 he was from the knife passed through his cheeks, was remarkable. The 
 nearest executioner snatched the sword from the others, the right hand of
 
 ASHANTEE. 32! 
 
 the victim was then lopped off, he was thrown down, and his head was 
 sawed rather than cut off; it was cruelly prolonged, I will not say wilfully. 
 Twelve more were dragged forward, but we forced our way through the 
 crowd, and retired to our quarters. Other sacrifices, principally female, 
 were made in the bush where the body was buried. It is usual to ' wet 
 the grave' with the blood of a freeman of respectability. All the retainers 
 of the family being present, and the heads of all the victims deposited in 
 the bottom of the grave, several are unsuspectingly called on in a hurry to 
 assist in placing the coffin or basket ; and just as it rests on the heads or 
 skulls, a slave from behind stuns one of these freemen by a violent blow, 
 followed by a deep gash in the back part of the neck, and he is rolled in 
 on the top of the body, and the grave instantly filled up." (pp. 287 
 288.) 
 
 "About a hundred persons, mostly culprits reserved, are generally sacri- 
 ficed, in different quarters of the town, at this custom (that is, at the feast 
 for the new year). Several slaves were also sacrificed at Bantama, over the 
 large brass pan, their blood mingling with the various vegetable and animal 
 matter within (fresh and putrefied), to complete the charm, and produce in- 
 vincible fetish. All the chiefs kill several slaves, that their blood may flow 
 into the hole from whence the new yam is taken. Those who cannot afford 
 to kill slaves, take the head of one already sacrificed, and place it on the 
 hole." (p. 279.) 
 
 _ The Ashantees are very superior in discipline and courage to the water- 
 side Africans : they never pursue when it is near sunset : the general is 
 always in the rear, and the fugitives are instantly put to death. The army 
 is prohibited, during the active part of the campaign, from all food but 
 meal, which each man carries in a small bag by his side, and mixes in his 
 hands with the first water he comes to ; no fires are allowed, lest their 
 position should be betrayed ; they eat little select bits of the first enemy's 
 heart whom they kill ; and all wear ornaments of his teeth and bones. 
 
 In their buildings, a mould is made for receiving the clay, by two rows 
 of stakes placed at a distance equal to the intended thickness of the wall : 
 the interval is then filled with gravelly clay miked with water, which, with 
 the outward surface of the framework, is plastered so as to exhibit the 
 appearance of a thick mud wall. The captains have pillars which assist to 
 support the roof, and form a proscenium, or open front. The steps and 
 raised floors of the rooms are clay and stone, with a thick layer of red 
 earth, washed and painted daily. 
 
 "While the walls are still soft, they formed moulds or frameworks of the 
 patterns in delicate slips of cane, connected by grass. The two first slips 
 (one end of each being inserted in the soft wall) projected the relief, com- 
 monly mezzo : the interstices were then filled up with the plaster, and 
 assumed the appearance depicted. The poles or pillars were sometimes 
 encircled by twists of cane, intersecting each other, which, being filled up 
 with thin plaster, resembled the lozenge and cable ornaments of the Anglo- 
 Norman order ; the quatre-foil was very common, and by no means rude, 
 from the symmetrical bend of the cane which formed it. I saw a few 
 pillars (after they had been squared with the plaster) with numerous slips 
 of cane pressed perpendicularly on to the wet surface, which being covered 
 again with a very thin coat of plaster, closely resembled fluting. When 
 they formed a large arch, they inserted one end of a thick piece of cane in 
 the wet clay of the floor or base, and, bending the other over, inserted it in 
 the same manner ; the entablature was filled up with wattle-work plastered 
 over. Arcades and piazzas were common. A whitewash, very frequently 
 
 x
 
 322 ASHANTEE. 
 
 renewed, was made from a clay in the neighbourhood. Of course the 
 plastering is very frail, and in the relief frequently discloses the edges of the 
 cane, giving, however, a piquant effect, auxiliary to the ornament. The 
 doors were an entire piece of cotton wood, cut with great labour out of the 
 stems or buttresses of that tree ; battens variously cut and painted were 
 afterwards nailed across. So disproportionate was the price of labour to 
 that of provision, that I gave but two tokoos for a slab of cotton wood, five 
 feet by three. The locks they use are from Houssa, and quite original : one 
 will be sent to the British Museum. Where they raised a first floor, the 
 under room was divided into two by an intersecting wall, to support the 
 rafters for the upper room, which were generally covered with a framework 
 thickly plastered over with red ochre. I saw but one attempt at flooring 
 with plank ; it was cotton wood shaped entirely with an adze, and looked 
 like a ship's deck. The windows were open wood-work, carved in fanciful 
 figures and intricate patterns, and painted red ; the frames were frequently 
 cased in gold, about as thick as cartridge paper. What surprised me most, 
 and is not the least of the many circumstances deciding their great superiority 
 over the generality of negroes, Avas the discovery that every house had its 
 cloacae, besides the common ones for the lower orders without the town." 
 (PP- 305, 306.) 
 
 The rubbish and offal of each house are burnt every morning at the back 
 of the street ; and they are as nice in their dwellings as in their persons. 
 The Ashantee loom is precisely on the same principles as the English : the 
 fineness, variety, brilliancy, and size of their cloths is astonishing. They 
 paint white cloths not inelegantly, as fast as an European can write. They 
 excel in pottery, and are good goldsmiths. Their weights are very neat 
 brass casts of almost every animal, fruit, and vegetable known in the 
 country. The king's scales, blow-pan, boxes, weights, and pipe-tongs 
 were neatly made of the purest gold. They work finely in iron, tan leather, 
 and are excellent carpenters. 
 
 Mr Bowdich computes the number of men capable of bearing arms to be 
 204,000. The disposable force is 150,000 ; the population a million ; the 
 number of square miles 14,000. Polygamy is tolerated to the greatest 
 extent ; the king's allowance is 3333 wives ; and the full compliment is 
 always kept up. Four of the principal streets in Coomassie are half a mile 
 long, and from 50 to 100 yards wide. The streets were all named, and a 
 superior captain in charge of each. The street where the Mission was lodged 
 was called Apperemsoo, or Cannon Street ; another street was called 
 Daebrim, or Great Market Street ; another Prison Street, and so on. A 
 plan of the town is given. The Ashantees persisted in saying, that the 
 population of Coomassie was above 100,000 ; but this is thought, by the 
 gentlemen of the Mission, to allude rather to the population collected on 
 great occasions, than the permanent residents, not computed by them at 
 more than 15,000. The markets were daily ; and the articles for sale, beef, 
 mutton, wild-hog, deer, monkeys' flesh, fowls, yams, plaintains, corn, sugar- 
 cane, rice, peppers, vegetable butter, oranges, papans, pine-apples, bananas, 
 salt and dried fish, large snails smoke-dried ; palm wine, rum, pipes, beads, 
 looking-glasses ; sandals, silk, cotton cloth, powder, small pillars, white 
 and blue thread, and calabashes. The cattle in Ashantee are as large as 
 English cattle ; their sheep are hairy. They have no implement but the 
 hoe ; have two crops of corn in the year ; plant their yams at Christmas, 
 and dig them up in September. Their plantations, extensive and orderly, 
 have the appearance of hop-gardens well fenced in and regularly planted in 
 lines, with a broad walk around, and a hut at each wicker-gate, where a
 
 ASHANTEE. 323 
 
 slave and his family reside to protect the plantation. All the fruits men- 
 tioned as sold in the market grew in spontaneous abundance, as did the 
 sugar-cane. The oranges were of a large size and exquisite flavour. There 
 were no cocoa trees. The berry which gives to acids the flavour of sweets, 
 making limes taste like honey, is common here. The castor-oil plant rises 
 to a large tree. The cotton tree sometimes rises to the height of 150 feet. 
 
 The great obstacle to the improvement of commerce with the Ashantee 
 people (besides the jealousy natural to barbarians) is our rejection of the 
 slave trade, and the continuance of that detestable traffic by the Spaniards. 
 While the Mission was in that country, one thousand slaves left Ashantee 
 for two Spanish schooners on the coast. How is an African monarch to be 
 taught that he has not a right to turn human creatures into rum and tobacco ? 
 or that the nation which prohibits such an intercourse, are not his enemies ? 
 To have free access to Ashantee, would command Dagwumba. The people 
 of Inta and Dagwumba being commercial, rather than warlike, an inter- 
 course with them would be an intercourse with the interior, as far as Tim- 
 buctoo and Houssa northwards ; and Cassina, if not Boomoo, eastwards. 
 
 After the observation of Mr Bowdich, senior officer of the Mission, follows 
 the narrative of Mr Hutchinson, left as charge d'affaires, upon the departure 
 of the other gentlemen. Mr Hutchinson mentions some white men residing 
 at Yenne, whom he supposes to have been companions of Park ; and All 
 Baba, a man of good character and consideration, upon the eve of departure 
 from these regions, assured him, that there were two Europeans then resident 
 at Timbuctoo. In his observations on the river Gaboon, Mr Bowdich has 
 the following information on .the present state of the slave trade : 
 
 " Three Portuguese, one French, and two large Spanish ships, visited 
 the river for slaves during our stay ; and the master of a Liverpool vessel 
 assured me that he had fallen hi with twenty-two between Gaboon and the 
 Congo. Their grand rendezvous is Mayumba. The Portuguese of St 
 Thomas's and Prince's Islands send small schooner boats to Gaboon for 
 slaves, which are kept, after they are transported this short distance, until 
 the coast is clear for shipping them to America. A third large Spanish ship, 
 well armed, entered the river the night before we quitted it, and hurried 
 our exit, for one of that character was committing piracy in the neighbour- 
 ing rivers. Having suffered from felling into their hands before, I felicitated 
 myself on the escape. We were afterwards chased and boarded by a Spanish 
 armed schooner, with three hundred slaves on board ; they only desired 
 provisions." 
 
 These are the most important extracts from this publication, which is 
 certainly of considerable importance, from the account it gives us of a people 
 hitherto almost entirely unknown ; and from the light which the very diligent 
 and laborious inquiries of Mr Bowdich have thrown upon the geography of 
 Africa, and the probability held out to us of approaching the great kingdoms 
 on the Niger, by means of an intercourse, by no means difficult to be estab- 
 lished, with the kingdoms of Inta and Dagwumba. The river Volta flows 
 into the. Gulf of Guinea, in latitude 7 north. It is navigable, and by the 
 natives navigated for ten days, to Odentee. Now, from Odentee to 
 Sallagha, the capital of the kingdom of Inta, is but four days' journey ; 
 and seven days' journey from Sallagha, through the Inta Jam of Zengoo, is 
 Yahndi, the capital of Dagwumba. Yahndi is described to be beyond 
 comparison larger than Coomassie, the houses much better built and orna- 
 mented. The Ashantees who had visited it, told Mr Bowdich they had 
 frequently lost themselves in the streets. The king has been converted by 
 the Moors, who have settled themselves there in great numbers, Mr Lucas
 
 324 AMERICA. 
 
 calls it the Mahomedan kingdom of Degomba ; and it was represented to 
 him as peculiarly wealthy and civilised. The markets of Yalmdi are 
 described as animated scenes of commerce, constantly crowded with mer- 
 chants from almost all the countries of the interior. It seems to us, that 
 the best way of becoming acquainted with Africa, is not to plan such 
 sweeping expeditions as have been lately sent out by Government, but to 
 submit to become acquainted with it by degrees, and to acquire by little 
 and little a knowledge of the best methods of arranging expeditions. The 
 kingdom of Dagwumba, for instance, is not 200 miles from a well-known 
 and regular water carriage, on the Volta. Perhaps it is nearer, but the 
 distance is not greater than this. It is one of the most commercial nations 
 in Africa, and one of the most civilised : and yet it is utterly unknown, 
 except by report, to Europeans. Then why not plan an expedition to 
 Dagwumba ? The expense of which would be very trifling, and the issue 
 known in three or four months. The information procured from such a 
 wise and moderate undertaking would enable any future mission to pro- 
 ceed with much greater ease and safety into the interior ; or prevent them 
 from proceeding, as they hitherto have done, to their own destruction. We 
 strongly believe, with Mr Bowdich, that this is the right road to the 
 Niger. 
 
 Nothing in this world is created in vain : lions, tigers, conquerors, have 
 their use. Ambitious monarchs, who are the curse of civilised nations, are 
 the civilisers of savage people. With a number of little independent hordes, 
 civilisation is impossible. They must have a common interest before there 
 can be peace ; and be directed by one will before there can be order. When 
 mankind are prevented from daily quarrelling and fighting, they first begin 
 to improve ; and all this, we are afraid, is only to be accomplished, in the 
 first instance, by some great conqueror. We sympathise, therefore, with 
 the victories of the King of Ashantee and feel ourselves, for the first time, 
 in love with military glory. The ex-Emperor of the French would, at Coo- 
 massie, Dagwumba, or Inta, be an eminent benefactor to the human race. 
 
 AMERICA. (E. REVIEW, 1820.) 
 
 Statistical Annals of the United States of America. By ADAM SEYBERT. 4to. 
 Philadelphia : 1818. 
 
 THIS is a book of character and authority ; but it is a very large book ; and 
 therefore we think we shall do an acceptable service to our readers, by pre- 
 senting them with a short epitome of its contents, observing the same order 
 which has been chosen by the author. The whole, we conceive, will form 
 a pretty complete picture of America, and teach us how to appreciate that 
 country, either as a powerful enemy or a profitable friend. The first 
 subject with which Mr Seybert begins, is the population of the United 
 States. 
 
 Population. As representatives and direct taxes are apportioned among 
 the different States in proportion to their numbers, it is provided for in the 
 American Constitution, that there shall be an actual enumeration of the 
 people every ten years. It is the duty of the marshals in each State to 
 number the inhabitants of their respective districts : and a correct copy of 
 the lists, containing the names of the persons returned, must be set up in a 
 public place within each district, before they are transmitted to the Secre- 
 tary of State. : they are then laid before Congress by the President. Under
 
 AMERICA. 325 
 
 this Act, three census, or enumerations of the people, have been already 
 laid before Congress for the years 1790, 1800, and 1810. In the year 
 1790, the population of America was 3,921,326 persons, of whom 697,697 
 were slaves. In 1800, the numbers were 5,319,762, of which 896,849 were 
 slaves. In 1810, the numbers were 7,239,903, of whom 1,191,364 were 
 slaves ; so that at the rate at which free population has proceeded between 
 1790 and 1810, it doubles itself, in the United States, in a very little more 
 than twenty-two years. The slave population, according to its rate of pro- 
 ceeding in the same time, would be doubled in about twenty-six years. The 
 increase of the slave population in this statement is owing to the importa- 
 tion of negroes between 1800 and 1808, especially in 1806 and 1807, from 
 the expected prohibition against importation. The number of slaves was 
 also increased by the acquisitions of territory in Louisiana, where they con- 
 stituted nearly half the population. From 1801 to 1811, the inhabitants of 
 Great Britain acquired an augmentation of 14 per cent. ; the Americans, 
 within the same period, were augmented 36 per cent. 
 
 Emigration seems to be of very little importance to the United States. 
 In the year 1817, by far the most considerable year of emigration, there 
 arrived in ten of the principal ports of America, from the Old World, 
 22,000 persons as passengers. The number of emigrants, from 1790 to 
 iSio, is not supposed to have exceeded 6000 per annum. None of the 
 separate States have been retrograde during these three enumerations, 
 though some have been nearly stationary. The most remarkable increase 
 is that of New York, which has risen from 340,120 in the year 1790, to 
 959,049 in the year 1810. The emigration from the Eastern to the Western 
 States is calculated at 60,000 persons per annum. In all the American 
 enumerations, the males uniformly predominate in the proportion of about 
 loo to 92. We are better off in Great Britain and Ireland, where the 
 women were to the men, by the census of 1811, as no to 100. The den- 
 sity of population in the United States is less than 4 persons to a square 
 mile ; that of Holland in 1803, was 275 to the square mile ; that of Eng- 
 land and Wales, 169. So that the fifteen provinces which formed the 
 Union in 1810, would contain, if they were as thickly peopled as Holland, 
 135 millions of souls. 
 
 The next head is that of Trade and Commerce. In 1790, the Exports of 
 the United States were above 19 millions of dollars; in 1791, above 20 
 millions ; in 1 792, 26 millions ; in 1 793, 33 millions of dollars. Prior to 
 1795, there was no discrimination, in the American Treasury accounts, be- 
 tween the exportation of domestic, and the re-exportation of foreign articles. 
 In 1795, the aggregate value of the merchandise exported was 67 millions 
 of dollars, of which the foreign produce re-exported was 26 millions. In 
 1800, the total value of exports was 94 millions ; in 1805, 101 millions ; and 
 in 1808, when they arrived at their maximum, 108 millions of dollars. In 
 the year 1809, from the effects of the French and English Orders in Coun- 
 cil, the exports fell to 52 millions of dollars ; in 1810 to 66 millions ; in 
 1811 to 61 millions. In the first year of the war with England, to 38 
 millions ; in the second, to 27 ; in the year 1814, when peace was made, 
 to 6 millions. So that the exports of the republic in 6 years, had tumbled 
 down from 108 to 6 millions of dollars : after the peace, in the years 
 1815-16-17, the exports rose to 52, 81, 87 millions of dollars. 
 
 In 1817, the exportation of cotton was 85 millions pounds. In 1815, the 
 sugar made on the banks of the Mississippi was 10 millions pounds. In 
 1792, when the wheat trade was at the maximum, a million and a half of 
 bushels were exported. The proportions of the exports to Great Britain, 
 Spain, France, Holland, and Portugal, on an average of ten years ending
 
 326 AMERICA. 
 
 iSi2,"are~ as r 2j, 16, 13, 12, and 7 ; the actual value of exports to the 
 dominions of Great Britain, in the three years ending 1804, were consecu- 
 tively, in millions of dollars, 16, 17, 13. 
 
 Imports. In 1791, the imports of the United States were 19 millions; 
 on an average of three consecutive years, ending 1804 inclusive, they were 
 68 millions; in 1806-7, they were 138 millions; and in 1815, 133 millions 
 of dollars. The annual value of the imports, on an average of three years 
 ending 1804, was 75 millions, of which the dominions of Great Britain fur- 
 nished nearly onejhalf. On an average of three years ending 1804, America 
 imported from Great Britain to the amount of about 36 millions, and returned 
 goods to the amount of about 23 millions. Certainly these are countries 
 that have some better employment for their time and energy than cutting 
 each other's throats, and may meet for more profitable purposes. The 
 American imports from the dominions of Great Britain, before the great 
 American war, amounted to about 3 millions sterling ; soon after the war, 
 to the same. From 1805 to 1811, both inclusive, the average annual ex- 
 portation of Great Britain to all parts of the world, in real value, was about 
 43 millions sterling ; of which one fifth, or nearly 9 millions, was sent to 
 America. 
 
 Tonnage and Navigation. Before the revolutionary war, the American 
 tonnage, whether owned by British or American subjects, was about 
 12^,000 tons ; immediately after that war, 108,000. In 1789, it had 
 amounted to 437,733 tons, of which 279,000 was American property. In 
 1790, the total was 605,825, of which 354,000 was American. In 1816, 
 the tonnage, all American, was 1,300,000. On an average of three years, 
 from 1810 to 1812, both inclusive, the registered tonnage of the British 
 empire was 2,459,000 ; or little more than double the American. 
 
 Lands. All public lands are surveyed before they are offered for sale ; 
 and divided into townships of six^ miles square, which are subdivided into 
 thirty-six sections of one mile square, containing each 640 acres. The 
 following lands are excepted from the sales. One thirty-sixth part of the 
 lands, or a section of 640 acres in each township, is uniformly reserved for 
 the support [of schools ; seven entire townships, containing each 23,000 
 acres, have been reserved in perpetuity for the support of learning : all salt 
 springs and lead mines are also reserved. The Mississippi, the Ohio, and 
 all the navigable rivers and waters leading into either, or into the river St 
 Lawrence, remain common highways, and for ever free to all the citizens 
 of the United States, without payment of any tax. All the other public 
 lands, not thus excepted, are offered for public sale in quarter sections of 
 1 60 acres, at a price not less than two dollars per acre, and as much more 
 as they will fetch by public auction. It was formerly the duty of the Sec- 
 retary of the Treasury to superintend the sale of lands. In 1812, an office, 
 denominated the General Land-Office, was instituted. The public lands 
 sold prior to the opening of the land-offices, amounted to one million and a 
 half of acres. The aggregate of the sales since the opening of the land- 
 offices, N.W. of the river Ohio, to the end of September, 1817, amounted 
 to 8,469,644 acres ; and the purchase-money to 18,000,000 dollars. The 
 lands sold since the opening of the land-offices in the Mississippi territory, 
 amount to 1,600,000 acres. The stock of unsold land on hand is calculated 
 at 400,000,000 acres. In the year 1817 there were sold above two millions 
 of acres. 
 
 Post-Office. In 1789, the number of post-offices in the United States 
 was seventy-five ; the amount of postage 38,000 dollars : the miles of post- 
 road 1800. In 1817, the number of post-offices was 3,459 ; the amount of 
 postage 961,000 dollars ; and the extent of post-roads 51,600 miles.
 
 AMERICA. 327 
 
 Rcventu. The revenues of the United States are derived from the 
 customs ; from duties on distilled spirits, carriages, snuff, refined sugar, 
 auctions, stamped paper, goods, wares, and merchandise manufactured 
 within the United States, household furniture, gold and silver watches, and 
 postage of letters ; from moneys arising from the sale of public lands, and 
 from fees on letters-patent. The following are the duties paid at the 
 custom-house for some of the principal articles of importation : 7i per 
 cent, on dyeing drugs, jewellery, and watchwork ; 15 per cent, on hempen 
 cloth, and on all articles manufactured from iron, tin, brass, and lead on 
 buttons, buckles, china, earthenware, and glass, except window glass ; 25 
 per cent, on cotton and woollen goods, and cotton twist ; 30 per cent, on 
 carriages, leather, and leather manufactures, &c. 
 
 The average annual produce of the customs, between 1801 and 1810, 
 both inclusive, was about twelve millions of dollars. In the year 1814, the 
 customs amounted only to four millions ; and, in the year 1815, the first 
 year after the war, rose to thirty-seven millions. From 178910 1814, the 
 customs have constituted 65 per cent, of the American revenues ; loans 26 
 per cent. ; and all other branches 8 to 9 per cent. They collect their 
 customs at about 4 per cent. ; the English expense of collection is 6 2s. 
 (xi. per cent. 
 
 The duty upon spirits is extremely trifling to the consumer not a penny 
 per gallon. The number of distilleries is about 15,000. The licences pro- 
 duce a very inconsiderable sum. The tax laid upon carriages in 1814, 
 varied from fifty dollars to one dollar, according to the value of the machine. 
 In the year 1801, there were more than fifteen thousand carriages of different 
 descriptions paying duty. The furniture tax seems to have been a very 
 singular species of tax, laid on during the last war. It was an ad valorem 
 duty upon all the furniture in any man's possession, the value of which 
 exceeded 600 dollars. Furniture cannot be estimated without domiciliary 
 visits, nor domiciliary visits allowed without tyranny and vexation. An 
 information laid against a new arm-chair or a clandestine side-board a 
 search-warrant, and a conviction consequent upon it have much more the 
 appearance of English than American liberty. The licence for a watch, 
 too, is purely English. A truly free Englishman walks out covered with 
 licences. It is impossible to convict him. He has paid a guinea for his 
 powdered head a guinea for the coat of arms upon his seals a three- 
 guinea licence for the gun he carries upon his shoulder to shoot game ; and 
 is so fortified with permits and official sanctions, that the most eagle-eyed 
 informer cannot obtain the most trifling advantage over him. 
 
 America has borrowed, between 1791 and 1815, one hundred and seven 
 millions of dollars, of which forty-rune millions were borrowed in 1813 and 
 
 1814. The internal revenue in the year 1815 amounted to eight millions 
 of dollars; the gross revenue of the same year, including the loan, to 
 fifty-one millions of dollars. 
 
 Army. During the late war with Great Britain, Congress authorised 
 the raising of 62,000 men for the armies of the United States, though the 
 actual number raised never amounted to half that force. In February^ 
 
 1815, the army of the United States did not amount to more than 32,000 
 men; hi January 1814, to 23,000.* The recruiting service, as maybe easily 
 conceived, where the wages of labour are so high, goes on very slowly in 
 America. The military peace establishment was fixed in 1815 at 10,000 
 men. The Americans are fortunately exempt from the insanity of garrison- 
 ing little rocks and islands all over the world ; nor would they lavish mil- 
 
 * Peace with Great Britain was signed in December, 1814, at Ghent.
 
 3 i8 AMERICA. 
 
 lions upon the ignoble end of the Spanish Peninsula the most useless and 
 extravagant possession with which any European power was ever afflicted. 
 In 1812, any recruit honourably discharged from the service was allowed 
 three months' pay and 160 acres of land. In 1814, every non-commis- 
 sioned officer, musician, and private, who enlisted, and was afterwards 
 honourably discharged, was allowed, upon such discharge, 320 acres. The 
 enlistment was for five years, or during the war. The widow, child, or 
 parent of any person enlisted, who was killed or died in the service of the 
 United States, was entitled to .receive the same bounty in land. 
 
 Every free white male between eighteen and forty-five is liable to be 
 called out in the militia, which is stated, in official papers, to amount to 
 748,000 persons. 
 
 Navy, On the 8th of June, 1781, the Americans had only one vessel of 
 war, the Alliance; and that was thought to be too expensive, it was sold ! 
 The attacks of the Barbary powers first roused them to form a navy ; 
 which, in 1797, amounted to three frigates. In 1814, besides a great 
 increase of frigates, four seventy-fours were ordered to be built. In 1816, 
 in consequence of some brilliant actions of their frigates, the naval service 
 had become very popular throughout the United States. One million of 
 dollars were appropriated annually, for eight years, to the gradual increase 
 of the navy ; nine seventy-fours,* and twelve forty -four gun ships were 
 ordered to be built. Vacant and unappropriated lands belonging to the 
 United States, fit to produce oak and cedar, were to be selected for the use 
 of the navy. The peace establishment of the marine corps was increased, 
 and six navy yards were established. We were surprised to find Dr 
 Seybert complaining of a want of ship timber in America. " Many per- 
 sons (he says) believe that our stock of live oak is very considerable ; but 
 xipon good authority we have been told, in 1801, that supplies of live oak 
 from Georgia will be obtained with great difficulty, and that the larger 
 pieces are very scarce." In treating of naval affairs, Dr Seybert, with a 
 very different purpose in view, pays the following involuntary tribute to 
 the activity and effect of our late naval warfare against the Americans. 
 
 " For a long time the majority of the people of the United States was 
 opposed to an extensive and permanent Naval establishment : and the force 
 authorised by the Legislature, until very lately, was intended for temporary 
 purposes. A navy was considered to be beyond the financial means of our 
 country ; and it was supposed the people would not submit to be taxed for 
 its support. Our brilliant success in the late war has changed the public 
 sentiment on this subject : many persons who formerly opposed the Navy, 
 now consider it as an essential means of our defence. The late transactions on 
 the borders of the Chesapeak Bay cannot be forgotten ; the extent of thai 
 immense estuary enabled the enemy to sail triumphant into the interior of 
 the United States. For hundreds of miles along the shores of that great 
 bay, our people were insulted ; our towns were ravaged and destroyed ; a 
 considerable population was teased and irritated ; depredations were hourly 
 committed by an enemy who could penetrate into the bosom of the country, 
 withput our being able to molest him whilst he kept on the water. By the 
 time a sufficient force was collected, to check his operations in one situation, 
 his ships had already transported him to another, which was feeble, and 
 offered a booty to him. An army could make no resistance to this mode 
 of warfare ; the people were annoyed ; and they suffered in the field only 
 to be satisfied of their inability to check those who had the dominion upon 
 
 * The American seventy-four gun ships are as big as our first-rates, aad their frigatel 
 nearly as big as ships of the line.
 
 AMERICA. 329 
 
 our waters. The inhabitants who were in the immediate vicinity, were not 
 alone affected by the enemy ; his operations extended their influence to our 
 great towns on the Atlantic coast ; domestic intercourse and internal com- 
 merce were interrupted, whilst that with foreign nations was, in some 
 instances, entirely suspended. The Treasury documents for 1814 exhibit 
 the phenomenon of the State of Pennsylvania not being returned in the list 
 of the exporting States. We were not only deprived of revenue, but our 
 expenditures were very much augmented. It is probable the amount of the 
 expenditures incurred on the borders of the Chesapeak, would have been 
 adequate to provide naval means for the defence of those waters : the people 
 might then ; have remained at home, secure from depredation in the pursuit 
 of their tranquil occupations. The expenses of the Government, as well as 
 of individuals, were very much augmented for every species of transportation. 
 Every thing had to be conveyed by land carriage. Our communication with 
 the ocean was cut off. One thousand dollars were paid for the transporta- 
 tion of each of the thirty-two pounder cannon from Washington city to Lake 
 Ontario, for the public service. Our roads became almost impassable from 
 the heavy loads which were carried over them. These facts should induce 
 us, in times of tranquillity, to provide for the national defence, and execute 
 such internal improvements as cannot be effected during the agitations of 
 war." (p. 679.) 
 
 Expenditure. The President of the United States receives about ;6ooo 
 a year ; the Vice-President about 600 ; the deputies to Congress have 
 8 dollars per day, and 8 dollars for every 20 miles of journey. The First 
 Clerk of the house of Representatives receives about 750 per annum ; the 
 Secretary of State, ^1200; the Postmaster-general, .750 ; the Chief Justice 
 of the United States, ;iooo ; a Minister Plenipotentiary, .2200 per annum. 
 There are, doubtless, reasons why there should be two noblemen appointed 
 in this country as Postmasters-General, with enormous salaries, neither of 
 whom know a twopenny post letter from a general one, and where further 
 retrenchments are stated to be impossible. This is clearly a case to which 
 that impossibility extends. But these are matters where a prostration of 
 understanding is called for ; and good subjects are not to reason, but to pay. 
 If, however, we were ever to indulge in the Saxon practice of looking into 
 our own affairs, some important documents might be derived from these 
 American salaries. Jonathan, for instance, sees no reason why the first 
 clerk of his House of Commons should derive emoluments from his situa- 
 tion to the amount of ^6000 or .7000 per annum ; but Jonathan is vulgar 
 and arithmetical. The total expenditure of the United States varied, 
 between 1799 and l8il, both inclusive, from II to 17 millions dollars. 
 From 1812 to 1814, both inclusive, and all these years of war with this 
 country, the expenditure was consecutively 22, 29, and 38 millions dollars. 
 The total expenditure of the United States, for fourteen years from 1791 to 
 1814, was 333 millions dollars ; of which, in the three last years of war with 
 this country, from 1812 to 1814, there were expended 100 millions of dollars, 
 of which only 35 were supplied by revenue, the rest by loans and govern- 
 ment paper. The sum total received by the American Treasury from the 
 3d of March, 1789, to the 3ist of March, 1816, is 354 millions dollars; of 
 which 107 millions have been raised by loan, and 222 millions by the customs 
 and tonnage : so that, exclusive of the revenue derived from loans, 222 parts 
 out of 247 of the American revenue have been derived from foreign com- 
 merce. In the mind of any sensible American, this consideration ought to 
 prevail over the few splendid actions of their half dozen frigates, which must, 
 in a continued war, have been, with all their bravery and activity, swept
 
 330 AMERICA. 
 
 from the face of the ocean by the superior force and equal bravery of the 
 English. It would be the height of madness in America to run into another 
 naval war with this country if it could be averted by any other means than 
 a sacrifice of proper dignity and character. They have, comparatively, no 
 land revenue ; and, in spite of the Franklin and Guerriere, though lined 
 with cedar and mounted with brass cannon, they must soon be reduced to 
 the same state which has been described by Dr Seybert, and from which 
 they were so opportunely extricated by the treaty of Ghent. David Porter 
 and Stephen Decatur are very brave men ; but they will prove an unspeak- 
 able misfortune to their country, if they inflame Jonathan into a love of 
 naval glory, and inspire him with any other love of war than that which is 
 founded upon a determination not to submit to serious insult and injury. 
 
 We can inform Jonathan -what are the inevitable consequences of being too 
 fond of glory ; TAXES upon every article which enters into the mouth, or 
 covers the back, or is placed under the foot taxes upon every thing "which it is 
 peasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste taxes upon warmth, light, and 
 locomotion taxes on every thing on earth, and the waters under the earth 
 on every thing that comes from abroad, or is grtnun at home taxes on the 
 raw material taxes on every fresh -value that is added to it by the industry 
 of man taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and the drug that 
 restores him to health on the ermine -Which decorates the judge, and t/u r<,pe 
 which hangs the criminal on the poor marts salt, and the rich marts spice 
 on the brass nails of the coffin, and t/te ribands of the bride at bed or board, 
 couchant or levant, we must pay. The school-boy whips his taxed top the 
 beardless youth manages his taxed horse, with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road : 
 and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid 7 per 
 cent., into a spoon that Jias paid 15 per cent. flings himself back upon his 
 chintz bed, which has paid 22 per cent. and expires in the arms of an 
 apothecary who has paid a licence of a hundred pounds for the privilege oj 
 putting him to death. His whole property is then immediately taxed from 2 
 to loper cent. Besides the probate, larg^fees are demanded for burying him 
 in the chancel ; his virtues are handed dmvn to posterity on taxed marble; 
 and he is then gathered to his fathers to be taxed no more. In addition to 
 all this, the habit of dealing with large sums will make the Government 
 avaricious and profuse ; and the system itself will infallibly generate the 
 base vermin of spies and informers, and a still more pestilent race of 
 political tools and retainers of the meanest and most odious description ; 
 while the prodigious patronage which the collecting of this splendid 
 revenue will throw into the hands of Government, will invest it with so vast 
 an influence, and hold out such means and temptations to corruption, as 
 all the virtue and public spirit, even of republicans, will be unable to 
 resist. 
 
 Every wise Jonathan should remember this, when he sees the rabble 
 huzzaing at the heels of the truly respectable Decatur, or inflaming the 
 vanity of that still more popular leader, whose justification has lowered the 
 character of his Government with all the civilised nations of the world. 
 
 Debt. America owed 42 millions of dollars after the revolutionary war ; 
 in 1790, 79 millions ; in 1803, 70 millions ; and in the beginning of January, 
 1812, the public debt was diminished to 45 millions of dollars. After the 
 last war with England, it had risen to 123 millions ; and so it stood on the 
 1st of January, 1816. The total amount carried to the credit of the com- 
 missioners of the sinking fund, on the 3 1st of December, 1816, was about 
 34 millions of dollars. 
 
 Such is the land of Jonathan and thus has it been governed. In his 
 honest endeavours to better his situation, and in his manly purpose of re
 
 AMERICA. 33 j 
 
 sisting injury and insult, we most cordially sympathise. We hope he will 
 always continue to watch and suspect his Government as he now does 
 remembering, that it is the constant tendency of those intrusted with power, 
 to conceive that they enjoy it by their own merits, and for their own use, 
 and not by delegation, and for the benefit of others. Thus far we are the 
 friends and admirers of Jonathan. But he must not grow vain and ambitious ; 
 or allow himself to be dazzled by that galaxy of epithets by which his orators 
 and newspaper scribblers endeavour to persuade their supporters that they 
 are the greatest, the most refined, the most enlightened, and the most moral 
 people upon earth. The effect of this is unspeakably ludicrous on this side of 
 the Atlantic and, even on the other, we should imagine, must be rather 
 humiliating to the reasonable part of the population. The Americans are 
 a brave, industrious, and acute people ; but they have hitherto given no 
 indications of genius, and made no approaches to the heroic, either in their 
 morality or character. They are but a recent offset indeed from England ; 
 and should make it their chief boast, for many generations to come, that 
 they are sprung from the same race with Bacon and Shakspeare and Newton. 
 Considering their numbers, indeed, and the favourable circumstances in 
 which they have been placed, they have yet done marvellously little to 
 assert the honour, of such a descent, or to show that their English blood 
 has been exalted or refined by their republican training and institutions. 
 Their Franklins and Washingtons, and all the other sages and heroes of 
 their revolution, were born and bred subjects of the King of England and 
 not among the freest or most valued of his subjects. And, since the period 
 of their separation, a far greater proportion of their statesmen and artists 
 and political writers have been foreigners, than ever occurred before in the 
 history of any civilised and educated people. During the thirty or forty 
 years of their independence, they have done absolutely nothing for the 
 Sciences, for the Arts, for Literature, or even for the statesman-like studies 
 of Politics or Political Economy. Confining ourselves to our own country, 
 and to the period that has elapsed since they had an independent existence, 
 we would ask, Where are their Foxes, their Burkes, their Sheridans, their 
 Windbams, their Homers, their Wilberforces ? where their Arkwrights, 
 their Watts, their Davys ? their Robertsons, Blairs, Smiths, Stewarts, 
 Paleys, and Malthuses ? their Persons, Parrs, Burneys, or Bloomfields ? 
 their Scotts, Rogers's, Campbells, Byrons, Moores, or Crabbes? their 
 Siddons's, Kembles, Keans, or O'Neils f their Wilkies, Lawrences, 
 Chantrys ? or their parallels to the hundred other names, that have spread 
 themselves over the world from our little island in the course of the last 
 thirty years, and blest or delighted mankind by their works, inventions, or 
 examples? In so far as we know, there is no such parallel to be produced 
 from the whole annals of this self-adulating race. In the four quarters of 
 the globe, who reads an American book? or goes to an American play? or 
 looks at an American picture or statue? What does the world yet owe 
 to American physicians or surgeons ? What new substances have their 
 chemists discovered ? or what old ones have they analysed ? What new 
 constellations have been discovered by the telescopes of Americans? What 
 have they done in the mathematics? Who drinks out of American glasses? 
 or eats from American plates ? or wears American coats or gowns ? or 
 sleeps in American blankets ? Finally, under which of the old tyrannical 
 governments of Europe is every sixth man a slave, whom his fellow-creatures 
 may buy and sell and torture ? 
 
 When these questions are fairly and favourably answered, their laudatory 
 epithets may be allowed : but till that can be done, we would seriously 
 advise them to keep clear of superlatives.
 
 332 POOR-LAWS. 
 
 POOR-LAWS. (E. REVIEW, 1820.) 
 
 i. Safe Method for rendering Income arising from Personal Property available to tht 
 
 Poor-Laws. Longman & Co. 1819. 
 a. Summary Kerie^v of the Refort and Evidence, relative to the Poor-Laws. By S. 
 
 \V. XICOL. York. 
 
 3. Essay on the Practicability of modifying the Poor-Laws. Sherwood. 1819. 
 
 4. Considerations on the Poor-Laws. By JOHN DAVISON, A.M. Oxford. 
 
 OUR readers, we fear, will require some apology for being asked to look 
 at any thing upon the Poor- Laws. No subject, we admit, can be more 
 disagreeable, or more trite. But, unfortunately, it is the most important of 
 all the important subjects which the distressed state of the country is now 
 crowding upon our notice. 
 
 A pamphlet on the Poor-Laws generally contains some little piece of 
 favourite nonsense, by which we are gravely told this enormous evil may be 
 perfectly cured. The first gentleman recommends little gardens ; the second 
 cows ; the third a village shop ; the fourth a spade ; the fifth Dr Bell, and 
 so forth. Every man rushes to the press with his small morsel of imbecility ; 
 and is not easy till he sees his impertinence stitched in blue covers. In this 
 list of absurdities, we must not forget the project of supporting the poor 
 from national funds, or, in other words, of immediately doubling the ex- 
 penditure, and introducing every possible abuse into the administration of 
 it. Then there are worthy men, who call upon gentlemen of fortune and 
 education to become overseers meaning, we suppose, that the present 
 overseers are to perform the higher duties of men of fortune. Then Merit 
 is set up as the test of relief ; and their worships are to enter into a long 
 examination of the life and character of each applicant, assisted, as they 
 doubtless would be, by candid overseers, and neighbours divested of every 
 feeling of malice and partiality. The children are next to be taken from 
 their parents, and lodged in immense pedagogueries of several acres each, 
 where they are to be carefully secluded from those fathers and mothers they 
 are commanded to obey and honour, and are to be brought up in virtue by 
 the churchwardens. And this is gravely intended as a corrective of the 
 Poor-Laws ; as if (to pass over the many other objections which might be 
 made to it) it would not set mankind populating faster than carpenters and 
 bricklayers could cover in their children, or separate twigs to be bound into 
 rods for their flagellation. An extension of the Poor-Laws to personal 
 property is also talked of. We should be very glad to see any species of 
 property exempted from these laws, but have no wish that any which is 
 now exempted should be subjected to their influence. The case would 
 infallibly be like that of the Income-tax, the more easily the tax was raised, 
 the more profligate would be the expenditure. It is proposed also that ale- 
 houses should be diminished, and that the children of the poor should be 
 catechised publicly in the church, both very respectable and proper sug- 
 gestions, but of themselves hardly strong enough for the evil. We have 
 every wish that the poor should accustom themselves to habits of sobriety ; 
 but we cannot help reflecting, sometimes, that an alehouse is the only place 
 where a poor tired creature, haunted with every species of wretchedness, 
 can purchase three or four times a year three pennyworth of ale, a liquor 
 upon which wine-drinking moralists are always extremely severe. We 
 must not forget, among other nostrums, the eulogy of small farms in other 
 words, of small capital, and profound ignorance in the arts of agriculture ; 
 and the evil is also thought to be curable by periodical contributions 
 from men who have nothing, and can earn nothing without charity. To
 
 1'OOR-LA WS. 
 
 333 
 
 one of these plans, and perhaps the most plausible, Mr Nicol has stated, 
 in the following passage, objections that are applicable to almost all the rest. 
 " The district school would no doubt be well superintended and well 
 regulated ; Magistrates and Country Gentlemen would be its visitors. The 
 more excellent the establishment, the greater the mischief; because the 
 greater the expense. We may talk what we will of economy, but where 
 the care of the poor is taken exclusively into the hands of the rich, com- 
 parative extravagance is the necessary consequence : to say that the Gentle- 
 man, or even the Overseer, would never permit the poor to live at the dis- 
 trict school, as they live at home, is saying far too little. English humanity 
 will never see the poor in any thing like want, when that want is palpably 
 and visibly brought before it ; first, it will give necessaries, next comforts ; 
 until its fostering care rather pampers, than merely relieves. The humanity 
 itself is highly laudable ; but if practised on an extensive scale, its conse- 
 quences must entail an almost unlimited expenditure. 
 
 " Mr Locke computes that the labour of a child from 3 to 14, being set 
 against its nourishment and teaching, the result will be exoneration of the 
 parish from expense. Nothing could prove more decisively the incompet- 
 ency of the Board of Trade to advise on this question. Of the productive 
 labour of the workhouse, I shall have to speak hereafter ; I will only 
 observe in this place, that after the greatest care and attention bestowed on 
 the subject, after expensive looms purchased, &c., the 50 boys of the Blue 
 Coat School earned in the year 1816, y), los. ^J. ; the 40 girls earned, in 
 the same time, 40, "js. <$d. The ages of these children are from 8 to 16. 
 They earn about one pound in the year and cost about twenty. 
 
 " The greater the call for labour in public institutions, be they prisons, 
 workhouses, or schools, the more difficult to be procured that labour must 
 be. There will thence be both much less of it for the comparative numbers, 
 and it will afford a much less price ; to get any labour at all, one school 
 must underbid another. 
 
 "It has just been observed, that 'the child ot a poor cottager, half 
 clothed, half fed, with the enjoyment of home and liberty, is not only 
 happier but better than the little automaton of a parish workhouse : ' and 
 this I believe is accurately true. I scarcely know a more cheering sight, 
 though certainly many more elegant ones, than the youthful gambols of a 
 village green. They call to mind the description given by Paley of the 
 shoals of the fry of fish : ' They are so happy that they know not what to do 
 with themselves ; their attitude, their vivacity, their leaps out of the water, 
 their frolics in it, all conduce to show their excess of spirits, and are simply 
 the effects of that excess.' 
 
 " Though politeness may be banished from the cottage, and though the 
 anxious mother may sometimes chide a little too sharply, yet here both 
 maternal endearments and social affection exist in perhaps their greatest 
 vigour: the attachments of lower life, where independent of attachment 
 there is so little to enjoy, far outstrip the divided if not exhausted sensibility 
 of the rich and great ; and in depriving the poor of these attachments, we 
 may be said to rob them of their little all. 
 
 ' ' But it is not to happiness only I here refer : it is to morals. I listen 
 with great reserve to that system of moral instruction which has not social 
 affection for its basis, or the feelings of the heart for its ally. It is not to be 
 concealed, that every thing may be taught, yet nothing learned, that systems 
 planned with care and executed with attention, may evaporate into unmean- 
 ing forms, where the imagination is not roused, or the sensibility impressed. 
 
 "Let us suppose the children of the 'district school,' nurtured with that
 
 334 POOR-LA WS. 
 
 superabundant care which such institutions, when supposed to be well con- 
 ducted, are wont to exhibit ; they rise with the dawn ; after attending to 
 the calls of cleanliness, prayers follow ; then a lesson ; then breakfast ; then 
 work, till noon liberates them, for perhaps an hour, from the walls of their 
 prison to the walls of their prison court. Dinner follows ; and then, in 
 course, work, lessons, supper, prayers ; at length, after a day dreary and 
 dull, the counterpart of every day which has preceded, and of all that are 
 to follow, the children are dismissed to bed. This system may construct a 
 machine, but it will not form a man. Of what does it consist? of prayers 
 parroted without one sentiment in accord with the words uttered : of moral 
 lectures which the understanding does not comprehend, or the heart feel ; 
 of endless bodily constraint, intolerable to youthful vivacity, and injurious 
 to the perfection of the human frame. The cottage day may not present so 
 imposing a scene ; no decent uniform ; no well-trimmed locks ; no glossy 
 skin ; no united response of hundreds of conjoined voices : no lengthened 
 procession, misnamed exercise ; but if it has less to strike the eye, it has far 
 more to engage the heart. A trifle in the way of cleanliness must suffice ; 
 the prayer is not forgot ; it is perhaps imperfectly repeated, and confusedly 
 understood : but it is not muttered as a vain sound ; it is an earthly parent 
 that tells of an heavenly one ; duty, love, obedience, are not words without 
 meaning, when repeated by a mother to a child : to God the great un- 
 known Being that made all things, all thanks, all praise, all adoration is 
 due. The young religionist may be in some measure bewildered by all 
 tliis ; his notions may be obscure, but his feelings will be roused, and the 
 foundation at least of true piety will be laid. 
 
 "Of moral instruction, the child may be taught less at home than at 
 school, but he will be taught better I that is, whatever he is taught he will 
 feel ; he will not have abstract propositions of duty coldly presented to his 
 mind ; but precept and practice will be conjoined ; what he is told it is 
 right to do will be instantly done. Sometimes the operative principle on 
 the child's mind will be love, sometimes fear, sometimes habitual sense of 
 obedience ; it is always something that will impress, always something that 
 will be remembered. 
 
 There are two points which we consider as now admitted by all men of 
 sense, 1st, That the Poor-Laws must be abolished ; zdfy, That they must 
 be very gradually abolished.* We hardly think it worth while to throw 
 away pen and ink upon any one who is still inclined to dispute either of 
 these propositions. 
 
 With respect to the gradual abolition, it must be observed, that the pre- 
 sent redundant population of the country has been entirely produced by the 
 Poor-Laws : and nothing could be so grossly unjust, as to encourage people 
 to such a vicious multiplication, and then, when you happen to discover 
 your folly, immediately to starve them into annihilation. You have been 
 calling upon your population for two hundred years to beget more children 
 furnished them with clothes, food, and houses taught them to lay up 
 nothing for matrimony, nothing for children, nothing for age but to depend 
 upon Justices of the Peace for every human want. The foll'y is now detected ; 
 but the people, who are the fruit of it, remain. It was madness to call them 
 
 * I am not quite so wrong in this as I seem to be, nor after all our experience am I 
 satisfied that there has not been a good deal of rashness and precipitation in the conduct 
 of this admirable measure. You have not been able to carry the law into manufacturing 
 counties. Parliament will compel you to soften some of the more severe clauses. It has 
 been the nucleus of general insurrection and chartism. The Duke of Wellington wisely 
 recommended that the experiment should be first tried in a few counties round the 
 metropolis.
 
 POOR-LA WS. 335 
 
 in this manner into existence ; but it would be the height of cold-blooded 
 cruelty to get rid of them by any other than the most gentle and gradual 
 means ; and not only would it be cruel, but extremely dangerous, to make 
 the attempt. Insurrections of the most sanguinary and ferocious nature 
 would be the immediate consequence of any very sudden change in the 
 system of the Poor-Laws ; not partial, like those which proceed from an 
 impeded or decaying state of manufactures, but as universal as the Poor- 
 Laws themselves, and as ferocious as insurrections always are which are led 
 on by hunger and despair. 
 
 These observations may serve as an answer to those angry and impatient 
 gentlemen, who are always crying out, What has the Committee of the 
 House of Commons done ? What have they to show for their labours ? 
 Are the rates lessened ? Are the evils removed ? The Committee of the 
 House of Commons would have shown themselves to be a set of the most 
 contemptible charlatans, if they had proceeded with any such indecent and 
 perilous haste, or paid the slightest regard to the ignorant folly which 
 required it at their hands. They have very properly begun, by collecting 
 all possible information upon the subject ; by consulting speculative and 
 practical men ; by leaving time for the press to contribute whatever it could 
 of thought or knowledge to the subject ; and by introducing measures, the 
 effects of which will be, and are intended to be gradual. The Lords seemed 
 at first to have been surprised that the Poor Laws were no*, abolished before 
 the end of the first session of Par'i.ime-T: ; and accordingly set up a little 
 rival Committee of their own, whicii did Ihtle or nothing, and will not, we 
 believe, be renewed. We are so much less sanguine than those noble legis- 
 lators, that we shall think the improvement immense, and a subject of very 
 general congratulation, if the Poor-rates are perceptibly diminished, and if 
 the system of pauperism is clearly going down in twenty or thirty years 
 hence. 
 
 We think, upon the whole, that Government have been fortunate in the 
 selection of the gentleman who is placed at the head of the Committee for 
 the revision of the Poor-Laws ; or rather, we should say (for he is a gentle- 
 man of very independent fortune), who has consented that he should be 
 placed there. Mr Sturges Bourne is undoubtedly a man of business, and of 
 very good sense : he has made some mistakes ; but, upon the whole, sees 
 the subject as a philosopher and a statesman ought to do. Above all, we 
 are pleased with his good nature and good sense in adhering to his under- 
 taking, after the Parliament has flung out two or three of his favourite bills. 
 Many men would have surrendered so unthankful and laborious an under- 
 taking in disgust ; but Mr Bourne knows better what appertains to his 
 honour and character, and, above all, what he owes to his country. It is a 
 great subject ; and such as will secure to him the gratitude and favour of 
 posterity, if he bring it to a successful issue. 
 
 We have stated our opinion, that all remedies, without gradual abolition, 
 are of little importance. With a foundation laid for such gradual abolition, 
 every auxiliary improvement of the Poor-Laws (while they do remain) is 
 worthy the attention of Parliament : and, in suggesting a few alterations as 
 fit to be immediately adopted, we wish it to be understood, that we have 
 in view the gradual destruction of the system, as well as its amendment 
 while it continues to operate. 
 
 It seems to us, then, that one of the first and greatest improvements of 
 this unhappy system would be a complete revision of the Law of Settle- 
 ment. Since Mr East's act for preventing the removal of chs poor till they 
 are actually chargeable, any man may live where he please?, till he becomes 
 a beggar, and asks alms of the place where he resides. To gain a settle-
 
 336 POOR-LA WS. 
 
 ment, then, is nothing more than to gain a right of begging : it is hot, as it 
 used to be before Mr East's act, a power of residing where, in the judgment 
 of the resident, his industry and exertion will be best rewarded ; but a 
 power of taxing the industry and exertions of other persons in the place 
 where his settlement falls. This privilege produces all the evil complained 
 of in the Poor-Laws ; and instead therefore of being conferred with the 
 liberality and profusion which it is at present, it should be made of very 
 difficult attainment, and liable to the fewest possible changes. The con- 
 stant policy of our Courts of Justice has been, to make settlements easily 
 obtained. Since the period we have before alluded to, this has certainly 
 been a very mistaken policy. It would be a far wiser course to abolish all 
 other means of settlement than those of Birth, Parentage, and Marriage, 
 not for the limited reason stated in the Committee, that it would diminish 
 the law expenses (though that, too, is of importance), but because it would 
 invest fewer residents with the fatal privilege of turning beggars, exempt a 
 greater number of labourers from the moral corruption of the Poor-Laws, 
 and stimulate them to exertion and economy, by the fear of removal if they 
 are extravagant and idle. Of ten men who leave the place of theirbirth, 
 four, probably, get a settlement by yearly hiring, and four others by renting 
 a small tenement ; while two or three may return to the place of their 
 nativity, and settle there. Now, under the present system, here are eight 
 men settled where they have a right to beg without being removed. The 
 probability is, that they will all beg ; and that their virtue will give way to 
 the incessant temptation of the Poor-Laws : but if these men had felt from 
 the very beginning, that removal from the place where they wished most 
 to live would be the sure consequence of their idleness and extravagance, 
 the probability is, that they would have escaped the contagion of pauperism, 
 and been much more useful members of society than they now are. The 
 best labourers in a village are commonly those who are living where they 
 are legally settled, and have therefore no right to ask charity for the plain 
 reason, that they have nothing to depend upon but their own exertions : in 
 short, for them the Poor-Laws hardly exist ; and they are such as the great 
 mass of English peasantry would be, if we had escaped the curse of these 
 laws altogether. 
 
 It is incorrect to say, that no labourer would settle out of the place of 
 his birth, if the means of acquiring a settlement were so limited. Many 
 men begin the world with strong hope and much confidence in their own 
 fortune, and without any intention of subsisting by charity ; but they see 
 others subsisting in greater ease, without their toil and their spirit 
 gradually sinks to the meanness of mendicity. 
 
 An affecting picture is sometimes drawn of a man falling into want in the 
 decline of life, and compelled to remove from the place where he has spent 
 the greatest part of his days. These things are certainly painful enough to 
 him who has the misfortune to witness them. But they must be taken 
 upon a large scale ; and the whole good and evil which they produce dili- 
 gently weighed and considered. The question then will be, whether any 
 thing can be more really humane, than to restrain a system which relaxes 
 the sinews of industry, and places the dependence of laborious men upon 
 any thing but themselves. We must not think only of the wretched suf- 
 ferer who is removed, and, at the sight of his misfortunes, call out for fresh 
 facilities to beg. We must remember the industry, the vigour, and the care 
 which the dread of removal has excited, and the number of persons who 
 owe their happiness and their wealth to that salutary feeling. The very 
 person who, in the decline of life, is removed from the spot where he has 
 spent so great a part of his time, would perhaps have been a pauper half a
 
 POOR-LA WS. 
 
 337 
 
 century before, if he had been afflicted with the right of asking alms in the 
 place where he lived. 
 
 It has been objected that this plan of abolishing all settlements but those 
 of birth, would send a man, the labour of whose youth had benefited some 
 other parish, to pass the useless part of his life in a place for Avhich he 
 existed only as a burthen. Supposing that this were the case, it would be 
 quite sufficient to answer, that any given parish would probably send away 
 as many useless old men as it received ; and, after all, little inequalities 
 must be borne for the general good. But, in truth, it is rather ridiculous 
 to talk of a parish not having benefited by the labour of the man who is 
 returned upon their hands in his old age. If such parish resemble most of 
 those in England, the absence of a man for thirty or forty years has been a 
 great good instead of an evil ; they have had many more labourers than 
 they could employ ; and the very man whom they are complaining of sup- 
 porting for his last few years, would, in all probability, have been a beggar 
 forty years before, if he had remained among them ; or, by pushing him out 
 of work, would have made some other man a beggar. Are the benefits 
 derived from prosperous manufactures limited to the parishes which contain 
 them ? The industry of Halifax, Huddersfield, or Leeds is felt across the 
 kingdom as far as the Eastern Sea. The prices of meat and com at the 
 markets of York and Malton are instantly affected by any increase of 
 demand and rise of wages in the manufacturing districts to the west. They 
 have benefited these distant places, and found labour for their superfluous 
 hands by the prosperity of their manufactures. Where then would be the 
 injustice if the manufacturers, in the time of stagnation and poverty, were 
 returned to their birth-settlements? But as the law now stands, population 
 tumours, of the most dangerous nature, may spring up in any parish : a 
 manufacturer, concealing his intention, may settle there, take 200 or 300 
 apprentices, fail, and half ruin the parish which has been the scene of his 
 operations. For these reasons, we strongly recommend to Mr Bourne to 
 narrow as much as possible, in all his future bills, the means of acquiring 
 settlements,* and to reduce them ultimately to parentage, birth, and mar- 
 riage convinced that by so doing, he will, in furtherance of the great object 
 of abolishing the Poor- Laws, be only limiting the right of begging, and pre- 
 venting the resident and alms-man from being (as they now commonly are) 
 one and the same person. But, before we dismiss this part of the subject, 
 we must say a few words upon the methods by which settlements are now 
 gained. 
 
 In the settlement by hiring it is held, that a man has a claim upon the 
 parish for support where he has laboured for a year ; and yet another who 
 has laboured there for twenty years by short hirings, gains no settlement at 
 all. When a man was not allowed to live where he was not settled, it was 
 wise to lay hold of any plan for extending settlements. But the whole 
 question is now completely changed ; and the only point which remains is, 
 to find out what mode of conferring settlements produces the least possible 
 mischief. We are convinced it is by throwing every possible difficulty in 
 the way of acquiring them. If a settlement hereafter should not be obtained 
 in that parish in which labourers have worked for many years, it will be 
 because it contributes materially to their happiness that they should not 
 gain a settlement there ; and this is a full answer to the apparent injustice. 
 
 Then, upon what plea of common sense should a man gain a power of 
 taxing a parish to keep him, because he has rented a tenement of ten 
 pounds a year there? or, because he has served the office of clerk, or 
 
 * This has been done.
 
 33 POOR-LA WS. 
 
 sexton, or hog-ringer, or bought an estate of thirty pounds value? How- 
 ever good these various pleas might be for conferring settlements, if it were 
 desirable to increase the facility of obtaining them, they are totally ineffica- 
 cious if it can be shown, that the means of gaining new settlements should 
 be confined to the limits of the strictest necessity. 
 
 These observations (if they have the honour of attracting his attention) 
 will show Mr Bourne our opinion of his bill, for giving the privilege of 
 fcttlement only to a certain length of residence. In the first place such a 
 bill would be the cause of endless vexation to the poor, from the certainty 
 of their being turned out of their cottages, before they pushed their legal 
 taproot into the parish ; and, secondly, it would rapidly extend all the evils 
 of the Poor-Laws, by identifying, much more than they are at present 
 identified, the resident and the settled man the very opposite of the policy 
 which ought to be pursued. 
 
 Let us suppose, then, that we have got rid of all the means of gaining a 
 settlement, or right to become a beggar, except by birth, parentage, and 
 marriage ; for the wife, of course, must fall into the settlement of the hus- 
 band, and the children, till emancipated, must be removed, if their parents 
 are removed. This point gained, the task of regulating the law expenses 
 of the Poor-Laws would be nearly accomplished : for the most fertile 
 causes of dispute would be removed. Every first settlement is an inex- 
 haustible source of litigation and expense to the miserable rustics. Upon 
 the simple fact, for example, of a farmer hiring a ploughman for a year, 
 arise the following afflicting questions: Was it an expressed contract? 
 Was it an implied contract? Was it an implied hiring of the ploughman, 
 rebutted by circumstances? Was the ploughman's contract for a year's 
 prospective service ? Was it a customary hiring of the ploughman ? Was 
 it a retrospective hiring of the ploughman? Was it a conditional hiring? 
 Was it a general hiring? Was it a special, or a special yearly hiring, or a 
 special hiring with wages reserved weekly? Did the farmer make it a 
 special conditional hiring with warning, or an exceptive hiring ? Was the 
 service of the ploughman actual or constructive ? Was there any dispen- 
 sation expressed or implied ? or was there a dissolution implied ? by new 
 agreement? or by mutual consent? or by Justices? or by any other of 
 the ten thousand means which the ingenuity of lawyers has created ? Can 
 any one be surprised, after this, to leam, that the amount of appeals for 
 removals, in the four Quarter Sessions ending Midsummer, 1817, \verefonr 
 thousand seven hundred?* Can any man doubt that it is necessary to 
 reduce the hydra to as few heads as possible ? or can any other objection 
 be stated to such reduction, than the number of attorneys and provincial 
 counsel, whom it will bring into the poor-house? Mr Nicol says, that the 
 greater number of modes of settlement do not increase litigation. He may 
 just as well say, that the number of streets in the Seven Dials does not in- 
 crease the difficulty of finding the way. The modes of settlement we have, 
 are by far the simplest, and the evidence is assisted by registers. 
 
 Under the head of Law Expenses, we are convinced a great deal may be 
 done, by making some slight alteration in the law of removals. At present, 
 removals are made without any warning to the parties to whom the pauper 
 is removed ; and the first intimation which the defendant parish receives of 
 the projected increase of their population is, by the arrival of the father, 
 mother, and eight or nine children at the overseer's door where they are 
 tumbled out, with the Justice's order about their necks, and left as a spec- 
 tacle to the assembled and indignant parishioners. No sooner have the 
 
 * Commons' Report, 1817,
 
 POOR-LA WS. 339 
 
 poor wretches become a little familiarised to their new parish, than the 
 order is appealed against, and they are recarted with the same precipitate 
 indecency Quo fata trahunt, retrahuntque. 
 
 No removal should ever take place without due notice to the parish to 
 which the pauper is to be removed, nor till the time in which it may 
 be appealed against is past by. Notice to be according to the distance 
 either by letter or personally ; and the decision should be made by 
 (lie Justices at their petty sessions, with as much care and attention as 
 if there were no appeal from their decision. An absurd notion prevails 
 among Magistrates, that they need not take much trouble in the investi- 
 gation of removals, because their errors may be corrected by a superior 
 uuurt ; whereas it is an object of great importance, by a fair and diligent 
 investigation, in the nearest and cheapest court, to convince the country 
 people which party is right and which is wrong ; and in this manner 
 to prevent them from becoming the prey of Law Vermin. We are con- 
 vinced that this subject of the removal of poor is well worthy a short and 
 separate bill. Mr Bourne thinks it would be very difficult to draw up such 
 a bill. We are quite satisfied we could draw up one in ten minutes that 
 would completely answer the end proposed, and cure the evil complained of. 
 
 We proceed to a number of small details, which are well worth the atten- 
 tion of the Legislature. Overseers' accounts should be given in quarterly, 
 and passed by the Justices, as they now are, annually. The office of Over- 
 seers should be triennial. The accounts which have nothing to do with the 
 poor, such as the Constable's account, should be kept and passed separately 
 from them ; and the vestry should have the power of ordering a certain 
 portion of the superfluous poor upon the roads. But we beseech all specu- 
 lators in Poor-Laws to remember, that the machinery they must work with 
 is of a very coarse description. An overseer must always be a limited, un- 
 educated person, but little interested in what he is about, and with much 
 business of his own on his hands. The extensive interference of gentlemen 
 with those matters is quite visionary and impossible. If gentlemen were 
 tidewaiters, the Custom-house would be better served ; if gentlemen would 
 become petty constables, the police would be improved ; if bridges were 
 made of gold, Instead of iron, they would not rust. But there are not 
 enough of these articles for such purposes. 
 
 A great part of the evils of the Poor-Laws has been occasioned by the large 
 powers intrusted to individual Justices. Every body is full of humanity and 
 good-nature when he can relieve misfortune by putting his hand in his 
 neighbour's pocket. Who can bear to see a fellow-creature suffering pain 
 and poverty, when he can order other fellow-creatures to relieve him ? Is it 
 in human nature, that A should see B in tears and misery, and not order C 
 to assist him ? Such a power must, of course, be liable to every degree of 
 abuse ; and the sooner the power of ordering relief can be taken out of the 
 hands of Magistrates, the sooner shall we begin to experience some mitigation 
 of the evils of the Poor-Laws. The Special- Vestry Bill is good for this pur- 
 pose, as far as it goes ; but it goes a very little way ; and we much doubt 
 if it will operate as any sort of abridgement to the power of Magistrates in 
 granting relief. A single Magistrate must not act under this bill, but in 
 cases of special emergency. But every case of distress is a case of special 
 emergency: and the double Magistrates, holding their petty sessions at 
 some little alehouse, and overwhelmed with all the monthly business of the 
 hundred, cannot possibly give to the pleadings of the overseer and pauper 
 half the attention they would be able to afford them at their own houses. 
 
 The common people have been so much accustomed to resort to Magis- 
 trates for relief, that it is certainly a delicate business to wean them from
 
 340 PCOR-LA Jl r S. 
 
 this bad habit ; but it is essential to the great objects which the Poor-Com- 
 mittee have in view, that the power of Magistrates of ordering relief should 
 be gradually taken away. When this is once done, half the difficulties of 
 the abolition are accomplished. We will suggest a few hints as to the means 
 by which this desirable end may be promoted. 
 
 A poor man now comes to a Magistrate any day in the week, and any 
 hour in any day, to complain of the Overseers, or of the select Committee. 
 Suppose he were to be made to wait a little, and to feel for a short time the 
 bitterness of that poverty which, by idleness, extravagance, and hasty mar- 
 riage, he has probably brought upon himself. To effect this object, we 
 would prohibit all orders for relief, by Justices, between the 1st and loth 
 day of the month ; and leave the poor entirely in the hands of the Overseers, 
 or of the Select Vestry, for that period. Here is a beginning a gradual 
 abolition of one of the first features of the Poor- Laws. And it is without risk 
 of tumult ; for no one will run the risk of breaking the laws for an evil to which 
 he anticipates so speedy a termination. This Decameron of overseers' 
 despotism, and paupers' suffering, is the very thing wanted. It will teach 
 the parishes to administer their own charity responsibly, and to depend upon 
 their own judgment. It will teach the poor the miseries of pauperism and 
 dependence ; and will be a warning to unmarried young men not hastily 
 and rashly to place themselves, their wives and children, in the same miser- 
 able situation ; and it will effect all these objects gradually, and without 
 danger. It would of course be the same thing on principle, if relief were 
 confined to three days between the 1st and the loth of each month ; three 
 between the loth and the 2Oth ; three between the 2oth and the end of the 
 month ; or in any other manner that would gradually * crumble away the 
 power, and check the gratuitous munificence, of Justices, give authority 
 over their own affairs to the heads of the parish, and teach the poor, by 
 little and little, that they must suffer if they are imprudent. It is understood 
 in all these observations, that the Overseers are bound to support their poor 
 without any order of Justices ; and that death arising from absolute want 
 should expose those officers to very severe punishments, if it could be traced 
 to their inhumanity and neglect. The time must come wheii we must do 
 without this ; but we are not got so far yet and are at present only getting 
 rid of Justices, not of Overseers. 
 
 Mr Davison seems to think that the plea of old age stands upon a 
 different footing, with respect to the Poor-Laws, from all other pleas. But 
 why should this plea be more favoured than that of sickness ? why more 
 than losses in trade, incurred by no imprudence ? In reality, this plea is 
 less entitled to indulgence. Every man knows he is exposed to the help- 
 lessness of age ; but sickness and sudden ruin are very often escaped com- 
 paratively seldom happen. Why is a man exclusively to be protected 
 against that evil which he must have foreseen longer than any other, and 
 has had the longest time to guard against ? Mr Davison 's objections to a 
 limited expenditure are much more satisfactory. These we shall lay before 
 our readers ; and we recommend them to the attention of the Committee. 
 
 " I shall advert next to the plan of a limitation upon the amount of rates 
 to be assessed in future. This limitation, as it is a pledge of some protec- 
 tion to the property now subjected to the maintenance of the poor against 
 the indefinite encroachment which otherwise threatens it, is, in that light, 
 certainly a benefit ; and supposing it were rigorously adhered to, the very 
 knowledge, among the parish expectants, that there was some limit to their 
 
 All gradation and caution have been banished since the Reform Pill rapid high- 
 fcessure wisdom is the only agent in public affairs.
 
 POOR.LA l\'S. 341 
 
 range of expectation, some barrier which they could not pass, might incline 
 them to turn their thoughts homeward again to the care of themselves. 
 But it is an expedient, at the best, far from being satisfactory. In the first 
 place, there is much reason to fear that such a limitation would not eventu- 
 ally be maintained, after the example of a similar one having failed before, 
 and considering that the urgency of the applicants, as long as they retain 
 the principle of dependence upon the parish unqualified in any one of its 
 main articles, would probably overbear a mere barrier of figures in the parish 
 account. Then there would be much real difficulty in the proceedings, to 
 be governed by such a limiting rule. For the use of the limitation would 
 be chiefly, or solely, in cases where there is some struggle between the 
 ordinary supplies of the parish rates and the exigencies of the poor, or a 
 kind of run and pressure upon the parish by a mass of indigence : and in 
 circumstances of this kind it would be hard to know how to distribute the 
 supplies under a fair proportion to the applicants, known or expected ; hard 
 to know how much might be granted for the present, and how much should 
 be kept in reserve for die remainder of the year's service. The real intricacy 
 in such a distribution of account would show itself in disproportions and 
 inequalities of allowance, impossible to be avoided ; and the applicants 
 would have one pretext more for discontent. 
 
 " The limitation itself in many places would be only in words and 
 figures. It would be set, I presume, by an average of certain preceding 
 years. But the average taken upon the preceding years might be a sum 
 exceeding in its real value the highest amount of the assessments of any of 
 the averaged years, under the great change which has taken place in the 
 value of money itself. A given rate, or assessment nominally the same, or 
 lower, might in this way be a greater real money value than it was some 
 time before. In many of the most distressed districts, where the parochial 
 rates have nearly equalled the rents, a nominal average would therefore be 
 no effectual benefit ; and yet it is in those districts that the alleviation of 
 the burthen is the most wanted. 
 
 " It is manifest, also, that a peremptory restriction of the whole amount 
 of money applicable to the parochial service, though abundantly justified in 
 many districts by their particular condition being so impoverished as to 
 make the measure, for them, almost a measure of necessity, if nothing can 
 be substituted for it ; and where the same extreme necessity does not exist, 
 still justified by the prudence of preventing in some way the interminable 
 increase of the parochial burthens ; still, that such a restriction is an ill- 
 adjusted measure in itself, and would in many instances operate very 
 inequitably. It would fall unfairly in some parishes, where the relative 
 state of the poor and the parish might render an increase of the relief as 
 just and reasonable as it is possible for any thing to be under the Poor- 
 Laws at all. It would deny to many possible fair claimants the whole, or 
 a part, of that degree of relief commonly granted elsewhere to persons in 
 their condition, on this or that account of claim. Leaving the reason of the 
 present demands wholly unimpeached, and unexplained ; directing no dis- 
 tinct warning or remonstrance to the parties, in the line of their affairs, by 
 putting a check to their expectations upon positive matters implicated in 
 their conduct ; which would be speaking, to them in a definite sense, and a 
 sense applicable to all : this plan of limitation would nurture the whole 
 mass of the claim in its origin, and deny the allowance of it to thousands, 
 on account of reasons properly affecting a distant quarter, of which they 
 know nothing. The want of a clear method, and of a good principle at the 
 bottom of it, in this direct compulsory restriction, renders it, I think, wholly 
 unacceptable, unless it be the only possible plan that can be devised for
 
 342 POOR-LA /r.V. 
 
 accomplishing the same end. If a parish had to keep its account with a 
 single dependant, the plan would be much more useful in that case. For 
 the ascertained fact of the total amount of his expectations might set his 
 jnind at rest, and put him on a decided course of providing for himself. 
 But, in the limitation proposed to be made, the ascertained fact is of a 
 general amount only, not of each man's share in it. Consequently, each 
 man has his indefinite expectations left to him, and every separate specific 
 ground of expectation remaining as before." 
 
 Mr Davison talks of the propriety of refusing to find labour for able 
 labourers after the lapse often years ; as if it was some ordinary bill he was 
 proposing, unaccompanied by the slightest risk. It is very easy to make 
 such laws, and to propose them ; but it would be of immense difficulty to 
 carry them into execution. Done it must be, every body knows that ; but 
 the real merit will consist in discovering the gradual and gentle means by 
 which the difficulties of getting parish labour may be increased, and the life 
 of a parish pauper be rendered a life of salutary and deterring hardship. A 
 law that rendered such request for labour perfectly lawful for ten years 
 longer, and _then suddenly abolished it, would merely bespeak a certain, 
 general, and violent insurrection for the year 1830. The legislator, thank 
 God, is in his nature a more cunning and gradual animal. 
 
 Before we drop Mr Davison, who writes like a very sensible man, we 
 wish to say a few words about his style. If he would think less about it, 
 he would write much better. It is always as plethoric and full-dressed as 
 if he were writing a treatise de finilnis Iwnorttm et malorum. He is some- 
 times obscure ; and is occasionally apt to dress up common-sized thoughts 
 in big clothes, and to dwell a little too long in proving what every man of 
 sense knows and admits. We hope we shall not offend Mr Davison by 
 these remarks ; and we have really no intention of doing so. His views 
 upon the Poor-Laws are, generally speaking, very correct and philosophical ; 
 he writes like a gentleman, a scholar, and a man capable of eloquence ; and 
 we hope he will be a bishop. If his mitred productions are as enlightened 
 and liberal as this, we are sure he will confer as much honour on the Bench 
 as he receives from it. There is a good deal, however, in Mr Davison's 
 book about the "virtuous marriages of the poor." To have really the 
 charge of a family as a husband and a father, we are told, to have the 
 privilege of laying out his life in their service, is the poor man's boast, 
 "his home is the school of his sentiments," &c. &c. This is viewing 
 human life through a Claude Lorraine glass, and decorating it with colours 
 which do not belong to it. A ploughman marries a ploughwoman because 
 she is plump ; generally uses her ill ; thinks his children an incumbrance ; 
 very often flogs them ; and, for sentiment, has nothing more nearly 
 approaching to it than the ideas of broiled bacon and mashed potatoes. 
 This is the state of the lower orders of mankind deplorable, but true and 
 yet rendered much worse by the Poor-Laws. 
 
 The system of roundsmen is much complained of; as well as that by 
 which the labour of paupers is paid, partly by the rate, partly by the master 
 and a long string of Sussex Justices send up a petition on the subject. 
 But the evil we are suffering under is an excess of population. There are 
 ten men applying for work, when five only are wanted ; of course, such a 
 redundance of labouring persons must depress the rate of their labour far 
 beyond what is sufficient for the support of their families. And how is that 
 deficiency to be made up but from the parish rates, unless it is meant 
 suddenly and immediately to abolish the whole system of the Poor-Laws ? 
 To state that the rate of labour is lower than a man can live by, is merely
 
 POOR-LAWS, 343 
 
 to state that we have had, and have, Poor-Laws of which this practice is 
 at length the inevitable consequence ; and nothing could be more absurd 
 than to attempt to prevent, by Acts of Parliament, the natural depreciation 
 of an article which exists in much greater abundance than it is wanted. 
 Nor can any thing be more unjust than the complaint, that roundsmen are 
 paid by their employers at an inferior rate, and that the difference is made 
 up by the parish funds. A roundsman is commonly an inferior description 
 of labourer who cannot get regularly hired ; he comes upon his parish for 
 labour commonly at those seasons when there is the least to do ; he is not 
 a servant of the farmer's choice, and probably does not suit him ; he goes 
 off to any other labour at a moment's warning, when lie finds it more profit- 
 able ; and the farmer is forced to keep nearly the same number of 
 labourers as if there were no roundsmen at all. Is it just, then, that a 
 labourer, combining every species of imperfection, should receive the same 
 wages as a chosen, regular, stationary person, who is always ready at hand, 
 and whom the farmer lias selected for his dexterity and character? 
 
 Those persons who do not, and cannot employ labourers, have no kind 
 of right to complain of the third or fourth part of the wages being paid by 
 the rates ; for if the farmers did not agree among themselves to take such 
 occasional labourers, the whole of their support must be paid by the rates, 
 instead of one third. The order is, that the pauper shall be paid such a 
 sum as will support himself and family ; and if this agreement to taku 
 roundsmen was not entered into by the farmers, they must be paid, by the 
 rates, the whole of the amount of the order, for doing nothing. If a 
 circulating labourer, therefore, with three children, to whom the Justices- 
 would order I2s. per week, receives 8s. from his employer, and 4*. from the 
 rates, the parish is not burdened by this system to the amount of 4*., but 
 relieved to the amount of 8s. A parish manufacture, conducted by over- 
 seers, is infinitely more burthensome to the rates than any system of rounds- 
 men. There are undoubtedly a few instances to the contrary. Zeal and 
 talents will cure the original defects of any system ; but to suppose that 
 average men can do what extraordinary men have done, is the cause of 
 many silly projects and extravagant blunders. Mr Owen may give his 
 whole heart and soul to the improvement of one of his parochial parallelo- 
 grams ; but who is to succeed to Mr Owen's enthusiasm ? Before we have 
 quite done with the subject of roundsmen, we cannot help noticing a strange 
 assertion of Mr Nicol, that the low rate of wages paid by the master is an 
 injustice to the pauper that he is cheated, forsooth, out of 8s. or ioj. pei 
 week by this arrangement. Nothing, however, can possibly be more absurd 
 than such an allegation. The whole country is open to him. Can he gain 
 more any where else ? If not, this is the market price of his labour ; and 
 what right has he to complain ? or how can he say he is defrauded ? A 
 combination among farmers to lower the price of labour would be im- 
 possible, if labour did not exist in much greater quantities than was 
 wanted. All such things, whether labour, or worsted stockings, or broad 
 cloth, are, of course, always regulated by the proportion between the 
 supply and demand. Mr Nicol cites an instance of a parish in Suffolk, 
 where the labourer receives sixpence from the farmers, and the rest is made 
 up by the rates j and for this he reprobates the conduct of the farmers. 
 But why are they not to take labour as cheap as they can get it ? Why are 
 they not to avail themselves of the market price of this, as of any other 
 commodity? The rates are a separate consideration : let them supply 
 what is wanting ; but the fanner is right to get his iron, his wood, and his 
 labour, as cheap as he can. It would, we admit, come nearly to the same 
 thing, if .100 were paid in wages rather than .25 in wages, and ^75 by
 
 344 IRELAND. 
 
 rate ; but then, if the farmers were to agree to give Avages above the 
 market price, and sufficient for the support of the labourers without any 
 rate, such an agreement could never be adhered to. The base and the 
 crafty would make their labourers take less, and fling heavier rales upon 
 those who adhered to the contract ; whereas the agreement, founded upon 
 giving as little as can be given, is pretty sure of being adhered to ; and he 
 who breaks it, lessens the rate to his neighbour, and does not increase it. 
 The problem to be solved is this : If you have ten or twenty labourers who 
 say they can get no work, and you cannot dispute this, and the Poor-Laws 
 remain, what better scheme can be devised, than that the farmers of the 
 parish should employ them in their turns ? and what more absurd than to 
 suppose that farmers so employing them should give one farthing more than 
 the maiket price for their labour? 
 
 It is contended, that the statute of Elizabeth, rightly interpreted, only 
 compels the overseer to assist the sick and old, and not to find labour for 
 strong and healthy men. This is true enough ; and it would have been 
 eminently useful to have attended to it a century past : but to find employ- 
 ment for all who apply, is now, by long use, become a practical part of the 
 Poor- Laws, and will require the same care and dexterity for its abolition as 
 any other part of that pernicious system. It would not be altogether pru- 
 dent suddenly to tell a million of stout men, with spades and hoes in their 
 hands, that the 43d of Elizabeth had been misconstrued, and that no more 
 employment would be found for them. It requires twenty or thirty years 
 to state such truths to such numbers. 
 
 We think, then, that the diminution of the claims of settlement, and of 
 the authority of Justices, coupled with the other subordinate improvements 
 we have stated, will be the best steps for beginning the abolition of the 
 Poor-Laws. When these have been taken, the description of persons 
 entitled to relief may be narrowed by degrees. But let no man hope to get 
 rid of these laws, even in the gentlest and wisest method, without a great 
 deal of misery, and some risk of tumult. If Mr Bourne thinks only of 
 avoiding risk, he will do nothing. Some risk must be incurred : but the 
 secret is gradation ; and the true reason for abolishing these laws "is, not 
 that they make the rich poor, but that they make the poor poorer.* 
 
 IRELAND. (E. REVIEW, 1820.) 
 
 1. Whiielaw's History of the City of Dublin. 410. Cadell and Davies. 
 
 2. Observations on the State of Ireland, principally directed to its Agriculture and 
 
 Rural Population: in a Series of Letters written on a 'J'our through that Country. 
 In 2 vols. By J. C. CURWEN, Esq., M.P. London : 1818. 
 
 3. Gambles Views of Society in Ireland. 
 
 THESE are all the late publications that treat of Irish interests in general 
 and none of them are of first-rate importance. Mr Gamble's Travels in 
 Ireland are of a very ordinary description low scenes and low humour 
 making up the principal part of the narrative. There are readers, however, 
 whom it will amuse ; and the reading market becomes more and more 
 extensive, and embraces a greater variety of persons every day. Mr White- 
 law's History of Dublin is a book of great accuracy and research, highly 
 creditable to the industry, good sense, and benevolence of its author. Of 
 
 ^J'he boldness of modern legislation has thrown all my caution into the background. 
 "Wife It wise to encounter such a risk? Is the danger over? Can the vital parts of the 
 Bill be maintained?
 
 IRELAND. 345 
 
 the Travels of Mr Christian Cunven, we hardly know what to say. He is 
 bold and honest in his politics a great enemy to abuses vapid in his 
 levity and pleasantry, and infinitely too much inclined to declaim upon 
 common-place topics of morality and benevolence. But, with these draw- 
 backs, the book is not ill written ; and may be advantageously read by 
 those who are desirous of information upon the present State of Ireland. 
 
 So great, and so long has been the misgovernment of that country, that 
 we verily believe the empire would be much stronger, if every thing was 
 open sea between England and the Atlantic, and if skates and cod-fish swam 
 over the fair land of Ulster. Such jobbing, such profligacy so much direct 
 tyranny and oppression such an abuse of God's gifts such a profanation 
 of God's name for the purposes of bigotry and party spirit, cannot be ex- 
 ceeded in the history of civilised Europe, and will long remain a monument 
 of infamy and shame to England. But it will be more useful to suppress 
 the indignation which the very name of Ireland inspires, and to consider 
 impartially those causes which have marred this fair portion of the creation, 
 and kept it wild and savage in the midst of improving Europe. 
 
 The great misfortune of Ireland is, that the mass of the people have been 
 given up for a century to a handful of Protestants, by whom they have been 
 treated as Helots, and subjected to every species of persecution and disgrace. 
 The sufferings of the Catholics have been so loudly chanted in the veiy 
 streets, that it is almost needless to remind our readers that, during the 
 reigns of Geo. I. and Geo. II., the Irish Roman Catholics were disabled from 
 holding any civil or military office, from voting at elections, from admission 
 into corporations, from practising law or physic. A younger brother, by 
 turning Protestant, might deprive his elder brother of his birth-right : by the 
 same process, he might force his father, under the name of a liberal pro- 
 vision, to yield up to him a part of his landed property ; and, if an eldest 
 son, he might, in the same way, reduce his father's fee-simple to a life- 
 estate. A Papist was disabled from purchasing freehold lands and even 
 from holding long leases and any person might take his Catholic neigh- 
 bour's house by paying $ for it. If the child of a Catholic father turned 
 Protestant, he was taken away from his father and put into the hands of a 
 Protestant relation. No Papist could purchase a freehold, or lease for 
 more than thirty years or inherit from an intestate Protestant nor from 
 an intestate Catholic nor dwell in Limerick or Galway nor hold an ad- 
 vowson, nor buy an annuity for life. $o was given for discovering a popish 
 Archbishop ^30 for a popish Clergyman and los. for a Schoolmaster. 
 No one was allowed to be trustee for Catholics ; no Catholic was allowed 
 to take more than two apprentices ; no Papist to be solicitor, sheriff, or to 
 serve on Grand Juries. Horses of Papists might be seized for the militia ; 
 for which militia Papists were to pay double, and to find Protestant sub- 
 stitutes. Papists were prohibited from being present at vestries, or from 
 being high or petty constables ; and, when resident hi towns, they were 
 compelled to find Protestant watchmen. Barristers and solicitors, marrying 
 Catholics, were exposed to the penalties of Catholics. Persons plundered 
 by privateers during a war with any Popish prince, were reimbursed by a 
 levy on the Catholic inhabitants where they lived. All popish priests cele- 
 brating marriages contrary to 12 Geo. I. cap. 3, were to be hanged I 
 
 The greater part of these incapacities are removed, though many of a 
 very serious and oppressive nature still remain. But the grand misfortune 
 is, that the spirit which these oppressive Laws engendered remains. The 
 Protestant still looks upon the Catholic as a degraded being. The Catholic 
 does not yet consider himself upon an equality with his former tyrant and 
 taskmaster. That religious hatred which required all the prohibiting vigilance
 
 ^ 4 6 IRELAND. 
 
 \j\ 
 
 of the law for its restraint, has found in the law its strongest support ; and 
 the spirit which the law first exasperated and embittered, continues to act 
 long after the original stimulus is withdrawn. The law which prevented 
 Catholics from serving on Grand Juries is repealed ; but Catholics are not 
 called upon Grand Juries in the proportion in which they are entitled, by 
 their rank and fortune. The Duke of Bedford did all he could to give them 
 the benefit of those laws which are already passed in their favour. But 
 power is seldom intrusted in this countiy to one of the Duke of Bedford's 
 liberality ; and every thing has fallen back in the hands of his successors 
 into the ancient division of the privileged and degraded castes. We do not 
 rnean to cast any reflection upon the present Secretary for Ireland, whom 
 we believe to be upon this subject a very liberal politician, and on all sub 
 jects an honourable and excellent man. The Government under which he 
 serves allows him to indulge in a little harmless liberality ; but it is per- 
 fectly understood that nothing is intended to be done for the Catholics ; 
 that no loaves and fishes will be lost by indulgence in Protestant insolence 
 and tyranny ; and, therefore, among the generality of Irish Protestants, 
 insolence, tyranny, and exclusion continue to operate. However eligible 
 the Catholic may be, he is not elected ; whatever barriers may be thrown 
 down, he does not advance a step. He was first kept out by law ; he is 
 now kept out by opinion and habit. They have been so long in chains, 
 that nobody believes they are capable of using their hands and feet. 
 
 It is not however the only or the worst misfortune of the Catholics, that 
 the relaxations of the law are hitherto of little benefit to them ; the law is 
 not yet sufficiently relaxed. A Catholic, as every body knows, cannot be 
 made sheriff; cannot be in parliament; cannot be a director of the Irish 
 Bank ; cannot fill the great departments of the law, the army, and the 
 navy ; is cut ofi" from all the high objects of human ambition, and treated 
 as a marked and degraded person. 
 
 The common admission now is, that the Catholics are to the Protestants 
 in Ireland as about 4 to I of which Protestants, not more than one half 
 belong to the Church of Ireland. This, then, is one of the most striking 
 features in the state of Ireland. That the great mass of the population is 
 completely subjugated and overawed by a handful of comparatively recent 
 settlers, in whom all the power and patronage of the country is vested, 
 who have been reluctantly compelled to desist from still greater abuses of 
 authority, and who look with trembling apprehension to the increasing 
 liberality of the Parliament and the country towards these unfortunate per- 
 sons whom they have always looked upon as their property and their prey. 
 
 Whatever evils may result from these proportions between the oppressor 
 and oppressed to whatever dangers a country so situated may be con- 
 sidered to be exposed these evils and dangers are rapidly increasing in 
 Ireland. The proportion of Catholics to Protestants is infinitely greater 
 now than it was thirty years ago, and is becoming more and more favour- 
 able to the former. By a return made to the Irish House of Lords in 
 1732, the proportion of Catholics to Protestants was not 2 to I. It is now 
 (as we have already observed) 4 to I ; and the causes which have thus 
 altered the proportions in favour of the Catholics are sufficiently obvious to 
 any one acquainted with the state of Ireland. The Roman Catholic priest 
 resides ; his income entirely depends upon the number of his flock ; and he 
 must exert himself or he starves. There is some chance of success, there- 
 fore, in his efforts to convert ; but the Protestant clergyman, if he were 
 equally eager, has little or no probability of persuading so much larger a 
 proportion of the population to come over to his church. The Catholic 
 clergyman belongs to a religion that has always been more desirous of
 
 IRELAND. 347 
 
 gaining proselytes than the Protestant church ; and lie is animated by a 
 sense of injury and a desire of revenge. Another reason for the dispropor- 
 tionate increase of Catholics is, that the Catholics will marry upon means 
 which the Protestant considers as insufficient for marriage. A few potatoes 
 and a shed of turf are all that Luther has left for the Romanist ; and, when 
 the latter gets these, he instantly begins upon the great Irish manufacture 
 of children. But a Protestant belongs to the sect that eats the fine flour, 
 and leaves the bran to others ; he must have comforts, and he does not 
 marry till he gets them. He would be ashamed if he were seen living as a 
 Catholic lives. This is the principal reason why the Protestants who 
 remain attached to their church do not increase so fast as the Catholics. 
 But in common minds, daily scenes, the example of the majority, the power 
 of imitation, decide their habits, religious as well as civil. A Protestant 
 labourer who works among Catholics, soon learns to think and act and talk 
 as they do he is not proof against the eternal panegyric which he hears of 
 Father O'Leary. His Protestantism is rubbed away ; and he goes at last, 
 after some little resistance, to the chapel, where he sees every body else 
 going. 
 
 These eight Catholics not only hate the ninth man, the Protestant of the 
 Establishment, for the unjust privileges he enjoys not only remember that 
 the lands of their father were given to his father but they find themselves 
 forced to pay for the support of his religion. In the wretched state of 
 poverty in which the lower orders of Irish are plunged, it is not without 
 considerable effort that they can pay the few shillings necessary for the 
 support of their Catholic priest ; and when this is effected, a tenth of the 
 potatoes in the garden are to be set out for the support of a persuasion, the 
 introduction of which into Ireland they consider as the great cause of their 
 political inferiority, and all their manifold wretchedness. In England, a 
 labourer can procure constant employment or he can, at the worst, obtain 
 relief from his parish. Whether tithe operates as a tax upon him, is known 
 only to the political economist : if he docs pay it, he does not know that he 
 pays it ; and the burthen of supporting the Clergy is at least kept out of 
 his view. But, in Ireland, the only method in which a poor man lives, is 
 by taking a small portion of land, in which he can grow potatoes : seven 
 or eight months out of twelve, in many parts of Ireland, there is no con- 
 stant employment of the poor : and the potato farm is all that shelters 
 them from absolute famine. If the Pope were to come in person, and 
 seize upon every tenth potato, the poor peasant would scarcely endure it. 
 With what patience, then, can he see it tossed into the cart of the heretic 
 Rector, who has a church without a congregation, and a revenue without 
 duties? 
 
 We do not say whether these things are right or wrong whether they 
 want a remedy at all or what remedy they want ; but we paint them in 
 those colours in which they appear to the eye of poverty and ignorance, 
 without saying whether those colours are false or true. Nor is the case at 
 nil comparable to that of Dissenters paying tithe in England ; which case 
 is precisely the reverse of what happens in Ireland, for it is the contribution 
 of a very small minority to the religion of a very large majority ; and the 
 numbers on either side make all the difference in the argument. To exas- 
 perate the poor Catholic still more, the rich graziers of the parish or the 
 squire in his parish pay no tithe at all for their grass land. Agistment 
 tithe is abolished in Ireland ; and the burthen of supporting two Churches 
 seems to devolve upon the poorer Catholics, struggling with plough and 
 spade in small scraps of dearly rented land. Tithes seem to be collected 
 iu a more harsh manner than they are collected in England. The minute
 
 34 8 IRELAND. 
 
 subdivisions of land in Ireland the little connection which the Protestant 
 clergyman commonly has with the Catholic population of his parish, have 
 made the introduction of tithe proctors very general sometimes as the 
 agent of the clergyman sometimes as the lessee or middle-man between 
 the clergyman and the cultivator of the land ; but, in either case, practised, 
 dexterous estimators of tithe. The English clergymen, in general, are far 
 from exacting the whole of what is due to them, but sacrifice a little to the 
 love of popularity or to the dread of odium. A system of tithe-proctors 
 established all over England (as it is in Ireland), would produce general 
 disgust and alienation from the Established Church. 
 
 " During the administration of Lord Halifax," says Mr Hardy, in quoting 
 the opinion of Lord Charlemont upon tithes paid by Catholics, " Ireland 
 was dangerously disturbed in its southern and northern regions. In the 
 south principally, in the counties of Kilkenny, Limerick, Cork, and Tippe- 
 rary, the White Boys now made their first appearance ; those White Boys, 
 who have ever since occasionally disturbed the public tranquillity, without 
 any rational method having been as yet pursued to eradicate this disgraceful 
 evil. When we consider, that the very same district has been for the long 
 space of seven and twenty years liable to frequent returns of the same disorder 
 into which it has continually relapsed, in spite of all the violent remedies from 
 time to time administered by our political quacks, we cannot doubt but that 
 some real, peculiar, and topical cause must exist ; and yet, neither the re- 
 moval, nor even the investigation of this cause, has ever once been seriously 
 attempted. Laws of the most sanguinary and unconstitutional nature have 
 been enacted ; the country has been disgraced, and exasperated by frequent 
 and bloody executions ; and the gibbet, that perpetual resource of weak and 
 cruel legislators, has groaned under the multitude of starving criminals : 
 yet, while the cause is suffered to exist, the effects will ever follow. The 
 amputation of limbs will never eradicate a prurient humour, which must be 
 sought in its source, and there remedied." 
 
 " I wish," continues Mr Wakefield, "for the sake of humanity, and for 
 the honour of the Irish character, that the gentlemen of that country would 
 take this matter into their serious consideration. Let them only for a mo- 
 ment place themselves in the situation of the half-famished cotter, sur- 
 rounded by a wretched family, clamorous for food ; and judge what his 
 feelings must be, when he sees the tenth part of the produce of his potato 
 garden exposed at harvest time to public cant ; or, if he have given a pro- 
 missory note for the payment of a certain sum of money, to compensate for 
 such tithe when it becomes due, to hear the heart-rending cries of his off- 
 spring clinging round him, and lamenting for the milk of which they are 
 deprived, by te cows being driven to the pound, to be sold to discharge 
 the debt. Such accounts are not the creations of fancy ; the facts do exist, 
 and are but too common in Ireland. Were one of them transferred to can- 
 vas by the hand of genius, and exhibited to English humanity, that heart 
 must be callous indeed that could refuse its sympathy. I have seen the 
 cow, the favourite cow, driven away, accompanied by the sighs, the tears, 
 and the imprecations of a whole family, who were paddling after, through 
 wet and dirt, to take their last affectionate farewell of this their only friend 
 and benefactor, at the pound gate. I have heard with emotions which I 
 can scarcely describe, deep curses repeated from village to village as the 
 cavalcade proceeded. I have witnessed the group pass the domain walls of 
 the opulent grazier, whose numerous herds were cropping the most luxuriant 
 pastures, while he was secure from any demand for the tithe of their food, 
 looking on witk the most unfeeling indifference." Wakefield, p. 486,
 
 IRELAND. 349 
 
 In Munster, where tithe of potatoes is exacted, risings against the system 
 have constantly occurred during the last forty years. In Ulster, where no 
 such tithe is required, these insurrections are unknown. The double church 
 which Ireland supports, and that painful visible contribution towards it 
 which the poor Irishman is compelled to make from his miserable pittance, 
 is one great cause of those never-ending insurrections, burnings, murders, 
 and robberies, which have laid waste that ill-fated country for so many 
 years. The unfortunate consequence of the civil disabilities, and the church 
 payments under which the Catholics labour, is a rooted antipathy to this 
 country. They hate the English Government from historical recollection, 
 actual suffering, and disappointed hope ; and till they are better treated, 
 they will continue to hate it. At this moment, in a period of the most pro- 
 found peace, there are twenty-five thousand of the best disciplined and best 
 appointed troops in the world in Ireland, with bayonets fixed, presented 
 arms, and in the attitude of present war : nor is there a man too much 
 nor would Ireland be tenable without them. When it was necessary last 
 year (or thought necessary) to put down the children of reform, we were 
 forced to make a new levy of troops in this country not a man could be 
 spared from Ireland. The moment they had embarked, Peep-of-day Boys, 
 Heart-of-Oak Boys, Twelve-o'clock Boys, Heart-of-Flint Boys, and all the 
 bloody boyhood of the Bog of Allen, would have proceeded to the ancient 
 work of riot, rapine, and disaffection. Ireland, in short, till her wrongs are 
 redressed, and a more liberal policy is adopted towards her, will always be 
 a cause of anxiety and suspicion to this country ; and, in some moment of 
 our weakness and depression, will forcibly extort what she would now re- 
 ceive with gratitude and exultation. 
 
 Ireland is situated close to another island of greater size, speaking the 
 same language, very superior in civilisation, and the seat of government. 
 The consequence of this is the emigration of the richest and most powerful 
 part of the community a vast drain of wealth and the absence of all that 
 wholesome influence which the representatives of ancient families residing 
 upon their estates, produce upon their tenantry and dependants. Can any 
 man imagine that the scenes which have been acted in Ireland within these 
 Li^t twenty years, would have taken place, if such vast proprietors as the 
 Duke of Devonshire, the Marquis of Hertford, the Marquis of Lansdowne, 
 Earl Fitzwilliam, and many other men of equal wealth, had been in the 
 constant habit of residing upon their Irish, as they are upon their English, 
 estates ? Is it of no consequence to the order, and the civilisation of a large 
 district, whether the great mansion is inhabited by an insignificant, perhaps a 
 mischievous, attorney, in the shape of agent, or whether the first and greatest 
 men of the United Kingdoms, after the business of Parliament is over, come 
 with their friends and families, to exercise hospitality, to spend large 
 revenues, to diffuse information, and to improve manners ? This evil is a 
 very serious one to Ireland ; and, as far as we see, incurable. For if the 
 present large estates were, by the dilapidation of families, to be broken to 
 pieces and sold, others equally great would, in the free circulation of pro- 
 perty, speedily accumulate; and the moment any possessor arrived at a 
 certain pitch of fortune, he would probably choose to reside in the better 
 country, near the Parliament, or the Court. 
 
 This absence of great proprietors in Ireland necessarily brings with it, 
 or if not necessarily, has actually brought with it, the employment of the 
 middlemen, which forms one other standing and regular Irish grievance. 
 We are well aware of all that can be said in defence of middlemen ; that 
 they stand between the little farmer and the great proprietor, as the shop- 
 keeper does between the manufacturer and consumer ; and, in fact, by their
 
 350 IRELAND. 
 
 intervention, save time, and therefore expense. This may be true enough 
 in the abstract ; but the particular nature of land must be attended to. The 
 object of the man who makes cloth is to sell his cloth at the present market, 
 for as high a price as he can obtain. If that price is too high, it soon falls ; 
 but no injury is done to his machinery by the superior price he has enjoyed 
 for a season he is just as able to produce cloth with it, as if the profits he 
 enjoyed had always been equally moderate ; he has no fear, therefore, of 
 the middleman, or of any species of moral machinery which may help to 
 obtain for him the greatest present prices. The same would be the feeling 
 of any one who let out a steam-engine, or any other machine, for the pur- 
 poses of manufacture ; he would naturally take the highest price he could 
 get ; for he might either let his machine for a price proportionate to the 
 work it did, or the repairs, estimable with the greatest precision, might be 
 thrown upon the tenant ; in short, he could hardly ask any rent too high 
 for his machine which a responsible person would give ; dilapidation would 
 be so visible, and so calculable in such instances, that any secondary lease, 
 or subletting, would be rather an increase of security than a source of alarm. 
 Any evil from such a practice would be improbable, measurable, and 
 remediable. In land, on the contrary, the object is not to get the highest 
 prices absolutely, but to get the highest prices which will not injure the 
 machine. One tenant may offer, and pay double the rent of another, and 
 in a few years leave the land in a state which will effectually bar all future 
 offers of tenancy. It is of no use to fill a lease full of clauses and covenants ; 
 a tenant who pays more than he ought to pay, or who pays even to the last 
 farthing which he ought to pay, will rob the land, and injure the machine, 
 in spite of all the attorneys in England. He will rob it even if he means 
 to remain upon it driven on by present distress, and anxious to put off the 
 day of defalcation and arrear. The damage is often difficult of detection 
 not easily calculated, not easily to be proved ; such for which juries (them- 
 selves perhaps fanners) will not willingly give sufficient compensation. And 
 if this be true in England, it is much more strikingly true in Ireland, 
 where it is extremely difficult to obtain verdicts for breaches of covenant in 
 leases. 
 
 The only method then of guarding the machine from real injury is, by 
 giving to the actual occupier such advantage in his contract, that he is 
 unwilling to give it up that he has a real interest in retaining it, and is 
 not driven by the distresses of the present moment to destroy the future 
 productiveness of the soil. Any rent which the landlord accepts more than 
 this, or any system by which more rent than this is obtained, is to borrow 
 money upon the most usurious and profligate interest to increase the 
 revenue of the present day by the absolute ruin of the property. Such is 
 the effect produced by a middleman ; he gives high prices that he may 
 obtain higher from the occupier ; more is paid by the actual occupier than 
 is consistent with the safety and preservation of the machine ; the land is 
 nm out, and, in the end, that maximum of rent we have described is not 
 obtained ; and not only is the property injured by such a system, but in 
 Ireland the most shocking consequences ensue from it. There is little 
 manufacture in Ireland ; the price of labour is low, the demand for labour 
 irregular. If a poor man be driven, by distress of rent, from his potato 
 garden, he has no other resource all is lost : he will do the impossible (as 
 the French say) to retain it ; subscribe any bond, and promise any rent. 
 The middleman has no character to lose ; and he knew, when he took up 
 the occupation, that it was one with which pity had nothing to do. On he 
 drives ; and backward the poor peasant recedes, loses something at every 
 step, till he comes to the very brink of despair ; and then he recoils and
 
 IRELAND. 351 
 
 murders his oppressor, and is a VVhite Boy or a Right Boy: the soldier 
 shoots him, and the judge hangs him. 
 
 In the debate which took place in the Irish House of Commons, upon 
 the bill for preventing tumultuous risings and assemblies, on the 3 1st of 
 January, 1787, the Attorney-General submitted to the House the following 
 narrative of facts. 
 
 "The commencement," said he, "was in one or two parishes in the 
 county of Kerry ; and they proceeded thus. The people assembled in a 
 Catholic chapel, and there took an oath to obey the laws of Captain Right, 
 and to starve the clergy. They then proceeded to the next parishes, on the 
 following Sunday, and there swore the people in the same manner ; with 
 this addition, that they (the people last sworn) should on the ensuing Sun- 
 day proceed to the chapels of their next neighbouring parishes, and swear 
 the inhabitants of those parishes in like manner. Proceeding in this man- 
 ner, they very soon went through the province of Minister. The first object 
 was, the reformation of tithes. They swore not to give more than a certain 
 price per acre ; not to assist, or allow them to be assisted, in drawing the 
 tithe, and to permit no proctor. They next took upon them to prevent the 
 collection of parish cesses ; next to nominate parish clerks, and in some 
 cases curates : to say what church should or should not be repaired ; and 
 in one case to threaten that they would burn a ne^c church, if the old one 
 were not given for a mass-house. At last, they proceeded to regulate the 
 price of lands ; to raise the price of labour ; and to oppose the collection 
 of the hearth-money, and other taxes. Bodies of 5000 of them have been 
 seen to march through the country unarmed, and if met by any magistrate, 
 they never offered the smallest rudeness or offence; on the contrary, they had 
 allowed persons charged with crimes to be taken from amongst them by the 
 magistrate alone, unaided by any force. 
 
 "The Attorney-General said he was well acquainted with the province 
 of Munster, and that it was impossible for human wretchedness to exceed 
 that of the peasantry of that province. The unhappy tenantry were ground 
 to powder by relentless landlords ; that, far from being able to give the 
 clergy their just dues, they had not food or raiment for themselves the 
 landlord grasped the whole ; and sorry was he to add, that, not satisfied 
 with the present extortion, some landlords had been so base as to instigate 
 the insurgents to rob the clergy of their tithes, not in order to alleviate the 
 distresses of the tenantry, but that they might add the clergy's share to the 
 cruel rack-rents they already paid. The poor people of Munster lived in a 
 more abject state of poverty than human nature could be supposed equal to 
 bear" Grattan's Speeches, vol. i. 292. 
 
 We are not, of course, in such a discussion to be governed by names. A 
 middleman might be tied up, by the strongest legal restriction, as to the 
 price he was to exact from the under-tenants, and then he would be no more 
 pernicious to the estate than a steward. A steward might be protected in 
 exactions as severe as the most rapacious middleman ; and then, of course, 
 it would be the same thing under another name. The practice to which we 
 object is. the too common method in Ireland of extorting the last farthing 
 which the tenant is willing to give for land, rather than quit it : and the 
 machinery by which such practice is carried into effect, is that of the mid- 
 dleman. It is not only that it ruins the land ; it ruins the people also. 
 They are made so poor brought so near the ground that they can sink no 
 lower ; and burst out at last into all the acts of desperation and revenge fot 
 which Ireland is so notorious. Men who have money in their pockets, and
 
 352 IRELAND. 
 
 find that they are improving in their circumstances, don't do these things. 
 Opulence, or the hope of opulence or comfort, is the parent of decency, 
 order, and submission to the laws. A landlord in Ireland understands the 
 luxury of carriages and hoises ; but has no relish for the greater luxury of 
 surrounding himself with a moral and grateful tenantry. The absent pro- 
 prietor looks only to revenue, and cares nothing for the disorder and degra- 
 dation of a country which he never means to visit. There are very honour- 
 able exceptions to this charge : but there are too many living instances that 
 it is just. The rapacity of the Irish landlord induces him to allow of the 
 extreme division of his lands. When the daughter marries, a little portion 
 of the little farm is broken off another corner for Patrick, and another for 
 Dennot till the land is broken into sections, upon one of which an 
 English cow could not stand. Twenty mansions of misery are thus reared 
 instead of one. A louder cry of oppression is lifted up to heaven ; and 
 fresh enemies to the English name and power are multiplied on the earth. 
 The Irish gentlemen, too, extremely desirous of political influence, multiply 
 freeholds, and split votes ; and this propensity tends of course to increase 
 the miserable redundance of living beings, under which Ireland is groaning. 
 Among the manifold wretchedness to which the poor Irish tenant is liable, 
 we must not pass over the practice of driving for rent. A lets land to 15, 
 who lets it to C, who lets it again to D. D pays C his rent, and C pays B. 
 But if B fails to pay A, the cattle of B, C, D are all driven to the pound, 
 and, after the interval of a few days, sold by auction. A general driving of 
 this kind very frequently leads to a bloody insurrection. It may be ranked 
 among the classical grievances of Ireland. 
 
 Potatoes enter for a great deal into the present condition of Ireland. 
 They are much cheaper than wheat ; and it is so easy to rear a family upon 
 them, that there is no check to population from the difficulty of procuring 
 food. The population therefore goes on with a rapidity approaching almost 
 to that of new countries, and in a much greater ratio than the improving 
 agriculture and manufactures of the country can find employment for it. All 
 degrees of all nations begin with living in pig-styes. The king or the priest 
 first gets out of them ; then the noble, then the pauper, in proportion as 
 each class becomes more and more opulent. Better tastes arise from better 
 circumstances ; and the luxury of one period is the wretchedness and poverty 
 of another. English peasants, in the time of Henry the Seventh, were 
 lodged as badly as Irish peasants now are ; but the population was limited 
 by the difficulty of procuring a com subsistence. The improvements of this 
 kingdom were more rapid ; the price of labour rose ; and, with it, the 
 luxury and comfort of the peasant, who is now decently lodged and clothed, 
 and who would think himself in the last stage of wretchedness, if he had 
 nothing but an iron pot in a turf house, and plenty of potatoes in it. 
 The use of the potato was introduced into Ireland when the wretched 
 accommodation of her own peasantry bore some proportion to the state of 
 those accommodations all over Europe. But they have increased their popu- 
 lation so fast, and, in conjunction with the oppressive government of Ireland 
 retarding improvement, have kept the price of labour so low, that the Irish 
 poor have never been able to emerge from their mud cabins, or to acquire 
 any taste for cleanliness and decency of appearance. Mr Curwen has the 
 following description of Irish cottages : 
 
 "These mansions of miserable existence, for so they may truly be 
 described, conformably to our general estimation of those indispensable 
 comforts requisite to constitute the happiness of rational beings, are most 
 commonly composed of two rooms on the ground floor, a most appropriate
 
 IRELAND. 353 
 
 term, for they are literally on the earth ; the surface of which is not unfre- 
 quently reduced a foot or more, to save the expense of so much outward 
 walling. The one is a refectory, the other the dormitory. The furniture of 
 the former, if the owner ranks in the upper part of the scale of scantiness, 
 will consist of a kitchen dresser, well provided and highly decorated with 
 crockery not less apparently the pride of the husband than the result of 
 female vanity in the wife : which, with a table, a chest, a few stools, and 
 an iron pot, complete the catalogue of conveniences generally found, as 
 belonging to the cabin : while a spinning-wheel, furnished by the Linen 
 Board, and a loom, ornament vacant spaces that otherwise would remain 
 unfurnished. In fitting up the latter, which cannot, on any occasion, or by 
 any display, add a feather to the weight or importance expected to be excited 
 by the appearance of the former, the inventory is limited to one, and some- 
 times two beds, serving for the repose of the whole family ! However 
 downy these may be to limbs impatient for rest, their coverings appeared 
 to be very slight ; and the %vhole of the apartment created reflections of a 
 very painful nature. Under such privations, with a wet mud floor, and a 
 roof in tatters, how idle the search for comforts !" Cttrwen, i. 112, 113. 
 To this extract we shall add one more on the same subject. 
 
 "The gigantic figure, bare-headed before me, had a beard that would 
 not have disgraced an ancient Israelite he was without shoes or stockings 
 and almost a sans-culotte with a coat, or rather a jacket, that appeared 
 as if the first blast of wind would tear it to tatters. Though his garb was 
 thus tattered, he had a manly commanding countenance. I asked permis- 
 sion to see the inside of his cabin, to which I received his most courteous 
 assent. On stooping to enter at the door I was stopped, and found that 
 permission from another was necessary before I could be admitted. A pig, 
 which was fastened to a stake driven into the floor, with length of rope 
 sufficient to permit him the enjoyment of sun and air, demanded some 
 courtesy, which I showed him, and was suffered to enter. The wife was 
 engaged in boiling thread ; and by her side, near the fire, a lovely infant 
 was sleeping, without any covering, on a bare board. Whether the fire 
 gave additional glow to the countenance of the babe, or that Nature 
 impressed on its unconscious cheek a blush that the lot of man should be 
 exposed to such privations, I will not decide ; but if the cause be referrible 
 to the latter, it was in perfect unison with my own feelings. Two or three 
 other children crowded round the mother : on their rosy countenances health 
 seemed established in spite of filth and ragged garments. The dress of the 
 poor woman was barely sufficient to satisfy decency. Her countenance bore 
 the impression of a set melancholy, tinctured with an appearance of ill 
 health. The hovel, which did not exceed twelve or fifteen feet in length, 
 and ten in breadth, was half obscured by smoke chimney or window I saw 
 none ; the door served the various purposes of an inlet to light, and the 
 outlet to smoke. The furniture consisted of two stools, an iron pot, and a 
 spinning-wheel while a sack stuffed with straw, and a single blanket laid 
 on planks, served as a bed for the repose of the whole family. Need I 
 attempt to describe my sensations? The statement alone cannot fail of 
 conveying, to a mind like yours, an adequate idea of them I could not 
 long remain a witness to this acme of human misery. As I left the deplor- 
 able habitation, the mistress followed me, to repeat her thanks for the trifle 
 I had bestowed. This gave me an opportunity of observing her person 
 more particularly. She was a tall figure, her countenance composed of in- . 
 teresting features, and with every appearance of having once been handsome. 
 ' Unwilling to quit the village without first satisfying myself whether what
 
 35+ IRELAND. 
 
 I had seen was a solitary instance, or a sample of its general state or 
 whether the extremity of poverty I had just beheld had arisen from peculiar 
 improvidence and want of management in one wretched family, I went 
 into an adjoining habitation, where I found a poor old woman of eighty, 
 whose miserable existence was painfully continued by the maintenance of 
 her granddaughter. Their condition, if possible, was more deplorable." 
 Curwen, i. 181183. 
 
 This wretchedness, of which all strangers who visit Ireland are so sensible, 
 proceeds certainly, in great measure, from their accidental use of a food so 
 cheap, that it encourages population to an extraordinary degree, lowers the 
 price of labour, and leaves the multitudes which it calls into existence almost 
 destitute of every thing but food. Many more live, in consequence of the 
 introduction of potatoes ; but all live in greater wretchedness. In the pro- 
 gress of population, the potato must of course become at last as difficult to 
 be procured as any other food ; and then let the political economist calculate 
 what the immensity and wretchedness of a people must be, where the further 
 progress of population is checked by the difficulty of procuring potatoes. 
 
 The consequence of the long mismanagement and oppression of Ireland, 
 and of the singular circumstances in which it is placed, is, that it is a semi- 
 barbarous country ; more shame to those who have thus fll-treated a fine 
 country, and a fine people ; but it is part of the present case of Ireland. 
 The barbarism of Ireland is evinced by the frequency and ferocity of duels, 
 the hereditary clannish feuds of the common people, and the fights to 
 which they give birth, the atrocious cruelties practised in the insurrections 
 of the common people, and their proneness to insurrection. The lower 
 Irish live in a state of greater wretchedness than any other people in Europe, 
 inhabiting so fine a soil and climate. It is difficult, often impossible, to 
 execute the processes of law. In cases where gentlemen are concerned, it 
 is often not even attempted. The conduct of under-sheriffs is often very 
 corrupt* We are afraid the magistracy of Ireland is very inferior to that 
 of this country ; the spirit of jobbing and bribery is very widely diffused, and 
 upon occasions when the utmost purity prevails in the sister kingdom. 
 Military force is necessary all over the country, and often for the most 
 common and just operations of Government. The behaviour of the higher 
 to the lower orders is much less gentle and decent than in England. Blows 
 from superiors to inferiors are more frequent, and the punishment for such 
 aggression more doubtful. The word gentleman seems, in Ireland, to put 
 an end to most processes at law. Arrest a gentleman ! ! ! ! take out a 
 warrant against a gentleman are modes of operation not very common in 
 the administration of Irish justice. If a man strike the meanest peasant in 
 England, he is either knocked down in his turn, or immediately taken before 
 a magistrate. It is impossible to live in Ireland, without perceiving the 
 various points in which it is inferior in civilisation. Want of unity in feel- 
 ing and interest among the people, irritability, violence, andrevenge, want 
 of comfort and cleanliness in the lower orders, habitual disobedience to 
 the law, want of confidence in Magistrates, corruption, venality, the per- 
 petual necessity of recurring to military force, all carry back the observer 
 to that remote and early condition of mankind, which an Englishman can 
 learn only in the pages of the antiquary or the historian. We do not draw 
 this picture for censure, but for truth. We admire the Irish, feel the most 
 sincere pity for the state of Ireland, and think the conduct of the English 
 to that country to have been a system of atrocious cruelty and contemptible 
 meanness. With such a climate, such a soil, and such a people, the inferi- 
 
 * The difficulty often is to catch the sheriff.
 
 IRELAND. 355 
 
 ority of Ireland to the rest of Europe is directly chargeable to the long 
 wickedness of the English Government. 
 
 A direct consequence of the present uncivilised state of Ireland is, that 
 very little English capital travels there. The man who deals in steam- 
 engines, and warps and woofs, is naturally alarmed by Peep-of-Day Boys, and 
 nocturnal Carders ; his object is to buy and sell as quickly and quietly as 
 he can ; and he will naturally bear high taxes and rivalry in England, or 
 emigrate to any part of the Continent, or to America, rather than plunge 
 into the tumult of Irish politics and passions. There is nothing which 
 Ireland wants more than large manufacturing towns, to take off its super- 
 fluous population. But internal peace must come first, and then the arts 
 of peace will follow. The foreign manufacturer will hardly think of em- 
 barking his capital where he cannot be sure that his existence is safe. 
 Another check to the manufacturing greatness of Ireland, is the scarcity not 
 of coal but of good coal, cheaply raised ; an article in which (in spite of 
 papers in the Irish Transactions) they are lamentably inferior to the English. 
 
 Another consequence from some of the causes we 'have stated, is the 
 extreme idleness of the Irish labourer. There is nothing of the value 
 of which the Irish seem to have so little notion as that of time. They 
 scratch, pick, daudle, stare, gape, and do any thing but strive and wrestle 
 with the task before them. The most ludicrous of all human objects, is an 
 Irishman ploughing. A gigantic figure a seven-foot machine for turning 
 potatoes into human nature, wrapt up in an immense great coat, and urging 
 on two starved ponies, with dreadful imprecations, and uplifted shillala. 
 The Irish crow discerns a coming perquisite, and is not inattentive to the 
 proceedings of the steeds. The furrow which is to be the depositary of the 
 future crop, is not unlike, either in depth or regularity, to those domestic 
 furrows which the nails of the meek and much-injured wife plough, in some 
 family quarrel, upon the cheeks of the deservedly punished husband. The 
 weeds seem to fall contentedly, knowing that they have fulfilled their 
 destiny, and left behind them, for the resurrection of the ensuing spring, an 
 abundant and healthy progeny. The whole is a scene of idleness, laziness, 
 and poverty ; of which it is impossible, in this active and enterprising 
 country, to form the most distant conception ; but strongly indicative of 
 habits, whether secondary or original, which will long present a powerful 
 impediment to the improvement of Ireland. 
 
 The Irish character contributes something to retard the improvements of 
 that country. The Irishman has many good qualities : he is brave, witty, 
 generous, eloquent, hospitable, and open-hearted ; but he is vain, ostenta- 
 tions, extravagant, and fond of display light in council deficient in perse- 
 verance without skill in private or public economy an enjoyer, not an 
 acquirer one who despises the slow and patient virtues who wants the 
 superstructure without the foundation the result without the previous 
 operation the oak without the acorn and the three hundred years of expec- 
 tation. The Irish are irascible, prone to debt, and to fight, and very 
 impatient of the restraints of law. Such a people are not likely to keep 
 their eyes steadily upon the main chance, like the Scotch or the Dutch. 
 England strove very hard, at one period, to compel the Scotch to pay a 
 double Church ; but Sawney took his pen and ink ; and finding what a 
 sum it amounted to, became furious, and drew his sword. God forbid the 
 Irishman should do the same ! the remedy, now, would be worse than the 
 disease : but if the oppressions of England had been more steadily resisted 
 a century ago, Ireland would not have been the scene of poverty, misery, 
 and distress which it now is. 
 
 The Catholic religion, among other causes, contributes to the backward-
 
 356 IRELAND. 
 
 ness and barbarism of Ireland. Its debasing superstition, childish cere- 
 monies, and the profound submission to the priesthood which it teaches, 
 all tend to darken men's minds, to impede the progress of knowledge and 
 inquiry, and to prevent Ireland from becoming as free, as powerful, and as 
 rich, as the sister kingdom. Though sincere friends to Catholic emancipa- 
 tion, we are no advocates for the Catholic religion. We should be very 
 glad to see a general conversion to Protestantism among the Irish ; but we 
 do not think that violence, privations, and incapacities, are the proper 
 methods of making proselytes. 
 
 Such, then, is Ireland at this period, a land more barbarous than the 
 rest of Europe, because it has been worse treated and more cruelly op- 
 pressed. Many of the incapacities and privations to which the Catholics 
 were exposed, have been removed by law ; but, in such instances, they are 
 still incapacitated and deprived by custom. Many cruel and oppressive 
 laws are still enforced against them. A ninth part of the population en- 
 grosses all the honours of the country ; the other nine pay a tenth of the 
 product of the earth for the support of a religion in which they do not 
 believe. There is little capital in the country. The great and rich men are 
 called by business, or allured by pleasure, into England ; their estates are 
 given up to factors, and the utmost farthing of rent extorted from the poor, 
 who, if they give up the land, cannot get employment in manufactures, or 
 regular employment in husbandry. The common people use a sort of food 
 so very cheap, that they can rear families, who cannot procure employment, 
 and who have little more of the comforts of life than food. The Irish are 
 light-minded want of employment has made them idle they are irritable 
 and brave have a keen remembrance of the past wrongs they have suffered, 
 and the present wrongs they are suffering, from England. The consequence 
 of all this is, eternal riot and insurrection, a whole army of soldiers in time 
 of profound peace, and general rebellion whenever England is busy with 
 other enemies, or off her guard ! And thus it will be while the same causes 
 continue to operate, for ages to come, and worse and worse as the rapidly 
 increasing population of the Catholics becomes more and more numerous. 
 
 The remedies are, time and justice ; and that justice consists in repealing 
 all laws which make any distinction between the two religions ; in placing 
 over the government of Ireland, not the stupid, amiable, and insignificant 
 noblemen who have too often been sent there, but men who feel deeply the 
 wrongs of Ireland, and who have an ardent wish to heal them ; who will 
 take care that Catholics, when eligible, shall be elected ; * who will share 
 the patronage of Ireland proportionally among the two parties, and give to 
 just and liberal laws the same vigour of execution which has hitherto been 
 reserved only for decrees of tyranny, and the enactments of oppression. The 
 injustice and hardship of supporting two churches must be put out of sight, 
 if it cannot or ought not to be cured. The political economist, the moralist, 
 and the satirist, must combine to teach moderation and superintendence to 
 the great Irish proprietors. Public talk and clamour may do something for 
 the poor Irish, as it did for the slaves in the West Indies. Ireland will 
 become more quiet under such treatment, and then more rich, more com- 
 fortable, and more civilised ; and the horrid spectacle of folly and tyranny, 
 which it at present exhibits, may in time be removed from the eyes of Europe. 
 
 There are two eminent Irishmen now in the House of Commons, Lord 
 Castlereagh and Mr Canning, who will subscribe to the justness of every 
 syllable we have said upon this subject ; and who have it in their power, by 
 making it the condition of their remaining in office, to liberate their native 
 country, and raise it to its just rank among the nations of the earth. Yet 
 * Great merit is due to the Whigs for the patronage bestowed on Catholics.
 
 A.VASTASJL'S. 357 
 
 tl-e Court buys thorn over, year after year, by the pomp and perquisites of 
 office ; s-id year after year they come into the House of Commons, feeling 
 deeply, and describing powerfully, the injuries of five millions of their 
 countrymen and continue members of a Government that inflicts those evils, 
 under the pitiful delusion that it is not a Cabinet Question, as if the 
 scratchings and quarrellings of Kings and Queens could alone cement poli- 
 ticians together in indissoluble unity, while the fate and fortune of one third 
 of the empire might be complimented away from one minister to another, 
 without the smallest breach in their Cabinet alliance. Politicians, at least 
 honest politicians, should be very flexible and accommodating in little things, 
 very rigid and inflexible in great things. And is this not a great thing ? 
 Who has painted it in finer and more commanding eloquence than Mi- 
 Canning? Who has taken a more sensible and statesmanlike view of our 
 miserable and cruel policy, than Lord Castlereagh ? You would think, to 
 hear them, that the same planet could not contain them and the oppressors 
 of their country, perhaps not the same solar system. Yet for money, 
 claret, and patronage, they lend their countenance, assistance, and friend- 
 ship, to the Ministers who are the stem and inflexible enemies to the eman- 
 cipation of Ireland ! 
 
 Thank God that all is not profligacy and corruption in the history of that 
 devoted people and that the name of Irishman does not always carry with 
 it the idea of the oppressor or the oppressed the plunderer or the plun- 
 dered the tyrant or the slave ! Great men hallow a whole people, and 
 lift up all who live in their time. What Irishman does not feel proud that 
 he has lived in the days of GRATTAN ? who has not turned to him for com- 
 fort, from the false friends and open enemies of Ireland ? who did not 
 remember him in the days of its burnings and wastings and murders ? No 
 Government ever dismayed him the world could not bribe him he thought 
 only of Ireland lived for no other object dedicated to her his beautiful 
 fancy, his elegant wit, his manly courage, and all the splendour of his aston- 
 ishing eloquence. He was so born, and so gifted, that poetry, forensic 
 skill, elegant literature, and all the highest attainments of human genius, 
 were within his reach ; but he thought the noblest occupation of a man was 
 to make other men happy and free ; and in that straight line he went on for 
 fifty years, without one side-look, without one yielding thought, without 
 one motive in his heart which he might not have laid open to the view of 
 God and man. He is gone ! but there is not a single day of his honest 
 life of which every good Irishman would not be more proud, than of the 
 whole political existence of his countrymen, the annual deserters and 
 betrayers of their native land. 
 
 ANASTASIUS. (E. REVIEW, 1821.; 
 
 Anasfasius: or, Memoirs of a. Greek, written in the i8//4 Century. London. 
 Murray. 3 vols. 8vo. 
 
 AXASTASIUS is a sort of oriental Gil Bias, who is tossed about from one 
 state of life to another, sometimes a beggar in the streets of Constanti- 
 nople, and at others, an officer of the highest distinction under an Egyptian 
 Bey, with that mixture of good and evil, of loose principles and popular 
 qualities, which, against our moral feelings and better judgment, render a 
 novel pleasing, and a hero popular. Anastasius is a greater villain than 
 Gil Bias, merely because he acts in a worse country, and under a worse
 
 358 ANASTASIUS. 
 
 government. Turkey is a country in the last stage of Casttereagk-ery and 
 Vamittartism: it is in that condition to which we are steadily approaching 
 a political finish ; the sure result of just and necessary wars, intermin- 
 able burthens upon affectionate people, green bags, strangled sultanas, and 
 murdered mobs. There are in the world all shades and gradations of 
 tyranny. The Turkish, or last, puts the pistol and stiletto in action. 
 Anastasius, therefore, among his other pranks, makes nothing of two or 
 three murders ; but they are committed in character, and are suitable 
 enough to the temper and disposition of a lawless Turkish soldier ; and 
 this is the justification of the book, which is called wicked, but for no other 
 reason than because it accurately paints the manners of a people become 
 wicked from the long and uncorrected abuses of their Government. 
 
 One cardinal fault which pervades this work is, that it is too long ; ill 
 spite of the numerous fine passages with which it abounds, there is too 
 much of it ; and it is a relief, not a disappointment, to get to the end. Mr 
 Hope, too, should avoid humour, in which he certainly does not exceL 
 His attempts of that nature are among the most serious parts of the book. 
 With all these objections (and we only mention them in case Mr Hope 
 writes again), there are few books in the English language which contain 
 passages of greater power, feeling, and eloquence, than this novel, which 
 delineate frailty and vice with more energy and acutenes^, or describe his- 
 torical scenes with such bold imagery, and such glowing language. Mr 
 Hope will excuse us, but we could not help exclaiming, in reading it, Is 
 this Mr Thomas Hope ? Is this the man of chairs and tables the gentle- 
 man of sphinxes the CEdipus of coalboxes he who meditated on muffin- 
 eers and planned pokers ? Where has he hidden all this eloquence and 
 poetry up to this hour ? How is it that he has, all of a sudden, burst out 
 into descriptions which would not disgrace the pen of Tacitus and dis- 
 played a depth of feeling and a vigour of imagination which Lord Byron 
 could not excel ? We do not shrink from one syllable of this eulogium. 
 The work now before us places him at once in the highest list of eloquent 
 writers, and of superior men. 
 
 Anastasius, the hero of the tale, is a native of Chios, the son of the drogue- 
 man to the French Consul. The drogueman, instead of bringing him up 
 to make Latin verses, suffered him to run wild about the streets of Chios, 
 where he lives for some tune a lubberly boy, and then a profligate youth. 
 His first exploit is to debauch the daughter of his acquaintance, from whom 
 (leaving her in a state of pregnancy) he runs away, and enters as a cabin- 
 boy in a Venetian brig. The brig is taken by Maynote pirates : the pirates 
 by a Turkish frigate, by which he is landed at Nauplia, and marched away 
 to Argos, where the captain, Hassan Pacha, was encamped with his army. 
 
 " I had never seen an encampment : and the novel and striking sight 
 absorbed all my faculties in astonishment and awe. There seemed to me to 
 be forces sufficient to subdue the whole world ; and I knew not which most 
 to admire, the endless dusters of tents, the enormous piles of armour, and 
 the rows of threatening cannon, which I met at every step, or the troops of 
 well mounted spahees, who, like dazzling meteors, darted by us on every 
 side, amid clouds of stifling dust. The very dirt with which the nearer 
 horsemen bespattered our humble troop, was, as I thought, imposing ; and 
 every thing upon which I cast my eyes gave me a feeling of nothingness, 
 which made me shrink within myself like a snail in its cell. I envied not 
 only those who were destined to share in all the glory and success of the 
 expedition, but even the meanest follower of the camp, as a being of a 
 superior order to myself; and, when suddenly there arose a loud flourish
 
 ANASTASIUS. 359 
 
 of trumpets, which, ending in a concert of cymbals and other warlike in- 
 struments, re-echoed in long peals from all the surrounding mountains, the 
 clang shook every nerve in my body, thrilled me to the very soul, and in- 
 fused in all my veins a species of martial ardour, so resistless, that it made 
 me struggle with my fetters, and try to tear them asunder. Proud as I was 
 by nature, I would have knelt to whoever had offered to liberate my limbs, 
 and to arm my hands with a sword or a battle-axe." (I. 36, 37.) 
 
 From his captive state he passes into the service of Mavroyeni, Hassan's 
 drogueman, with whom he ingratiates himself, and becomes a person of 
 consequence. In the service of this person, he receives from old Demo, a 
 brother domestic, the following admirable lecture on masters : 
 
 " 'Listen, young man,' said he, 'whether you like it or not. For my 
 own part, I have always had too much indolence, not to make it my study 
 throughout life rather to secure ease than to labour for distinction. It has 
 therefore been my rule to avoid cherishing in my patron any outrageous 
 admiration of my capacity, which would have increased my dependence 
 while it lasted, and exposed me to persecution on wearing out : but you, 
 I see, are of a different mettle : I therefore may point out to you the surest 
 way to that more perilous height, short of which your ambition I doubt 
 will not rest satisfied. When you have compassed it, you may remember 
 old Demo, if you please. 
 
 " 'Know, first, that all masters, even the least lovable, like to be loved. 
 All wish to be served from affection rather than duty. It flatters their 
 pride, and it gratifies their selfishness. They expect from this personal 
 motive a greater devotion to their interest, and a more unlimited obedience 
 to their commands. A master looks upon mere fidelity in his servant as 
 his due, as a thing scarce worth his thanks ; but attachment he considers 
 as a compliment to his merit, and, if at all generous, he will reward it with 
 liberality. Mavroyeni is more open than any body to this species of flattery. 
 Spare it not therefore. If he speak to you kindly, let your face brighten 
 up. If he talk to you of his own affairs, though it should only be to dispel 
 the tedium of conveying all day long other men's thoughts, listen with the 
 greatest eagerness. A single yawn, and you are undone ! Yet let not 
 curiosity appear your motive, but the delight only of being honoured with 
 his confidence. The more you appear grateful for the least kindness, the 
 oftener you will receive important favours. Our ostentatious drogueman 
 will feel a pleasure in raising your astonishment His vanity knows no 
 bounds. Give it scope therefore. When he comes home clacking with its 
 suppressed ebullitions, be their ready and patient receptacle : do more ; 
 discreetly help him on in venting his conceit ; provide him with a cue ; hint 
 what you heard certain people, not knowing you to be so near, say of his 
 capacity, his merit, and his influence. He wishes to persuade the world 
 that he completely rules the Pasha, Tell him not flatly he does, but assume 
 it as a thing of general notoriety. Be neither too candid in your remarks, 
 nor too fulsome in your flattery. Too palpable deviations from fact might 
 appear a satire on your master's understanding. Should some disappoint- 
 ment evidently rufile his temper, appear not to conceive the possibility of 
 his vanity having received a mortification. Preserve the exact medium be- 
 tween too cold a respect and too presumptuous a forwardness. However 
 much Mavroyeni may caress you in private, never seem quite at ease with 
 him in public. A master still likes to remain master, or, at least, to appear 
 so to others. Should you get into some scrape, wait not to confess your 
 imprudence until concealment becomes impossible ; nor try to excuse the 
 offence. Rather than you should, by so doing, appear to make light of
 
 360 AA?ASTASIUS. 
 
 your guilt, exaggerate your self-upbraidings, and throw yourself entirely 
 upon the drogueman's mercy. On all occasions take care how you appear 
 cleverer than your lord, even in the splitting of a pen ; or if you cannot 
 avoid excelling him in some trifle, give his own tuition all the credit of your 
 proficiency. Many things he will dislike, only because they come not from 
 himself. Vindicate not your innocence when unjustly rebuked ; rather sub- 
 mit for the moment ; and trust that, though Mavroyeni never will expressly 
 acknowledge his error, he will in due time pav you for your forbearance.' " 
 (I. 43-450 
 
 In the course of his service with Mavroyeni, he bears arms against the 
 Arnoots, under the Captain Hassan Pacha ; and a very animated descrip- 
 tion is given of his first combat. 
 
 ' ' I undressed the dead man completely. When, however, the business 
 which engaged all my attention was entirely achieved, and that human 
 body, of which, in the eagerness for its spoil, I had only thus far noticed 
 the separate limbs one by one, as I stripped them, all at once struck my 
 sight in its full dimensions, as it lay naked before me ; when I contem- 
 plated that fine athletic frame, but a moment before full of life and vigour 
 unto its finger ends, now rendered an insensible corpse by the random shot 
 of a raw youth whom in close combat its little finger might have crushed, I 
 could not help feeling, mixed with my exultation, a sort of shame, as if for 
 a cowardly advantage obtained over a superior being ; and, in order to 
 make a kind of atonement to the shade of an Epirote of a kinsman I ex- 
 claimed with outstretched hands, ' Cursed be the paltry dust which turns 
 the warrior's arm into a mere engine, and striking from afar an invisible 
 blow, carries death no one knows whence to no one knows whom ; levels 
 the strong with the weak, the brave with the dastardly ; and enabling tho 
 feeblest hand to wield its fatal lightning, makes the conqueror slay without 
 anger, and the conquered die without glory.' " (I. 54, 55.) 
 
 The campaign ended, he proceeds to Constantinople with the drogueman, 
 where his many intrigues and debaucheries end with the drogueman's turn- 
 ing him out of doors. He lives for some time at Constantinople in great 
 misery ; and is driven, among other expedients, to the trade of quack-doctor. 
 
 " One evening, as we were returning from the Klacquerness, an old 
 woman threw herself in our way, and, taking hold of my master's garment, 
 dragged him almost by main force after her into a mean-looking habitation 
 just by, where lay on a couch, apparently at the last gasp, a man of foreign 
 features. 'I have brought a physician,' said the female to the patient, 
 ' who, perhaps, may relieve you.' ' Why will you ' answered he faintly 
 1 still persist to feed idle hopes ! I have lived an outcast : suffer me at least 
 to die in peace ; nor disturb my last moments by vain illusions. My soul 
 pants to rejoin the supreme Spirit ; arrest not its flight : it would only be 
 delaying my eternal bliss ! ' 
 
 " As the stranger spoke these words which struck even Yacoob suffi- 
 ciently to make him suspend his professional grimace the last beams of 
 the setting sun darted across the casement of the window upon his pale, yet 
 swarthy features. Thus visited, he seemed for a moment to revive. ' I 
 have always,' said he, 'considered my fate as connected with the great 
 luminary that rules the creation. I have always paid it due worship, and 
 firmly believed I could not breathe my last while its rays shone upon me. 
 Carry me therefore out, that I may take my last farewell of the heavenly 
 ruler of my earthly destinies ! '
 
 AA'ASTASIUS. 361 
 
 "We all rushed forward to obey the mandate : but the stairs being too 
 narrow, the woman only opened the window, and placed the dying man 
 before it, so as to enjoy the full view of the glorious orb, just in the act of 
 dropping beneath the horizon. He remained a few moments in silent 
 adoration ; and mechanically we all joined him in fixing our eyes on the 
 object of his worship. It set in all its splendour ; and when its golden 
 disk had entirely disappeared, we looked round at the Parsee. He too had 
 sunk into everlasting rest. " (I. 103, 104.) 
 
 From the dispensation of chalk and water, he is then ushered into a 
 Turkish jail, the description of which, and of the plague with which it is 
 visited, are very finely written ; and we strongly recommend them to the 
 attention of our readers. 
 
 " Every day a capital fertile in crimes pours new offenders into this dread 
 receptacle ; and its high walls and deep recesses resound every instant with 
 imprecations and curses, uttered in all the various idioms of the Othoman 
 empire. Deep moans and dismal yells leave not its frightful echoes a 
 moment's repose. From morning till night and from night till morning, the 
 ear is stunned with the clang of chains, which the galley-slaves wear while 
 confined in their cells, and which they still drag about when toiling at their 
 tasks. Linked together two and two for life, should they sink under their 
 sufferings, they still continue unsevered after death ; and the man doomed 
 to live on, drags after him the corpse of his dead companion. In no direc- 
 tion can the eye escape the spectacle of atrocious punishments and of .ades- 
 cribable agonies. Here, perhaps, you see a wretch whose stiffened limbs 
 refuse their office, stop suddenly short in the midst of his labour, and, as if 
 already impassable, defy the stripes that lay open his flesh, and wait in 
 total immobility the last merciful blow that is to end his misery ; while 
 there, you view his companion foaming with rage and madness, turn against 
 his own person his desperate hands, tear his clotted hair, rend his bleeding 
 bosom, and strike his skull, until it burst against the wall of his dungeon." 
 (I. no, in.) 
 
 A few survived. 
 
 "I was among these scanty relics. I who, indifferent to life, had never 
 stooped to avoid the shafts of death, even when they flew thickest around 
 me, had more than once laid my finger on the livid wound they inflicted, 
 had probed it as it festered, I yet remained unhurt : for sometimes the 
 plague is a magnanimous enemy, and, while it seldom spares the pusillani- 
 mous victim, whose blood running cold ere it is tainted, lacks the energy 
 necessary to repel the infection when at hand, it will pass him by who dares 
 its utmost fury, and advances undaunted to meet its raised dart." (I. 121.) 
 
 In this miserable receptacle of guilty and unhappy beings, Anastasius forms 
 and cements the strongest friendship with a young Greek, of the name of 
 Anagnosti. On leaving the prison, he vows to make every exertion for the 
 liberation of his friend vows that are forgotten as soon as he is clear from 
 the prison walls. After being nearly perished with hunger, and after being 
 saved by the charity of an hospital, he gets into an intrigue with a rich 
 Jewess is detected pursued and, to save his life, turns Mussulman. 
 This exploit performed, he suddenly meets his friend Anagnosti treats him 
 with disdain and, in a quarrel which ensues between them, stabs him to 
 the heart. 
 
 " ' Life,' says the dying Anagnosti, 'has long been bitterness : death is a 
 welcome guest : I rejoin those that love me, and in a better place. Already,
 
 362 AKASTASIUS. 
 
 methinks, watching my flight, they stretch out their arms from heaven to 
 their dying Anagnosti. Thou, if there be in thy breast one spark of pity 
 left for him thou once namedst thy brother ; for him to whom a holy tie, a 
 sacred vow. . . . Ah ! suffer not the starving hounds in the street. . . . 
 See a little hallowed earth thrown over my wretched corpse.' These words 
 were his last." (I. 209.) 
 
 The description of the murderer's remorse is among the finest passages in 
 the work. 
 
 " From an obscure aisle in the church I beheld the solemn service ; saw 
 on the field of death the pale stiff corpse lowered into its narrow cell, and 
 hoping to exhaust sorrow's bitter cup, at night, when all mankind hushed 
 its griefs, went back to my friend's final resting-place, lay down upon his 
 silent grave, and watered with my tears the fresh-raised hollow mound. 
 
 " In vain ! Nor my tears nor my sorrows could avail. No offerings nor 
 penance could purchase me repose. Wherever I went, the beginning of 
 our friendship and its issue still alike rose in view ; the fatal spot of blood 
 still danced before my steps, and the reeking dagger hovered before my 
 aching eyes. In the silent darkness of the night I saw the pale phantom of 
 my friend stalk round my watchful couch, covered with gore and dust and 
 even during the unavailing riots of the day, I still beheld the spectre rise 
 over the festive board, glare on me with piteous look, and hand me what- 
 ever I attempted to reach. But whatever it presented seemed blasted by 
 its touch. To my wine it gave the taste of blood, and to my bread the 
 rank flavour of death 1" (I. 212, 213.) 
 
 We question whether there is in the English language a finer description 
 than this. We request our readers to look at the very beautiful and affect- 
 ing picture of remorse, pp. 214, 215, vol. i. 
 
 Equally Tgood, but in another way, is the description of the Opi'im 
 Coffeehouse. 
 
 " In this tchartchee might be seen any day a numerous collection of 
 those whom private sorrows have driven to a public exhibition of insanity. 
 There each reeling idiot might take his neighbour by the hand, and say, 
 ' Brother, and what aileth thee, to seek so dire a cure ? ' There did I with 
 the rest of its familiars now take my habitual station in my solitary niche, 
 like an insensible motionless idol, sitting with sightless eyeballs staring on 
 vacuity. 
 
 " One day, as I lay in less entire absence than usual under the purple 
 vines of the porch, admiring the gold-tipped domes of the majestic 
 Sulimanye, the appearance of an old man with a snow-white beard, reclin- 
 ing on the couch beside me, caught my attention. Half plunged in stupor, 
 he every now and then burst out into a wild laugh, occasioned by the 
 grotesque phantasms which the ample dose of madjoon he had just swal- 
 lowed was sending up to his brain. I sat contemplating him with mixed 
 curiosity and dismay, when, as if for a moment roused from his torpor, he 
 took me by the hand, and fixing on my countenance his dim vacant eyes, 
 said in an impressive tone, ' Young man, thy days are yet few ; take the 
 advice of one who, alas ! has counted many. Lose no time ; hie thee 
 hence, nor cast behind one lingering look : but if thou hast not the strength, 
 why tarry even here? Thy journey is but half achieved. At once go on 
 to that large mansion before thee. It is thy ultimate destination ; and by 
 thus beginning where thou must end at last, thou mayest at least save both 
 thy time and thy money. 1 "(I. 215, 216.)
 
 ANASTASIUS. 363 
 
 Lingering in the streets of Constantinople, Anastasius hears that his 
 mother is dead, and proceeds to claim that heritage which, by the Turkish 
 law in favour of proselytes, had devolved upon him. 
 
 " ' How often,' he exclaims (after seeing his father in the extremity of 
 old age) ' how often does it happen in life, that the most blissful moments 
 of our return to a long-left home are those only that just precede the instant 
 of our arrival ; those during which the imagination still is allowed to paint 
 in its own unblended colours the promised sweets of our reception ! How 
 often, after this glowing picture of the phantasy, does the reality which 
 follows appear cold and dreary. How often do even those who grieved to 
 see us depart, grieve more to see us return ! and how often do we ourselves 
 encounter nothing but sorrow, on again beholding the once happy, joyous 
 promoters of our own hilarity, now mournful, disappointed, and themselves 
 needing what consolation we may bring ! ' " (I. 239, 240.) 
 
 During his visit to Chios, he traces and describes the dying misery of 
 Helena, whom he had deserted, and then debauches her friend Agnes. 
 From thence he sails to Rhodes, the remnants of which produce a great 
 deal of eloquence and admirable description (pp. 275, 276, vol. i.) From 
 Rhodes he sails to Egypt ; and chap. 16. contains a short and very well 
 written history of the origin and progress of the Mameluke government. 
 The flight of Mourad, and the pursuit of this chief in the streets of Cairo,* 
 would be considered as very fine passages in the best histories of antiquity. 
 Our limits prevent us from quoting them. Anastasius then becomes a 
 Mameluke ; marries his master's daughter ; and is made a Kiashef. In the 
 numerous skirmishes into which he falls in his new military life, it falls to 
 his lot to shoot, from an ambush, Assad, his inveterate enemy. 
 
 "Assad, though weltering in his blood, was still alive ; but already the 
 angel of death flapped his dark wings over the traitor's brow. Hearing 
 footsteps advance, he made an effort to raise his head, probably in hopes 
 of approaching succour ; but beholding, but recognising only me, he felt 
 that no hopes remained, and gave a groan of despair. Life was flowing 
 out so fast, that I had only to stand still my arms folded within each 
 other and with a steadfast eye to watch its departure. One instant I saw 
 my vanquished foe, agitated by a convulsive tremor, open his eyes and 
 dart at me a glance of impotent rage ; but soon he averted them again, 
 then gnashed his teeth, clenched his fist, and expired." (II. 92.) 
 
 We quote this, and such passages as these, to show the great power of 
 description which Mr Hope possesses. The vindictive man standing with 
 his arms folded, and watching the blood flowing from the wound of his 
 enemy, is very new and very striking. 
 
 After the death of his wife, he collects his property, quits Egypt, and 
 visits Mekkah, and acquires the title and prerogatives of an Haujee. After 
 this he returns to the Turkish capital, renews his acquaintance with Spir- 
 idion, the friend of his youth, who in vain labours to reclaim him, and 
 whom he at last drives away, disgusted with the vices and passions of 
 Anastasius. We then find our Oriental profligate fighting as a Turkish 
 captain in Egypt, against his old friends the Mamelukes ; and afterwards 
 employed in Wallachia, under his old friend Mavroyeni, against the 
 Russians and Austrians. In this part of the work, we strongly recommend 
 to our readers to look at the Mussulmans in a pastrycook s shop during 
 the Rhamadam, vol. iii. p. 164 ; the village of beggars, vol. ii. p. 266 ; 
 the death of the Hungarian pfficer, vol. ii. p. 327 ; and the last days of 
 
 P. 325- Vol. I.
 
 364 ANASTJS1V& 
 
 Mavroyeni, vol. ii. p. 356 ; not forgetting the walk over a field of battle, 
 vol. ii. p. 252. The character of Mavroyeni is extremely well kept up 
 through the whole of the book ; and his decline and death are drawn in a 
 very spirited and masterly manner. The Spiridion part of the novel we 
 are not so much struck with ; we entirely approve of Spiridion, and ought 
 to take more interest in him ; but we cannot disguise the melancholy truth 
 that he is occasionally a little long and tiresome. The next characters 
 assumed by Anastasius are, a Smyrna debauchee, a robber of the desert, 
 and a Wahabee. After serving some time with these sectaries, he returns 
 to Smyrna, finds his child missing, whom he had left there, traces the 
 little boy to Egypt, recovers him, then loses him by sickness ; and wearied 
 of life, retires to end his days in a cottage in Carinthia. For striking 
 passages in this part of the novel, we refer our readers to the description of 
 the burial-places near Constantinople, vol. ii. pp. n 13; the account of 
 Djezzar Pacha's retirement to his harem during the revolt, equal to any 
 tiling in Tacitus ; and above all, to the landing of Anastasius with his sick 
 child, and the death of the infant. It is impossible not to see that this 
 last picture is faithfully drawn from a sad and cruel reality. The account 
 of the Wahabees is very interesting, vol. iii. p. 128; and nothing is more 
 so than the story of Euphrosyne. Anastasius had gained the affections of 
 Euphrosyne, and ruined her reputation ; he then wishes to cast her off, and 
 to remove her from his house. 
 
 "'Ah no!' now cried Euphrosyne, convulsively clasping my knees: 
 ' be not so barbarous ! Shut not your own door against her, against whom 
 you have barred every once friendly door. Do not deny her whom you have 
 dishonoured the only asylum she lias left. If I cannot be your wife, let me 
 be your slave, your drudge. No service, however mean, shall I recoil from 
 when you command. At least before you I shall not have to blush. In 
 your eyes I shall not be what I must seem in those of others ; I shall not 
 from you incur the contempt, which I must expect from my former com- 
 panions : and my diligence to execute the lowest offices you may require, 
 will earn for me, not only as a bare alms at your hands, that support which, 
 however scanty, I can elsewhere only receive as an unmerited indulgence. 
 Since I did a "few days please your eye, I may still please it a few days 
 longer : perhaps a few days longer therefore I may still wish to live ; and 
 when that last blessing, your love, is gone by, when my cheek, faded 
 with grief, has lost the last attraction that could arrest your favour, then 
 speak, then tell me so, that, burthening you no longer, I may retire and 
 die I'" (III. 64, 65.) 
 
 Her silent despair, and patient misery, when she finds that she has not 
 only ruined herself with the world, but lost his affections also, has the 
 beauty of the deepest tragedy. 
 
 " Nothing but the most unremitting tenderness on my part could in some 
 degree have revived her drooping spirits. But when, after my excursion, 
 and the act of justice on Sophia in which it ended, I reappeared before 
 the still trembling Euphrosyne, she saw too soon that that cordial of the 
 heart must not be expected. One look she cast upon my countenance, as 
 I sat down in silence, sufficed to inform her of my total change of senti- 
 ments ; and the responsive look by which it was met, tore for ever from 
 her breast the last seeds of hope and confidence. Like the wounded snail 
 she shrunk within herself, and thenceforth, clokecl in unceasing sadness 
 never more expanded to the sunshine of joy. With her buoyancy of 
 spirits she seemed even to lose all her quickness of intellect, nay all her
 
 SPRING GUNS AND MAN 'TRAPS. 365 
 
 readiness of speech ; so that, not only fearing to embark with her in serious 
 conversation, but even finding no response in her mind to lighter topics, I 
 at last began to nauseate her seeming torpor and dulness, and to roam 
 abroad even more frequently than before a partner of my fate remained at 
 home, to count the tedious hours of my absence ; while she poor miser- 
 able creature dreading the sneers of an unfeeling world, passed her time 
 under my roof in dismal and heart-breaking solitude. Had the most patient 
 endurance of the most intemperate sallies been able to soothe my di.-ap- 
 pointment and to soften my hardness, Euphrosyne's angelic sweetness must 
 at last have conquered : but in my jaundiced eye her resignation only tended 
 to strengthen the conviction of her shame : and I saw in her forbearance 
 nothing but the consequence of her debasement, and the consciousness of 
 her guilt. 'Did her heart,' thought I, 'bear witness to a purity on which 
 my audacity dared first to cast a blemish, she could not remain thus tame, 
 thus spiritless, under such an aggravation of my wrongs ; and either she 
 would be the first to quit my merciless roof, or at least she would not so 
 fearfully avoid giving me even the most unfounded pretence for denying her 
 its shelter. She must merit her sufferings to bear them so meekly!' 
 Hence, even when moved to real pity by gentleness so enduring, I seldom 
 relented in my apparent sternness." (III. 72 74.) 
 
 With this we end our extracts from Anastasius. We consider it as a 
 work in which great and extraordinary talent is evinced. It abounds in 
 eloquent and sublime passages, in sense, in knowledge of history, and 
 in knowledge of human character ; but not in wit. It is too long : and if 
 this novel perish, and is forgotten, it will be solely on that account. If it 
 be the picture of vice, so is Clarissa Harlowe, and so is Tom Jones. There 
 are no sensual and glowing descriptions in Anastasius, nothing which 
 corrupts the morals by inflaming the imagination of youth ; and we are 
 quite certain that every reader ends this novel with a greater disgust at vice, 
 and a more thorough conviction of the necessity of subjugating passion, than 
 he feels from reading either of the celebrated works we have just mentioned. 
 The sum of our eulogium is, that Mr Hope, without being very successful 
 in his story, or remarkably skilful in the delineation of character, has written 
 a novel, which all clever people of a certain age should read, because it is 
 full of marvellously fine things. 
 
 SPRING GUNS. (E. REVIEW, 1821.) 
 
 Tlie Shooier's Guide. By J. B. JOHNSON. 121110. Edwards and Knibb. 1819. 
 
 WHEN Lord Dacre (then Mr Brand) brought into the House of Commons 
 his bill for the amendment of the Game Laws, a system of greater mercy 
 and humanity was in vain recommended to that popular branch of the 
 Legislature. The interests of humanity, and the interests of the lord of the 
 manor, were not, however, opposed to each other ; nor any attempt made 
 to deny the superior importance of the last. No such bold, or alarming 
 topics were agitated ; but it was contended that, if laws were less ferocious, 
 there would be more partridges if the lower orders of mankind were not 
 torn from their families and banished to Botany Bay, hares and pheasants 
 would be increased in number, or, at least, not diminished. It is not, how- 
 ever, till after long experience, that mankind ever think of recurring to 
 humane expedients for effecting their objects. The rulers who ride the
 
 366 SPR2NG GUNS AND MAN TRAPS. 
 
 people never think of coaxing and patting till they have worn out the lashes 
 of their whips, and broken the rowels of their spurs. The legislators of the 
 trigger replied, that two laws had lately passed which would answer their 
 purpose of preserving game : the one, an act for transporting men found 
 with arms in their hands for the purposes of killing game in the night ; the 
 other, an act for rendering the buyers of the game equally guilty with the 
 seller, and for involving both in the same penalty. Three seasons have 
 elapsed since the last of these laws was passed : and we appeal to the 
 experience of all the great towns in England, whether the difficulty of pro- 
 curing game is in the slightest degree increased ? whether hares, partridges, 
 and pheasants are not purchased with as much facility as before the pass- 
 ing this act ? whether the price of such unlawful commodities is even in 
 the slightest degree increased? Let the Assize and Sessions' Calendars 
 bear witness, whether the law for transporting poachers has not had the 
 most direct tendency to encourage brutal assaults and ferocious murders. 
 There is hardly now a jail-delivery in which some gamekeeper has not 
 murdered a poacher or some poacher a gamekeeper. If the question con- 
 cerned the payment of five pounds, a poacher would hardly risk his life 
 rather than be taken ; but when he is to go to Botany Bay for seven years, 
 he summons together his brother poachers they get brave from rum, num- 
 bers, and despair and a bloody battle ensues. 
 
 Another method by which it is attempted to defeat the depredations of 
 the poacher is, by setting spring guns to murder any person who comes 
 within their reach ; and it is to this last new feature in the supposed Game 
 Laws, to which, on the present occasion, we intend principally to confine 
 our notice. 
 
 We utterly disclaim all hostility to the Game Laws in general. Game 
 ought to belong to those who feed it. All the landowners in England are 
 fairly entitled to all the game in England. These laws are constructed upon 
 a basis of substantial justice j but there is a great deal of absurdity and 
 tyranny mingled with them, and a perpetual and vehement desire on the 
 part of the country gentlemen to push the provisions of these laws up to the 
 highest point of tyrannical severity. 
 
 " Is it lawful to put to death by a spring gun, or any other "machine, an 
 unqualified person trespassing upon your woods or fields in pursuit of game, 
 and who has received due notice of your intention, and of the risk to which 
 he is exposed?" This, we think, is stating the question as fairly as can be 
 stated. We purposely exclude gardens, orchards, and all contiguity to the 
 dwelling-house. We exclude, also, all felonious intention on the part of 
 the deceased. The object of his expedition shall be proved to be game ; 
 and the notice he received of his danger shall be allowed to be as complete 
 as possible. It must also be part of the case, that the spring gun was 
 placed there for the express purpose of defending the game, by killing or 
 wounding the poacher, or spreading terror, or doing any thing that a reason- 
 able man ought to know would happen from such a proceeding. 
 
 Suppose any"gentleman were to give notice that all other persons must 
 abstain from his manors ; that he himself and his servants paraded the woods 
 and fields with loaded pistols and blunderbusses, and would shoot any body 
 who fired at a partridge ; and suppose he were to keep his word, and shoot 
 through the head some rash trespasser who defied his bravado, and was 
 determined to have his sport : is there any doubt that he would be guilty 
 of murder ? We suppose no resistance on the part of the trespasser ; but 
 that, the moment he passes the line of demarcation with his dogs and gun, 
 he is shot dead by the proprietor of the land from behind a tree. If this la 
 not murder, what is murder ? We will make the case a little better for the
 
 SPXLVG GUNS AND MAN TRAPS. 367 
 
 homicide squire. It shall be night ; the poacher, an unqualified person, 
 steps over the line of demarcation with his nets and snares, and is instantly 
 shot through the head by the pistol of the proprietor. We have no doubt 
 that this -would be murder that it ought to be considered as murder, and 
 punished as murder. We think this so clear, that it would be a waste of 
 time to argue it. There is no kind of resistance on the part of the deceased ; 
 no attempt to run away ; he is not even challenged : but instantly shot dead 
 by the proprietor of the wood, for no other crime than the intention of kill- 
 ing game unlawfully. We do not suppose that any man, possessed of the 
 elements of law and common sense, would deny this to be a case of murder, 
 let the previous notice to the deceased have been as perfect as it could be. 
 It is true, a trespasser in a park may be killed ; but then it is when he will 
 not render himself to the keepers, upon a hue and cry to stand to the king's 
 peace. But deer are property, game is not ; and this power of slaying deer- 
 stealers is by the 2 ist Edward I. de Malifactoribus in Parcis, and by 3d and 
 4th William & Man', c. to. So rioters may be killed, house-burners, 
 ravishers, felons refusing to be arrested, felons escaping, felons breaking 
 gaol, men resisting a civil process may all be put to death. All these 
 cases of justifiable homicide are laid down and admitted in our books. But 
 who ever heard, that to pistol a poacher was justifiable homicide ? It has 
 long been decided, that it is unlawful to kill a dog who is pursuing game in 
 a manor. "To decide the contrary," says Lord Ellenborough, "would 
 outrage reason and sense." (Vere z/. Lord Cawdor and King, II East, 
 386.) Pointers have always been treated by the legislature with great deli- 
 cacy and consideration. To " wish to be a (fog, and to bay the moon," is not 
 quite so mad a wish as the poet thought it. 
 
 If these things are so, what is the difference between the act of firing 
 yourself, and placing an engine which does the same thing? In the one 
 our hand pulls the trigger; in the other, it places the wire which 
 communicates with the trigger, and causes the death of the trespasser. 
 There is the same intention of slaying in both cases there is precisely the 
 same human agency in both cases ; only the steps are rather more numerous 
 in the latter case. As to the bad effects of allowing proprietors of game to 
 put trespassers to death at once, or to set guns that will do it, we can have- 
 no hesitation in saying, that the first method, ef giving the power of li 
 and death to esquires, would be by far the most humane. For, as we havi 
 observed in a previous Essay on the Game Laws, a live armigeral sprint; 
 gun would distinguish an accidental trespasser from a real poacher:; 
 woman or a boy from a man perhaps might spare a friend or an acquaint- 
 anceor a father of a family with ten children or a small freeholder who 
 voted for Administration. But this new rural artillery must destroy, without 
 mercy and selection, every one who approaches it. 
 
 In the case of Hot versus Wilks, Esq., the four judges, Abbot, Bailey, 
 Holroyd, and Best, gave their opinions seriatim on points connected with 
 this question. In this case, as reported in Chetwynd's edition of Burn's 
 Justice, 1820, vol. ii. p. 500., Abbot C. J. observes as follows : 
 
 "I cannot say that repeated and increasing acts of aggression may not 
 reasonably call for increased means of defence and protection, 
 that many of the persons who cause engines of this description to be placed 
 in their grounds, do not do so with an intention to injure any person, but 
 really believe that the publication of notices will prevent any person froi 
 sustaining an injury : and that no person having the notice given him, will 
 be weak and foolish enough to expose himself to the perilous consequences 
 of his trespass. Many persons who place such engines in their grounds, d(
 
 368 SPRING GUNS AND MAN TRAPS. 
 
 so for the purpose of preventing, by means of terror, injury to their property, 
 rather than from any motive of doing malicious injury." 
 
 " Increased means of defence and protection," but increased (his Lord- 
 ship should remember) from the payment of five pounds to instant death 
 and instant death inflicted, not by the arm of law, but by the arm of the 
 proprietor ; could the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench intend to 
 say, that the impossibility of putting an end to poaching by other means 
 would justify the infliction of death upon the offender ? Is he so ignorant 
 of the philosophy of punishing, as to imagine he has nothing to do but to 
 give ten stripes instead of two, a hundred instead of ten, and a thousand, if 
 a hundred will not do ? to substitute the prison for pecuniary fines, and the 
 gallows instead of the gaol ? It is impossible so enlightened a Judge can. 
 forget, that the sympathies of mankind must be consulted ; that it would 
 be wrong to break a person upon the wheel for stealing a penny loaf, and 
 that gradations in punishments must be carefully accommodated to grada- 
 tions in crime ; that if poaching is punished more than mankind in general 
 think it ought to be punished, the fault will either escape with impunity, or 
 the delinquent be driven to desperation ; that if poaching and murder are 
 punished equally, every poacher will be an assassin. Besides, too, if the 
 principle is right in the unlimited and unqualified manner in which the 
 Chief Justice puts it if defence goes on increasing with aggression, the 
 Legislature at least must determine upon their equal pace. If an act cf 
 Parliament made it a capital offence to poach upon a manor, as it is to 
 commit a burglary in a dwelling-house, it might then be as lawful to shoot 
 a person for trespassing upon your manor, as it is to kill a thief for breaking 
 into your house. But the real question is and so in sound reasoning his 
 Lordship should have put it " If the law at this moment determine the 
 aggression to be in such a state, that it merits only a pecuniary fine after 
 summons and proof, has any sporadic squire the right to say, that it shall 
 be punished with death, before any summons and without any proof?" 
 
 It appears to us, too, very singular, to say, that many persons who cause 
 engines of this description to be placed in their ground, do not do so with 
 an intention of injuring any person, but really believe that the publication of 
 notices will prevent any person from sustaining an injury, a.. id that no per- 
 son, having the notice given him, will be weak and foolish enough to expose 
 himself to the perilous consequences of his trespass. But if this be the real 
 belief of the engineer if he think the mere notice will keep people away 
 then he must think it a mere inutility that the guns should be placed at all : 
 if he think that many will be deterred, and a few come, then he must mean 
 to shoot those few. He who believes his gun will never be called upon to 
 do its duty, need set no gun, and trust to rumour of their being set, or being 
 loaded, for his protection. Against the gun and the powder we have no 
 complaint ; they are perfectly fair and admissible : our quarrel is with the 
 bullets. He who sets a loaded gun means it should go off if it is touched. But 
 what signifies the mere empty wish that there may be no mischief, when I 
 perform an action which my common sense tells me may produce the worst 
 mischief? If I hear a great noise in the street, and fire a bullet to keep 
 people quiet, I may not perhaps have intended to kill ; I may have wished 
 to have produced quiet, by mere terror, and I may have expressed a strong 
 hope that my object has been effected without the destruction of human 
 life. Still I have done that which every man of sound intellect knows is 
 likely to kill ; and if any one fall from my act, I am guilty of murder. 
 "Further" (says Lord Coke), "if there be an evil intent, though that 
 intent extendeth not to death, it is murder. Thus, if a man, knowing that
 
 SPRING GUNS AND MAN TRAPS. 369 
 
 many people are in the street, throw a stone over the wall, intending only 
 to frighten them, or to give them a little hurt, and thereupon one is killed 
 this is murder for he had an ill intent ; though that intent extended not 
 to death, and though he knew not the party slain." (3 Inst. 57. ) If a man 
 be not mad, he must be presumed to foresee common consequences ; if he 
 puts a bullet into a spring gun he must be supposed to foresee that it will 
 kill any poacher who touches the wire and to that consequence he must 
 stand. We do not suppose all preservers of game to be so bloodily inclined 
 that they would prefer the death of a poacher to his staying away. Their 
 object is to preserve game ; they have no objection to preserve the lives of 
 their fellow creatures also, if both can exist at the same time ; if not, the 
 least worthy of God's creatures must fall the rustic without a soul, not 
 the Christian partridge not the immortal pheasant not the rational wood- 
 cock, or the accountable hare. 
 
 The Chief Justice quotes the instance of glass and spikes fixed upon wall:;. 
 He cannot mean to infer from this, because the law connives at the inflic- 
 tion of such small punishments for the protection of property, that it does 
 allow, or ought to allow, proprietors to proceed to the punishment of death. 
 Small means of annoying trespassers may be consistently admitted by the 
 law, though more severe ones are forbidden, and ought to be forbidden ; 
 unless it follows, that what is good in any degree, is good in the highest 
 degree. You may correct a servant boy with a switch ; but if you bruise 
 him sorely, you are liable to be indicted if you kill him, you are hanged. 
 A blacksmith corrected his servant with a bar of iron : the boy died, and 
 the blacksmith was executed. (Grey's Case, Kel. 64, 65.) A woman 
 kicked and stamped on the belly of her child she was found guilty of mur- 
 der, (l East, P. C. 261.) Si immoderate sno jure utatur, tune retis hotno- 
 cidii sit. There is, besides, this additional difference in the two cases put 
 by the Chief Justice, that no publication of notices can be so plain, in the 
 case of the guns, as the sight of the glass or the spikes ; for a trespasser 
 may not believe in the notice which he receives, or he may think he shall 
 see the gun, and so avoid it, or that he may have the good luck to avoid it, 
 if he does not see it ; whereas, of the presence of the glass or the spikes he 
 can have no doubt ; and he has no hope of placing his hand in any spot 
 where they are not. In the one case he cuts his fingers upon full and 
 perfect notice, the netice of his own senses ; in the other case, he loses his 
 life after a notice which he may disbelieve, and by an engine which he may 
 hope to escape. 
 
 Mr Justice Bailey observes, in the same case, that it is not an indictable 
 offence to set spring guns : perhaps not. It is not an indictable offence to 
 go about with a loaded pistol, intending to shoot any body who grins at 
 you : but, if you do it, you are hanged : many inchoate acts are innocent, the 
 consummation of which is a capital offence. 
 
 This is not a case where the motto applies of Volenti non fit injuria. 
 The man does not will to be hurt, but he wills to get the game ; and, with 
 that rash confidence natural to many characters, believes he shall avoid the 
 evil and gain the good. On the contrary, it is a case which exactly arranges 
 itself under the maxim, Quando aliquid prohibetur ex directo, prohibetur et 
 per obliquwn. Give what notice he may, the proprietor cannot lawfully 
 shoot a trespasser (who neither runs nor resists) with a loaded pistol ; -he 
 cannot do it ex directo; how then can he do it per obliquum, by arranging 
 on the ground the pistol which commits the murder? 
 
 Mr Justice Best delivers the following opinion. His Lordship concluded 
 as follows : 
 
 2 A
 
 370 SPRING GUNS AND MAN 7 RAPS. 
 
 " This case has been discussed at the bar, as if these engines were exclu- 
 sively resorted to for the protection of game ; but I consider them as law- 
 fully applicable to the protection of every species of property against unlaw- 
 ful trespassers. But if even they might not lawfully be used for the protec- 
 tion of game, I, for one, should be extremely glad to adopt such means, if 
 they were found sufficient for that purpose ; because I think it a great object 
 that gentlemen should have a temptation to reside in the country, amongst 
 their neighbours and tenantry, whose interests must be materially advanced 
 by such a circumstance. The links of society are thereby better preserved, 
 and the mutual advantage and dependence of the higher and lower classes 
 of society, existing between each other, more beneficially maintained. We 
 have seen, in a neighbouring country, the baneful consequences of the non- 
 residence of the landed gentry ; and in an ingenious work, lately published 
 by a foreigner, we learn the fatal effects of a like system on the Continent. 
 By preserving game, gentlemen are tempted to reside in the country ; and, 
 considering that the diversion of the field is the only one of which they can 
 partake on their estates, I am of opinion that, for the purpose I have stated, 
 it is of essential importance that this species of property should be inviolably 
 protected." 
 
 If this speech of Mr Justice Best be correctly reported, it follows, that a 
 man may put his fellow-creatures to death for any infringement of his pro- 
 perty for picking the sloes and blackberries off his hedges for breaking a 
 few dead sticks out of them by night or by day with resistance or without 
 resistance with warning or without warning ; a strange method this of 
 keeping up the links of society, and maintaining the dependence of the 
 lower upon the higher classes. It certainly is of importance that gentlemen 
 should reside on their estates in the country j but not that gentlemen with 
 such opinions as these should reside. The more they are absent from the 
 country, the less strain will there be upon those links to which the learned 
 Judge alludes the more firm that dependence upon which he places so just 
 a value. In the case of Dean -versus Clayton, Bart., the Court of Common 
 Pleas were equally divided upon the lawfulness of killing a dog courting a 
 hare by means of a concealed dog-spear. We confess that we cannot see 
 the least difference between transfixing with a spear, or placing a spear so 
 that it will transfix ; and, therefore, if Vere versus Lord Cawdor and King 
 is good law, the action could have been maintained in Dean versus Clayton ; 
 but the solemn consideration concerning the life of the pointer is highly 
 creditable to all the judges. They none of them say that it is lawful to put 
 a trespassing pointer to death under any circumstances, or that they them- 
 selves would be glad to do it ; they all seem duly impressed with the recol- 
 lection that they are deciding the fate of an animal faithfully ministerial 
 to the pleasures of the upper classes of society ! there is an awful desire to 
 do their duty, and a dread of any rash and intemperate decision. Seriously 
 speaking, we can hardly believe this report of Mr Justice Best's speech to 
 be correct ; yet we take it from a book which guides the practice of nine 
 tenths of all the magistrates of England. Does a Judge a cool, calm, 
 man, in whose hands are the issues of life and death from whom so many 
 miserable trembling human beings await their destiny does he tell us, 
 and tell us in a court of justice, that he places such little value on the life 
 of man, that he himself would plot the destruction of his fellow-creatures 
 for the preservation of a few hares and partridges ? " Nothing which falls 
 from me" (says Mr Justice Bailey) "shall have a tendency to encourage 
 the practice." "I consider them" (says Mr Justice Best) "as lawfully 
 applicable to the protection of every species of property ; but even if they
 
 SPRING GUNS AND MAN TRAPS. 371 
 
 might Hot lawfully be used for the protection of game, I for one should bi 
 extremely glad to adopt them, if they were found sufficient for that purpose." 
 Can any man doubt to which of these two magistrates he would rather 
 intrust a decision on his life, his liberty, and his possessions ? We should 
 be very sorry to misrepresent Mr Justice Best, and will give to his disavowal 
 of such sentiments, if he do disavow them, all the publicity in our power ; 
 but we have cited his very words conscientiously and correctly, as they are 
 given in the Law Report. We have no doubt he meant to do his duty ; 
 we blame not his motives, but his feelings, and his reasoning. 
 
 Let it be observed that, in the whole of this case, we have put every 
 circumstance in favour of the murderer. We have supposed it lo be in 
 the night-time ; but a man may be shot in the day * by a spring gun. We 
 have supposed the deceased to be a poacher ; but he may be a very 
 innocent man, who has missed his way an unfortunate botanist, or a lover. 
 We have supposed notice ; but it is a very possible event that the dead 
 man may have been utterly ignorant of the notice. This instrument, so 
 highly approved of by Mr Justice Best this knitter together of the different 
 orders of society is levelled promiscuously against the guilty or the 
 innocent, the ignorant and the informed. No man who sets such an 
 infernal machine, believes that it can reason or discriminate ; it is made to 
 murder all alike, and it does murder r.ll alike. 
 
 Blackstone says, that the law of England, like that of every other well- 
 rernlated community, is tender of the public peace, and careful of the lives 
 of the subjects ; " that it will not s;-.:Tcr with impunity any crime to be pre- 
 vented by death, unless the same, if co; . :tld a/so be punished by 
 death" (Commentaries, vol. iv. p. 182.) "The law sets so high a value 
 upon the life of a man, that it always intends some misbehaviour in the 
 person who takes it away, unless by the command, or express permission of 
 the law." " And as to the necessity which excuses a man who kills another 
 se defendendo, Lord Bacon calls even that necessitas culpabilis." (Commen- 
 taries, vol. iv. p. 187.) So far this Luminary of the law. But the ve;y 
 amusements of the rich are, in the estimation of Mr Justice Best, of so great 
 importance, that the poor are to be exposed to sudden death who interfere 
 with them. There are other persons of the same opinion with this 
 trate respecting the pleasures of the rich. In the last Session of Parliament 
 a bill was passed, entitled " An Act for the summary Punishment, in cer- 
 tain Cases, of Persons wilfully or maliciously damaging, or committing 
 Trespasses on public or private Property." Anno primo (a bad specimen 
 of what is to happen) Georgii IV. Regis, cap. 56. In this act it is pro- 
 vided, that "if any person shall wilfully, or maliciously, commit any damage, 
 injury, or spoil, upon any building, fence, hedge, gate, stile, guidepost, 
 milestone, tree, wood, underwood, orchard, garden, nursery-ground, crops, 
 vegetables, plants, land, or other matter or thing growing or being therein, 
 or to or upon real or personal property of any nature or kind soever, he may 
 be immediately seized by any body, without a warrant, taken before a 
 magistrate, and fined (according to the mischief he has done) to the extent 
 f S 5 or in default of payment, may be committed to the gaol for three 
 months." And at the end comes a clause, exempting from the operation of 
 this act all mischief done in hunting, and by shooters who are qualified. This 
 is surely the most impudent piece of legislation that ever crept into the 
 statute-book ; and, coupled with Mr Justice Best's declaration, constitutes 
 the following affectionate relation, between the different orders of society. 
 
 Large damages have been given for wounds inflicted by spring guns set in a garden 
 in the day-time, where the party wounded had no notice.
 
 372 SPRING GUiVS AND MAN TRAPS. 
 
 Says the higher link to the lower, "If you meddle with my game, I V.5H 
 immediately murder you ; if you commit the slightest injury upon my real 
 or personal property, I will take you before a magistrate, and fine you five 
 pounds. I am in Parliament, and you are not ; and I have just brought in 
 an act of Parliament for that puqjose. But so important is it to you that 
 my pleasures should not be interrupted, that I have exempted myself and 
 friends from the operation of this act ; and we claim the right (without 
 allowing you any such summary remedy) of riding over your fences, hedges, 
 gates, stiles, guide-posts, milestones, woods, underwoods, orchards, gardens, 
 nursery-grounds, crops, vegetables, plants, lands, or other matters or things 
 growing or being thereupon including your children and yourselves, if you 
 do not get out of the way." Is there, upon earth, such a mockery of justice 
 as an act of Parliament, pretending to protect property, sending a poor 
 hedge-breaker to gaol, and specially exempting from its operation the 
 accusing and the judging squire, who, at the tail of the hounds, have that 
 morning, perhaps, ruined as much wheat and seeds as would purchase fuel 
 a whole year for a whole village ? 
 
 It cannot be urged, in extenuation of such a murder as we have described, 
 that the artificer of death had no particular malice against the deceased ; 
 that his object was general, and his indignation levelled against offenders 
 in the aggregate. Every body knows that there is a malice by implication 
 of law. 
 
 " In general, any formal design of doing mischief may be called malice ; 
 and therefore, not such killing only as proceeds from premeditated hatred 
 and revenge against the person killed, but also, in many other cases, such 
 as is accompanied with those circumstances that show the heart to be per- 
 versely wicked, is adjudged to be of malice prepense." 2 I-Lnv. c. 31. 
 
 "For, where the law makes use of the term, malice aforethought, as 
 descriptive of the crime of murder, it is not to be understood in that narrow 
 restrained sense in which the modern use of the word malice is apt to lead 
 one, a principle of malevolence to particulars ; for the law, by the term 
 malice, malitia, in this instance, meaneth that the fact hath been attended 
 with such circumstances as are the ordinary symptoms of a wicked heart 
 regardless of social duty, and fatally bent upon mischief." Fast. 256, 257. 
 
 Ferocity is the natural weapon of the common people. If gentlemen of 
 education and property contend with them at this sort of warfare, they will 
 probably be defeated in the end. If spring guns are generally set if the 
 common people are murdered by them, and the Legislature does not inter- 
 fere, the posts of gamekeeper and lord of the manor will soon be posts of 
 honour and danger. The greatest curse under heaven (witness Ireland) is 
 a peasantry demoralised by the barbarity and injustice of their rulers. 
 
 It is expected by some persons, that the severe operation of these engines 
 will put an end to the trade of a poacher. This has always been predicated 
 of every fresh operation of severity, that it was to put an end to poaching. 
 But if this argument is good for one thing, it is good for another. Let the 
 first pickpocket who is taken be hung alive by the ribs, and lot him be a 
 fortnight in wasting to death. Let us seize a little grammar boy, who is 
 robbing orchards, tie his arms and legs, throw over him a delicate puff- 
 paste, and bake him in a bunpan in an oven. If poaching can be extirpated 
 by intensity of punishment, why not all other crimes ? If racks and gibbets 
 and tenterhooks are the best method of bringing back the golden age, why 
 do we refrain from so easy a receipt for abolishing every species of wicked- 
 ness ? The best way of answering a bad argument is not to stop it, but to 
 let it go on in its course till it leaps over the boundaries of common sense. 
 There is a little book called Btccaria on Crimes and Punishments, whicu
 
 STATE OF PRISONS. 373 
 
 \ve strongly recommend to the attention of Mr Justice Best. He who has 
 not read it, is neither fit to make laws, nor to administer them when made. 
 
 As to the idea of abolishing poaching altogether, we will believe that 
 poaching is abolished when it is found impossible to buy game ; or when 
 they have risen so greatly in price, that none but people of fortune can buy 
 them. But we are convinced this never can and never will happen. All 
 the traps and guns in the world will never prevent the wealth of the mer- 
 chant and manufacturer from commanding the game of the landed gentle- 
 man. You may, in the pursuit of this visionary purpose, render the common 
 people savage, ferocious, and vindictive ; you may disgrace your laws, by 
 enormous punishments, and the national character by these new secret 
 assassinations ; but you will never separate the wealthy glutton from his 
 pheasant. The best way is, to take what you want, and to sell the rest 
 fairly and openly. This is the real spring gun and steel trap which will 
 annihilate, not the unlawful trader, but the unlawful trade. 
 
 There is a sort of horror in thinking of a whole land filled with lurking 
 engines of death machinations against human life under every green tree 
 traps and guns in every dusky dell and bosky bourn the ferce naturii, 
 the lords of manors eyeing their peasantry as so many butts and marks, and 
 panting to hear the click of the trap and to see the flash of the gun. How 
 any human being, educated in liberal knowledge and Christian feeling, can 
 doom to certain destruction a poor wretch, tempted by the sight of animals 
 that naturally appear to him to belong to one person as well as another, we 
 are at a loss to conceive. We cannot imagine how he could live in the 
 same village, and see the widow and orphans of the man whose blood he 
 had shed for such a trifle. We consider a person who could do this to be 
 deficient in the very elements of morals to want that sacred regard to 
 human life which is one of the corner stones of civil society. If he sacrifice 
 the life of man for his mere pleasures, he would do so, if he dared, for the 
 lowest and least of his passions. He may be defended, perhaps, by the 
 abominable injustice of the Game Laws though we think and hope he is 
 not. But there rests upon his head, and there is marked in his account, 
 the deep and indelible sin of blood-guiltiness. 
 
 PRISONS. (E. REVIEW, 1821.) 
 
 \. Thoughts on the Criminal Prisons of this Country, occasioned by the BUI now in 
 the House of Commons, for Consolidating and Amending the Laws relating to 
 Prisons: with some Remarks on the Practice of looking to the Task-Master of the 
 Prison rather than to the Chaplain for the Reformation of Offenders: and pf 
 purchasing- the ',l'ork of those whom tne Law has condemned to hard Labour as a 
 Punishment, by allowing them to spend a Portion of their Earnings during their 
 Imprisonment. By GEORGE HOLFORD, Esq., M. P. Rivington. 1821. . 
 
 . Gurney on Prisons, Constable and Co. 1819. 
 
 3. Report of Society for bettering the Condition of Prisons. Bensley. i8ao. 
 
 THERE are, in every county in England, large public schools maintained at 
 the expense of the county, for the encouragement of profligacy and vice, 
 and for providing a proper succession of housebreakers, profligates, and 
 thieves. They are schools, too, conducted without the smallest degree of 
 partiality or favour ; there being no man (however mean his birth, or 
 obscure his situation) who may not easily procure admission to them. The 
 moment any young person evinces the slightest propensity for these pur- 
 suits, lie is provided with food, clothing, and lodging, and put to his studies
 
 374 STA TE OF PRISONS. 
 
 under the most accomplished thieves and cut-throats the county can supply. 
 There is not, to be sure, a formal arrangement of lectures, after the manner 
 of our Universities ; but the petty larcenous stripling, being left destitute 
 of even 7 species of employment, and locked up with accomplished villains 
 as idle as himself, listens to their pleasant narrative of successful crimes, 
 and pants for the hour of freedom, that he may begin the same bold and 
 interesting career. 
 
 This is a perfectly true picture of the prison establishments of many 
 counties in England, and was so, till very lately, of almost all ; and the 
 effects so completely answered the design, that, in the year 1818, there 
 were committed to the jails of the United Kingdom more than one hundred 
 and seven thousand persons ! * a number supposed to be greater than that 
 of all the commitments in the other kingdoms of Europe put together. 
 
 The bodily treatment of prisoners has been greatly improved since the 
 time of Howard. There is still, however, much to do ; and the attention 
 of good and humane people has been lately called to their state of moral 
 discipline. 
 
 It is inconceivable to what a spirit of party this has given birth ; all the 
 fat and sleek people the enjoyers the mumpsimus, and "well as we are" 
 people, are perfectly outrageous at being compelled to do their duty, and 
 to sacrifice time and money to the lower orders of mankind. Their first 
 resource was, to deny all the facts which were brought forward for the 
 purposes of amendment ; and the alderman's sarcasm of the Turkey carpet 
 in jails was bandied from one hard-hearted and fat-witted gentleman to 
 another : but the advocates of prison-improvement are men in earnest not 
 playing at religion, but of deep feeling, and of indefatigable industry in 
 charitable pursuits. Mr Buxton went in company with men of the most 
 irreproachable veracity ; and found in the heart of the metropolis, and in a 
 prison of which the very Turkey carpet aldennan was an official visitor, 
 scenes of horror, filth, and cruelty, which would have disgraced even the 
 interior of a slave-ship. 
 
 This dislike of innovation proceeds sometimes from the disgust excited 
 by false humanity, canting hypocrisy, and silly enthusiasm. It proceeds 
 also from a stupid and indiscriminate horror of change, whether of evil for 
 good, or good for evil. There is also much party spirit in these matters. A 
 good deal of these humane projects and institutions originate from Dis- 
 senters. The plunderers of the public, the jobbers, and those who sell 
 themselves to some great man, who sells himself to a greater, all scent, 
 from afar, the .danger of political change, are sensible that the correction 
 of one abuse may lead to that of another feel uneasy at any visible opera- 
 tion of public spirit and justice hate and tremble at a man who exposes 
 and rectifies abuses from a sense of duty and think, if such things are suf- 
 fered to be, that their candle-ends and cheese-parings are no longer safe : 
 and these sagacious persons, it must be said for them, are not very wrong 
 in this feeling. Providence, which has denied to them all that is great and 
 good, has given them a fine tact for the preservation of their plunder : their 
 real enemy is the spirit of inquiry the dislike of wrong the love of right 
 and the courage and diligence which are the concomitants of these virtues. 
 When once this spirit is up, it may be as well directed to one abuse as an- 
 other. To say you must not torture a prisoner with bad air and bad food, 
 and to say you must not tax me without my consent, or that of my repre- 
 sentative, are both emanations of the same principle, occurring to the same 
 sort of understanding congenial to the same disposition, published, pro- 
 
 * Report of Prison Society, xiv.
 
 STATE OF PRISONS. 
 
 375 
 
 tected, and enforced by the same qualities. This it is that really excites the 
 horror against Mrs Fry, Mr Gurney, Mr Bennet, and Mr Buxton. Alarmists 
 such as we have described have no particular wish that prisons should be 
 dirty, jailers cruel, or prisoners wretched ; they care little about such mat- 
 ters either way ; but all their malice and meanness is called up into action 
 when they see secrets brought to light, and abuses giving way before the 
 diffusion of intelligence, and the aroused feelings of justice and compassion. 
 As for us, we have neither love of change, nor lear of it ; but a love of what 
 is just and wise, as far as we are able to find it out. In this spirit we shall 
 offer a few observations upon prisons, and upon the publications before us. 
 
 The new law should keep up the distinction between Jails and Houses of 
 Correction. One of each should exist hi every county, either at a distance 
 from each other, or in such a state of juxtaposition that they might be under 
 the same governor. To the jail should be committed all persons accused of 
 capital offences, whose trials would come on at the Assizes ; to the house of 
 correction, all offenders whose cases would be cognizable at the Quarter- 
 sessions. Sentence of imprisonment in th2 house of correction, after trial, 
 should carry with it hard labour ; sentence of imprisonment in the jail, after 
 trial, should imply an exemption from compulsory labour. There should be 
 no compulsory labour in jails only in houses of correction. In using the 
 terms Jail and House of Correction, \\Q should always attend to these dis- 
 tinctions. Prisoners for trial should not only not be compelled to labour, 
 but they should have every indulgence shown to them compatible with 
 safety. No chains much better diet than they commonly have all pos- 
 sible access to their friends and relations and means of earning money if 
 they choose it. The broad and obvious distinction between prisoners before 
 and after trial should constantly be attended to ; to violate it is gross tyranny 
 and cruelty. 
 
 The jails for men and women should be so far separated, that nothing 
 could be seen or heard from one to the other. The men should be divided 
 into two classes : 1st, those who are not yet tried ; zdly, those who are 
 tried and convicted. The first class should be divided into those who arc 
 accused as misdemeanants and as felons ; and each of these into first mis- 
 demeanants and second misdemeanants, men of better and worse character ; 
 and the same with felons. The second class should be divided into, 1st, 
 persons condemned to death ; zdly, persons condemned for transportation ; 
 3<#V, first class confined, or men of the best character under sentence of con- 
 finement ; QtAfy, second confined, or men of worse character under sentence 
 of confinement. To these are to be added separate places for king's evi- 
 dence, boys, lunatics, and places for the first reception of prisoners, before 
 they can be examined and classed : a chapel, hospital, yards, and work- 
 shops for such as are willing to work. 
 
 The classifications in jails will then be as follows : 
 
 Men before Trial. Men after Trial. 
 
 1st Misdemeanants. Sentenced to death. 
 
 2d Ditto. Ditto transportation. 
 
 1st Felons. 1st Confined. 
 
 3d Ditto. 2d Confined. 
 
 Other Divisions in a Jail, 
 King's Evidence. 
 Criminal Lunatics. 
 Boys. 
 
 Prisoners on their first reception. 
 And the same divisions for Women.
 
 376 STATE OF PRISONS. 
 
 But there is a division still more important than any of these ; and that 
 is a division into much smaller numbers than are gathered together in 
 prisons : 40, 50, and even 70 and 80 felons, are often placed together in 
 one yard, and live together for months previous to their trial. Any classi- 
 fication of offences, while there is such a multitude living together of one 
 class, is perfectly nugatory and ridiculous ; no character can escape from 
 corruption and extreme vice in such a school. The law ought to be per- 
 emptory against the confinement of more than fifteen persons together of 
 the same class. Unless some measure of this kind is resorted to, all refor- 
 mation in prisons is impossible.* 
 
 A very great, and a very neglected object in prisons, is Diet. There 
 should be, in every jail and house of correction, four sorts of diet : 1st, 
 Bread and Water ; 2dfy, Common prison diet, to be settled by the magis- 
 trates ; ^dly, Best prison diet, to be settled by ditto ; 4////J', Free diet, from 
 which spirituous liquors altogether, and fennented liquors in excess, are 
 excluded. All prisoners before trial should be allowed best prison diet, 
 and be upon free diet, if they could afford it. Every sentence for imprison- 
 ment should expressly mention to which diet the prisoner is confined ; and 
 no other diet should be, on any account, allowed to such prisoner after his 
 sentence. Nothing can be so preposterous, and criminally careless, as the 
 way in which persons confined upon sentence are suffered to live in prisons. 
 Misdemeanants, who have money in their pockets, may be seen in many of 
 our prisons with fish, buttered veal, rump steaks, and every kind of luxury ; 
 and as the practice prevails of allowing them to purchase a pint of ale each; 
 the rich prisoner purchases many pints of ale in the name of his poorc.* 
 brethren, and drinks them himself. A jail should be a place of punishment, 
 from which men recoil with horror a place of real suffering painful to tho 
 memory, terrible to the imagination ; but if men can live idly, and live 
 luxuriously, in a clean, well-aired, well-warmed, spacious habitation, is it 
 any wonder that they set the law at defiance, and brave that magistrate who 
 restores them to their former luxury and ease ? There arc a set of men well 
 known to jailers, called Family-men, who are constantly returning to jail, 
 and who may be said to spend the greater part of their life there, up to 
 the time when they are hanged. 
 
 Minutes of Evidence taken before Select Committee on Gaols. 
 
 "Mr WILLIAM BEEBY, Keeper of the New Clerkenicell Prison. Have 
 you many prisoners that return to you on re-commitment ? A vast number ; 
 some of them are frequently discharged in the morning, and I have them 
 back again in the evening ; or they have been discharged in the evening, 
 and I have had them back again in the morning." Evidence before the 
 Committee of the House of Commons in 1819, p. 278. 
 
 "FRANCIS CONST, Esq., Chairman of the Middlesex Quarter-sessions. 
 Has that opinion been confirmed by any conduct you have observed in 
 prisoners that have come before you for trial? I only judge from the 
 opposite thing, that, going into a place where they can be idle, and well 
 protected from any inconveniences of the weather, and other things that 
 poverty is open to, they are not amended at all ; they laugh at it frequently, 
 and desire to go to the House of Correction. Once or twice, in the early 
 part of the winter, upon sending a prisoner for two months, he has asked 
 whether he could not stay longer, or words to that effect. It is an insulting 
 way of saying they like it." Evidence before the Committee of the House of 
 Commons in 1819, p. 285. 
 
 * We should much prefer solitary imprisonment ; but are at presfnt speaking of the 
 regulations in jails where that system is excluded.
 
 STATE OF PRISONS. 
 
 377 
 
 The fact is, that a thief is a very dainty gentleman. Malt parta citodila~ 
 bnntur. He does not rob to lead a life of mortification and self-denial. 
 The difficulty of controlling his appetites, in all probability, first led him to 
 expenses, which made him a thief to support them. Having lost character, 
 and become desperate, he orders crab and lobster and veal cutlets at a 
 public house, while a poor labourer is refreshing himself with bread and 
 cheese. The most vulnerable part of a thief is his belly ; and there is no- 
 thing he feels more bitterly in confinement than a long course of water-gruel 
 and flour-puddings. It is a mere mockery of punishment to say, that sucli 
 a man shall spend his money in luxurious viands, and sit down to dinnei 
 witli fetters on his feet, and fried pork in his stomach. 
 
 Restriction to diet in prisons is still more necessary, when it is remem* 
 bered that it is impossible to avoid making a prison, in some respects, more 
 eligible than the home of a culprit. It is almost always more spacious, 
 cleaner, better ventilated, better warmed. All these advantages are in- 
 evitable on the side of the prison. The means, therefore, that remain of 
 making a prison a disagreeable place, are not to be neglected ; and of these, 
 none are more powerful than the regulation of diet. If this be neglected, 
 the meaning of sentencing a man to prison will be this and it had better 
 be put in these words 
 
 " Prisoner at the Bar, you are fairly convicted by a jury of your country, 
 of having feloniously stolen two pigs, the property of Stephen Muck, farmer. 
 The Court having taken into consideration the frequency and enormity of 
 this offence, and the necessity of restraining it with the utmost severity of 
 punishment, do order and adjudge that you be confined for six months in a 
 house larger, better, better aired, and warmer than your own, in company 
 with 20 or 30 young persons in as good health and spirits as yourself. You 
 need do no work ; and you may have any thing for breakfast, dinner, and 
 supper, you can buy. In passing this sentence, the Court hope that your 
 example will be a warning to others ; and that evil-disposed persons will 
 perceive, from your suffering, that the laws of their country are not to be 
 broken with impunity." 
 
 As the diet, according to our plan, is always to be a part of the sentence, 
 a Judge will, of course, consider the nature of the offence for which the 
 prisoner is committed, as well as the quality of the prisoner : and we have 
 before stated, that all prisoners, before trial, should be upon the best prison 
 diet, and unrestricted as to what they could purchase, always avoiding in- 
 temperance. 
 
 These gradations of diet being fixed in all prisons, and these definitions 
 of Tail and House of Correction being adhered to, the punishment of im- 
 prisonment may be apportioned with the greatest nicety either by the 
 statute, or at the discretion of the Judge, if the law chooses to give him 
 that discretion. There will be 
 
 Imprisonment for different degrees of time. 
 Imprisonment solitary, or in company, or in darkness. 
 In jails without labour. 
 In houses of correction with labour. 
 Imprisonment with diet on bread and water. 
 Imprisonment with common prison diet. 
 Imprisonment with best prison diet. 
 Imprisonment with free diet. 
 
 Every sentence of the Judge should state diet, as well as light or darkness, 
 time, place, solitude, society, labour or ease ; and we are strongly of opinion, 
 lhat the punishment in prisons should be sharp and short. We would, in
 
 378 STATE OF PRISONS. 
 
 most cases, give as much of solitary confinement as would not injure men's 
 minds, and as much of bread and water diet as would not injure their 
 bodies. A return to prison should be contemplated with horror horror, 
 not excited by the ancient filth, disease, and extortion of jails ; but by 
 cairn, well-regulated, well-watched austerity by the gloom and sadness 
 wisely and intentionally thrown over such an abode. Six weeks of such 
 sort of imprisonment would be much more efficacious than as many months 
 of jolly company and veal cutlets. 
 
 It appears, by The Times newspaper of the 24th of June, 1821, that two 
 persons, a man and his wife, were committed at the Surrey Sessions for three 
 years. Tf this county jail is bad, to three years of idleness and good living 
 if it is a manufacturing jail, to three years of regular labour, moderate 
 living, and accumulated gains. They are committed principally for a 
 warning to others, partly for their own good. Would not these ends have 
 been much more effectually answered, if they had been committed, for nine 
 months, to solitary cells upon bread and water ; the first and last month in 
 dark cells ? If this is too severe, then lessen the duration still more, and 
 give them more light days, and fewer dark ones ; but we are convinced the 
 whole good sought may be better obtained in much shorter periods than are 
 now resorted to. 
 
 For the purpose of making jails disagreeable, the prisoners should remain 
 perfectly alone all night, if it is not thought proper to render their confine- 
 ment entirely solitary during the whole period of their imprisonment. 
 Prisoners dislike this and therefore it should be done ; it would make their 
 residence in jails more disagreeable, and render them unwilling to return 
 there. At present, eight or ten women sleep in a room with a good fire, 
 pass the night in sound sleep or pleasant conversation ; and this is called 
 confinement in a prison. A prison is a place where men, after trial and 
 sentence, should be made unhappy by public lawful enactments, not so 
 tevere as to injure the soundness of mind or body. If this be not done, 
 prisons are a mere invitation to the lower classes to wade, through felony 
 and larceny, to better accommodations than they can procure at home. 
 And here, as it appears to us, is the mistake of the many excellent men who 
 busy themselves (and wisely and humanely busy themselves) about prisons. 
 Their first object seems to be the reformation of the prisoners, not the 
 reformation of the public ; whereas the first object should be, the discojnfort 
 and discontent of their prisoners ; that they should become a warning, feel 
 unhappy, and resolve never so to act again as to put themselves in the same 
 predicament ; and then as much reformation as is compatible with this, the 
 better. If a man say to himself, "This prison is a comfortable place," 
 while he says to the chaplain or the visitor that he will come there no more, 
 we confess we have no great confidence in his public declaration ; but if he 
 say, " This is a place of misery and sorrow, you shall not catch me here 
 again," there is much reason to believe he will be as good as his word ; and 
 he then becomes (which is of much more consequence than his own refor- 
 mation) a warning to others. Hence it is we object to that spectacle of 
 order and decorum carpenters in one shop, tailors in another, weavers hi 
 a third, sitting down to a meal by ring of bell, and receiving a regular 
 portion of their earnings. We are afraid it is better than real life oil the 
 other side of the wall, or so very little worse that nobody will have any fear 
 to encounter it. In Bury jail, which is considered as a pattern jail, the 
 prisoners under a sentence of confinement are allowed to spend their weekly 
 earnings (two, three, and four shillings per week) in fish, tobacco, and vege- 
 tables ; so states the jailer in his examination before the House of Commons 
 and we have no doubt it is well meant ; but is it punishment ? We were
 
 STATE OF PRISONS. 379 
 
 most struck, in reading the evidence of the Jail Committee before the House 
 of Commons, with the opinions of the jailer of the Devizes jail, and with 
 the practice ofrthe Magistrates who superintend it.* 
 
 " Mr T. BRUTTON, Governor of the Gaol at Devizes. Does this confine- 
 ment in solitude make prisoners more averse to return to prison ? I think 
 it does. Does it make a strong impression upon them ? I have no doubt 
 of it. Does it make them more obedient and orderly while in gaol? I 
 have no doubt it does. Do you consider it the most effectual punishment 
 you can make use of? I do. Do you think it has a greater effect upon 
 the minds of prisoners than any apprehensions of personal punishment ? 
 I have no doubt of it. Have you any dark cells for the punishment ot 
 refractory prisoners? I have. Do you find it necessary occasionally to use 
 them ? Very seldom. Have you, in any instance, been obliged to use the 
 dark cell, in the case of the same prisoner, twice ? Only on one occasion, 
 I think. What length of time is it necessary to confine a refractory prisoner 
 to bring him to his senses ? Less than one day. Do you think it essential, 
 for the purpose of keeping up the discipline of the prison, that you should 
 have it in your power to have recourse to the punishment, of dark cells ? I 
 do ; I consider punishment in a dark cell for one day has a greater effect 
 upon a prisoner than to keep him on bread and water for a month." 
 Evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1819, p. 359. 
 
 The evidence of the Governor of Gloucester jail is to the same effect. 
 
 " Mr THOMAS CUNNINGHAM, Keeper of Glmtc ester Gaol. Do you attri- 
 bute the want of those certificates entirely to the neglect of enforcing the 
 means of solitary confinement ? I do most certainly. Sometimes, where a 
 certificate has not been granted, and a prisoner has brought a certificate of 
 good behaviour for one year, Sir George and the Committee ordered one 
 pound or a guinea from the charity. Does that arise from your apprehen- 
 sion that the prisoners have not been equally reformed, or only from the 
 want of the means of ascertaining such reformation? It is for want of not 
 knowing ; and we cannot ascertain it, from their working in numbers. 
 They may be reformed ? Yes : but we have not the means of ascertaining 
 it. There is one thing I do which is not provided by the rules, and which 
 is the only thing in which I deviate from the rules. When a man is com- 
 mitted for a month, I never give him any work ; he sits in solitude, and 
 walks in the yard by himself for air ; he has no other food but his bread 
 and water, except twice a week a pint of peas soup. I never knew an 
 instance of a man coming in a second time, who had been committed for a 
 month. I have done that for these seventeen or eighteen years. What has 
 been the result? They dread so much coming in again. If a man is com- 
 mitted for six weeks, we give him work. Do you apprehend that solitary 
 confinement for a month, without employment, is the most beneficial means 
 of working reform ? I conceive it is. Can it operate as the means of 
 reform, any more than it operates as a system of punishment? It is only 
 for small offences they commit for a month. Would not the same effect be 
 produced by corporal punishment? Corporal punishment may be abso- 
 lutely necessary sometimes : but I do not think corporal punishment would 
 reform them so much as solitary confinement. Would not severe corporal 
 punishment have the same effect? No, k would harden them more than 
 any thing else. Do you think benefit is derived from the opportunity of 
 reflection afforded by solitary confinement ? Yes. And very low diet also? 
 
 * The Winchester and Devizes jai!s seem to us to be conducted upon better principles 
 than any other, though even these are by no means what jails should be.
 
 380 STA TE OF PRISONS. 
 
 Yes." Evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1819, 
 P. 391- 
 
 We must quote also the evidence of the Governor of Horsley jaiL 
 
 " Mr WILLIAM STOKES, Governor of the House of Correction at Horsley. 
 Do you observe any difference in the conduct of prisoners who are em- 
 ployed, and those who have no employment ? Yes, a good deal ; I look 
 upon it, from what judgment I can form, and I have been a long while in 
 it, that to take a prisoner and discipline him according to the rules as the 
 law allows, and if he have no work, that that man goes through more pun- 
 ishment in one month than a man who is employed, and receives a portion 
 of his labour three months ; but still I should like to have employment, 
 because a great number of times I took men away, who had been in the 
 habit of earning sixpence a week to buy a loaf, and put them in solitary 
 confinement ; and the punishment is a great deal more without work. 
 Which of the prisoners, those that have been employed, or those unem- 
 ployed, do you think would go out of the prison the better men ? I think, 
 that let me have a prisoner, and I never treat any one with severity, any 
 further than that they should be obedient, and to let them see that I will do 
 my duty, I have reason to believe, that, if a prisoner is committed under 
 my care, or any other man's care, to a house of correction, and he has to go 
 under the discipline of the law, if he is in for the value of a month or six 
 weeks, that man is in a great deal better state than though he stays for six 
 months ; he gets hardened by being in so long, from one month to another. 
 You are speaking now of solitude without labour ; do you think he would 
 go out better, if he had been employed during the month you speak of? 
 No, nor half; because I never task those people, in order that they should 
 not say I force them to do more than they are able, that they should not 
 slight it ; for if they perform any thing in the bounds of reason, I never 
 find fault with them : the prisoner who is employed, his time passes smooth 
 and comfortable, and he has a proportion of his earnings, and he can buy 
 additional diet ; but if he has no labour, and kept under the discipline of 
 the prison, it is a tight piece of punishment to go through. Which of the 
 two should you think most likely to return immediately to habits of labour 
 on their own account ? The dispositions of all men are not alike ; but my 
 opinion is this, if they are kept and disciplined according to the rules of the 
 prison, and have no labour, that one month will do more than six ; I am 
 certain, that a man who is kept there without labour once, will not be very 
 ready to come there again." Evidence before the Committee of the House of 
 Commons, pp. 398, 399. 
 
 Mr Guniey and Mr Buxton both lay a great stress upon the quiet and 
 content of prisoners, upon their subordination and the absence of all plans 
 of escape ; but, where the happiness of prisoners is so much consulted, we 
 should be much more apprehensive of a conspiracy to break into, than to 
 break out of, prison. The mob outside may, indeed, envy the wicked ones 
 within ; but the felon who has left, perhaps, a scolding wife, a battered 
 cottage, and six starving children, has no disposition to escape from regu- 
 larity, sufficient food, employment which saves him money, warmth, ven- 
 tilation, cleanliness, and civil treatment. These symptoms, upon which 
 these respectable and excellent men lay so much stress, are by no means 
 proofs to us that prisons are placed upon the best possible footing. 
 
 The Governor of Bury jail, as well as Mr Gurney, insist much upon the 
 few prisoners who return to the jail a second time, the manufacturing skill 
 which they acauirc there, and the complete reformation of manners, for
 
 STATE OF PRISONS. 3 8 t 
 
 which the prisoner has afterwards thanked him the governor. But this is 
 not the real criterion of the excellence of a jail, nor the principal reason why 
 jails were instituted. The great point is, not the average recurrence of the 
 same prisoners ; but the paucity or frequency of commitments, upon the 
 whole. You may make a jail such an admirable place of education, that it 
 may cease to be infamous to go there. Mr Holford tells us (and a very 
 curious anecdote it is), that parents actually accuse their children falsely of 
 crimes, in order to get them into the Philanthropise Charity ! and that it is 
 consequently a rule with the Governors of that Charity never to receive :x 
 child upon the accusation of the parents alone. But it is quite obvious what 
 the next step will be, if the parents cannot get their children in by fibbing. 
 They will take good care that the child is really qualified for the Philan- 
 thropic, by impelling him to those crimes which are the passport to so good 
 an education. 
 
 " If, on the contrary, the offender is to be punished simply by being 
 placed in a prison, where he is to be well lodged, well clothed, and well fed, 
 to be instructed in reading and writing, to receive a moral and religious 
 education, and to be brought up to a trade ; and if this prison is to be 
 within the reach of the parents, so that they may occasionally visit theif 
 child, and have 'the satisfaction of knowing, from time to time, that all these 
 advantages are conferred upon him, and that he is exposed to no hardships, 
 although the confinement and the discipline of the prison may be irksome 
 to the boy ; yet the parents may be apt to congratulate themselves on hav- 
 ing got him off their hands into so good a berth, and may be considered 
 by other parents as having drawn a prize in the lottery of human life by 
 their son's conviction. This reasoning is not theoretical, but is founded in 
 some degree upon experience. Those who have been in the habit of attend- 
 ing the committee of the Philanthropic Society know, that parents have 
 often accused their children of crimes falsely, or have exaggerated their 
 real offences, for the sake of inducing that Society to take them ; and so 
 frequent has. been this practice, that it is a rule with those who manage that 
 institution, never to receive an object upon the representation of its parents, 
 unless supported by other strong testimony." Holford, pp. 44, 45. 
 
 It is quite obvious that, if men were to appear again, six months after 
 they were hanged, handsomer, richer, and more plump than before execu- 
 tion, the gallows would cease to be an object of terror. But here are men 
 who come out of jail, and say, "Look at us we can read and write, we 
 can make baskets and shoes, and we went in ignorant of every thing : and 
 we have learnt to do without strong liquors, and have no longer any 
 objection to work ; and we did work in the jail, and have saved money, 
 and here it is." What is there of terror and detriment in all this? and how 
 arc crimes to be lessened if they are thus rewarded? Of schools there can- 
 not be too many. Penitentiaries, in the hands of wise men, may be ren- 
 dered excellent institutions ; but a prison must be a prison a place of 
 sorrow and wailing ; which should be entered with horror, and quitted with 
 earnest resolution never to return to such misery ; with that deep impres- 
 sion, in short, of the evil, which breaks out into perpetual warning and 
 exhortation to others. This great point effected, all other reformation must 
 do the greatest good. 
 
 There are some very sensible observations upon this point in Mr Holford's 
 book, who upon the whole has, we think, best treated the subject of prisons, 
 and best understands them. 
 
 " In former times, men were deterred from pursuing the road that led to
 
 382 STATE OF PRISONS. 
 
 a prison, by the apprehension of encountering there disease and hunger, of 
 being loaded with heavy irons, and of remaining without clothes to cover 
 them, or a bed to lie on : we have done no more than what justice required 
 in relieving the inmates of a prison from these hardships ; but there is no 
 reason that they should be freed from the fear of all other sufferings and 
 privations. And I hope that those whose duty it is to take up the con- 
 sideration of these subjects will see, that in Penitentiaries, offenders should 
 be subjected to separate confinement, accompanied by such work as may be 
 found consistent with that system of imprisonment ; that in Gaols or Houses 
 of Correction, they should perform that kind of labour which the law has 
 enjoined ; and that, in prisons of both descriptions, instead of being allowed 
 to cater for themselves, they should be sustained by such food as the rules 
 and regulations of the establishment should have provided for them ; in 
 short, that prisons should be considered as places of punishment, and not 
 as scenes of cheerful industry, where a compromise must be made with the 
 prisoner's appetites to make him do the common work of a journeyman or 
 manufacturer, and the labours of the spinning-wheel and the loom must be 
 alleviated by indulgence." * 
 
 This is good sound sense ; and it is a pity that it is preceded by the usual 
 nonsense about " the tide of blasphemy and sedition." If Mr Holford is an 
 observer of tides and currents, whence comes it that he observes only those 
 which set one way? Whence comes it that he says nothing of the tides cf 
 canting and hypocrisy, which are flowing with such rapidity? of abject 
 political baseness and sycophancy of the disposition, so prevalent among 
 Englishmen, to sell their conscience and their country to the Marquis of 
 Londonderry for a living for the second son or a silk gown for the nephew 
 or for a frigate for my brother the captain ? How comes our loyal car- 
 eerist to forget all these sorts of tides ? 
 
 There is a great confusion, as the law now stands, in the government of 
 
 * " That I am guilty of no exaggeration in thus describing a prison conducted upon 
 the principles now coming into fashion, will be evident to any person who will turn to 
 the latter part of the article ' Penitentiary, Millbank, 1 in Mr Buxton's Book on Prisons. 
 He there states what passed in conversation between himself and the Governor of Bury 
 gaol (which gaol, by the bye, he praises as one of the three best prisons he has ever 
 seen, and strongly recommends to our imitation at Millbank). Having observed, that 
 the Governor of Bury gaol had mentioned his having counted 34 spinning-wheels in full 
 activity when he left that gaol at 5 o'clock in the morning on the preceding day, Mr 
 Buxton proceeds as follows: 'After he had seen the Millbank Penitentiary, I asked 
 
 gether refuse to work at Millbank they will work during the stated hours ; but the 
 
 f resent incentive being wanting, the labour will, I apprehend, be languid and desultory.' 
 shall not, on my part, undertake to say that they will do as much work as will be done 
 in those prisons in which work is the primary object ; but, besides the encouragement 
 of the portion of earnings laid up for them, they know that diligence is among the qtiaiities 
 that will recommend them to the mercy of the Crown, and that the want of it is, by the 
 rules and regulations of the prison, an offence to be punished. The Governor of Bury 
 gaol, who is a very intelligent man, must have spoken hastily, in his eagerness to sup- 
 port his own system, and did not, I conceive, give himself credit for as much power and 
 authority in his prison as he really possesses. It is not to be wondered at, that the 
 keepers of prisons should like the new system: there is less trouble in the care of a 
 manufactory than in that of a gaol ; but I am surprised to find that so much reliance is 
 placed in argument on the declaration of some of these officers, that the prisoners are 
 quieter where their work is encouraged, by allowing them to spend a portion of their 
 earnings. It may naturally be expected, that offenders will be least discontented, and 
 consequently least turbulent, where their punishment is lightest, or where, to use Mr 
 Buxton's own words, ' by making labour productive of comfort cr convenience-. 
 much towards rendering it agreeable ;' but I must be permitted to doubt, whether these 
 are the prisons of which men will live in most dread," Holford, pp. 78 So.
 
 STATE OF PRISONS. 383 
 
 jails. The justices are empowered, by several statutes, to make subordinate 
 regulations for the government of the jails ; and the sheriff supersedes those 
 regulations. Their respective jurisdictions and powers shoald be clearly 
 arranged. 
 
 The female prisoners should be under the care of a matron with proper 
 assistants. Where this is not the case, the female part of the prison is often 
 a mere brothel for the turnkeys. Can any thing be so repugnant to all 
 ideas of reformation, as a male turnkey visiting a solitary female prisoner? 
 Surely, women can take care of women as effectually as men can take care 
 of men ; or, at least, women can do so properly, assisted by men. This 
 want of a matron is a very scandalous and immoral neglect in any prison 
 system. 
 
 The presence of female visitors, and instructors for the women, is so 
 obviously advantageous and proper, that the offer of forming such an insti- 
 tution must be gladly and thankfully received by any body of magistrates. 
 That they should feel any jealousy of such interference is too absurd a sup- 
 position to be made or agreed upon. Such interference may not effect all 
 that zealous people suppose it will effect ; but, if it does any good, it had 
 better be. 
 
 Irons should never be put upon prisoners before trial ; after trial we can- 
 not object to the humiliation and disgrace which irons and a particoloured 
 prison dress occasion. Let them be a part of solitary confinement, and 
 let the words "Solitary Confinement," in the sentence, imply permission 
 to use them. The Judge then knows what he inflicts. 
 
 We object to the office of Prison Inspector for reasons so very obvious, 
 that it is scarcely necessary to enumerate them. The prison inspector 
 would, of course, have a good salary ; that, in England, is never omitted. 
 It is equally matter of course that he would be taken from among Treasury 
 retainers ; and that he never would look at a prison. Every sort of atten- 
 tion should be paid to the religious instruction of these unhappy people, 
 but the poor chaplain should be paid a little better; every possible duty is 
 expected from him and he has one hundred per annum. 
 
 Whatever money is given to prisoners, should be lodged with the gover- 
 nor for their benefit, to be applied as the visiting magistrates point out no 
 other donations should be allowed or accepted. 
 
 If voluntary work before trial, or compulsory work after trial, be the 
 system of a prison, there should be a taskmaster ; and it should be remem- 
 bered, that the principal object is not profit 
 
 Wardsmen, selected in each yard among the best of the prisoners, are 
 very serviceable. If prisoners work, they should work in silence. At all 
 times, the restrictions upon seeing friends should be very severe ; and no 
 food should be sent from friends. 
 
 Our general system then is that a prison should be a place of real pun- 
 ishment ; but of known, enacted, measurable, and measured punishment. 
 A prisoner (not for assault, or refusing to pay parish dues, but a bad felo- 
 nious prisoner) should pass a part of his three months in complete darkness ; 
 the rest in complete solitude, perhaps in complete idleness (for solitary 
 idleness leads to repentance, idleness in company to vice). He should be 
 exempted from cold, be kept perfectly clean, have sufficient food to prevent 
 hunger or illness, wear the prison dress and moderate irons, have no com- 
 munication with any body but the officers of the prison and the magistrates, 
 and remain otherwise in the most perfect solitude. We strongly suspect 
 this is the way in which a bad man is to be made afraid of prisons ; nor do 
 we think that he would be less inclined to receive moral and religious in- 
 struction, than any one of seven or eight carpenters in jail, working at a
 
 384 STA TE OF PRISONS. 
 
 common bench, receiving a part of their earnings, and allowed to purchase 
 with them the delicacies of the season. If this system be not resorted to, 
 the next best system is severe work, ordinary diet, no indulgences, and as 
 much seclusion and solitude as are compatible with work ; always remark- 
 ing, that perfect sanity of mind and body are to be preserved. 
 
 To this system of severity in jails there is but one objection. The present 
 duration of punishments was calculated for prisons conducted upon very 
 different principles ; and if the discipline of prisons were rendered more 
 strict, we are not sure that the duration of imprisonment would be practi- 
 cally shortened ; and .the punishments would then be quite atrocious and 
 disproportioned. There is a very great disposition, both in judges and 
 magistrates, to increase the duration of imprisonment ; and, if that be done, 
 it will be dreadful cruelty to increase the bitterness as well as the time. 
 We should think, for instance, six months' solitary imprisonment to be a 
 punishment of dreadful severity ; but we find, from the House of Commons' 
 Report, that prisoners are sometimes committed by county magistrates for 
 two years * of solitary confinement. And so it may be doubted, whether 
 it is not better to wrap up the rod in flannel, and make it a plaything, as 
 it really now is, than to show how it may be wielded with effectual severity. 
 For the pupil, instead of giving one or two stripes, will whip his patient 
 to death. But if this abuse were guarded against, the real way to improve 
 would be, now we have made prisons healthy and airy, to make them odious 
 and austere engines of punishment, and objects of terror. 
 
 In this age of charity and of prison improvement, there is one aid to 
 prisoners which appears to be wholly overlooked ; and that is, the means 
 of regulating their defence, and providing them witnesses for their trial. 
 A man is tried for murder, or for housebreaking, or robbery, without a 
 single shilling in his pocket. The nonsensical and capricious institutions 
 of the English law prevent him from engaging counsel to speak in his 
 defence, if he had the wealth of Croesus ; but he has no money to employ 
 even an attorney, or to procure a single witness, or to take out a subpccna. 
 The Judge, we are told, is his counsel, this is sufficiently absurd ; but it 
 is not pretended that the Judge is his witness. He solemnly declares that 
 he has three or four witnesses who could give a completely different colour 
 to the transaction ; but they are sixty or seventy miles distant, working for 
 their daily bread, and have no money for such a journey, nor for the expense 
 of a residence of some days in an Assize town. They do not know even 
 the time of the Assize, nor the modes of tendering their evidence if they 
 could come. When every thing is so well marshalled against him on the 
 opposite side, it would be singular if an innocent man, with such an absence 
 of all means of defending himself, should not occasionally be hanged or 
 transported : and accordingly we believe that such things have happened. f 
 Let any man, immediately previous to the Assizes, visit the prisoners for 
 
 * House of Commons' Report, 335. 
 
 t From the Clonmel Advertiser it appears, that John Brien, alias Captain Wheeler, 
 was found guilty of murder at the late assizes for the county of Waterford. Previous to 
 his execution he made the following confession : 
 
 " I now again most solemnly aver, in the presence of that God by whom I will soon 
 be judged, and who sees the secrets of my heart, that only three, viz. Morgan Brien, 
 Patrick Brien, and my unfortunate self, committed the horrible crimes of murder and 
 burning at Ballygarron, and that the four unfortunate men who have before suffered for 
 them were not in the smallest degree accessary to them. I have been the cause for 
 which they have innocently suffered death. I have contracted a debt ofjustice with 
 them and the only and least restitution I can make them, is thus publicly, solemnly, 
 and with death before my eyes, to acquit their memory of any guilt in the crimes foi 
 which I shall deservedly suffer ! ! ! " Philanthropist, No. 6. 208. 
 
 Pereunt et imputantur.
 
 MAN TRAPS AND SPRING GL\\S. 38$ 
 
 trial, and see the many wretches who are to answer to the most serious 
 accusations, without one penny to defend themselves. If it appeared pro- 
 bable, upon enquiry, that these poor creatures had important evidence 
 which they could not bring into Court for want of money, would it not be 
 a wise application of compassionate funds to give them this fair chance of 
 establishing their innocence? It seems to us no bad finale of the pious 
 labours of those who guard the poor from ill-treatment during their im- 
 prisonment, to take care that they are not unjustly hanged at the expiration 
 of the term. 
 
 MAN TRAPS AND SPRING GUNS. (E. REVIEW, 1821.) 
 
 Reports of Cases argued and determined in the Court of Kings' Bench, in Hilary Term, 
 doth Ceo. III. 1820. By RICHARD V. BARNEWALL, of Lincoln's Inn, Esq., Barris- 
 ter-at-Law, and EDWARD H. ALDERSON, of the Inner Temple, Esq., Barristcr-at- 
 Law. Vol.111. Part II. London : 1820. 
 
 MOST of our readers will remember, that we very lately published an article 
 upon the use of Steel Traps and Spring Guns ; and, in the course of discus- 
 sion, had occasion to animadvert upon the Report of Mr Justice Best's 
 judgment, in the case of Ilott and Wilkes, as reported in Chctwyntfs 
 Edition of BiinCs Jiutice, published in the spring of the present year. In 
 the Morning Chronicle, of the 4th of June, 1821, Mr Justice Best is reported 
 to have made the following observations in the King's Bench : 
 
 " Mr Justice Best said, Mr Chetwynd's book having been mentioned by 
 my Learned Brother Bayley, I must take this opportunity, not without some 
 pain, of adverting to what I am reported in his work to have said in the 
 case of Ilott v. Wilkes, and of correcting a most gross misrepresentation. 
 I am reported to have concurred with the other Judges, and to have 
 delivered my judgment at considerable length, and then to have said, 
 ' This case has been discussed at the Bar, as if these engines were exclu- 
 sively resorted to for the protection of game ; but I consider them as law 
 fully applicable to the protection of every species of property against unlaw- 
 ful trespassers.' This is not what I stated ; but the part which I wish more 
 particularly to deny, as ever having said, or even conceived, is this ' But 
 if even they might not lawfully be used for the protection of game, I, for 
 one, should be extremely glad to adopt such means, if they were found 
 sufficient for that purpose.' I confess I am surprised that this learned 
 person should suppose, from the note of any one, that any person who ever 
 sat in a Court of Justice as a Judge could talk such wicked nonsense as I am 
 made to talk ; and I am surprised that he should venture to give the autho- 
 rity he does for what he has published ; for I find, that the reference he 
 gives in the Appendix to his book is 3 Barn, and Aid. 304, where there is 
 a correct report of that case, and where it will be found that every word 
 
 . iding the whole of what I did say 
 that I said ' My Brother Bayley has illustrated this case by the question 
 which he asked, namely, Can you indict a man for putting spring guns in 
 his enclosed field ? I think the question put by Lord Chief Justice Gibbs, 
 in the case of Dean z: Clayton, in the Common Pleas, a still better illustra- 
 tion, viz., Can you justify entering into enclosed lands to take away guns 
 so set ? If both these questions must be answered in the negative, it can 
 not be unlawful to set springs guns in an enclosed field at a distance from 
 &ny road, giving such notice that they are set. as to render it in the highest 
 
 2 B
 
 386 MAN TRAPS AJMD SPRIXG GUNS. 
 
 degree probable that all persons in the neighbourhood must know that they 
 are so set. Humanity requires that the fullest notice possible should be 
 given ; and the law of England will not sanction what is inconsistent with 
 humanity.' A popular work has quoted this Report from Mr Chetwynd's 
 Work, but has omitted this important line (which omission reminds one of 
 the progress of a thing, the name of which one does not choose to mention), 
 ' that I had concurred in what had fallen from the other Judges ;' and 
 omitting that line, they state, that one had said, ' It is my opinion that with 
 notice, or without notice, this might be done.' Now, concurring with the 
 other Judges, it is impossible I should say that. It is right that this should 
 be corrected ; not that I entertain any angry feeling, for too much time has 
 elapsed since then for any anger to remain on my mind ; but all 1 claim, 
 with respect to the observations made in that work, severe as they are (and 
 I, for one, feel that I should deserve no mercy if I should ever entertain 
 such doctrines), is, that I may not be misrepresented. It is necessary fo: 
 me, in this place, to say, that no man entertains more horror of the doctrine 
 I am supposed to have laid down than I do ; that the life of man is to be 
 treated lightly and indifferently, in comparison with the preservation of 
 game, and the amusement of sporting ; that the laws of humanity are to be 
 violated merely for the sake of preserving the amusement of game. I am 
 sure no man can justly impute to me such wicked doctrines. It is unneces- 
 sary for me to say, that I entertain no such sentiments ; and therefore I 
 hope I shall be excused, not on account of my own feelings, but as far as 
 the public are interested in the character of a Judge, in saying, that no person 
 should blame a Judge for what has been unjustly put into his mouth." 
 
 His Lordship's speech is reported in the New Times of the same date, as 
 follows : 
 
 " Mr Justice Best said, 'My Brother Bayley has quoted Mr Chetwynd's 
 edition of Burn : I am surprised that the learned author of that work should 
 have made me talk such mischievous nonsense, as he has given to the 
 public, in a report of my judgment in the case of Ilott and Wilkes. 1 am 
 still more surprised, that he should have suffered this judgment to remain 
 unconnected, alter he had seen a true report of the case in Barnewall and 
 Alderson, to which report he has referred in his Appendix.' MrL'hetuynd's 
 report has the following passage: 'Mr Justice Best concurred with the 
 other Judges.' His Lordship concluded as follows : ' This case has been 
 discussed at the Bar, as if these engines were exclusively resorted to for the 
 protection of game ; but I considered them as lawfully applicable to the 
 protection of every species of property against unlawful trespassers. But 
 if even they might not lawfully be used for the protection of game, 1 for one 
 should be extremely glad to adopt such measures, if they were found sufficient 
 for that purpose. ' 
 
 " A popular periodical work contains the passage just cited, with the 
 omission of the words ' concurred with the other Judges.' Of this omission 
 I have reason to complain, because, if it had been inserted, the writer of 
 the article could not have said, ' It follows, that a man may put his fellow- 
 creatures to death for any infringement of his property, for picking the sloes 
 and blackberries of his hedges ; for breaking a few dead sticks out of them 
 by night or by day, with resistance or without resistance, with warning or 
 without warning'. ' The Judges with whom Mr Chetwynd makes me concur 
 in opinion, all gave their judgment on the ground of due notice being given, 
 I do not complain of the other observations contained in this work ; they 
 would have been deserved by me had I ever uttered such an opinion as the 
 report of Mr Chetwynd has stated me to have delivered. The whole of
 
 MAN TRAPS AND SPRING GUNS 387 
 
 what I said will be found to be utterly inconsistent with the statement, by 
 those who will read the case in ' Barnewall and AUIerson.' I will only 
 trouble the Court with the passage which will be found in the report of my 
 judgment in '3 Barnewall and Alderson, 319 :' 'It cannot be unlawful 
 to set spring guns in an enclosed field, at a distance from any road, giving 
 such notice that they are set, as to render it in the highest degree probable 
 that all persons in the neighbourhood must know that they are so set. 
 Humanity required that the fullest notice possible should be given ; and the 
 law of England will not sanction what is inconsistent with humanity." I 
 have taken the first opportunity of saying this, because I think it of import- 
 ance to the public that such a misrepresentation of the opinion of one of the 
 Judges should not be circulated without some notice." 
 
 \Ve subjoin the report of Messrs Barnewall and Alderson, here alluded 
 to, and allowed by Mr Justice Best to be correct. 
 
 "Best, J. The act of the plaintiff could only occasion mere nominal 
 damage to the wood of the defendant. The injury that the plaintiff's tres- 
 pass has brought upon himself is extremely severe. In such a case, one 
 cannot, without pain, decide against the action. But we must not allow 
 our feelings to induce us to lose sight of the principles which are essential 
 to the rights of property. The prevention of intrusion upon property is 
 one of these rights ; and every proprietor is allowed to use the force that is 
 absolutely necessary to vindicate it. If he uses more force than is absolutely 
 necessary, he renders himself responsible for all the consequences of the 
 excess. Thus, if a man comes on my land, I cannot lay hands on him to 
 remove him, until I have desired him to go off. If he will not depart on 
 request, I cannot proceed immediately to beat him, but must endeavour to 
 pu>h him off. If he is too powerful for me, I cannot use a dangerous 
 weapon, but must first call in aid other assistance. I am speaking of out- 
 door property, and of cases in which no felony is to be apprehended. It is 
 evident, also, that this doctrine is only applicable to trespasses committed 
 in the presence of the owner of the property trespassed on. When the 
 owner and the servants are absent at the time of the trespass, it can only 
 be repelled by the tenor of spring guns, or other instruments of the same 
 kind. There is, in such cases, no possibility of proportioning the resisting 
 force to the obstinacy and violence of the trespasser, as the owner of the 
 close may and is required to do where he is present. There is no distinction 
 between the mode of defence of one species of out-door property and 
 another (except in cases where the taking or breaking into the property 
 amounts to felony). If the owner of woods cannot set spring guns in his 
 woods, the owner of an orchard, or of a field with potatoes or turnips, or 
 any other crop usually the object of plunder, cannot set them in such field. 
 I low, then, are these kinds of property to be protected, at a distance from 
 the residence of the owner, in the night, and in the absence of his servants? 
 It has been said, that the law has provided remedies for any injuries to such 
 things by action. But the offender must be detected before he can be sub- 
 jected to an action ; and the expense of continual watching for this purpose 
 would often exceed the value of the property to be protected. If we look 
 at the subject in this point of view, we may find, amongst poor tenants, who 
 are prevented from paying their rents by the plunder of their crops, men 
 who are more objects of our compassion than the wanton trespasser, who 
 brings on himself the injury which he suffers. If an owner of a dose cannot 
 set spring guns, he cannot put glass bottles or spikes on the top of a wall, or 
 even have a savage dog, to prevent persons from entering his yard. It has 
 been said, in argument, that you may see the glass botues or spikes ; and
 
 3SS MAN TRAPS AND SPRING GUNS. 
 
 it is admitted, that if the exact spot where these guns are set was pointed 
 cut to the trespasser, he could not maintain any action for the injury he 
 received from one of them. As to seeing the glass bottles or spikes, that 
 must depend on the circumstance whether it be light or dark at the time of 
 the trespass. But what difference does it make, whether the trespasser be 
 told the gun is set in such a spot, or that there are guns in different parts of 
 such a field, if he has no right to go on any part of that field ? It is absurd 
 to say you may set the guns, provided you tell the trespasser exactly 
 where they are set, because then the setting them could answer no purpose. 
 My brother Bayley has illustrated this case, by the question which he asked, 
 namely, Can you indict a man for putting spring guns in his enclosed field ? 
 I think the question put by Lord C. J. Gibbs, in the case in the Common 
 Pleas, a still better illustration, viz., Can you justify entering into enclosed 
 lands, to take away guns so set ? If both these questions must be answered 
 in the negative, it cannot be unlawful to set spring guns in an enclosed field, 
 at a distance from any road, giving such notice that they are set, as to render 
 it in the highest degree probable that all persons in the neighbourhood must 
 know that they are so set. Humanity requires that the fullest notice possible 
 should be given ; and the law of England will not sanction what is incon- 
 sistent with humanity. It has been said in argument, that it is a principle 
 of law, that you cannot do indirectly what you are not permitted to do 
 directly. This principle is not applicable to the case. You cannot shoot a 
 man that comes on your land, because you may turn him off by means less 
 hurtful to him ; and, therefore, if you saw him walking in your field, and 
 were to invite him to proceed on his walk, knowing that he must tread on 
 a wire and so shoot himself with a spring gun, you would be liable to all 
 the consequences that would follow. The invitation to liim to pursue his 
 walk is doing indirectly, what, by drawing the trigger of a gun with your 
 own hand, is done directly. But the case is just the reverse, if, instead of 
 inviting him to walk on your land, you tell him to keep off, and warn him 
 of what will follow if he does not. It is also said, that it is a maxim of 
 law that you must so use your own property as not to injure another's. This 
 maxim I admit ; but I deny its application to the case of a man who comes 
 to trespass on my property. It applies only to cases where a man has only 
 a transient property, such as in the air or water that passes over his land, 
 and which he must not corrupt by nuisance ; or where a man has a qualified 
 property, as in land near another's ancient windows, or in land over which 
 another has a right of way. In the first case, he must do nothing on his 
 land to stop the light of the windows, or, in the second, to obstruct the 
 way. This case has been argued, as if it appeared in it that the guns were 
 set to preserve game ; but that is not so ; they were set to prevent trespasses 
 on the lands of the defendant. Without, however, saying in whom the 
 property of game is vested, I say, that a man has a right to keep persons off 
 his lands, in order to preserve the game. Much money is expended in the 
 protection of game ; and it would be hard, if, in one night, when the keepers 
 are absent, a gang of poachers might destroy what has been kept at so much 
 cost If you do not allow men of landed estates to preserve their game, 
 you will not prevail on them to reside in the country. Their poor neighbours 
 will thus lose their protection and kind offices ; and the Government the 
 support that it derives from an independent, enlightened, and unpaid 
 magistracy." 
 
 As Mr Justice Best denies that he did say what a very respectable and 
 grave law publication reported him to have said, and as Mr Chetwynd and 
 Lis reporter have made no attempt to vindicate their Report, of course our
 
 MAN TXAfS AND SPRING GUNS. 383 
 
 observations cease to be applicable. There is certainly nothing in the 
 Term Report of Mr Justice Best's speech which calls for any degree of 
 moral criticism ; nothing but what a respectable and temperate Jud"e 
 might fairly have uttered. Had such been the Report cited in Burn, it 
 never would have drawn from us one syllabic of reprehension. 
 
 We beg leave, however, to observe, that we have never said that it was 
 Mr Justice Best's opinion, as reported in Chctwynd, that a man might bs 
 put to death ivitJiout Notice, but without Warning; by which we meant a 
 very different thing. If notice was given on boards that certain grounds 
 were guarded by watchmen with fire-arms, the watchmen, feeling perhaps 
 some little respect for human life, would probably call out to the man to stand 
 and deliver himself up : " Stop, or I '11 shoot you ! " " Stand, or you are 
 a dead man ! "or some such compunctious phrases as the law compels 
 living machines to use. But the trap can give no such warning can pre- 
 sent to the intruder no alternative of death or surrender. Now, these 
 different modes of action in the dead or the living guard, is what we alluded 
 to in the words ivithoitt warning. We meant to" characterise the ferocious, 
 unrelenting nature of the means used and the words are perfectly correct 
 and applicable, after all the printed notices in the world. Notice is the com- 
 munication of something about to happen, after some little interval of time. 
 Warning is the communication of some imminent danger. Nobody gives 
 another notice that he will immediately shoot him through the head or 
 warns him that he will be a dead man in less than thirty years. This, 
 and not the disingenuous purpose ascribed to us by Mr Justice Best, is the 
 explanation of the offending words. We are thoroughly aware that Mr 
 Justice Best was an advocate for notice, and never had the most distant 
 intention of representing his opinion otlierwise : and we really must say 
 that (if the Report had been correct) there never was a judicial speech where 
 there was so little necessity for having recourse to the arts of misrepresenta- 
 tion. We are convinced, however, that the report is not correct and we 
 are heartily glad it is not. There is in the Morning Chronicle an improper 
 and offensive phrase, which (now we know Mr Justice Best's style better) 
 we shall attribute to the reporters, and pass over without further notice. It 
 would seem from the complaint of the learned Judge, that we had omitted 
 something in the middle of the quotation from Chetwynd ; whereas we have 
 quoted every word of the speech as Chetwynd has given it, and only began 
 our quotation after the preliminary observations, because we had not the 
 most distant idea of denying that Mr Justice Best considered ample notice 
 as necessary to the legality of these proceedings. 
 
 There are passages in the Morning Chronicle already quoted, and in the 
 Term Report, which we must take the liberty of putting in juxtaposition to 
 each other. 
 
 Mr Justice Best in the Mf y^. . ^ T R Barnwall 
 
 Morning Chronicle of d AlJerson _ 
 the 4/// of June, 1021. 
 
 It is not necessary for When the owner and his servants are absent 
 
 me in this place to say, at the time of the trespass, it can only be re- 
 
 that no man entertains pelled by the terror of spring guns, or other in- 
 
 more horror of the doc- struments of the same kind. There is, in such 
 
 trine I am supposed to cases, no possibility of proportioning the resisting 
 
 have laid down, than I force to the obstinacy and violence of the tres- 
 
 do, that the life of man passer, as the owner of the close may, and is 
 
 is to be treated lightly required to do, when he is present. 317. 
 
 and indifferently in com- Without saying in whom the property of game
 
 390 /,/:- A" TRAPS AND SPRING GUNS. 
 
 parison with the preser- is vested, I say that a man has a right to keep 
 
 vation of game and the persons off his lands, in order to preserve the 
 
 amusement of sporting game. Much money is expended on the protec- 
 
 that the laws of humanity tion of game; and it would be hard if, in one 
 
 are to be violated for the night, when the keepers are absent, a gang of 
 
 sake merely of preserving poachers might destroy what has been kept at so 
 
 the amusement of game, much cost. 320. 
 
 I am sure no man can If an owner of a close cannot set spring guns, 
 
 justly impute to me such he cannot put glass bottles or spikes on the top 
 
 wicked doctrines; it is of a wall. 318. 
 
 unnecessary for me to say If both these questions must be answered in 
 
 I entertain no such send- the negative, it cannot be unlawful to set spring 
 
 ments. guns in an enclosed field, at a distance from any 
 
 In Barnewall and Al- road ; giving such notice that they are set, as to 
 
 derson there is a correct render it in the highest degree probable that all 
 
 report of that case. persons in the neighbourhood must know they 
 
 Morning Chron, are so set. Humanity requires that the fullest 
 
 notice possible should be given ; and the law of 
 
 England will not sanction what is inconsistent 
 
 with humanity. Barnewall and Alderson, 319. 
 
 There is, perhaps, some little inconsistency in these opposite extracts ; 
 but we have not the smallest wish to insist upon it. We are thoroughly 
 and honestly convinced, that Mr Justice Best's horror at the destruction of 
 human life for tlie mere preservation of game is quite sincere. It is impos- 
 sible, indeed, that any human being, of common good nature, could enter- 
 tain a different feeling upon the subject, when it is earnestly pressed upon 
 him ; and though, perhaps, there may be Judges upon the Bench more 
 remarkable for imperturbable apathy, we never heard Mr Justice^ Best 
 accused of ill nature. In condescending to notice our observations, in 
 destroying the credit of Chetwynd's Report, and in withdrawing the canopy 
 of his name from the bad passions of country gentlemen, he has conferred 
 a real favour upon the public. 
 
 Mr Justice Best, however, must excuse us for saying, that we are not in 
 the slightest degree convinced by his reasoning. We shall suppose a fifth 
 Judge to have delivered his opinion in the case of Ilott against Willies^ and 
 to have expressed himself in the following manner. But we must caution 
 Mr Chetwynd against introducing this fifth Judge in his next edition of 
 Burn's Justice ; and we assure him that he is only an imaginary personage. 
 
 " My Brother Best justly observes, that prevention of intrusion upon 
 private property is a right which every proprietor may act upon, and use 
 force to vindicate the force absolutely necessary for such vindication. If 
 any man intrude upon another's lands, the proprietor must first desire 
 him to go off, and then lay hands upon the intruder, then push him 
 off; and if that will not do, call in aid other assistance, before he uses 
 a dangerous weapon. If the proprietor uses more force than is absolutely 
 necessary, he renders himself responsible for all the consequences of the 
 excess. In this doctrine I cordially concur ; and admire (I am sure, with 
 him) the sacred regard which our law everywhere exhibits for the life and 
 safety of man its tardiness and reluctance to proceed to extreme violence : 
 but my learned brother then observes as follows : ' It is evident, also, 
 that this doctrine is only applicable to trespasses committed in the presence 
 of the owner of the property trespassed upon. When the owner and his 
 servants are absent at the time of the trespass, it can only be repelled by 
 the terror of spring guns, or other instruments of the same kind,' If Mr
 
 MAN TRAPS AND SPRING GUNS. 391 
 
 Justice Best means by the ttrror of spring guns, the mere alarm that the 
 notice excites or the powder without the bullets noise without danger 
 it is not worth while to raise an argument upon the point ; for, absent or 
 present, notice or no notice, such means must always be lawful. But if my 
 Brother Best means that in the absence of the proprietor, the intruder may 
 be killed by such instruments, after notice, this is a doctrine to which I 
 never can assent ; because it rests the life and security of the trespasser 
 upon the accident of the proprietor's presence. In that presence there 
 must be a most cautious and nicely graduated scale of admonition and 
 harmless compulsion ; the feelings and safely of the intruder are to be stu- 
 diously consulted ; but if business or pleasure call the proprietor away, the 
 intruder may be instantly shot dead by machinery. Such a state of law, I 
 must be permitted to say, is too incongruous for this or any other country. 
 
 " If the alternative is the presence of the owner and his servants, or such 
 dreadful consequences as these, why are the owner or his servants allowed 
 to be absent ? If the ultimate object in preventing such intrusions is pleasure 
 in sporting, it is better that pleasure should be rendered more expensive, 
 than that the life of man should be rendered so precarious. But why is it 
 impossible to proportion the resisting force to the obstinacy of the trespasser 
 in the absence of the proprietor ? Why may not an intruder be let gently 
 down into five feet of liquid mud? why not caught in a box which shall 
 detain him till the next morning? why not held in a toothless trap till the 
 proprietor arrives? such traps as are sold in all the iron shops in this city? 
 We are bound, according to my Brother Best, to inquire if these means 
 have been previously resorted to ; for upon his own principle, greater vio- 
 lence must not be used, where less will suffice for the removal of the intruder. 
 
 " There are crops, I admit, of essential importance to agriculture, which 
 will not bear the expense of eternal vigilance ; and if there be districts 
 where such crops are exposed to such serious and disheartening depredation, 
 that may be a good reason for additional severity ; but then it must be the 
 severity of the legislator, and not of the proprietor. If the Legislature 
 enact fine and imprisonment as the punishment for stealing turnips, it is not 
 to be endured that the proprietor should award to this crime the punish- 
 ment of death. If the fault be not sufficiently prevented by the punish- 
 ments already in existence, he must wait till the frequency and flagrancy of 
 the offence attracts the notice, and stimulates the penalties of those who 
 make laws. He must not make laws (and those very bloody laws) for himself. 
 
 " I do not say that the setter of the trap or gun allures the trespasser into 
 it ; but I say that the punishment he intends for the man who trespasses 
 after notice is death. He covers his spring gun with furze and heath, and 
 gives it the most natural appearance he can ; and in that gun he places the 
 slugs by which he means to kill the trespasser. This killing of an unchal- 
 lenged, unresisting person, I really cannot help considering to be as much 
 murder as if the proprietor had shot the trespasser with his gun. Giving 
 it all the attention in my power, I am utterly at a loss to distinguish between 
 the two cases. Does it signify whose hand or whose foot pulls the string 
 which moves the trigger ? the real murderer is he who prepare* the in- 
 strument of death, and places it in a position that such hand or foot may 
 touch it, for the purposes of destruction. My Brother Holroyd says the 
 trespasser who has had a notice of guns being set in the wood is the real 
 voluntary agent who pulls the trigger. But I most certainly think that he 
 is not. He is the animal agent, but not the rational agent he does not 
 intend to put himself to death ; but he foolishly trusts in his chance of 
 escaping, and 's any thing but a voluntary agent in firing the gun. If a 
 trespasser were to rush into a wood, meaning to seek his own destruction
 
 392 MAN TRAPS AND SPRING GUNS. 
 
 to hunt for the wire, and when found, to pull it, he would indeed be the 
 agent, in the most philosophical sense of the word. But, after entering the 
 wood, he does all he can to avoid the gun keeps clear of every suspicious 
 place, and is baflled only by the superior cunning of him who planted the 
 gun. How the firing of the gun then can be called his act his voluntary 
 act I am at a loss to conceive. The practice has unfortunately become so 
 common, that the first person convicted of such a murder, and acting under 
 the delusion of right, might be a fit object for royal mercy. Still, in my 
 opinion, such an act must legally be considered as murder. 
 
 " It has been asked, if it be an indictable offence to set such guns in a 
 man's own ground : but let me first put a much greater question Is it 
 murder to kill any man with such instruments? If it be, it must be indict- 
 able to set them. To place an instrument for the purpose of committing 
 murder, and to surrender (as in such cases you must surrender) all control 
 over its operation, is clearly an indictable offence. 
 
 " AU my brother Judges have delivered their opinions as if these puns 
 were often set for the purposes of terror, and not of destruction. To this I 
 can only say, that the moment any man puts a bullet into his spring gun, 
 he has some other purpose than that of terror ; and if he does not put a 
 bullet there, he never can be the subject of argument in this Court. 
 
 " My Lord Chief Justice can see no distinction between the case of 
 tenter-hooks upon a wall, and the placing of spring guns, as far as the law- 
 fulness of both is concerned. But the distinctions I take between the case 
 of tenter-hooks upon a wall, and the setting of spring guns, are founded 
 1st, in the magnitude of the evil inflicted ; adly, in the great difference of 
 the notice which the trespasser receives ; 3dly, in the very different evidence 
 of criminal intention in the trespasser ; 4thly, in the greater value of the 
 property invaded ; Sthly, in the greater antiquity of the abuse. To cut the 
 fingers, or to tear the hand, is of course a more pardonable injury than to 
 kill. The trespasser, in the daytime, sees the spikes ; and by day or night, 
 at all events, he sees or feels the wall. It is impossible he should not un- 
 derstand the nature of such a prohibition, or imagine that his path lies over 
 this wall ; whereas the victim of the spring gun may have gone astray, may 
 not be able to read, or may first cross the armed soil in the night-time, 
 when he cannot read ; and so he is absolutely without any notice at all. 
 In the next place, the slaughtered man may be perfectly innocent in his 
 purpose, which the sealer of the walls cannot be. No man can get to the 
 top of a garden wall without a criminal purpose. A garden, by the com- 
 mon consent and feeling of mankind, contains more precious materials than 
 a wood or a field, and may seem to justify a greater jealousy and cave. 
 Lastly, and for these reasons, perhaps, the practice of putting spikes and 
 glass bottles has prevailed for this century past ; and the right so to do has 
 become, from time, and the absence of cases (for the plaintiff, in such a 
 case, must acknowledge himself a thief), inveterate. But it is quite impos- 
 sible, because in some trifling instances, and in much more pardonable cir- 
 cumstances, private vengeance has usurped upon the province of law, that 
 I can, from such slight abuses, confer upon private vengeance the power oi 
 life and death. On the contrary, I think it my imperious duty to contend, 
 that punishment for such offences as these is to be measured by the law, 
 and not by the exaggerated notions which any individual may form of the 
 importance of his own pleasures. It is my duty, instead of making one 
 abuse a reason for another, to recall the law back to its perfect state, and 
 to restrain as much as possible the invention and use of private punish- 
 ments. Indeed, if this wild sort of justice is to be tolerated, I see no sort 
 of use in the careful adaptation of punishments to crimes, in the humane
 
 MAN TRAPS AND SPRING GUNS. 393 
 
 labours of the lawgiver. Every lord of a manor is his own Lycurgus, or 
 rather his own Draco, and the great purpose of civil life is defeated. Inter 
 nova tormtntorum genera machinasqne exitiales, silent leges. 
 
 " Whatever be the law, the question of humanity is a separate question. 
 I shall not state all I think of that person, who, for the preservation of 
 game, would doom the innocent or the guilty intruder, to a sudden death. 
 1 will not, however (because I am silent respecting individuals), join in any 
 undeserved panegyric of the humanity of the English law. I cannot say, at 
 the same moment, that the law of England allows such machines to be set 
 after public notice ; and that the law of England sanctions nothing but 
 what is humane. If the law sanctions such practices, it sanctions, in my 
 opinion, what is to the last degree odious, unchristian, and inhumane. 
 
 " The case of the dog or bull I admit to be an analogous case to this : 
 and I say, if a man were to keep a dog of great ferocity and power, for the 
 express purpose of guarding against trespass in woods and fields, and that 
 dog was to kill a trespasser, it would be murder in the person placing him 
 there for such a purpose. It is indifferent to me whether the trespasser be 
 slain by animals or machines, intentionally brought there for that purpose : 
 he ought not to be slain at all. It is murder to use such a punishment for 
 such an offence. If a man put a ferocious dog in his yard, to guard his 
 house from burglary, and that dog strays into the neighbouring field, and 
 there worries the man, there wants, in this case, the murderous and mali- 
 cious spirit. The dog was placed in the yard for the legal purpose of 
 guarding the house against burglary ; for which crime, if caught in the act of 
 perpetrating it, a man may legally be put to death. There was no primary 
 intention here of putting a mere trespasser to death. So, if a man keep a 
 ferocious bull, not for agricultural purposes, but for the express purpose of 
 repelling trespassers, and that bull occasion the death of a trespasser, it is 
 murder : the intentional infliction of death by any means for such sort oj 
 offences constitutes the murder ; a right to kill for such reasons cannot be 
 acquired by the foolhardiness of the trespasser, nor by any sort of notice or 
 publicity. If a man were to blow a tnimpet all over the country, and say 
 that he would shoot any man who asked him how he did, would he acquire 
 a right to do so by such notice? Does mere publication of an unlawful 
 intention make the action lawful which follows ? If notice be the principle 
 which consecrates this mode of destroying human beings, I wish my brothers 
 had been a little more clear, or a little more unanimous, as to what is meant 
 by this notice. Must the notice be always actual, or is it sufficient that it 
 is probable ? May these guns act only against those who have read the 
 notice, or against all who might have read the notice ? The truth is, that 
 the practice is so enormous, and the opinions of the most learned men so 
 various, that a declaratory law upon the subject is imperiously required.* 
 Common humanity required it, after the extraordinary difference of opinion 
 which occurred in the case of Dean and Clayton. 
 
 "For these reasons I am compelled to differ from my learned brothers. 
 We have all, I am sure, the common object of doing justice in such cases 
 as these ; we can have no possible motive for doing otherwise. Where 
 such a superiority of talents and numbers is against me, I must of course be 
 wrong ; but I think it better to publish my own errors, than to subscribe to 
 opinions of the justice of which I am not convinced. To destroy a tres- 
 passer with such machines, I think would be murder ; to set such uncon- 
 trollable machines for the purpose of committing this murder, I think would 
 be indictable ; and I am therefore of opinion, that he who suffers from such 
 
 * This has been doae.
 
 394 SCAR LETTS POOR BILL. 
 
 machines has a fair ground of action, in spite of any notice ; for it is not in 
 the power of notice to make them lawful. 
 
 SCARLETT'S POOR BILL. (E. REVIEW, 1821.) 
 
 i. Letter to James Scarlett, Esq., M.P., on hit Bill relating- to Poor-Laws. By a 
 
 Surrey Magistrate. London, 1821. 
 a. An Addrttt to the Imperial Parliament, vpon the Practical Means of gradually 
 
 abolishing the Poor-Laws, and Educating the Poor Systematically. Illustrated. 
 
 by an Account of the Colonies of Frederic ks-Oord in Holland, and of the Common 
 
 Mountain in the South of Ireland. With General Observations. Third Edition. 
 
 By WILLIAM HERBERT SAUNDERS, Esq. London, 1821. 
 3. On Pauperism and the Poor-Laivs, With a Supplement. London, i8ai. 
 
 WE are friendly to the main principle of Mr Scarlett's bill ; but are rather 
 surprised at the unworkmanlike manner in which he has set about it. 
 
 To fix a maximum for the Poor-rates, we should conceive to be an opera- 
 tion of sufficient difficulty and novelty for any one bill. There was no need 
 to provoke more prejudice, to rouse more hostility, and create more alarm, 
 than such a bill would naturally do. But Mr Scarlett is a very strong man ; 
 and before he works his battering-ram, he chooses to have the wall made of 
 a thickness worthy of his blow capable of evincing, by the enormity of its 
 ruins, the superfluity of his vigour, and the certainty of his aim. Accord- 
 ingly he has introduced into his bill a number of provisions, which have no 
 necessary, and indeed no near connection with his great and main object ; 
 but which are sure to draw upon his back all the Sir John's and Sir Thomas's 
 in the House of Commons. It may be right, or it may be wrong, that the 
 chargeable poor should be removed ; but why introduce such a controverted 
 point into a bill framed for a much more important object, and of itself 
 calculated to produce so much difference of opinion? Mr Scarlett appears 
 to us to have been not only indiscreet in the introduction of such hetero- 
 geneous matter, but very much mistaken in the enactments which that mat- 
 ter contains. 
 
 "And be it further enacted, that from and after the passing of this Act, 
 it shall not be lawful for any Justice of Peace or other person to remove, or 
 cause to be removed, any poor person or persons from any parish, township or 
 place, to any other, by reason of such person or persons being chargeable 
 to such parish, township or place, or being unable to maintain him or them- 
 selves, or under colour of such person or persons being settled in any other 
 parish, township or place, any law or statute to the contrary notwithstanding : 
 Provided always, that nothing in this Act shall in anywise be deemed to 
 alter any law now in force for the punishment of vagrants, or for removing 
 poor persons to Scotland, Ireland, or the Isles of Guernsey, Jersey, and 
 Man. And be it further enacted, that in all cases where any poor person, 
 at the time of the passing this Act, shall be resident in any parish, town- 
 ship or place, where he is not legally settled, and shall be receiving relief 
 from the Overseers, Guardians, or Directors of the Poor of the place of his 
 legal settlement, the said Overseers, Guardians, or Directors are hereby 
 required to continue such relief, in the same manner, and by the same 
 means, as the same is now administered, until one of his Majesty's Justices 
 of the Peace, in or near the place of residence of such poor person, shall, 
 upon application to him, either by such poor person, or any other person, 
 on his behalf, for the continuance thereof, or by the said Overseers, Guar-
 
 SCARLETT 'S POOR BILL. 395 
 
 dians, or Directors of the Poor, paying such relief, for the discharge thereof, 
 certify that the same is no longer necessary." Bill, pp. 3, 4. 
 
 Now, here is a gentleman, so thoroughly and so justly sensible of the 
 evils of the Poor-Laws, that he introduces into the House of Commons a 
 very plain and very bold measure to restrain them ; and yet, in the very 
 same bill, he abrogates the few impediments that remain to universal men- 
 dicity. The present law says, "Before you can turn beggar in the place 
 of your residence, you must have been born there, or you must have rented 
 a farm there, or served an office ;" but Mr Scarlett says, " You may beg 
 anywhere where you happen to be. I will have no obstacles to your turn- 
 ing beggar ; I will give every facility and every allurement to the destruc- 
 tion of your independence." We are quite confident that the direct tendency 
 of Mr Scarlett's enactments is to produce these effects. Labourers living 
 in one place and settled in another are uniformly the best and most inde- 
 pendent characters in the place. Alarmed at the idea of being removed 
 from the situation of their choice, and knowing they have nothing to 
 depend upon but themselves, they are alone exempted from the degrading 
 influence of the Poor-Laws, and frequently arrive at independence by their 
 exclusion from that baneful privilege which is offered to them by the incon- 
 sistent benevolence of this bill. If some are removed, after long residence 
 in parishes where they are not settled, these examples only insure the bene- 
 ficial effects of which we have been speaking. Others see them, dread the 
 same fate, quit the mug, and grasp the flail. Our policy, as we have 
 explained in a previous article, is directly the reverse of that of Mr Scarlett. 
 CoiKsidering that a poor man, since Mr East's bill, if he asks no charity, has 
 a right to live where he pleases, and that a settlement is now nothing more 
 than a beggar's ticket, we would gradually abolish all means of gaining a 
 settlement, but those of birth, parentage, or marriage ; and this method 
 would destroy litigation as effectually as the method proposed by Mr 
 Scarlett.* 
 
 Mr Scarlett's plan, too, we are firmly persuaded, would completely 
 defeat his own intentions ; and would inflict a greater injury upon the poor 
 than this very bill, intended to prevent their capricious removal. If his bill 
 had passed, he could not have passed. His post-chaise on the Northern 
 Circuit would have been impeded by the crowds of houseless villagers, 
 driven from their cottages by landlords rendered merciless by the bill. In 
 the mud all in the mud (for such cases made and provided) would they 
 have rolled this most excellent counsellor. Instigated by the devil and 
 their own malicious puqioses, his wig they would have polluted, and tossed to 
 a thousand winds the parchment bickerings cf Doe and Roe. Mr Scarlett's 
 bill is so powerful a motive to proprietors for the depopulation of a village 
 for preventing the poor from living where they wish to live, that nothing but 
 the conviction that such a bill would never be suffered to pass, has prevented 
 those effects from already taking place. Landlords would, in the contem- 
 plation of such a bill, pull down all the cottages of persons not belonging 
 to the parish, and eject the tenants ; the most vigorous measures would be 
 taken to prevent any one from remaining or coming who was not absolutely 
 necessary to the lord of the soil. At present, cottages are let to any body ; 
 because, if they are burthensome to the parish, the tenants can be removed. 
 But the impossibility of doing this would cause the immediate demolition of 
 cottages ; prevent the erection of fresh ones where they are really wanted ; 
 and chain a poor man for ever to the place of his birth, without the pos- 
 sibility of moving. If every body who passed over Mr Scarlett's threshold 
 
 * This has since been done.
 
 396 SCARLETT'S POOR BILL. 
 
 were to gain a settlement for life in his house, he would take good care never 
 to be at home. We all boldly let our friends in, because we know we can 
 easily get them out. So it is with the residence of the poor. Their present 
 power of living where they please, and going where they please, entirely 
 depends upon the possibility of their removal when they become chargeable. 
 If any mistaken friend were to take from them this protection, the whole 
 power and jealousy of property would be turned against their locomotive 
 liberty ; they would become adscripti gleba, no more capable of going out of 
 the parish than a tree is of proceeding, with its roots and branches, to a 
 neighbouring wood. 
 
 The remedy here proposed for these evils is really one of the most extraordi- 
 nary we ever remember to have been introduced into any act of Parliament. 
 
 "And whereas it may happen, that in several parishes or townships now 
 burdened with the maintenance of the Poor settled and residing therein, the 
 owners of lands or inhabitants may, in order to remove, the residence of the 
 labouring Poor from such parishes or places, destroy the cottages and habi- 
 tations therein now occupied by the labourers and their families : And 
 whereas also it may happen, that certain towns and villages, maintaining 
 their own poor, may, by the residence therein of labourers employed and 
 working in other parishes or townships lying near the said towns and villages, 
 be charged with the burden of maintaining those who do not work, and 
 before the passing of this act were not settled therein ; For remedy thereof, 
 be it enacted by the authority aforesaid, that, in either of the above cases, 
 it shall be lawful for the Justices, at any Quarter- sessions of the peace held 
 for the county in which such places shall be, upon the complaint of the 
 Overseers of the poor of any parish, town, or place, that by reason of either 
 of the causes aforesaid, the Rates for the relief of the poor of such parish, 
 town, or place, have been materially increased, whilst those of any other 
 parish or place have been diminished, to hear and fully inquire into the 
 matter of such complaint ; and in case they shall be satisfied of the truth 
 thereof, then to make an order upon the Overseers of the Poor of the parish 
 or township, whose Rates have been diminished by the causes aforesaid, to 
 pay to the complainants such sum or sums, from time to time, as the said 
 Justices shall adjudge reasonable, not exceeding, in any case, together with 
 the existing rates, the amount limited by this act, as a contribution towards 
 the relief of the poor of the parish, town, or place whose Rates have been 
 increased by the causes aforesaid ; which order shall continue in force until 
 the same shall be discharged by some future order of sessions, upon the 
 application of the Overseers paying the same, and proof that the occasion 
 for it no longer exists : Provided always, that no such order shall be made 
 without proof of notice in writing of such intended application, and of the 
 grounds thereof, having been served upon the Overseers of the Poor of 
 the parish or place, upon whom such order is prayed, fourteen days at least 
 before the first day of the Quarter-sessions, nor unless the Justices making 
 such order shall be satisfied that no money has been improperly or unneces- 
 sarily expended by the Overseers of the Poor praying for such order ; and 
 that a separate and distinct account has been kept by them of the additional 
 burden which has been thrown upon their Rates by the causes alleged." 
 Bill, pp. 4, 5. 
 
 Now this clause, we cannot help saying, appears to us to be a receipt 
 for universal and interminable litigation all over England a perfect law- 
 hurricane a conversion of all flesh into plaintiffs and defendants. The 
 parish A. has pulled down houses, and burdened the parish B. ; B. has 
 demolished to the misery of C. ; which has again misbehaved itself in the
 
 SCARLETT'S POOR BILL. 
 
 397 
 
 same manner to the oppression of other letters of the alphabet. All run 
 into parchment, and pant for revenge and exoneration. Though the fact 
 may be certain enough, the causes which gave rise to it may be very 
 uncertain ; and assuredly will not be admitted to have been those against 
 which the statute has denounced the.se penalties. It will be alleged, there- 
 fore, that the houses were not pulled down to get rid of the poor, but 
 because they were not worth repair because they obstructed the squire's 
 view because rent was not paid. All these motives must go before the ses- 
 sions, the last resource of legislators, the unhappy Quarter-sessions, pushed 
 to the extremity of their wit by the plump contradictions of parish perjury. 
 
 Another of the many sources of litigation in this clause is as follows : 
 A certain number of workmen live in a parish M., not being settled in it, 
 and not working in it before the passing of this act. After the passing of 
 this act, they become chargeable to M., whose Poor-rates are increased. 
 M. is to find out the parishes relieved from the burthen of these men, and 
 to prosecute at the Quarter-sessions for relief. But suppose the burthened 
 parish to be in Yorkshire, and the relieved parish in Cornwall, are the 
 Quarter-sessions in Yorkshire to make an order of annual payment upon a 
 parish in Cornwall ? and Cornwall, in turn, upon Yorkshire ? How is the 
 money to be transmitted? What is the easy and cheap remedy, if neglected 
 to be paid ? And if all this could be effected, what is it, after ail, but the 
 present system of removal rendered ten times more intricate, confused, and 
 expensive ? Perhaps Mr .Scarlett means, that the parishes where these 
 men worked, and which may happen to be within the jurisdiction of the 
 Justices, are to be taxed in aid of the parish M., in proportion to the benefit 
 they have received from the labour of men whose distresses they do not 
 relieve. We must have, then, a detailed account of how much a certain 
 carpenter worked in one parish, how much in another ; and enter into a 
 species of evidence absolutely interminable. We hope Mr Scarlett will not 
 be angry with us : we entertain for his abilities and character the highest 
 possible respect ; but great lawyers have not leisure for these trifling 
 details. It is very fortunate that a clause so erroneous in its view should 
 be so inaccurate in its construction. If it were easy to comprehend it, and 
 possible to execute it, it would be necessary to repeal it. 
 
 The shortest way, however, of mending all this, will be entirely to omit 
 this part of the bill. We earnestly, but with very little hope of success, 
 exhort Mr Scarlett not to endanger the really important part of his project, 
 by the introduction of a measure which has little to do with it, and which 
 any Quarter-session country squire can do as well or better than himself. 
 The real question introduced by his bill is, whether or not a limit shall be 
 put to the Poor-Laws ; and not only this, but whether their amount shall 
 be gradually diminished. To this better and higher part of the law we 
 shall now address ourselves. 
 
 In this, however, as well as in the former part of his bill, Mr Scarlett 
 becomes frightened at his own enactments, and repeals himself. Parishes 
 are first to relieve every person actually resident within them. This is no 
 sooner enacted, than a provision is introduced to relieve them from this 
 expense, tenfold more burthensome and expensive than the present system 
 of removal. In the same manner, a maximum is very wisely and bravely 
 enacted ; and, in the following clause, is immediately repealed. 
 
 " Provided also, and be it further enacted, that, if, by reason of any 
 unusual scarcity of provisions, epidemic disease, or any other cause of a 
 temporary or local nature, it shall be deemed expedient by the Overseers 
 of the Poor, or other persons having, by virtue of any local Act of Parlia-
 
 398 SCARLETT'S POOR BILL. 
 
 ment, the authority of Overseers of the Poor of any parish, township, ol 
 place, to make any addition to the sum assessed for the relief of the Poor, 
 beyond the amount limited by this Act, it shall be lawful for the said 
 Overseers, or such other persons, to give public notice in the several 
 churches, and other places of worship within the same parish, township, or 
 place, and if there be no church or chapel within such place, then in the 
 parish church or chapel next adjoining the same, of the place and time of 
 a general meeting to be held by the inhabitants paying to the relief of the 
 Poor within such parish, township, or place, for the purpose of considering 
 the occasion and the amount of the proposed addition ; and if it shall 
 appear to the majority of the persons assembled at such meeting, that such 
 addition shall be necessary, then it shall be lawful to the Overseers, or 
 Other persons having power to make assessments, to increase the assessment 
 by the additional sum proposed and allowed, at such meeting, and for the 
 Justices by whom such rate is to be allowed, upon due proof upon oath to 
 be made before them, of the resolution of such meeting, and that the same 
 was held after sufficient public notice, to allow such rate with the proposed 
 addition, specifying the exact amount thereof, with the reasons for allowing 
 the same, upon the face of the rate." Bill, p. 3. 
 
 It would really seem, from these and other qualifying provisions, as il 
 Mr Scarlett had never reflected upon the consequences of his leading enact- 
 ments till he had penned them ; and that he then set about finding how he 
 could prevent himself from doing what he meant to do. To what purpose 
 enact a maximum, if that maximum may at any time be repealed by the 
 majority of the parishioners'? How will the compassion and charity which 
 the Poor- Laws have set to sleep be awakened, when such a remedy is al 
 hand as the repeal of the maximum by a vote of the parish? Will ardent 
 and amiable men form themselves into voluntary associations to meet any 
 sudden exigency of famine and epidemic disease, when this sleepy and 
 sluggish method of overcoming the evil can be had recourse to? As soon 
 as it Incomes realty impossible to increase the poor fund by law when there 
 is but little, and there can be no more, that little will be administered with 
 the utmost caution ; claims will be minutely inspected ; idle manhood will 
 not receive the scraps and crumbs which belong to failing old age ; distress 
 will make the poor provident and cautious; and all the good expected from 
 the abolition of the Poor-Laws will begin to appear. But these expecta- 
 tions will be entirely frustrated, and every advantage of Mr Scarlett's bill 
 destroyed, by this fatal facility of eluding and repealing it. 
 
 The danger of insurrection is a circumstance worthy of the most serious 
 consideration in discussing the propriety of a maximum. Mr Scarlett's 
 bill is an infallible receipt for tumult and agitation, whenever corn is a 
 little dearer than common. "Repeal the maximum," will be the clamour 
 in every village ; and woe be to those members of the village vestry who 
 should oppose the measure. Whether it was really a year of scarcity, and 
 whether it was a proper season for expanding the bounty of the law, would 
 be a question constantly and fiercely agitated between the farmers and the 
 poor. If the maximum is to be quietly submitted to, its repeal must be 
 rendered impossible but to the Legislature. "Burn your ships, Mr Scarlett. 
 You are doing a wise and a necessary thing ; don't be afraid of yourself. 
 Respect your own nest. Don't let clause A repeal clause B. Be stout. 
 Take care that the Rat Lawyers on the Treasury Bench do not take the 
 oysters out of your Bill, and leave you the shell. Do not yield one par- 
 ticle of the w ; s'lom and philosophy of your measure to the country gentle- 
 men of the earth. "
 
 SCARLETT'S POOR BILL. 
 
 399 
 
 We object to a maximum which is not rendered a decreasing maximum. 
 If definite sums were fixed for each village, which they could not exceed, 
 that sum would in a very few years become a minimum, and an established 
 claim. If 8cxr. were the sum allotted for a particular hamlet, the poor 
 would very soon come to imagine that they were entitled to that precise 
 sum, and the farmers that they were compelled to give it. Any maximum 
 established should be a decreasing, but a very slowly decreasing, maximum, 
 perhaps it should not decrease at a greater rate than los. per cent, per 
 annum. 
 
 It may be doubtful, also, whether the first bill should aim at repealir.:: 
 more than 20 per cent, of the present amount of the Poor-rates. This 
 would be effected in forty years. Long before that time the good or bad 
 effects of the measure would be fairly estimated ; if it be wise that it should 
 proceed, let posterity do the rest. It is by no means necessary to destroy 
 in one moment, upon paper, a payment which cannot, without violating 
 every principle of justice, and every consideration of safety and humanity, 
 be extinguished in less than two cenluries. 
 
 It is important for Mr Scarlett to consider, whether he will make the 
 operation of his bill immediate, or interpose two or three years between its 
 enactment and first operation. 
 
 We entirely object to the following clause, the whole of which ought to 
 be expunged : 
 
 "And be it further enacted, that it shall not be lawful for any Church- 
 warden, Overseer, or Guardian of the Poor, or any other person having 
 authority to administer relief to the Poor, to allow or give, or for any 
 Justice of the Peace to order, any relief to any person whatsoever, who 
 shall be married after the passing of this Act, for himself, herself, or any 
 part of his or her family, unless such poor person shall be actually, at the 
 time of asking such relief, by reason of age, sickness, or bodily infirmity, 
 unable to obtain a livelihood, and to support his or her family by work : 
 Provided always, that nothing in this clause contained shall be construed so 
 as to authorise the granting relief, or making any order for relief, in cases 
 where the same was not lawful before the passing of this Act." 
 
 Nothing in the whole bill will occasion so much abuse and misrepresenta- 
 tion as this clause. It is upon this that the Radicals will first fasten. It 
 will, of course, be explained into a prohibition of marriage to the poor ; and 
 will, in fact, create a marked distinction between two classes of paupers, and 
 become a rallying point for insurrection. In fact, it is wholly unnecessary. 
 As the funds for the relief of pauperism decrease under the operation of a 
 diminishing maximum, the first to whom relief is refused will be the young 
 and the strong ; in other words, the most absurd and extravagant conse- 
 quences of the present Poor-Laws will be the first cured. 
 
 Such, then, is our conception of the bill which ought to be brought into 
 Parliament a maximum regulated by the greatest amount of Poor-rates 
 ever paid, and annually diminishing at the rate of icw. per cent, till they are 
 reduced 20 per cent, of their present value ; with such a preamble to the bill 
 as will make it fair and consistent for any future Parliament to continue the 
 reduction. If Mr Scarlett will bring in a short and simple bill to this effect, 
 and not mingle with it any other parochial improvements, and will persevere 
 in such a bill for two or three years, we believe he will carry it ; and we are 
 certain he will confer, by such a measure, a lasting benefit upon his country 
 and upon none more than upon its labouring poor. 
 
 Wo presume there are very few persons who will imagine such a measure 
 to be deficient in vigour. That the Poor-Laws should be stopped in their
 
 400 PRISONS. 
 
 fatal encroachment upsn property, and unhappy multiplication of the humaii 
 species, and not on'.y this, but that the evil should be put in a state of 
 diminution, would be an improvement of our condition almost beyond hope. 
 The tendency of fears aci objections will all lie the other way ; and a bill 
 of this nature will not be focused of inertness, but of rashness, cruelty, and 
 innovation. We cannot now enter into the question of the Poor- Laws, of 
 all others that which has undergone the most frequent and earnest discus- 
 sion. Our whole reasoning is founded upon the assumption, that no system 
 of laws was ever so completely calculated to destroy industry, foresight, and 
 economy in the poor ; to extinguish compassion in the rich ; and, by destroy- 
 ing the balance between the demand for, and the supply of, labour, to spread 
 a degraded population over a ruined land. Not to attempt the cure of this 
 evil would be criminal indolence : not to cure it gradually and compas- 
 sionately would be very wicked. To Mr Scarlett belongs the real merit of 
 introducing the bill. He will forgive us the freedom, perhaps the severity, 
 of some of our remarks. We are sometimes not quite so smooth as we 
 ought to be ; but we hold Mr Scarlett in very high honour and estimation. 
 He is the greatest advocate perhaps of his time ; and without the slightest 
 symptom of tail or whiskers decorations, it is reported, now as character- 
 istic of the English Bar as wigs and gowns in days of old he has never 
 carried his soul to the Treasury, and said, What will you give me for this ? 
 he has never sold the warm feelings and honourable motives of his youth 
 and manhood for an annual sum of money and an office, he has never 
 taken a price for public liberty and public happiness, he has never touched 
 the political Aceldama, and signed the' devil's bond for cursing to-morrow 
 what he has blest to-day. Living 'n the midst of men who have disgraced 
 it, he has cast honour upon his honourable profession ; and has sought 
 dignity, not from the ermine and the mace, but from a straight path and a 
 spotless life. 
 
 PRISONS. (E. REVIEW, 1822.) 
 
 THERE never was a Society calculated, upon the whole, to do more good 
 than the Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline ; and, hitherto, 
 it has been conducted with equal energy and prudence. If now, or here- 
 after, therefore, we make any criticisms on their proceedings, these must 
 not be ascribed to any deficiency of good will or respect. We may differ 
 from the Society in the means our ends, we are proud to say, are the 
 same. 
 
 In the improvement of prisons, they consider the small number of 
 recommitments as the great test of amelioration. Upon this subject we 
 have ventured to differ from them in a late Number ; and we see no reason 
 to alter our opinion. It is a mistake, and a very serious and fundamental 
 mistake, to suppose that the principal object in jails is the reformation of 
 the offender. The principal object undoubtedly is, to prevent the repetition 
 of the offence by the punishment of the offender ; and, therefore, it is quite 
 possible to conceive that the offender himself may be so kindly, gently, and 
 agreeably led to reformation, by the efforts of good and amiable persons,
 
 401 
 
 that the effect of the punishment may be destroyed, at the same time that 
 the punished may be improved. A prison may lose its terror and discredit, 
 though the prisoner may return from it a better scholar, a better artificer) 
 and a better man. The real and only test, in short, of a good prison system 
 is, the diminution of offences by the 'terror of the punishment. If it can be 
 shown that, in proportion as attention and expense have been employed 
 upon the improvement of prisons, the number of commitments has been 
 diminished, this indeed would be a convincing proof that such care and 
 attention were well employed. But the very reverse is the case ; the num- 
 ber of commitments within these last ten years having nearly doubled all 
 over England. 
 
 7" The following are stated to be the committals in Norfolk county jail. 
 From 1796 to 1815, the number averaged about So. 
 
 In 1816 it was 134 
 
 1817 142 
 
 1818 159 
 
 1819 161 
 
 1820 223. Report, p. 57. 
 
 In Staffordshire, the commitments have gradually increased from 195 in 
 1815, to 443 in 1820 though the jail has been built since Howard's time, 
 at an expense of .30,000. (Report, p. 67.) In Wiltshire, in a prison 
 which has cost the county 40,000, the commitments have increased from 
 207 in 1817, to 504 in 1821. Within this period, to the eternal scandal 
 and disgrace of our laws, 378 persons have been committed for Game 
 offences constituting a sixth part of all the persons committed ; so much 
 for what our old friend, Mr Justice Best, would term the unspeakable 
 advantages of country gentlemen residing upon their own property ! 
 
 When the Committee was appointed in the county of Essex, in the year 
 1818, to take into consideration the state of the jail and houses of correc- 
 tion, they found that the number of prisoners annually committed had 
 increased, within the ten preceding years, from 559 to 1993 ; and there is 
 little doubt (adds Mr Western) of this proportion being a tolerable speci- 
 men of the whole kingdom. We are far from attributing this increase 
 solely to the imperfection of prison discipline. Increase of population, new 
 statutes, the extension of the breed of pheasants, landed and mercantile 
 distress, are veiy operative causes. But the increase of commitments is a 
 stronger proof against the present state of prison discipline, than the 
 decrease of recommitments is in its favour. We may possibly have made 
 some progress in the art of teaching him who has done wrong, to do so no 
 more ; but there is no proof that we have learnt the more important art 
 of deterring those from doing wrong who are doubting whether they shall 
 do it or not, and who, of course, will be principally guided in their decision 
 by the sufferings of those who have previously yielded to temptation. 
 
 There are some assertions in the Report of the Society, to which we can 
 hardly give credit, not that we have the slightest suspicion of any inten- 
 tional misrepresentation, but that we believe there must be some uninten- 
 tional error. 
 
 "The Ladies Committees visiting Newgate and the Borough Compter, 
 have continued to devote themselves to the improvement of the female 
 prisoners, in a spirit worthy of their enlightened zeal and Christian charity. 
 The beneficial effects of their exertions have been evinced by the progressive 
 decrease in the number of female prisoners recommitted, which has dimin 
 ished. since the visits of the ladies to Newgate, no less than 40 per cent." 
 
 3C
 
 4 OJ PRISONS. 
 
 That is, that Mrs Fry and her friends have reclaimed forty women out 
 of every hundred, who, but for them, would have reappeared in jails. 
 Nobody admires and respects Mrs Fry more than we do ; but this fact is 
 scarcely credible ; and, if accurate, ought, in justice to the reputation of 
 the Society and its real interests, to have been thoroughly substantiated by 
 names and documents. The ladies certainly lay claim to no such extraor- 
 dinary success in their own Report quoted in the Appendix ; but speak 
 with becoming modesty and moderation of the result of their labours. 1'he 
 enemies of all these reforms accuse the reformers of enthusiasm and exagger- 
 ation. It is of the greatest possible consequence, therefore that their state- 
 ments should be correct, and their views practical ; and that all strong 
 assertions should be supported by strong documents. The English are a 
 calm, reflecting people ; they will give time and money when they are con- 
 vinced ; but they love dates, names, and certificates. In the midst of the most 
 heart-rending narratives, Bull requires the day of the month, the year of 
 our Lord, the name of the parish, and the countersign of three or four 
 respectable householders. After these affecting circumstances, he can no 
 longer hold out ; but gives way to the kindness of his nature puffs, 
 blubbers, and subscribes. 
 
 A case is stated in the Hertford house of correction, which so much more 
 resembles the sudden conversions of the Methodist Magazine, than the slow 
 and uncertain process by which repentance is produced in real life, that we 
 are a little surprised the Society should have inserted it. 
 
 "Two notorious poachers, as well as bad men, were committed for three 
 months, for not paying the penalty after conviction, but who, in conse- 
 
 Suence of extreme contrition and good conduct, were, at the intercession of 
 ic clergyman of their parish, released before the expiration of their term 
 of punishment. Upon leaving the House of Correction, they declared that 
 they had been completely brought to their senses spoke with gratitude of 
 the benefit they had derived from the advice of the chaplain, and promised, 
 upon their return to their parish, that they would go to their minister, ex- 
 press their thanks for his interceding for them ; and moreover that they 
 would, for the future, attend their duty regularly at church. It is pleasing 
 to add, that these promises have been faithfully fulfilled." A } pp. to Third 
 Report, pp. 29, 30. 
 
 Such statements prove nothing, but that the clergyman who makes them 
 is an amiable man, and probably a college tutor. Their introduction, 
 however, in the Report of a Society depending upon public opinion for 
 success, is very detrimental. 
 
 It is not fair to state the recommitments of one prison, and compare them 
 with those of another, perhaps very differently circumstanced, the recom- 
 mitments, for instance, of a county jail, where offences are generally of 
 serious magnitude, with those of a borough, where the most trifling faults 
 are punished. The important thing would be, to give a table of recommit- 
 ments, in the same prison, for a series of years, the average of recommit- 
 ments, for example, every five years in each prison for twenty years past. 
 If the Society can obtain this, it will be a document of some importance 
 (though of less perhaps than they would consider it to be). At present 
 they tell us, that the average of recommitments in certain prisons is 3 per 
 cent. : in certain other prisons 5 per cent. : but what were they twenty 
 years ago in the same prison ? what were they five years ago ? If recom- 
 mitments are to be the test, we must know whether these are becoming, in 
 any given prison, more or less frequent, before we can determine whether 
 that prison is better or worse governed than formerly. Recommitment*
 
 PXISONS. 403 
 
 will of course be more numerous where prisoners are received from large 
 towns, and from the resorts of soldiers and sailors ; because it is in these 
 situations that we may expect the most hardened offenders. The different 
 nature of the two soils which grow the crimes must be considered before 
 the produce gathered into prisons can be justly compared. 
 
 The quadruple column of the state of prisons for each year is a very ire- 
 ful and important document ; and we hope, in time, the Society will give 
 us a general and particular table of commitments and recommitments carried 
 back for twenty or thirty years ; so that the table may contain (of Gloucester 
 jail, for instance), 1st, the greatest number it can contain ; 2dly, the greatest 
 number it did contain at any one period in each year ; 3dly, its classifica- 
 tion ; 4thly, the greatest number committed in any given year ; 5thly, four 
 averages of five years each, taken from the twenty years preceding, and 
 stating the greatest number of commitments ; 6thly, the greatest number of 
 recommitments in the year under view ; and four averages of recommit- 
 ments, made in the same manner as the average of the commitments ; and 
 then totals at the bottom of the columns. Tables so constructed would 
 throw great light upon the nature and efficacy of imprisonment. 
 
 We wish the Society would pay a little more attention to the question of 
 solitary imprisonment, both in darkness and in light, and to the extent to 
 which it may be carried. Mr Western has upon this subject some ingenious 
 ideas. 
 
 "It appears to me, that if relieved from these impediments, and likewise 
 from any idea of the necessity of making the labour of prisoners profitable, 
 the detail of corrective prison discipline would not be difficult for any body 
 to chalk out. I would first premise, that the only punishment for refractory 
 conduct, or any misbehaviour in the gaol, should, in my opinion, be solitary 
 confinement ; and that, instead of being in a dark hole, it should be in some 
 part of the house where they could fully see the light of day ; and I am not 
 sure that it might not be desirable in some cases, if possible, that they should 
 see the surrounding country and moving objects at a distance, and every 
 thing that man delights in, removed at the same time from any intercourse 
 or word or look with any human being, and quite out of the reach of being 
 themselves seen. I consider such confinement would be a punishment very 
 severe, and calculated to produce a far better effect than darkness. All the 
 feelings that are good in men would be much more likely to be kept alive ; 
 the loss of liberty, and all the blessings of life which honesty will ensure, 
 more deeply to be felt. There would not be so much danger ot any delin- 
 quent sinking into that state of sullen, insensible condition, of incorrigible 
 obstinacy, which sometimes occurs. If he does under those circumstances, 
 we have a right to keep him out of the way of mischief, and let him there 
 remain. But I believe such solitary confinement as I have described, with 
 scanty fare, would very rarely fail of its effect." Weitcrris Remarks, pp. 
 59, 60. 
 
 There is a good deal in this ; it is well worth the trial ; and we hope the 
 Society will notice it in their next Report 
 
 It is very difficult to hit upon degrees ; but we cannot help thinking the 
 Society lean too much to a system of indulgence and education in jails. W 
 shall be very glad to see them more stern and Spartan in their discipline. 
 They recommend work, and even hard work ; but they do not insist upoa 
 it, that the only work done in jails by felons should be hard, dull, and un- 
 interesting ; they do not protest against the conversion of jails into schools 
 ftnd manufactories. Look, for example, to " Preston house of correction.
 
 404 fWSOA'S. 
 
 "Preston house of correction is justly distinguished by the industry which 
 prevails. Here an idle hand is rarely to be found. There were lately 150 
 looms in full employ, from each of which the average weekly earnings are 
 5-r. About 150 pieces of cotton goods are worked off per week. A con- 
 siderable proportion of the looms are of the prisoners' own manufacture. In 
 one month, an inexperienced workman will be able to earn the cost of his 
 gaol allowance of food. Weaving has these advantages over other prison 
 labour : the noise of the shuttle prevents conversation, and the progress of 
 the work constantly requires the eye. The accounts of this prison contained 
 in the Appendix deserve particular attention, as there appears to be a balance 
 of clear profit to the county, from the labour of the prisoners, in the year, 
 of ^1398, 9-r. iff. This sum was earned by weaving and cleaning cotton 
 only ; the prisoners being besides employed in tailoring, whitewashing, 
 flagging, slating, painting, carpentering, and labourers' work, the earnings 
 of which are not included in the above account." Third Report, pp. 
 21, 22. 
 
 "At Worcester county gaol, the system of employment is admirable. 
 Every article of dress worn by the prisoners is made from the raw material : 
 sacking and bags are the only articles made ior sale." Ib. p. 23. 
 
 " In many prisons, the instruction of the prisoners in reading and writing 
 has been attended with excellent effects. Schools have been formed at 
 Bedford, Durham, Chelmsford, Winchester, Hereford, Maidstone, Leices- 
 ter house of correction, Shrewsbury, Warwick, Worcester, &c. Much 
 valuable assistance has been derived in this department from the labours of 
 respectable individuals, especially females, acting under the sanction of the 
 magistrates, and direction of the chaplain." Ib. pp. 30, 31. 
 
 We again enter our decided protest against these modes of occupation in 
 prisons ; they are certainly better than mere idleness spent in society ; but 
 they are not the kind of occupations which render prisons terrible. We 
 would banish all the looms of Preston jails, and substitute nothing but the 
 tread-wheel, or the capstan, or some species of labour where the labourer 
 could not see the results of his toil, where it was as monotonous, irksome, 
 and dull as possible, pulling and pushing, instead of reading and writing, 
 no share of the profits not a single shilling. TLere should be no tea 
 and sugar, no assemblage of female felons round the washing-tub, no- 
 thing but beating hemp, and pulling oakum, and pounding bricks, no 
 work but what was tedious, unusual, and unfeminine. Man, woman, boy 
 and girl, should all leave the jails unimpaired indeed in health, but heartily 
 wearied of their residence ; and taught by sad experience to consider it as 
 the greatest misfortune of their lives to return to it. We have the strongest 
 belief that the present lenity of jails, the education carried on there the 
 cheerful assemblage of workmen the indulgence in diet the shares of 
 earnings enjoyed by prisoners, are one great cause of the astonishingly rapid 
 increase of commitments. 
 
 Mr Western, who entirely agrees with us upon these points, has the fol- 
 lowing judicious observations upon the severe system : 
 
 " It may be imagined by some persons, that the rules here prescribed are 
 too severe ; but such treatment is, in my opinion, the tenderest mercy, 
 compared with that indulgence which is so much in practice, and which 
 directly tends to ruin, instead of saving, its unfortunate victim. This 
 severity it is which in truth forms the sole effective means which imprison- 
 ment gives ; only one mitigation therefore, if such it may be termed, can be 
 admissible, and that is, simply to shorten the duration of the imprisonment. 
 The sooner the prisoner comes out the better, if fully impressed with dread
 
 PRISONS. 40S 
 
 of what he has suffered, and communicates information to his friends what 
 they may expect if they get there. It appears to me, indeed, that one great 
 and primary object we ought to have in view is, generally, to shorten the 
 duration of imprisonment, at the same time that we make it such a punish- 
 ment, as is likely to deter, correct, and reform ; shorten the duration of 
 imprisonment before trial, which we are called upon, by every principle of 
 moral and political justice, to do ; shorten also the duration of imprison- 
 ment after trial, by the means here described ; and I am satisfied our 
 prisons would soon lose, or rather would never see, half the number of their 
 present inhabitants. The long duration of imprisonment, where the dis- 
 cipline is less severe, renders it perfectly familiar, and, in consequence, 
 not only destitute of any useful influence, but obviously productive of the 
 worst effects ; yet this is the present practice ; and, I think, indeed, 
 criminals are now sentenced to a longer period of confinement than 
 formerly. 
 
 "The deprivation of liberty certainly is a punishment under any circum- 
 stances ; but the system generally pursued in our gaols might rather be 
 considered as a palliative of that punishment, than to make it effectual to 
 any good purpose. An idle life, society unrestrained, with associates of 
 similar character and habits, better fare and lodgings in many cases, and in 
 few, if any, worse than fall to the lot of the hardworking and industrious 
 peasant ; and very often much better than the prisoners were in the enjoy- 
 ment of before they were apprehended. 
 
 "I do not know what could be devised more agreeable to all the different 
 classes of offenders than this sort of treatment : the old hardened sinner, the 
 juvenile offender, or the idle vagabond, who runs away and leaves a sick 
 wife and family to be provided for by his parish, alike have little or no appre 
 hension, at present, of any imprisonment to which they may be sentenced } 
 and thus are the most effective means we possess to correct and reform ren- 
 dered totally unavailable, and even perverted, to the more certain min of 
 those who might be restored to society good and valuable members of it. 
 
 "There are, it is true, various occupations now introduced into many 
 prisons, but which, I confess, I think of very little use ; drawing and pre- 
 paring straws, platting, knitting, heading pins, &c., weaving and working 
 at a trade even, as it is generally carried on prisoners coaxed to the per- 
 formance of it, the task easy, the reward immediate afford rather the means 
 of passing away the time agreeably. These occupations are indeed better 
 than absolute idleness, notwithstanding that imprisonment may be rendered 
 less irksome thereby. I am far from denying the advantage, still less would 
 I be supposed to derogate from the merits of those who, with every feeling 
 of humanity, and with indefatigable pains, in many instances, have estab- 
 lished such means of employment ; and some of them for women, with 
 washing, &c., amount to hard labour ; but I contend that, for men, they are 
 applicable only to a house of industry, and by no means suited to the cor- 
 rective discipline which should be found in a prison. Individuals are sent 
 here to be punished, and for that sole purpose ; in many cases for crimes 
 which have induced the forfeiture of life : they are not sent to be educated, 
 or apprenticed to a trade. The horrors of dungeon imprisonment, to the 
 credit of the age, no longer exist. But if no cause of dread is substituted, 
 by what indication of common sense is it that we send criminals there at all? 
 If prisons are to be made into places in which persons of both sexes and all 
 ages may be well fed, clothed, lodged, educated, and taught a trade, where 
 they may find pleasant society, and are required not to take heed foi the 
 morrow, the present inhabitants should be turned out, and the most deserv- 
 ing and industrious pf our poorest fellow subjects should be invited to take
 
 406 PRISONS. 
 
 their place, which I have no doubt they would be eager to do." Western, 
 PP- 1317. 
 
 In these sentiments we most cordially agree. They are well worth the 
 most serious attention of the Society. 
 
 The following is a sketch from Mr Western's book of what a prison life 
 should be. It is impossible to write with more good sense, and a more 
 thorough knowledge of the subject. 
 
 "The operations of the day should begin with the greatest punctuality 
 at a given hour ; and, as soon as the prisoners have risen from their beds, 
 they should be, according to their several classes, marched to the work- 
 bouses, where they should be kept to hard labour two hours at least ; from 
 thence they should be taken back to wash, shave, comb, and clean them- 
 selves ; thence to the chapel to hear a short prayer, or the governor or de- 
 puty should read to them in their respective day-rooms ; and then theit 
 breakfast, which may, altogether, occupy an hour and a half or more. I 
 have stated, in a former part of my letter, that the hours of meals and leisure 
 should be in solitude, in the sleeping cells of the prison ; but I presume, for 
 the moment, this may not always be practicable. I will therefore consider 
 the case as if Jthe classes assembled at meal-times in the different day-rooms. 
 After breakfast they should return to hard labour for three or four hours, 
 and then take another hour for dinner ; labour aficr dinner two or three 
 hours, and their supper given them to eat in solitude in their sleeping cells. 
 
 "This marching backwards and forwards to chapel and mill-house, &c., 
 may appear objectionable, but it has not been so represented to me in the 
 prisons where it actually now takes place ; and it is, to my apprehension, 
 materially useful in many respects. The object is to keep the prisoners iu 
 a state of constant motion, so that there shall be no lounging time or loiter- 
 ing, which is always favourable to mischief or cabal. For the same reason 
 it is I propose two hours' labour the moment they are up, and before wash- 
 ing, &c., that there may be no time lost, and that they may begin the day 
 by a portion of labour, which will tend to keep them quiet and obedient the 
 remainder of it. Each interval for meal, thus occurring between labour 
 hours, has also a tendency to render the mischief of intercourse less prob- 
 able, and at the same time the evening association, which is most to be 
 apprehended in this respect, is entirely cut off. The frequent moving of 
 the prisoners from place to place keeps the governor and sub-officers of the 
 prison in a similar state of activity and attention, which is likewise of advan- 
 tage, though their numbers should be such as to prevent their duty becoming 
 too arduous or irksome. Their situation is not pleasant, and their respon- 
 sibility is great. An able and attentive governor, who. executes all his 
 arduous duties with unremitting zeal and fidelity, is a most valuable public 
 servant, and entitled to the greatest respect. He must be a man of no 
 ordinary capacity, with a liberal and comprehensive mind, possessing a con- 
 trol over his own passions, firm and undaunted, a character that commands 
 from those under him, instinctively, as it were, respect and regard. In 
 vain are our buildings, and rules, and regulations, if the choice of a gover- 
 nor is not made an object of primary and most solicitous attention and con- 
 sideration. 
 
 " It does not appear to me necessary for the prisoners to have more than 
 three hours' leisure, inclusive of meal-times ; and I am convinced the close 
 of the day must be in solitude. Eight or ten hours will have passed in 
 company with their fellow prisoners of the same class (for I am presuming 
 that a separate compartment of the workhouse will be allotted to each), 
 where, though they cannot associate to enjoy society as they would wish, no
 
 PRISONS. 407 
 
 gloom of solitude can oppress them : there is more danger even then of too 
 close an intercourse and conversation, though a ready cure is in that case to 
 be found by a wheel put in motion, the noise of which speedily overcomes 
 the voice. Some time after Saturday night should be allowed to them, 
 more particularly to cleanse themselves and their clothes, and they should 
 have a bath, cold or warm, if necessary ; and on the Sunday they should be 
 dressed in their best clothes, and the day should be spent wholly in the 
 chapel, the cell, and the airing ground ; the latter in the presence of a day 
 watchman, as I have described to be in practice at Warwick. I say nothing 
 about teaching to read, write, work, &c. &c. ; any proportion of time neces- 
 sary for any useful purpose may be spared from the hours of labour or of 
 rest, according to circumstances ; but I do not place any reliance upon 
 improvement in any branch of education : they would not, indeed, be there 
 long enough. All I want them to learn is, that there exists the means of 
 punishment for crime, and be fully impressed with dread of repetition of 
 what they have undergone ; and a short time will suffice for that purpose. 
 X'liv, if each successive day was spent in this manner, can it be doubted 
 that the frequent commission of crime would be checked, and more done to 
 deter, correct, and refonn, than could be accomplished by any other punish- 
 ment? A period of such discipline, longer or shorter, according to the 
 nature of the offence, would surely be sufficient for any violation of the law 
 short of murder, or that description of outrage which is likely to lead on to 
 the perpretation of it. This sort of treatment is not to be overcome : ii 
 cannot be braved, or laughed at, or disregarded, by any force of animal 
 spirits, however strong or vigorous of mind or body the individual may be. 
 The dull, unvarying course of hard labour, with hard fare and seclusion, 
 must in time become so painfully irksome, and so wear and distress him, 
 the he will inevitably, in the end, be subdued." Western, pp. 64 69. 
 
 There is nothing in the Report of the Prison Society so good as this. 
 
 The Society very properly observe upon the badness of town jails, and 
 the necessity for their suppression. Most towns cannot spare the funds 
 necessary for building a good jail. Shopkeepers cannot spare the time for 
 its superintendence; and hence it happens that town jails are almost always 
 in a disgraceful state. The Society fiequently allude to the diffusion of 
 tracts. If education is to be continued in jails, and tracts are to be dis- 
 persed, we cannot help lamenting that the tracts, though full of good prin- 
 ciples, are so intolerably stupid and all apparently constructed upon the 
 supposition, that a thief or a peccant ploughman are inferior in common 
 sense to a boy of five years old. The stoiy generally is, that a labourer 
 with six children has nothing to live upon but mouldy bread and dirty water ; 
 yet nothing can exceed his cheerfulness and content no murmurs no dis- 
 content : of mutton he has scarcely heard of bacon he never dreams : fur- 
 furous bread and the water of the pool constitute his food, establish his 
 felicity, and excite his warmest gratitude. The squire or parson of the 
 parish always happens to be walking by, and overhears him praying for the 
 king and the members for the county, and for all in authority ; and it 
 generally ends with their offering him a shilling, which this excellent man 
 declares he does not want, and will not accept ! These are the pamphlets 
 which Goodies and Noodles are dispersing with unwearied diligence. It 
 would be a great blessing if some genius would arise who had a talent of 
 writing for the poor. He would be of more value than many poets living 
 upon the banks of lakes or even (though we think highly of ourselves) of 
 greater value than many reviewing men living in the garrets of the north. 
 
 The Society offer some comments upon the prison bill now pending, and
 
 408 PJVSO.YS. 
 
 which, unfortunately* for the cause of prison improvement, has been so 
 long pending in the legislature. In the copy of this bill, as it stands at 
 present, nothing is said of the limitation of numbers in any particular class. 
 We have seen forty felons of one class in one yard before trial. If this be 
 to continue, all prison improvement is a mere mockery. Separate sleeping 
 cells should be enacted positively, and not in words which leave this 
 improvement optional. If any visiting justice dissent from the majority, t 
 it should be lawful for him to give in a separate report upon the state of the 
 prison and prisoners to the Judge or the Quarter-sessions. All such reports 
 of any visiting magistrate or magistrates, not exceeding a certain length, 
 should be published in the county papers. The chairman's report to the 
 Secretary of State should be published in the same manner. The great 
 panacea is publicity : it is this which secures compliance with wise and just 
 laws, more than all the penalties they contain for their own preservation. 
 
 We object to the reading and writing clause. A poor man, who is lucky 
 enough to have his son committed for a felony, educates him, under such a 
 system, for nothing-; while the virtuous simpleton on the other side of the 
 wall is paying by the quarter for these attainments. He sees clergymen and 
 ladies busy with the larcenous pupil ; while the poor lad, who respects the 
 eighth commandment, is consigned, in some dark alley, to the frowns and 
 blows of a ragged pedagogue. It would be the safest way, where a prisoner 
 is kept upon bread and water alone, to enact that the allowance of bread 
 should not be less than a pound and a half for men, and a pound for women 
 and boys. We strongly recommend, as mentioned in a previous Number, 
 that four sorts of diet should be enacted for every prisor : 1st, Bread and 
 water ; 2d, Better prison diet ; 3d, Best prison diet ; 4th, Free diet the 
 second and third to be defined by the visiting magistrates. All sentences 
 of imprisonment should state to which of these diets the prisoner is to be 
 confined ; and all deviation from it on the part of the prison officers should 
 be punished with very severe penalties. The regulation of diet in a prison is a 
 point of the very highest importance ; and to ask of visiting magistrates that 
 they should doom to bread and water a prisoner, whom the law has left at 
 liberty to purchase whatever he has money to procure, is a degree of 
 severity which it is hardly fair to expect from country gentlemen, and, if 
 expected, those expectations will not be fulfilled. The whole system of 
 diet, one of the mainsprings of all prison discipline, will get out of order, if 
 its arrangement be left to the interference of magistrates, and not to the 
 sentence of the judge. Free diet and bread diet need no interpretation ; 
 and the jailer will take care to furnish the judge with the definitions of 
 better prison diet and best prison diet. A knowledge of the diet prescribed 
 in a jail is absolutely necessary for the justice of the case. Diet differs so 
 much in different prisons, that six weeks in one prison is as severe a punish- 
 ment as three months in another. If any country gentleman, engaged in 
 legislation for prisons, is inclined to undervalue the importance of these regu- 
 lations, let him appeal to his own experience, and remember, in the vacuity 
 of the country, how often he thinks of dinner, and of what there will be for 
 dinner ; and how much his amenity and courtesy for the evening depend, 
 upon the successful execution of this meal. But there is nobody so glut- 
 tonous and sensual as a thief ; and he will feel much more bitterly fetters on 
 his mouth than his heels. It sometimes happens that a gentleman is sen- 
 tenced to imprisonment, for manslaughter in a duel, or for a libel. Are 
 
 * The county of York, with a prison under presentment, has been waiting nearly three 
 years for this bill, in order to proceed upon the improvement of their county jail. 
 
 t It would be an entertaining change in human affairs to determine every tiling by 
 minorities. They are almost always in the right.
 
 PXISONS. 409 
 
 visiting justices to doom such a prisoner to bread and water, or are they to 
 make an invidious distinction between him and the other prisoners ? The 
 diet should be ordered by the judge, or it never will be well ordered or 
 ordered at all. 
 
 The most extraordinary clause in the bill is the following : 
 
 " And be it further enacted, that in case any criminal prisoner shall be 
 guilty of any repeated offence against the rules of the prison, or shall be 
 guilty of any greater offence which the jailer or keeper is not by this act 
 empowered to punish, the said jailer or keeper shall report the same to the 
 visiting justices, or one of them, for the time being ; and such justices, or 
 one of them, shall have power to inquire upon oath, and determine con- 
 cerning any such offence so reported to him or them, and shall order the 
 offender to be punished, either by moderate whipping, repeated whippings, 
 or by close confinement, for any terra not exceeding ." Act, p. 21. 
 
 Upon this clause, any one justice may order repeated whippings for any 
 offence greater than that which the jailer may punish. Our respect for the 
 committee will only allow us to say, that we hope this clause will be recon- 
 sidered. We beg leave to add, that there should be a return to the prin- 
 cipal Secretary of State of recommitments as well as commitments. 
 
 It is no mean pleasure to see this attention to jail discipline travelling 
 from England to the detestable and despotic governments of the Continent, 
 to see the health and life of captives admitted to be of any importance, 
 to perceive that human creatures in dungeons are of more consequence than 
 rats and black beetles. All this is new is some little gained upon tyranny ; 
 and for it we are indebted to the labours of the Prison Society. Still the 
 state of prisons, on many parts of the Continent, is shocking beyond all 
 description. 
 
 It is a most inconceivable piece of cruelty and absurdity in the English 
 law, that the prisoner's counsel, when he is tried for any capital felony, is 
 not allowed to speak for him ; and this we hope the new prison bill will 
 correct. Nothing can be more ridiculous in point of reasoning, or more 
 atrociously cruel and unjust in point of fact. Any number of counsel may 
 be employed to take away the poor man's life. They are at full liberty to 
 talk as long as they like ; but not a syllable is to be uttered in his defence 
 not a sentence to show why the prisoner is not to be hung. This practice 
 is so utterly ridiculous to any body but lawyers (to whom nothing that is 
 customary is ridiculous), that men not versant with courts of justice will not 
 believe it. It is, indeed, so utterly inconsistent with the common cant of 
 the humanity of the English law, that it is often considered to be the mistake 
 of the narrator, rather than the imperfection of the system. We must take 
 this opportunity, therefore, of making a few observations on this very strange 
 and anomalous practice. 
 
 The common argument used in its defence is that the judge is counsel 
 for the prisoner. But the defenders of this piece of cruel and barbarous 
 nonsense must first make their election, whether they consider the prisoner 
 to be, by this arrangement, in a better, a worse, or an equally good situa- 
 tion as if his council were allowed to plead for him. If he be m a worse 
 situation, why is he so placed? Why is a man, in a solemn issue of life 
 and death, deprived of any fair advantage which any suitor in any court of 
 justice possesses? This is a plea of guilty to the charge we make against 
 the practice ; and its advocates, by such concession, are put out of court. 
 But, if it be an advantage, or no disadvantage, whence comes i 
 that the choice of this advantage, in the greatest of all human con- 
 ceras, is not left to the party, or to his friends? If the question concern
 
 <io fXISONS. 
 
 a foot-path or a fat ox every man may tell his own story, or employ a 
 barrister to tell it for him. The law leaves the litigant to decide on the 
 method most conducive to his own interest. But, when the question is 
 whether he is to live or die, it is at once decided for him that his counsel 
 are to be dumb ! And yet, so ignorant are men of their own interests, that 
 there is not a single man tried who would not think it a great privilege 
 if counsel were allowed to speak in his favour, and who would not be 
 supremely happy to lay aside. the fancied advantage of their silence. And 
 this is true not merely of ignorant men ; but there is not an Old Bailey 
 barrister who would not rather employ another Old Bailey barrister to speak 
 for him, than enjoy the advantage (as the phrase is) of having the judge for 
 his counsel. But in what sense, after all, is the judge counsel for the 
 
 Rrisoner? lie states, in his summing up, facts as they have been delivered 
 i evidence ; and he tells the jury upon what points they are to decide : he 
 mentions what facts are in favour of the prisoner, and what bear against 
 him ; and he leaves the decision to the jury. Does he do more than this 
 in favour of the prisoner ? Does he mistake ? does he mislead ? does he 
 bring forward arguments on one side of the question, and omit equally 
 important arguments on the other? If so, he is indeed counsel for the 
 prisoner ; but then who is judge ? who takes care of the interests of the 
 public ? But the truth is, he does no such thing ; he does merely what we 
 nave stated him to do ; and would he do less, could he do less, if the 
 prisoner's counsel spoke for him ? If an argument were just, or an inference 
 legitimate, he would not omit the one, or refute the other, because they had 
 been put or drawn in the speech of the prisoner's counsel, lie would be 
 no more prejudiced against the defendant in a criminal than in a civil suit. 
 He would select from the speeches of both counsel all that could be fairly 
 urged for or against the defendant, and he would reply to their fallacious 
 reasonings. The pure administration of justice requires of him, in either 
 case, the same conduct. Whether the whole bar spoke for the prisoner, or 
 whether he was left to defend himself, what can the judge do, or what 
 ought he to do, but to state to the jury the facts as they are given in evi- 
 dence, and the impression these facts have made upon his own mind ? In 
 the mean time, while the prisoner's counsel have been compelled to be 
 silent, the accuser's, the opposite party, have enjoyed an immense advan- 
 tage. In considering what bears against the prisoner, the judge has heard, 
 not only the suggestions of his own understanding, but he has been exposed 
 to the able and artful reasoning of a practised advocate, who has been pre- 
 viously instructed in the case of which the judge never heard a syllable 
 before he came into court. Suppose it to be a case depending upon cir- 
 cumstantial evidence ; in how many new points of view may a man of 
 genius have placed those circumstances, which would not have occurred 
 to the judge himself ! How many inferences may he have drawn, which 
 would have been unnoticed, but for the efforts of a man whose bread and 
 fame depend upon his exertions, and who has purposely, and on contract, 
 flung the whole force of his understanding into one scale ! In the mean- 
 time, the prisoner can say nothing, for he has not the gift of learned 
 speech ; his counsel can say nothing, though he has communicated with 
 the prisoner, and could place the whole circumstances, perhaps, in the 
 fairest and clearest point of view for the accused party. By the courtesy 
 of England this is called justice we in the north cannot admit of the 
 correctness of the appellation. 
 
 It seems utterly to be forgotten, in estimating this practice, that two un- 
 derstandings are better than one. The judge must inevitably receive many 
 new views against the prisoner by the speech of one counsel, and lo>c many
 
 PRISONS. 
 
 41* 
 
 views in favour of the prisoner by the silence of the other. We are not to 
 suppose (like ladies going into court in an assize town) that the judge would 
 have thought of every thing which the counsel against the prisoner has said, 
 and which the counsel for the prisoner would have said. The judge, wigged 
 and robed as he is, is often very inferior in acuteness to either of the person;, 
 who are pleading under him a cold, slow, parchment and precedent man, 
 without passions or prsecordia, perhaps a sturdy brawler for church and 
 king, or a quiet man of ordinary abilities, steadily, though perhaps con- 
 scientiously, following tiio.se in power through thick and thin through 
 right and wrong. Whence comes it that the method of getting at truth, 
 which is so excellent on all common occasions, should be considered as so 
 improper on the greatest of all occasions, where the life of a man is con- 
 cerned ? If an acre of land is to be lost or won, one man says all that can 
 be said on one side of the question another on the oilier ; and the jury, 
 aided by the impartiality of the judge, decide. The wit of man can devise 
 no better method of disentangling difficulty, exposing falsehood, and detect- 
 ing truth. " 7c'// me why I am hurried away to a premature death, and no 
 man suffered to speak in my defence, when at this very moment, and in my 
 hearing, all the eloquence of the bar, on the other side of your justice-hall, is 
 employed in defending a path or a hedge ? Is a foot of land dearer to any 
 man than my life is to me? The civil plaintiff has not trusted the smallest 
 part of his fate or fortune to his own efforts ; and will you grant me no assist- 
 ance of superior wisdom, who have suffered a long famine to purchase it who 
 am broken by prison broken by chains and so shamed by this dress of guilt, 
 and abashed by the presence of my superiors, that I have no words which you 
 could hear without derision that I could not give way for a moment to the 
 fulness and agitation of my rude heart without moving your contempt ? " So 
 spoke a wretched creature to a judge in our hearing ! and what answer 
 could be given, but "Jailer, take him away?" 
 
 We are well aware that a great decency of language is observed by the 
 counsel employed against the prisoner, in consequence of the silence im- 
 posed upon the opposite counsel ; but then, though there is a decency, as 
 far as concerns impassioned declamation, yet there is no restraint, and there 
 can be no restraint upon the reasoning powers of a counsellor. He may 
 put together the circumstances of an imputed crime in the most able, artful, 
 and ingenious manner, without the slightest vehemence or passion. We 
 have no objection to this, if any counter statement were permitted. We 
 want only fair play. Speech for both sides, or speech for none. The first 
 would be the wiser system ; but the second would be clear from the intoler- 
 able cruelty of the present. We see no harm that would ensue, if both 
 advocates were to follow their own plan without restraint. But, if the 
 feelings are to be excluded in all causes of this nature (which seems very 
 absurd), then let the same restraint be exacted from both sides. It might 
 very soon be established as the etiquette of the bar, that the pleadings on 
 both sides were expected to be calm, and to consist of reasoning upon the 
 facts. In high treason, where the partiality of the judge and power of the 
 court are suspected, this absurd incapacity of being heard by counsel is 
 removed. Nobody pretends to sar, in such cases, that the judge would be 
 counsel for the prisoner ; and yet, how many thousand cases are there in a 
 free country which have nothing to do with high treason, and where the 
 spirit of party, unknown to himself, may get possession of a judge ? Sup- 
 pose any trial for murder to have taken place in the Manchester riots, 
 will any man say that the conduct of many judges on such a question ought 
 not to have been watched with the most jealous circumspection ? Would any 
 prisoner would any fair mediator between the prisoner and the public be
 
 412 PXJSO.VS. 
 
 satisfied at snch a period with the axiom that the judge is counsel for the 
 prisoner ? We are not saying that there is no judge who might not be so 
 trusted, but that all judges are not, at all times, to be so intrusted. We 
 are not saying that any judge would wilfully do wrong ; but that many 
 might be led to do wrong by passions and prejudices of which they were un- 
 conscious ; and that the real safeguard to the prisoner, the best, the only 
 safeguard, is full liberty of speech for the counsel he has employed. 
 
 What would be the discipline of that hospital, where medical assistance 
 was allowed in all trifling complaints, and withheld in every case of real 
 danger ? where Bailey and Halford were lavished upon stomach-aches and 
 refused in typhus fever? where the dying patient beheld the greatest skill 
 employed upon trifling evils of others, and was told, because bis was a case 
 of life and death, that the cook or the nurse was to be his physician ? 
 
 Suppose so intolerable an abuse (as the Attorney and Solicitor General 
 would term it) had been established, and that a law for its correction was 
 now first proposed, entitled znActto prti'cnt the Couttsel for Prisoners from 
 being heard in their Defence ! ! 1 
 
 What evil would result from 'allowing counsel to be heard in defence of 
 prisoners? Would too many people be hung from losing that valuable 
 counsellor, the judge ? or would too few people be hung ? or would things 
 remain much as they are at present ? We never could get the admirers of 
 this practice to inform us what the results would be of deviating from it ; 
 and we are the more particularly curious upon this point, because our 
 practice is decidedly the reverse, and we find no other results from it than 
 a fair administration of criminal justice. In all criminal cases that require 
 the intervention of a jury in Scotland, a prisoner must have, 1st, a copy of 
 the indictment, which must contain a minute specification of the offence 
 charged ; 2ndly, a list of witnesses ; 3dly, a list of the assize ; and, 4thly, 
 in every question that occurs, and in all addresses to the jury, the prisoner's 
 counsel has the last word. Where is the boasted mercy of the English law 
 after this? 
 
 The truth is, it proceeds from the error which, in all dark ages, pervades 
 all codes of laws, of confounding the accused with the guilty. In the early 
 part of our state trials, the prisoners were not allowed to bring evidence 
 against the witnesses of the crown. For a long period after this, the wit- 
 nesses of the prisoner were not suffered to be examined upon oath. One 
 piece of cruelty and folly has given way after another. Each has been 
 defended by the Attorney and Solicitor General for the time, as absolutely 
 necessary to the existence of the state, and the most perfect performance of 
 our illustrious ancestors. The last grand hope of every foolish person is 
 the silence of the prisoner's counsel. In the defence of this, it will be seen 
 what stupidity driven to despair can achieve. We beg pardon for this 
 digression ; but flesh and blood cannot endure the nonsense of lawyers 
 upon this subject 
 
 The Society have some very proper remarks upon the religious instruc- 
 tions of the chaplain an appointment of vast importance and utility ; 
 unfortunately very ill paid, and devolving entirely upon the lower clergy. 
 It is said that the present Bishop of Gloucester, Dr Ryder, goes into jails, 
 and busies himself with the temporal wretchedness and the eternal welfare 
 of the prisoners. If this be so, it does him great honour, and is a noble 
 example to all ranks of clergy who are subject to him. Above all, do not 
 let us omit the following beautiful anecdote, while we are talking of good 
 and pious men. 
 
 " The Committee cannot refrain from extracting from the Report of the
 
 PRISONS. 413 
 
 Paris Society, the interesting anecdote of the excellent Pere Joussony, who 
 being sent, by the Consul at Algiers, to minister to the slaves, fixed his 
 residence in their prison ; and, during a period of thirty years, never 
 quitted his post. Being compelled to repair to France, for a short period, 
 he returned again to the prison, and at length resigned his breath in the 
 midst of those for whose interests he had laboured, and who were dearer to 
 him than life. " Report, p. 30. 
 
 It seems to be a very necessary part of the prison system, that any poor 
 person, when acquitted, should be passed to his parish ; and that all who 
 are acquitted should be immediately liberated. At present, a prisoner, after 
 acquittal, is not liberated till the Grand Jury are dismissed,* in case (as it 
 is said) any more bills should be preferred against him. This is really a con- 
 siderable hardship ; and we do not see, upon the same principle, why the 
 prisoner may not be detained for another assize. To justify such a practice, 
 notice should, at all events, be given to the jailer of intention to prefer 
 other charges against him. To detain a man who is acquitted of all of 
 which he has been accused, and who is accused of nothing more, merely 
 because he may be accused of something more, seems to be a great perver- 
 sion of justice. The greatest of all prison improvements, however, would 
 be, the delivery of jaiis four times in the year. It would save expense ; 
 render justice more terrible, by rendering it more prompt ; facilitate classi- 
 fication, by lessening numbers ; keep constantly alive, in the minds of 
 wicked men, the dread of the law ; and diminish the unjust sufferings of 
 those who, after long imprisonment, are found innocent. 
 
 " From documents," says Mr Western, "upon the table of the House of 
 Commons in 1819, I drew out an account, which I have already adverted 
 to in part, but which I shall restate here, as it places, in a strong point of 
 view, the extent of injustice, and inconsistency too, arising out of the 
 present system. It appeared that at the Maidstone Lent Assizes of that 
 year there were one hundred and seventy-seven prisoners for trial ; of these 
 seventeen were in prison before the 1st of October, eighty- three before the 
 rst of January', the shortest period of confinement before trial being six 
 months of the former, three months of the latter. Nothing can show us 
 more plainly the injustice of such confinement, than the known fact of six 
 months' imprisonment being considered a sufficient punishment for half the 
 felonies that are committed ; but the case is stronger, when we consider the 
 number acquitted ; seventeen of the twenty-seven first mentioned were 
 acquitted, nine of the seventeen were discharged, not being prosecuted, 
 or having no bill found against them. On the other side it appeared, that 
 twenty-five convicted felons were sentenced to six months' imprisonment, or 
 under, the longest period of whose confinement did not therefore exceed the 
 shortest of the seventeen acquitted, or that of the nine, against whom no 
 charge was adduced ; there were three, who, after being about seven months 
 in prison, were then discharged, whilst various convicted felons suffered six 
 sevenths only of the punishment, including the time before trial as well as 
 after condemnation. By the returns from the Lent Assizes at Chelmsford, 
 the same year, the cases were not less striking than those of Maidstone : the 
 total number was one hundred and sixty-six ; of these, twenty-five were in 
 prison before the 1st of October, of whom eleven were acquitted ; and of 
 these eleven, six were discharged without any indictment preferred ; two 
 were in prison eight months ; three, seven months and fifteen days ; three 
 six months and fifteen days. On the other hand, sixteen convicted of 
 
 * This has since been done away with.
 
 414 PRISONS. 
 
 felony were considered to be sufficiently punished by imprisonment undei 
 six months. Upon the whole, it appeared that four hundred and five per- 
 sons had been in jail before the 1st of October, whilst eight hundred 
 convicted felons were 'sentenced to a lighter punishment, to a shorter 
 duration of imprisonment, than these four hundred and five had actually 
 undergone. 
 
 "It is a curious fact that upon an average, more than one third of the 
 total number committed for trial are acquitted. In the seven years ending 
 1819, seventy-two thousand two hundred and sixteen persons were com- 
 mitted ; of these, fourteen thousand two hundred and ninety-one were 
 acquitted on trial, eleven thousand two hundred and seventy-four were 
 discharged, there being no prosecutions, or no bills found against them. 
 This large proportion of acquittals aggravates the evil and injustice of long 
 confinement before trial ; but were it otherwise, what possible right can we 
 have to detain a man in custody six months, upon any charge exhibited 
 against him, before he is brought to trial? \Vhat excuse or palliation can 
 be found for so barbarous a violation of all the principles of justice and 
 humanity? How contemptible it is, by way of defence, to talk of the in- 
 expediency of increasing the number of the judges, the expense, inconveni- 
 ence, trouble, &c. ! It is wrong to contend with such arguments against 
 the unanswerable claims of justice, as it is only to admit they are entitled to 
 weight. The fact is, we are so completely under the influence of habitual 
 respect for established practice, that we do-not stop to question the possi- 
 bility of the existence of any serious defects in the administration of the law 
 that can be capable of remedy. The public attention has never been 
 earnestly and steadily fixed and devoted to the attainment of a better 
 system." Western, pp. 80 83. 
 
 The public cannot be too grateful to Mr Western for his labours on this 
 subject. We strongly recommend his tract for general circulation. It is 
 full of stout good sense, without one particle of nonsense or fanaticism ; 
 good English stuff, of the most improved and best sort. Lord Londonderry 
 has assented to the measure ; and his assent does him and the Government 
 very great credit. It is a measure of first-rate importance. The multipli- 
 city of imprisonments is truly awful. 
 
 Within the distance of ten miles round London, thirty-one fairs are 
 annually held, which continue eighty days within the space of seven 
 months. The effect of these fairs, in filling the prisons of the metropolis, it 
 is easy to imagine ; and the topic is very wisely and properly brought for- 
 ward by the Society. 
 
 Nothing can be so absurd as the reasoning iised about flash-houses. 
 They are suffered to exist, it seems, because it is easy to the officers of 
 justice to find, in such places, the prisoners of whom they are in search ! 
 But the very place where the thief is found is most probably the place 
 which made him a thief. If it facilitate the search, it creates the necessity 
 for searching, and multiplies guilt while it promotes detection. 'Wher- 
 ever thieves are known to haunt, that place should be instantly purged of 
 thieves. 
 
 We have pushed this article to a length which will prevent us from 
 dwelling upon that part of the plan of the Prison Society which embraces 
 the reformation of juvenile delinquents, of whom it is calculated there are 
 not less than 8000 in London who gain their livelihood by thieving. To this 
 subject we may perhaps refer in some future number. \\"e must content 
 ourselves at present with a glimpse at the youthful criminals of the metro 
 polls.
 
 PRISONS. 
 
 4*5 
 
 " Upon a late occasion (in company with Mr Samuel Hoare, the Chair- 
 man of the Society for the Reform of Juvenile Delinquents), I visited, about 
 midnight, many of those receptacles of thieves which abound in this metro- 
 polis. We selected the night of that day in which an execution had taken 
 place ; and our object was, to ascertain whether that terrible demonstration 
 of rigour could operate even a short suspension of iniquity, and keep for a 
 single night the votaries of crime from their accus'omed orgies. In one 
 room, I recollect, we found a large number of children of both sexes, the 
 oldest under eighteen years of age, and in the centre of these a man who 
 had been described to me by the Police as one of the largest sellers of forged 
 Bank-notes. At another part, we were shown a number of buildings, into 
 which only children were allowed to enter, and in which, if you could obtain 
 admission, which you cannot, you would see scenes of the most flagrant, 
 the most public, and the most shocking debauchery. Have I not, then, a right 
 to say, that you are growing crimes at a terrible rate, and producing those 
 miscreants who are to disturb the public peace, plunder the public property, 
 and to become the scourge and disgrace of the country? Buxton, pp. 
 66, 67. 
 
 Houses dedicated to the debauchery of children, where it is impossible to 
 enter ! ! ! Whence comes this impossibility? 
 
 To show that their labours are not heedlessly continued, the Society 
 make the following statement of the present state of prisons : 
 
 "But although these considerations are highly encouraging, there is yet 
 much to accomplish in this work of national improvement. So extensive 
 are the defects of classification, that in thirty jails, constructed for the con- 
 finement of 2985 persons, there were, at one time in the last year, no fewer 
 than 5837 prisoners ; and the whole number imprisoned in those jails, during 
 that period, amounted to 26, 703. There are yet prisons where idleness and 
 its attendant evils reign unrestrained where the sexes are not separated 
 where all distinctions of crime are confounded where few can enter, if 
 uncorrupted, without pollution ; and, if guilty, without incurring deeper 
 stains of criminality. There are yet prisons which receive not the pious 
 visits of a Christian minister which the light of knowledge never enters 
 and where the truths and consolations of the Gospel are never heard. 
 There are yet prisons where, for the security of the prisoners, measures are 
 resorted to as revolting to British feeling as they are repugnant to the spirit 
 and letter of English law." Report, pp. 63, 64. 
 
 With this statement we take our leave of the subject of prisons, thoroughly 
 convinced that, since the days of their cleanliness and salubrity, they have 
 been so managed as to become the great school for crimes and wretchedness ; 
 and that the public, though beginning to awake, are not yet sufficiently 
 aware of this fact, and sufficiently alarmed at it. Mrs Fry is an amiable 
 excellent woman, and ten thousand times better than the infamous neglect 
 that preceded her ; but hers is not the method to stop crimes. In prisons 
 which are really meant to keep the multitude in order, and to be a terror to 
 evil doers, there must be no sharing of profits no visiting of friends no 
 education but religious education no freedom of diet no weavers' looms 
 or carpenters' benches. There must be a great deal of solitude ; coarse 
 food ; a dress of shame ; hard, incessant, irksome, eternal labour ; a planned 
 and regulated and unrelenting exclusion of happiness and comfort.
 
 416 PERSECUTING BISHOPS. 
 
 PERSECUTING BISHOPS. (E. REVIEW, 1822.) 
 
 I. An Appeal to the Legislature and Public: or, the Legality of t lie Eig'iiy-Sn'tlt 
 Questions proposed by Dr Herbert Marsh., the Bishop of Peterborough, to Candi- 
 dates for Holy Orders, and for Licenses, ivitliin that Diocese, considered, ad 
 Edition. London, Seely, 1821. 
 
 a. A Speech, delirered in tlie House of Lords, on Friday, June 7, 1822, by Herbert, 
 Lord Bishop of Peterborough, on the Presentation of a Petition against his Exa- 
 mination Questions : with- Explanatory Notes, a Supplement, and a Copy of tin 
 Questions. London, Rivington, 1822. 
 
 3. The Wrongs of the Clergy of the Diocese of Peterborough stated and illustrated. By 
 
 the Rev. T. S. GRIMSHAWE, M.A., Rector of Burton, Northamptonshire ; and Vicar 
 of Biddenham, Bedfordshire, London, Seely, 1822. 
 
 4. Episcopal Innovation ; or, the Test of Modern Orthodoxy, in Eighty-SeT.'en Questions, 
 
 imposed, as Articles of Faith, upon Candidates for Licenses and for Holy Orders, 
 in the Diocese of Peterborough : ivith a Distinct Answer to each Question, and 
 General Reflections rcLitivc to their Illegal Structure and Pernicious Tendency. 
 London, Seely, 1820. 
 
 5. Official Correspondence betu'een the Right Reverend Herbert Lord Bishop of Peter- 
 
 borough and the Rev. yohn Green, respecting his Nomination to the Curacy cf 
 Blatherwycke, in the Diocese of Peterborough, and County of Northampton : Also, 
 between his Grace Charles Lord Archbishop of Canterbury and the Rev. Henry 
 William Ncvile, M.A., Rector of Blathenvy eke, and of Cottesmore in the County of 
 Rutland. 1821. 
 
 IT is a great point in any question to clear away encumbrances, and to make 
 a naked circle about the object in dispute, so that there may be a clear view 
 of it on every side. In pursuance of this disencumbering process, we shall 
 first acquit the Bishop of all wrong intentions. He has a very bad opinion 
 of the practical effects of high Calvinistic doctrines upon the common people ; 
 and he thinks it his duty to exclude those clergymen who profess them from 
 his diocese. There is no moral wrong in this. He has accordingly devised 
 no fewer than eighty-seven interrogatories, by which he thinks he can detect 
 the smallest taint of Calvinism that may lurk in the creed of the candidate ; 
 and in this also, whatever we may think of his reasoning, we suppose his 
 puipose to be blameless. He believes, finally, that he has legally the power 
 so to interrogate and exclude ; and in this perhaps he is not mistaken. His 
 intentions then are good, and his conduct, perhaps, not amenable to the 
 law. All this we admit in his favour : but against him we must maintain, 
 that his conduct upon the points in dispute has been singularly injudicious, 
 extremely harsh, and, in its effects (though not in its intentions), veiy 
 oppressive and vexatious to the Clergy. 
 
 We have no sort of intention to avail ourselves of an anonymous publica- 
 tion to say unkind, uncivil, or disrespectful things to a man of rank, learn- 
 ing, and character we hope to be guilty of no such impropriety ; but we 
 cannot believe we are doing wrong in ranging ourselves on the weaker side, 
 in the cause of propriety and justice. The Mitre protects its wearer from 
 indignity ; but it does not secure impunity. 
 
 It is a strong presumption that a man is wrong, when all his friends 
 whose habits naturally lead them to coincide with him, think him wrong. 
 If a man were to indulge in taking medicine till the apothecary, the drug- 
 gist, and the physician, all called upon him to abandon his philocathartic 
 propensities if he were to gratify his convivial habits till the landlord 
 demurred and the waiter shook his head we should naturally imagine that 
 advice so wholly disinterested was not given before it was wanted, and that 
 it merited some little attention and respect. Now, though the Bench 01 
 Bishops certainly love power, and love the Church, as well as the Bishop 
 of Peterborough, yet not one defended him not one rose to say, " I have 
 done, or I would do, the same thing." It was impossible to be present at
 
 PERSECUTING BISHOPS. 
 
 417 
 
 the last debate on this question, without perceiving that his Lordship stood 
 alone and this in a very gregarious profession, that habitually combines 
 and butts against an opponent with a very extended front. If a lawyer is 
 wounded, the rest of the profession pursue him, and put him to death. If 
 a churchman is hurt, the others gather round for his protection, stamp with 
 their feet, push with their horns, and demolish the dissenter who did the 
 mischief. 
 
 The Bishop has at least done a very unusual thing in his Eighty-seven 
 Questions. The two Archbishops, and we believe every other Bishop, and 
 all the Irish hierarchy, admit curates into their dioceses without any such 
 precautions. The necessity of such severe and scrupulous inquisition, in 
 short, has been apparent to nobody but the Bishop of Peterborough ; and 
 the authorities by which he seeks to justify it are any thing but satisfactory. 
 His Lordship states, that forty years ago he was himself examined by 
 written interrogatories, and that he is not the only Bishop who has done it ; 
 but he mentions no names ; and it was hardly worth while to state such 
 extremely slight precedents for so strong a deviation from the common 
 practice of the Church. 
 
 The Bishop who rejects a curate upon the Eighty-seven Questions is 
 necessarily and inevitably opposed to the Bishop who ordained him. The 
 Bishop of Gloucester ordains a young man of twenty-three years of age, 
 not thinking it necessary to put to him these interrogatories, or putting 
 them, perhaps, and approving of answers diametrically opposite to those 
 that are required by the Bishop of Peterborough. The young clergyman 
 then comes to the last-mentioned Bishop ; and the Bishop, after putting 
 him to the Question, says, " You are unfit for a clergyman," though, ten 
 days before, the Bishop of Gloucester has made him one ! It is bad enough 
 for ladies to pull caps, but still worse for Bishops to pull mitres. Nothing 
 can be more mischievous or indecent than such scenes ; and no man of 
 common prudence, or knowledge of the world, but must see that they ought 
 immediately to be put a stop to. If a man is a captain in the army in one 
 part of England, he is a captain in all. The general who commands north 
 of the Tweed does not say, You shall never appear in my district, or exer- 
 cise the functions of an officer, if you do not answer eighty-seven questions 
 on the art of war, according to my notions. The same officer who com- 
 mands a ship of the line in the Mediterranean, is considered as equal to the 
 same office in the North Seas. The sixth commandment is suspended, by 
 one medical diploma, from the north of England to the south. But, by 
 this new system of interrogation, a man may be admitted into orders at 
 Barnet, rejected at Stevenage, readmitted at Brogden, kicked out as a 
 Calvinist at Witham Common, and hailed as an ardent Arminian on his 
 arrival at York. 
 
 It matters nothing to say that sacred things must not be compared with 
 profane. In their importance, we allow, they cannot ; but in their order 
 and discipline they may be so far compared as to say, that the discrepancy 
 and contention which would be disgraceful and pernicious in worldly affairs, 
 should, in common prudence, be avoided in the affairs of religion. Mr 
 Greenough has made a map of England, according to its geological varieties ; 
 blue for the chalk, green for the clay, red for the sand, and so forth. 
 Under this system of Bishop Marsh, we must petition for the assistance of 
 the geologist in the fabrication of an ecclesiastical map. All the Arminian 
 districts must be purple. Green for one theological extremity sky-blue 
 for another as many colours as there are bishops as many shades of these 
 colours as there are Archdeacons a tailor's pattern card the picture of 
 vanity, fashion, and caprice I 
 
 3D
 
 418 PERSECUTING BISHOPS. 
 
 The Bishop seems surprised at the resistance he meets with ; and yet, to 
 what purpose has he read ecclesiastfcal history, if he expect to meet with 
 any thing l>ut the most determined opposition? Does he think that every 
 Murdy supralapsarian bullock whom he tries to sacrifice to the Genius of 
 Orthodoxy, will not kick, and push, and toss ; that he will not, if he can, 
 shake the axe from his neck, and hurl his mitred butcher into the air? His 
 Lordship lias undertaken a task of which he little knows the labour or the 
 end. \Ve know these men fully as well as the Bishop ; he has not a chance 
 of success against them. If one motion in Parliament will not do, they 
 will have twenty. They will ravage, roar, and rush, till the very chaplains, 
 and the Masters and Misses Peterborough request his Lordship to desist. 
 He is raising up a storm in the English Church of which he has not the 
 slightest conception ; and which will end, as it ought to end, in his Lord- 
 ship's disgrace and defeat. 
 
 The longer we live, the more we are convinced of the justice of the old 
 Saying, that an ounce of mother wit is -worth a pound of clergy ; that discre- 
 tion, gentle manners, common sense, and good nature, are, in men of high 
 ecclesiastical station, of far greater importance than the greatest skill in dis- 
 criminating between sublapsarian and supralapsarian doctrines. Bishop 
 Marsh should remember, that all men wearing the mitre work by character, 
 as well as doctrine ; that a tender regard to men's rights and feelings, a 
 desire to avoid sacred squabbles, a fondness for quiet, and an ardent wish 
 to make every body happy, would be of far more value to the Church of 
 England than all his learning and vigilance of inquisition. The Irish Tithes 
 will probably fall next session of Parliament ; the common people are regu- 
 larly receding from the Church of England baptizing, burying, and con- 
 firming for themselves. Under such circumstances, what would the worst 
 enemy of the English Church require ? a bitter, bustling, theological 
 Bishop, accused by his clergy of tyranny and oppression the cause of daily 
 petitions and daily debates in the House of Commons the idoneous vehicle 
 of abuse against the Establishment a stalking-horse to bad men for the 
 introduction of revolutionary opinions, mischievous ridicule, and irreligious 
 feelings. Such will be the advantages which Bishop Marsh will secure for 
 the English Establishment in the ensuing session. It is inconceivable how 
 such a prelate shakes all the upper works of the Church, and ripens it for 
 dissolution and decay. Six such Bishops, multiplied by eighty-seven, and 
 working with five hundred and twenty-two questions, would fetch every 
 thing to the ground in less than six months. But what if it pleased Divine 
 Providence to afflict every prelate with the spirit of putting eighty-seven 
 queries, and the two Archbishops with the spirit of putting twice as many, 
 and the Bishop of Sodor and Man with the spirit of putting only forty-three 
 queries ? there would then be a grand total of two thousand three hundred 
 and thirty-five interrogations flying about the English Church ; and sorely 
 vexed would the land be with Question and Answer. 
 
 We will suppose this learned Prelate, without meanness or undue regard 
 to his worldly interests, to feel that fair desire of rising in his profession, 
 which any man, in any profession, may feel without disgrace. Does he 
 forget that his character in the ministerial circles will soon become that of 
 a violent impracticable man whom it is impossible to place in the highest 
 situations who has been trusted with too much already, and must be trusted 
 with no more ? Ministers have something else to do with their time, and 
 with the time of Parliament, than to waste them in debating squabbles 
 between Bishops and their clergy. They naturally wish, and, on the whole, 
 reasonably expect, that every thing should go on silently and quietly in the 
 Church. They have no objection to a learned Bishop ; but they deprecate
 
 PERSECUTING BISHOPS. 419 
 
 one atom more of learning thnn is compatible with moderation, good sense, 
 and the soundest discretion. It must be the grossest ignorance of the world 
 to suppose that the Cab.net has any pleasure in Pitching Calvinists. 
 
 The Bishop not only puts the questions, but he actuary assigns the limits 
 within which they are to be answered. Spaces are left in the paper of 
 interrogations, to which limits the answer is to be confined ; two inches to 
 original sin ; an inch and a half to justification ; three quarters to predes- 
 tination ; and to free will only a quarter of an inch. But if his Lordship 
 gives them an inch, they will take an ell. His Lordship is himself a theo- 
 logical writer, and by no means remarkable for his conciseness. To deny 
 space to his brother theologians, who are writing on the most difficult sub- 
 jects, not from choice, but necessity ; not for fame, but for bread ; and to 
 award rejection as the penalty of prolixity, does appear to us no slight 
 deviation from Christian gentleness. The tyranny of calling for such -h<>rt 
 answers is very strikingly pointed out in a letter' from Mr Thurtell to the 
 Bishop of Peterborough ; the style of which pleads, we think, very puwcr- 
 fuhy in favour of the writer. 
 
 " Becdes, Suffolk, August 2&/1, 1821. 
 "My Lord, 
 
 " I ought, in the first place, to apologise for delaying so long to answer 
 your Lordship's letter: but the difficulty in which I was involved, by re- 
 ceiving another copy of your Lordship's Questions, with povtive directions 
 to give short answers, may be sufficient to account for that delay. 
 
 " It i> my sincere desire to meet your Loidship's wishes, and to obey 
 your Lordship's directions in every particular ; and 1 would therefore imme- 
 diately have returned answers, without any ' restrictions or modifications, 1 
 to the Questions which your Lordship has thought fit to send me, if, in so 
 doing, I could have discharged the obligations of my conscience, by showing 
 what my opinions really are. But it appears to me, that the Questions pro- 
 posed to me by your Lordship are so constructed as to elicit only two sets 
 of opinions ; and that, by answering them in so concise a manner, I should 
 be representing myself to your Lordship as one who believes in either of two 
 particular creeds, to neither of which I do really subscribe. For instance, 
 to answer Question I. chap. ii. in the manner your Lordship desires, I am 
 reduced to the alternative of declaring, either that ' mankind are a mass of 
 mere corruption,' which expresses more than I intend, or of leaving room 
 for the inference, that they are only partudly corrupt, which is opposed to 
 the plainest declarations of the Homilies ; such as these, 'Man is altogether 
 spotted and defiled' (Horn, on Nat.), 'without a spark of goodness in him' 
 (Serm. on Mis. of Man, c. ). 
 
 " Again, by answering the Questions comprised in the chapter on ' Free 
 'Will,' according to your Lordship's directions, I am compelled to acknow- 
 ledge, either that man has such a share in the work of his own salvation as 
 to exclude the sole agency of God, or that he has no share whatever ; when 
 the Homilies for Rogation Week and Whitsunday positively dec! : that 
 God is the ' only Worker,' or, in other words, sole Agent ; and at the some 
 time assign to man a certain share in the work of his own salvation. In 
 short, I could, with your Lordship's permission, point out twenty Questions, 
 involving doctrines of the utmost importance, which I am unable to answer, 
 so as to convey my real sentiments, without more loom for explanation than 
 the printed sheet affords. 
 
 " In this view of the subject, therefore, and in the most deliberate exer- 
 cise of my judgment, I deem it indispensable to my acting with that candour 
 and truth with which it is my wish and duty to act, and with which I cannot
 
 4 20 PERSECUTING BISHOPS. 
 
 but believe your Lordship desires I should act, to state my opinions in that 
 language which expresses them most fully, plainly, and unrest vedly. This 
 I have endeavoured to do in the answers now in the possebsion of your 
 Lordship. If any further explanation be required, I am most willing to 
 give it, even to a minuteness of opinion beyond what the Articles require. At 
 the same time, I would humbly and respectfully appeal to your Lordship's 
 candour 'whether it is not hard to demand my decided opinion upon points 
 -which have been the themes of volumes ; npon which the most pious and 
 learned men of the Church have conscientiously differed ; and upon which the 
 Articles, in the judgment of BisJiop Burnet, have pronounced no definite sen- 
 tence. To those Articles, my Lord, I have already subscribed ; and I am 
 willing again to subscribe to every one of them, ' in its literal and gramma- 
 tical sense,' according to His Majesty's declaration prefixed to them. 
 
 " I hope, therefore, in consideration of the above statement, that your 
 Lordship will not compel me, by the conciseness of my answers, to assent 
 to doctrines which I do not believe, or to expose myself to inferences which 
 do not fairly and legitimately follow from my opinions. 
 
 " I am, my Lord, &c. &c." 
 
 We are not much acquainted with the practices of courts of justice ; but, 
 if we remember right, when a man is going to be hanged, the judge lets him 
 make his defence in his own way, without complaining of its length. We 
 should think a Christian Bishop might be equally indulgent to a man who 
 is going to be ruined. The answers are required to be clear, concise, and 
 correct short, plain, and positive. In other words, a poor curate, ex- 
 tremely agitated at the idea of losing his livelihood, is required to write with 
 brevity and perspicuity on the following subjects : Redemption by Jesus 
 Christ Original Sin Free Will Justification Justification in reference 
 to its causes Justification in reference to the time when it takes place 
 Everlasting Salvation Predestination Regeneration on the New Birth 
 Renovation, and the Holy Trinity. As a specimen of these questions, the 
 answer to which is required to be so brief and clear, we shall insert the 
 following quotation : 
 
 " Section II. Of Justification, in reference to its cause. 
 
 " I. Does not the eleventh article declare that we are 'justified by Faith 
 only?' 
 
 " 2. Does not the expression ' Faith only ' derive additional strength from 
 the negative expression in the same Article ' and not for our own 
 works ? ' 
 
 " 3. Does not therefore the eleventh Article exclude good works from all 
 share in the office of Justifying ? Or can we so construe the term 
 ' Faith ' in that Article, as to make it include good works ? 
 
 "4. Do not the twelfth and thirteenth Articles further exclude them, the 
 one by asserting that good works follow after Justification, the 
 other by maintaining that they cannot precede it? 
 
 " 5. Can that which never precedes an effect be reckoned among the 
 causes of that effect ? 
 
 ." 6. Can we then, consistently with our Articles, reckon the performance 
 of good works among the causes of Justification, whatever quali- 
 fying epithet be used with the term cause ? " 
 
 We entirely deny that the Calvinistical Clergy are bad members of their 
 profession. We maintain that as many instances of good, serious, and pious
 
 PERSECUTING BISHOPS. 
 
 421 
 
 men of Arsons zealously interesting themselves in the temporal and 
 spiritual welfare of their parishioners, are to be found among them, as 
 among the clergy who put an opposite interpretation on the Articles. The 
 Articles of Religion are older than Arminianism, eo nomine. The early 
 reformers leant to Calvinism ; and would, to a man, have answered the 
 Bishop's questions in a way which would have induced him to refuse them 
 ordination and curacies ; and those who drew up the Thirty-nine Articles, 
 if they had not prudently avoided all precise interpretation of their Creed 
 on free will, necessity, absolute decrees, original sin, reprobation and elec- 
 tion, would have, in all probability, given an interpretation of them like 
 that which the Bishop considers as a disqualification for Holy Orders. 
 Laud's Lambeth Articles were illegal, mischievous, and are generally con- 
 demned. The Irish Clergy in 1641 drew up one hundred and four articles 
 as the creed of their Church ; and these are Calvinistic and not Arminian. 
 They were approved and signed by Usher, and never abjured by him ; 
 though dropt as a test or qualification. Usher was promoted (even in the 
 days of Arminianism) to bishoprics and archbishoprics so little did a Cal- 
 vinistic interpretation of the Articles in a man's own breast, or even an 
 avowal of Calvinism beyond what was required by the Articles, operate even 
 then as a disqualification for the cure of souls, or any other office in the 
 Church. Throughout Charles II. and William III.'s time, the best men 
 and greatest names of the Church not only allowed latitude in interpreting 
 the Articles, but thought it would be wise to diminish their number, and 
 render them more lax than they are ; and be it observed, that these latitu- 
 dinarians leant to Arminianism rather than to high Calvinism ; and thought, 
 consequently, that the Articles, if objectionable at all, were exposed to the 
 censure of being "too Calvinistic," rather than too Arminian. How pre- 
 posterous, therefore, to twist them, and the subscription to them required by 
 law, by the machinery of a long string of explanatory questions, into a bar- 
 rier against Calvinists, and to give the Arminians a monopoly in the 
 Church ! 
 
 Archbishop Wake, in 1716, after consulting all the Bishops then attend- 
 ing Parliament, thought it incumbent on him ' ' to employ the authority -which 
 the ecclesiastical laws then in force, and the custom and laws of the realm 
 vested in him" in taking care that "no un-uorthy person might hereafter be 
 admitted into the sacred Ministry of the Church ; " and he drew up twelve 
 recommendations to the Bishops of England, in which he earnestly exhorts 
 them not to ordain persons of bad conduct or character, or incompetent 
 learning ; but he does not require from the candidates for Holy Orders or 
 preferment any explanation whatever of the Articles which they had signed. 
 
 The Correspondence of the same eminent Prelate with Professor Turretin 
 in 1718, and with Mr Le Clerc and the Pastors and Professors of Geneva 
 in 1719, printed in London, 1782, recommends union among Protestants, 
 and the omission of controverted points in Confessions of Faith, as a means 
 of obtaining that union ; and a constant reference to the practice of the 
 Church of England is made, in elucidation of the charity and wisdom of 
 such policy. Speaking of men who act upon a contrary principle, he says, 
 O quantum potuit insana $t\ajTia ! 
 
 These passages, we think, are conclusive evidence of the practice of the 
 Church till 1719. For Wake was not only at the time Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, but both in his circular recommendations to the Bishops of 
 England, and in his correspondence with foreign Churches, was acting in the 
 capacity of metropolitan of the Anglican Church. He, a man of prudence 
 and learning, publicly boasts to Protestant Europe, that his Church does not 
 exact, and that he de facto has never avowed, and never will, his opinions on
 
 422 PERSECUTING BISHOPS. 
 
 those very points upon which Bishop Marsh obliges every poor curate to be 
 explicit, upon pain of expulsion from the Church. 
 
 It is clear, then, the practice was, to extract subscription and nothing 
 else, as the test of orthodoxy to that \Vake is an evidence. As far as he 
 is authority on a point of opinion, it is his conviction that this practice was 
 wholesome, wise, and intended to preserve peace in the Church ; that it 
 would be wrong at least, if not illegal, to do otherwi.se ; and that the 
 observance of this forbearance is the only method of preventing schism. 
 The Bishop of Peterborough, however, is of a different opinion ; he is so 
 thoroughly convinced of the pernicious effects of Calvinistic doctrines, that 
 he does v/hat no other Bishup does, or ever djd do, for their exclusion. 
 This may be either wise or injudicious, but it is at least zealous and bold ; 
 it is to encounter rebuke and opposition from a sense of duty. It is impos- 
 sible to deny this merit to his Lordship. And we have no doubt, that, in 
 pursuance of the same theological gallantry, he is preparing a set of interro- 
 gatories for those clergymen who are presented to benefices in his diocese. 
 The patron will have his action of Qua re impeJit, it is true ; and the judge 
 and jury will decide whether the Bishop has the right of interrogation at 
 all ; and whether Calvinistical answers to his interrogatories disqualify any 
 man from holding preferment in the Church of England. If either of these 
 points are given against the Bishop of Peterborough, he is in honour and 
 conscience bound to give up his examination of curates. If Calvinistic 
 ministers are, in the estimation of the Bishops, so dangerous as curates, 
 they are of course much more dangerous as rectors and vicars. He has as 
 much right to examine one as the other. Why then does he pass over the 
 greater danger, and guard against the less ? Why does he not show his zeal 
 when he would run some risk, and where the excluded person (if excluded 
 unjustly) could appeal to the laws of his country ? If his conduct be just 
 and right, has he any thing to fear from that appeal ? What should we say 
 of a police officer who acted in all cases of petty larceny, where no opposi- 
 tion was made, and let off all persons guilty of felony who threatened to 
 knock him down ? If the Bishop value his own character, he is bound to 
 do less, or to do more. God send his choice may be right ! The law, 
 as it stands at present, certainly affords very unequal protection to rector 
 and to curate ; out if the Bishop will not act so as to improve the law, the 
 law must be so changed as to improve the Bishop ; an action of ( 'mire 
 impedit must be given to the curate also anil then the fury of interrogation 
 will be calmed. 
 
 \Ve are aware that the Bishop of Peterborough, in his speech, disclaims 
 the object of excluding the Calvinists by this system of interrogation. We 
 shall take no other notice of his disavowal, than expressing our sincere 
 regret that he ever made it ; but the question is not at all altered by the 
 intention of the interrogator. Whether he aim at the Calvinists only, or 
 includes them with other heterodox respondents the fact is, they are 
 included in the proscription, and excluded from the Church, the practical 
 effect of the practice being, that men are driven out of the Church who 
 have as much right to exercise the duties of clergymen as the Bishop him- 
 self. If heterodox opinions are the great objects of the Bishop's appre- 
 hensions, he has his Ecclesiastical Courts, where regular process may bring 
 the offender to punishment, and from whence there is an appeal to higher 
 courts. This would be the fair thing to do. The Curate and the Bishop 
 would be brought into the light of day, and subjected to the wholesome 
 restraint of public opinion. 
 
 His Lordship boasts, that he has excluded only two curates. So the 
 Emperor of Hayti boasted that he had only cut off two persons' heads for
 
 PERSECUTING BISHOPS. 
 
 423 
 
 disagreeable behaviour at his table. In spite of the paucity of the visitors 
 executed, the example operated as a considerable impediment to conversa- 
 tion ; and the intensity of the punishment was found to be a full compensa- 
 tion for its rarity. How many persons have been deprived of curacies 
 which they might have enjoyed, but for the tenour of these interrogatories? 
 How many respectable clergymen have been deprived of the assistance of 
 curates connected with them by blood, friendship, or doctrine, and com- 
 pelled to choose persons for no other qualification than that they could pass 
 through the eye of the Bishop's needle? Violent measures are not to be 
 judged of merely by the number of times they have been resorted to, but by 
 the terror, misery, and restraint which the severity is likely to have pro- 
 duced. 
 
 We never met with any style so entirely clear of all redundant and vicious 
 ornament, as that which the ecclesiastical Lord of Peterborough has adopted 
 towards his clergy. It, in fact, may be all reduced to these few words 
 " Reverend Sir, I shall do what I please. Peterborough." Even in the 
 House of Lords, he speaks what we must call very plain language. Among 
 other things, he says, that the allegations of the petitions vtejalu. Now, 
 as every Bishop is, besides his other qualities, a gentleman ; and as the 
 v/ord/a/se is used only by laymen who mean to hazard their lives by the 
 expression ; and as it cannot be supposed that foul language is ever used 
 because it can be used with personal impunity, his Lordship must therefore 
 be intended to mean not false but mistaken not a wilful deviation from 
 truth, but an accidental and unintended departure from it. 
 
 His Lordship talks of the drudgery of wading through ten pages of 
 answers to his eighty-seven questions. \Vho has occasioned this drudgery, 
 but the person who means to be so much more active, useful, and important, 
 than all other Bishops, by proposing questions which nobody has thought 
 to be necessary but himself? But to be intolerably strict and harsh to a 
 poor curate, who is trying to earn a morsel of hard bread, and then to com- 
 plain of the drudgery of reading his answers, is much like knocking a man 
 down with a bludgeon, and then abusing him for splashing you with his 
 blood, and pestering you with his groans. It is quite monstrous, that a 
 man who inflicts eighty-seven new questions in Theology upon his fellow- 
 creatures, should talk of the drudgery of reading their answers. 
 
 A Curate there is something which excites compassion in the very name 
 of a Curate ! ! ! How any man of Purple, Palace*, and Preferment, can 
 let himself loose against this poor working man of God, we are at a loss to 
 conceive, a learned man in an hovel, with sermons and saucepans, lexi- 
 cons and bacon, Hebrew books and ragged children good and patient a 
 comforter and a preacher the first and purest pauper in the hamlet, and 
 yet showing, that, in the midst of his worldly misery, he has the heart of a 
 gentleman, and the spirit of a Christian, and the kindness of a pastor ; and 
 this man, though he has exercised ihe duties of a clergyman lor twenty 
 years though he has most ample testimonies of conduct from clergymen as 
 respectable as any Bishop though an Archbishop add his name to the list 
 cf witnesses, is not good enough for Bishop Marsh ; but is pushed out in 
 the street, with his wife and children, and his little furniture, to surrender 
 his honour, his faith, his conscience, and his learning or to starve ! 
 
 An obvious objection to these innovations is, that there can be no end to 
 them. If eighty-three questions are assumed to be necessary by one Bishop, 
 eight hundred may be considered as the minimum of interrogation by 
 another. When once the ancient faith marks of the Church are lost sight 
 of and despised, any misled theologian may launch out on the boundlesi 
 sea of polemical vexation.
 
 424 PERSECUTING BISHOPS. 
 
 The Bishop of Peterborough is positive, r that the Arminian interpretation 
 of the Articles is the right interpretation, and that Calvinists should be ex- 
 cluded from it ; but the country gentlemen who are to hear these matters 
 debated in the Lower House, are to remember, that other Bishops have 
 written upon these points before the Bishop of Peterborough, and have 
 arrived at conclusions diametrically opposite. When curates are excluded 
 because their answers are Calvinistical, a careless layman might imagine 
 that this interpretation of the Articles had never been heard of before in 
 the Church that it was a gross and palpable perversion of their sense, which 
 had been scouted by all writers on Church matters, from the day the Articles 
 were promulgated, to this hour that such an unheard-of monster as a Cal- 
 vinistical Curate had never leapt over the pale before, and been detected 
 browsing in the sacred pastures. 
 
 The following is the testimony of Bishop Sherlock : 
 
 " ' The Church has left a latitude of sense to prevent schisms and breaches 
 upon every different opinion. It is evident the Church of England has so 
 done in some Articles, which are most liable to the hottest disputes ; which 
 yet are penned with that temper as to be willingly subscribed by men of 
 different apprehensions in those matters." " SHERLOCK'S Defence of Stilling- 
 fieefs Unreasonableness of Separation. 
 
 Bishop Cleaver, describing the difficulties attending so great an under- 
 taking as the formation of a national creed, observes : 
 
 " ' These difficulties, however, do not seem to have discouraged the great 
 leaders in this work from forming a design as wise as it was liberal, that of 
 framing a confession, which, in the enumeration and method of its several 
 articles, should meet the approbation, and engage the consent, of the whole 
 reformed world. 
 
 " ' If upon trial it was found that a comprehension so extensive could not 
 be reduced to practice, still as large a comprehension as could be contrived, 
 within the narrower limits of the kingdom, became, for the same reasons 
 which first suggested the idea, at once an object of prudence and duty, in 
 the formation and government of the English Church.' 
 
 " After dwelling on the means necessary to accomplish this object, the 
 Bishop proceeds to remark : ' Such evidently appears to have been the 
 origin and such the actual complexion of the confession comprised in the 
 Articles of our Church ; the true scope and design of which "will not, I con- 
 ceive, be correctly apprehended in any other view than that of one drawn up 
 and adjusted with an intention to comprehend the assent of all, rather than to 
 exclude that of any who concurred in the necessity of a reformation. 
 
 " ' The means of comprehension intended were, not any general ambiguity 
 or equivocation of terms, but a prudent forbearance in all parties not to in- 
 sist on the full extent of their opinions in matters not essential or fundamental ; 
 and in all cases to waive, as much as possible, tenets which might divide where 
 they tcish to unite? " Remarks on the Design and Formation of the 
 Articles of the Church of England, by WILLIAM, Lord Bishop of Bangor, 
 1802. pp. 2325. 
 
 We will finish with Bishop Horsley : 
 
 " It has been the fashion of late to talk about Arminianism as the system 
 of the Church of England, and of Calvinism as something opposite to it, to 
 which the Church is hostile. That I may not be misunderstood in what I
 
 PERSECUTING BISHOPS. 425 
 
 have stated, or may have occasion further to say upon this subject, I must 
 here declare, that I use the words Arminianism and Calvinism in that 
 restricted sense in which they are now generally taken, to denote the doc- 
 trinal part of each system, as unconnected with the principles either of 
 Arminians or Calvinists upon Church discipline and Church government. 
 This being premised, I assert, what I often have before asserted, and by 
 God's grace I will persist in the assertion to my dying day, that so far is it 
 from the truth that the Church of England is decidedly Arminian, and hos- 
 tile to Calvinism, that the truth is this, that upon the principal points in 
 dispute between the Arminians and the Calvinists upon all the points of 
 doctrine characteristic of the two sects, the Church of England maintains 
 an absolute neutrality; her Articles explicitly assert nothing but what is be- 
 lieved both by Arminians and by Calvinists. The Calvinists indeed hold 
 some opinions relative to the same points, which the Church of England has 
 not gone the length of asserting in her Articles ; but neither has she gone 
 the length of explicitly contradicting those opinions ; insomuch, that there is 
 nothing to hinder the Arminian and the highest supralapsarian Calvinist from 
 walking together in tht Church of England and Ireland as friends and bro- 
 thers, if they both afprove the discipline of the Church, and both are willing 
 to submit to it. Her discipline has been approved ; it has been submitted to ; 
 it lias been in former times most ably and zealously defended by the highest 
 supralapsarian Calvinists. Such was the great Usher ; such was "NYhitgift ; 
 such were many more, burning and shining lights of our Church in her early 
 days (when first she shook off the Papal tyranny), long since gone to the 
 resting-place of the spirits of the just. Bishop HORSLEY'S Charges, p. 216." 
 pp. 25, 26. 
 
 So that these unhappy Curates are turned out of their bread for an 
 exposition of the Articles which such men as Sherlock, Cleaver, and 
 Horsley think may be fairly given of their meaning. We do not quote 
 their authority to show that the right interpretation is decided, but that it 
 is doubtful that there is a balance of authorities that the opinion which 
 Bishop Marsh has punished with poverty and degradation, has been con- 
 sidered to be legitimate, by men at least as wise and learned as himself. 
 In fact, it is to us perfectly clear, that the Articles were originally framed 
 to prevent the very practices which Bishop Marsh has used for their protec- 
 tion they were purposely so worded, that Arminians and Calvinists could 
 sign them without blame. They were intended to combine both these 
 descriptions of Protestants, and were meant principally for a bulwark 
 against the Catholics. 
 
 " Thus," says Bishop Burnet, " was the doctrine of the Church cast into 
 a short and plain form ; in which they took care both to establish the 
 positive articles of religion, and to cut off the errors formerly introduced in 
 the time of Popery, or of late broached by the Anabaptists and enthusiasts 
 of Germany ; avoiding the niceties of schoolmen, or the peremptoriness of the 
 writers of controversy ; leaving in matters that are more justly controvertible, 
 a liberty to divines to follow tluir private opinions without thereby disturbing 
 the peace of the Church." History of the Reformation, booki. pait ii. i6S, 
 folio ed. 
 
 The next authority is that of Fuller. 
 
 " In the Convocation now sitting, wherein Alexander Nowel, Dean of 
 St Paul's, was Prolocutor, the nine-and-thirty Articles were composed. 
 For the main they agree with those set forth in the reign of King Edward
 
 426 PERSECUTING BISHOPS. 
 
 the Sixth, though in some particulars allowing more liberty to dissenting 
 judgments. For instance, in this King's Articles it is said, that it is to be 
 believed that Christ went down to hell (to preach to the spirits there) ; 
 which last clause is left out in these Articles and men left to a latitude 
 concerning the cause, time, and manner of his descent. 
 
 "Hence some have unjustly taxed the composers for too much favour 
 extended in their large expressions, clean through the contexture of these 
 Articles, which should have tied men's consciences up closer, in more strict 
 and particularising propositions which indeed proceeded from their comn:cn- 
 able moderation. Children's clothes ought to be made of the biggest, 
 because afterwards their bodies will grow up to their garments. Thus the 
 Articles of this English Protestant Church, in the infancy thereof, they 
 thought good to draw up in general terms, foreseeing that posterity would 
 grow up to fill the same : I mean these holy men did prudently prediscover, 
 that differences in judgments would unavoidably happen in the Church, 
 and were loath to unchurch any, and drive them off from an ecclesiastical 
 communion, for such petty differences, which made them pen the Articles in 
 comprehensive words, to take in all who, differing in the branches, meet in the 
 root of the same religion. 
 
 " Indeed most of them had formerly been sufferers themselves, and 
 cannot be said, in compiling these articles (an acceptable service, no 
 doubt), to offer to God what cost them nothing, some having paid im- 
 prisonment, others exile, all losses in their estates, for this their experi- 
 mental knowledge in religion, which made them the more merciful and 
 tender in stating those points, seeing such who themselves have been most 
 patient in bearing, will be most pitiful in burdening the consciences of 
 others." See FULLER'S Church History, book ix. p. 72, folio ed. 
 
 But this generous and pacific spirit gives no room for the display of zeal 
 and theological learning. The gate of admission has been left too widely 
 open. I may as well be without power at all, if I cannot force my 
 opinions upon other people. What was purposely left indefinite, I must 
 make finite and exclusive. Questions of contention and difference must 
 be laid before the servants of the Church, and nothing like neutrality in 
 theological metaphysics allowed to the ministers of the Gospel. / come 
 not to bring peace, &c. 
 
 The Bishop, however, seems to be quite satisfied with himself, when he 
 states that he has a right to do what he has done just as if a man's charac- 
 ter \\ith his fellow creatures depended upon legal rights alone, and not upon 
 a discreet exercise of those rights. A man may persevere in doing what he 
 has a right to do, till the Chancellor shuts him up in Bedlam, or till the 
 mob pelt him as he passes. It must be presumed, that all men whom the 
 law has invested with rights, Nature has invested with common sense to 
 use those rights. For these reasons, children have no rights till they have 
 gained some common sense, and old men have no rights after they lose their 
 common sense. All men are at all times accountable to their fellow 
 creatures for the discreet exercise of every right they possess. 
 
 Prelates are fond of talking of my see, my clergy, my diocese, as if these 
 things belonged to them as their pigs and dogs belonged to them. They 
 forget that the clergy, the diocese, and the Bishops themselves, all exist 
 only for the public good ; that the public are a third and principal party in 
 the whole concern. It is not simply the tormenting Bishop versus the tor- 
 mented Curate, but the public against the system of tormenting ; as tending 
 to bring scandal upon religion and religious men. By the late alteration in 
 the laws, the labourers in the vineyard are given up to the power of the
 
 PERSECUTING BISHOPS. 
 
 427 
 
 inspectors of the vineyard. If he have the meanness and malice to do so, an 
 inspector may worry and plague to death any labourer against whom he 
 may have conceived an antipathy. As often as such cases are detected, \ve 
 believe they will meet, in either House of Parliament, with the severest 
 reprehension. The noblemen and gentlemen of England will never allow 
 their parish clergy to be treated with cruelty, injustice, and caprice, by men 
 who were parish clergymen themselves yesterday, and who were trusted 
 with power for very different purposes. 
 
 The Bishop of Peterborough complains of the insolence of the answers 
 made to him. This is certainly not true of Mr Grimshawe, Mr Neville, or 
 of the author of the Appeal. They have answered his Lordship with great 
 force, great manliness, but with perfect respect. Does the Bishop expect 
 that humble men, as learned as himself, are to be driven from their houses 
 and homes by his new theology, and then to send him letters of thanks for 
 the kicks and cuffs he has bestowed upon them? Men of very small 
 incomes, be it known to his Lordship, have very often very acute feelings ; 
 and a Curate trod on feels a pang as great as when a Bishop is refuted. 
 
 'We shall now give a specimen of some answers, which, we believe, would 
 exclude a curate from the diocese of Peterborough, and contrast these 
 answers with the Articles of the Church to which they refer. The gth 
 Article of the Church of England is upon Original Sin. Upon this point 
 Uis Lordship puts the following question : 
 
 " Did the fall of Adam produce such an effect on his posterity, that man- 
 kind became thereby a mass of mere corruption, or of absolute and entire 
 depravity? Or is the effect only such, that we are very fa r gone from ori- 
 ginal righteousness, and of our own nature inclined to evil ? " 
 
 Excluding A timer 
 
 "The fall of Adam 
 produced such an effect 
 on his posterity, that 
 mankind became thereby 
 a mass of mere corrup- 
 tion, or of absolute and 
 entire depravity." 
 
 The Ninth Article. 
 
 " Original sin standeth not in the following of 
 Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk) ; but it 
 is the fault or corruption of the nature of every 
 man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring 
 of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from 
 original righteousness, and is of his own nature 
 inclined to evil, so that the flesh lustelh always 
 contrary to the spirit ; and therefore, in every 
 person born into the world, it deserveth God's 
 wrath and damnation." 
 
 The gth Question, Cap. 3d, on Free Will, is as follows : Is it not con- 
 trary to Scripture to say, that man h?-s no thare in the work of his salvation? 
 
 Excluding Answer. 
 
 "It is quite agreeable 
 to Scripture to say, that 
 man has no share in the 
 work of his own salva- 
 tion." 
 
 Tenth Article. 
 
 "The condition of man after the fall of Adam 
 is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself 
 by his own natural strength and good works, to 
 faith, and calling upon God. Wherefore, we have 
 no power to do good works pleasant and accept- 
 able to God, without the grace of God by Christ 
 preventing us, that we may have a good will, 
 and working with us \vhen we have that good 
 will."
 
 428 BOTANY BA Y. 
 
 On redemption, his Lordship has the following question, Cap. 1st, Ques- 
 tion ist : Did Christ die for all men, or did he die only for a chosen few? 
 
 Excluding Answer. Part of Article Seventh. 
 
 "Christ did not die " Predestination to life is the everlasting pur- 
 
 for all men, but only for pose of God whereby (before the foundations of 
 
 a chosen few." the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed 
 
 by his counsel, secret to us, to deliver from curse 
 
 and damnation those whom he hath chosen in 
 
 Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by 
 
 Christ unto everlasting salvation as vessels made 
 
 to honour. " 
 
 Now, whether these answers are right or wrong, we do not presume to 
 decide ; but we cannot help saying, there appears to be some little colour, 
 in the language of the Articles, for the errors of the respondent. It does 
 not appear at first sight to be such a deviation from the plain, literal, and 
 grammatical sense of the Articles, as to merit rapid and ignominious eject- 
 ment from the bosom of the Church. 
 
 Now we have done with the Bishop. We give him all he asks as to his 
 legal right ; and only contend, that he is acting a very indiscreet and injudi- 
 cious part fatal to his quiet fatal to his reputation as a man of sense 
 blamed by Ministers blamed by all the Bench of Bishops vexatious to 
 the Clergy, and highly injurious to the Church. We mean no personal dis- 
 respect to the Bishop ; we are as ignorant of him as of his victims. We 
 should have been heartily glad if the debate in Parliament had put an end 
 to these blamable excesses ; and our only object, in meddling with the 
 question, is to restrain the arm of Power within the limits of moderation 
 and justice one of the great objects which first led to the establishment of 
 this Journal, and which, we hope, will always continue to characterise its 
 efforts. 
 
 BOTANY BAY. (E. REVIEW, 1823.) 
 
 I. Letter to Earl Bathurst, by the Honourable H. GREY BENNET, M.P. 
 
 9. Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry into the State of the Colony of Ne-M South 
 Wales. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed igiA "June, 1822. 
 
 MR BIGGE'S Report is somewhat long, and a little clumsy ; but it is alto- 
 gether the production of an honest, sensible, and respectable man, who has 
 done his duty to the public, and justified the expense of his mission to the 
 fifth or pickpocket quarter of the globe. 
 
 What manner of man is Governor Macquarrie ? Is all that Mr Bennet 
 says of him in the House of Commons true? These are the questions which 
 Lord Bathurst sent Mr Bigge, and very properly sent him, 28,000 miles to 
 answer. The answer is, that Governor Macquarrie is not a dishonest man, 
 nor a jobber ; but arbitrary, in many things scandalously negligent, very 
 often wrong-headed, and, upon the whole, very deficient in that good sense, 
 and vigorous understanding, which his new and arduous situation so mani- 
 festly requires. 
 
 Ornamental architecture in Botany Bay ! How it could enter into the 
 head of any human being to adorn public buildings at the Bay, or to aim at
 
 BOTANY BA Y. 
 
 429 
 
 any other architectural purpose but the exclusion of wind and rain, we are 
 utterly at a loss to conceive. Such an expense is not only lamentable for 
 the waste of property it makes in the particular instance, but because it 
 destroys that guarantee of sound sense which the Government at home 
 must require in those who preside over distant colonies. A man who thinks 
 of pillars and pilasters, when half the colony are wet through for want of 
 any covering at all, cannot be a wise or prudent person. He seems to be 
 ignorant, that the prevention of rheumatism in all young colonies is a much 
 more important object than the gratification of taste, or the display of skill. 
 
 "I suggested to Governor Macquarrie the expediency of stopping all 
 work then in progress that was merely of an ornamental nature, and of 
 postponing its execution till other more important buildings were finished. 
 With this view it was, that I recommended to the Governor to stop the 
 progress of a large church, the foundation of which had been laid previous 
 to my arrival, and which, by the estimate of Mr Greenway the architect, 
 would have required six years to complete. By a change that I recom- 
 mended, and which the Governor adopted, in the destination of the new 
 Court-house at Sydney, the accommodation of a new church is probably by 
 this time secured. As I conceived that considerable advantage had been 
 gained by inducing Governor Macquarrie to suspend the progress of the 
 larger church, I did not deem it necessary to make any pointed objection 
 to the addition of these ornamental parts of the smaller one ; though I 
 regretted to observe in this instance, as well as in those of the new stables 
 at Sydney, the turnpike gate-house and the new fountain there, as well as 
 in the repairs of an old church at Paramatta, how much more the embellish- 
 ment of these places had been considered by the Governor than the real 
 and pressing wants of the colony. The buildings that I had recommended 
 to his early attention in Sydney were, a new gaol, a school-house, and a 
 market-house. The defects of the first of these buildings will be more 
 particularly pointed out when I come to describe the buildings that have 
 been erected in New South Wales. It is sufficient for me now to observe, 
 that they were striking, and of a nature not to be remedied by additions or 
 repairs. The other two were hi a state of absolute ruin ; they were also of 
 undeniable importance and necessity. Having left Sydney in the month of 
 November, 1820, with these impressions, and with a belief that the sug- 
 gestions I had made to Governor Macquarrie respecting them had been 
 partly acted upon, and would continue to be so during my absence in Van 
 Diemen's Land, it was not without much surprise and regret that I learnt, 
 during my residence in that settlement, the resumption of the work at the 
 large church in Sydney, and the steady continuation of the others that I 
 had objected to, especially the Governor's stables at Sydney. I felt the 
 greater surprise in receiving the information respecting this last-mentioned 
 structure, during my absence in Van Diemen's Land, as the Governor him- 
 self had, upon many occasions, expressed to me his own regret at having 
 ever sanctioned it, and his consciousness of its extravagant dimensions and 
 ostentatious character." Report, pp. 51, 52. 
 
 One of the great difficulties in Botany Bay is to find proper employment 
 for the great mass of convicts who are sent out. Governor Macquarrie 
 selects all the best artisans, of every description, for the use of Government ; 
 and puts the poets, attornies, and politicians up to auction. The evil con- 
 sequences of this are manifold. In the first place, from possessing so many 
 of the best artificers, the Governor is necessarily turned into a builder ; and 
 immense drafts are drawn upon the Treasury at home, for buildings better
 
 430 BOTANY BA }'. 
 
 adapted for Regent Street than the Bay. In the next place, the poor 
 settler, finding that the convict attorney is very awkward at cutting timber, 
 or catching kangaroos, soon returns him upon the hands of Government in 
 a much worse plight than that in which he was received. Not only are 
 governors thus debauched into useless and expensive builders, but the 
 colonists who are scheming and planning with all the activity of new settlers, 
 cannot find workmen to execute their designs. 
 
 What two ideas are more inseparable than Beer and Britannia ? what 
 event more awfully important to an English colony, than the erection of its 
 first brewhouse ? and yet it required, in Van Diemen's Land, the greatest 
 solicitation to the Government, and all the influence of Mr Bigge, to get it 
 effected. The Government, having obtained possession of the best work- 
 men, keep them ; their manumission is much more infrequent than that of 
 the useless and unprofitable convicts ; in other words, one man is punished 
 for his skill, and another rewarded for his inutility. Guilty of being a lock- 
 smith guilty of stonemasonry, or brick-making ; these are the second 
 verdicts brought in, in New South Wales ; and upon them is regulated the 
 duration or mitigation of punishment awarded in the mother-country. At 
 the very period when the Governor assured Lord Bathurst, in his despatches, 
 that he kept and employed so numerous a gang of workmen, only because 
 the inhabitants could not employ them, Mr Bigge informs us, that their 
 services would have been most acceptable to the colonists. Most of the 
 settlers, at the time of Mr Bigge's arrival, from repeated refusals and dis- 
 appointments, have been so convinced of the impossibility of obtaining 
 workmen, that they had ceased to make application to the Governor. Is it 
 to be believed that a governor, placed over a land of convicts, and capable 
 of guarding his limbs from any sudden collision with odometrous stones, or 
 vertical posts of direction, should make no distinction between the simple 
 convict and the double and treble convict the man of three juries, who has 
 three times appeared at the Bailey, trilarcenous three times driven over the 
 seas? 
 
 " I think it necessary to notice the want of attention that has prevailed, 
 until a very late period, at Sydney, to the circumstances of those convicts 
 who have been transported a second and a third time. Although the 
 knowledge of these facts is transmitted in the hulk lists, or acquired without 
 difficulty during the passage, it never has occurred to Governor Macquarrie 
 or to the superintendent of convicts, to make any difference in the condition 
 of these men, not even to disappoint the views they may be supposed to 
 have indulged by the success of a criminal enterprise in England, and by 
 transferring the fruits of it to New South Wales. 
 
 " To accomplish this very simple but important object, nothing more 
 was necessary than to consign these men to any situation rather than that 
 which their friends had selected for them, and distinctly to declare in the 
 presence of their comrades at the first muster on their arrival, that no con- 
 sideration or favour vrotild be shown to those who had violated the law a 
 second time, and that the mitigation of their sentences must be indefinitely 
 postponed." Report, p. 19. 
 
 We were not a little amused at Governor Macquarrie's laureate a 
 regular Mr Southey who, upon the King's birth-day, sings the praises of 
 Governor Macquarrie.* The case of this votary of Apollo and Mercury 
 was a case for life ; the offence a menacing epistle, or, as low people call 
 
 * Vidt Report, p. 14*.
 
 BOTANY BAY, 43 ! 
 
 h, a threatening letter. He has been pardoned, however bursting his 
 shackles, like Orpheus of old, with song and metre, and is well spoken of 
 by Mr Bigge, but no specimen of his poetry given. One of the best and 
 most enlightened men in the settlement appears to be Mr Marsden, a clergy, 
 man at Paramatta. Mr liennet represents him as a gentleman of great 
 feeling, whose life is embittered by the scenes of horror and vice it is his lot 
 to witness at Paramatta. Indeed he says of himself, that in consequence 
 of these things, " he does not enjoy one happy moment from the beginning 
 to the end of the week !" This lelter, at the time, produced a very con- 
 siderable sensation in this country. The idea of a man of refinement and 
 feeling wearing away his life in the midst of scenes of crime and debauchery 
 to which he can apply no corrective, is certainly a very melancholy .and 
 affecting picture ; but there is no story, however elegant and eloquent, 
 which does not require, for the pnrposes of justice, to be turned to the 
 other side, and viewed in reverse. The Rev. Mr Marsden (says Mr Bigge), 
 being himself accustomed to traffic in spirits, must necessarily feel displeased 
 at having so many public houses licensed in the neighbourhood. (p. 14.) 
 
 "As to Mr Marsden's troubles of mind" (says the Governor), "and 
 pathetic display of sensibility and humanity, they must be so deeply seated, 
 and so far removed from the surface, as to escape ail possible observation. 
 His habits are those of a man for ever engaged in some active, animated 
 pursuit. No man travels more from town to town, or from house to house. 
 His deportment is at all times that of a person the most gay and happy, 
 ^'hen I was honoured with his society, he was by far the most cheerful 
 person I met in the colony. Where his hours of sorrow were spent, it is 
 hard to divine ; for the variety of his pursuits, both in his own concerns, 
 and in those of others, is so extensive, in farming, grazing, manufactories, 
 transactions, that with his clerical duties, he seems, to use a common 
 phrase, to have his hands full of work. And the particular subject to 
 which he imputes this extreme depression of mind, is, besides, one for 
 which few people here will give him much credit." Macquarrti 's Letter 
 to Lord Sidmouth, p. 18. 
 
 There is certainly a wide difference between a man of so much feeling, 
 that he has not a moment's happiness from the beginning to the end of the 
 week, and a little merry bustling clergyman, largely concerned in the sale 
 of rum, and brisk at a bargain for barley. Mr Bigge's evidence, however, 
 is very much in favour of Mr Marsden. He seems to think him a man of 
 highly respectable character and superior understanding, and that he has 
 been dismissed from the magistracy by Governor Macquarrie, in a very 
 rash, unjustifiable, and even tyrannical manner ; and in these opinions, we 
 must say, the facts seem to bear out the Report of the Commissioner. 
 
 Colonel Macquarrie not only dismisses honest and irreproachable men in 
 a country where their existence is scarce, and their services inestimable, but 
 he advances convicts to the situation and dignity of magistrates. Mr 
 Bennet lays great stress upon this, and makes it one of his strongest charges 
 against the Governor ; and the Commissioner also takes part against it. 
 But we confess we have great doubts on the subject ; and are by no means 
 satisfied that the system of the Governor was not, upon the whole, the wisest 
 and best adapted to the situation of the colony. Men are governed by 
 words ; and under the infamous term convict, are comprehended crimes of 
 the most different degrees and species of guilt. One man is transported 
 for stealing three hams and a pot of sausages ; and in the next berth to him 
 drt board th- is a young surgeon, who has been engaged in the
 
 434 BOTANY BA Y. 
 
 mutiny at the No re ; the third man is for extorting money ; the fourth was 
 in a respectable situation of life at the time of the Irish Rebellion, and was 
 so ill read in history as to imagine that Ireland had been ill-treated by Eng- 
 land, and so bad a reasoner as to suppose, that nine Catholics ought not to 
 pay tithes to one Protestant. Then comes a man who set his house on fire, 
 to cheat the Phcenix Office ; and, lastly, that most glaring of all human 
 villains, a poacher, driven from Europe, wife and child, by thirty lords of 
 manors, at the Quarter Sessions, for killing a partridge. Now, all these 
 are crimes no doubt particularly the last ; but they are surely crimes of 
 very different degrees of intensity, to which different degrees of contempt 
 and horror are attached and from which those who have committed them 
 may, by subsequent morality, emancipate themselves, with different degrees 
 of difficulty, and with more or less of success. A warrant granted by a 
 reformed bacon-stealer would be absurd ; but there is hardly any reason 
 why a foolish hot-brained young blockhead, who chose to favour the muti- 
 Vieers at the Nore when he was sixteen years of age, may not make a very 
 loyal subject, and a very respectable and respected magistrate, when he is 
 forty years of age, and has cast his Jacobine teeth, and fallen into the prac- 
 tical jobbing and loyal baseness which so commonly developes itself about 
 that period of life. Therefore, to say that a man must be placed in no situ- 
 ation of trust or elevation, as a magistrate, merely because he is a convict, 
 is to govern mankind with a dictionary, and to surrender sense and useful- 
 ness to sound. Take the following case, for instance, from Mr Bigge : _, 
 
 "The next person, from the same class, that was so distinguished by 
 Governor Macquarrie was the Rev. Mr Fulton. He was transported by 
 the sentence of a court-martial in Ireland, during the Rebellion ; and on 
 his arrival in New South Wales, in the year 1800, was sent to Norfolk 
 Island to officiate as chaplain. He returned to New South Wales in the 
 year 1 804, and performed the duties of chaplain at Sydney and Paramatta. 
 
 " In the divisions that prevailed in the colony previous to the arrest of 
 Governor Bligh, Mr Fulton took no part ; but, happening to form one of 
 his family when the person of the Governor was menaced with violence, he 
 courageously opposed himself to the military party that entered the house, 
 and gave an example of courage and devotion to the authority of Governor 
 Bligh, which, if partaken either by the officer or his few adherents, would 
 have spared him the humiliation of a personal arrest, and rescued his autho- 
 rity from the disgrace of open and violent suspension." Report, pp. 83, 84. 
 
 The particular nature of the place too must be remembered. It is seldom, 
 we suspect, that absolute dunces go to the Bay, but commonly men of active 
 minds, and considerable talents in their various lines who have not learnt, 
 indeed, the art of self-discipline and control, but who are sent to learn it in 
 the bitter school of adversity. And when this medicine produces its proper 
 effect when sufficient time has been given to show a thorough change in 
 character and disposition a young colony really cannot afford to dispense 
 with the services of any person of superior talents. Activity, resolution, 
 and acuteness, are of such immense importance in the hard circumstances 
 of a new State, that they must be eagerly caught at, and employed as soon 
 as they are discovered. Though all may not be quite so unobjectionable as 
 could be wished 
 
 " Res dura, et regnf novitas me talia cogunt 
 Moliri " 
 
 as Colonel Macquarrie probably quoted to Mr Commissioner Bigge, A
 
 BOTANY BA Y. 433 
 
 for the conduct of those extra-moralists, who come to settle in a land of 
 crime, and refuse to associate with a convict legally pardoned, however light 
 his original offence, however perfect his subsequent conduct we have no 
 toleration for such folly and foppery. To sit down to dinner with men who 
 have not been tried for their lives is a luxury which cannot be enjoyed in 
 such a country. It is entirely out of the question ; and persons so dainty, 
 and so truly admirable, had better settle at Clapham Common than at 
 Botany Bay. Our trade in Australasia is to turn scoundrels into honest 
 men. If you come among us, and bring with you a good character, and 
 will lend us your society, as a stimulus and reward to men recovering from 
 degradation, you will confer the greatest possible benefit upon the colony ; 
 but if you turn up your nose at repentance, insult those unhappy people with 
 your character, and fiercely stand up as a moral bully, and a virtuous brag- 
 gadocio, if> would have been far better for us if Providence had directed you 
 to any other part of the globe than to Botany Bay which was colonised, 
 not to gratify the insolence of Pharisees, but to heal the contrite spirit of 
 repentant sinners. Mr Marsden, who has no happiness from six o'clock 
 Monday morning, till the same hour the week following, will not meet 
 pardoned convicts in society. We have no doubt Mr Marsden is a very 
 respectable clergyman ; but is there not something very different from this 
 in the Gospel ? The most resolute and inflexible persons in the rejection of 
 pardoned convicts were some of the marching regiments stationed at Botany 
 Bay men, of course, who had uniformly shunned, in the Old World, the 
 society of gamesters, prostitutes, drunkards, and blasphemers who had 
 ruined no tailors, corrupted no wives, and had entitled themselves, by a 
 long course of solemnity and deconim, to indulge in all the insolence of 
 purity and virtue. 
 
 In this point, then, of restoring convicts to society, we side, as far as the 
 principle goes, with the Governor ; but we are far from undertaking to say 
 that his application of the principle has been on all occasions prudent and 
 judicious. Upon the absurdity of his conduct in attempting to force the 
 society of the pardoned convicts upon the undetected part of the colony, 
 there can be no doubt. These are points upon which every body must be 
 allowed to judge for themselves. The greatest monarchs in Europe cannot 
 control opinion upon those points sovereigns far exceeding Colonel Lachlan 
 Macquarrie, in the antiquity of their dynasty, and the extent, wealth, and 
 importance of their empire. 
 
 "It was in vain to assemble them" (the pardoned convicts), "even on 
 public occasions, at Government House, or to point them out to the especial 
 notice and favour of strangers, or to favour them with particular marks of 
 his own attention upon these occasions, if they still continued to be shunned 
 or disregarded by the rest of the company. 
 
 " With the exception of the Reverend Mr Fulton, and, on some occasions, 
 of Mr Redfern, I never observed that the other persons of this class partici- 
 pated in the general attentions of the company ; and the evidence of Mr 
 Judge Advocate Wylde and Major Bell both prove the embarrassment in 
 Which they were left on occasions that came within their notice. 
 
 " Nor has the distinction that has been conferred upon them by Governor 
 Macquarrie produced any effect in subduing the prejudices or objections of 
 the class of free inhabitants to associate with them. One instance only has 
 occurred, in which the wife of a respectable individual, and a magistrate, has 
 been visited by the wives of the officers of the garrison, and by a few of the 
 married ladies of the colony. It is an instance that reflects equal credit 
 upon the individual herself, as upon the feelings and motives of those by 
 
 2 E
 
 434 BOTANY BAY. 
 
 whom she has been so noticed : but the circumstances of her case were 
 very peculiar, and those that led to her introduction to society were very 
 fuch of a personal kind. It has generally been thought, that such instances 
 would have been more numerous if Governor Macquarrie had allowed e\ery 
 person to have followed the dictates of their own judgment upon a subject, 
 on which, of all others, men are least disposed to be dictated to, and most 
 disposed to judge for themselves. 
 
 "Although the emancipated convicts, whom he has selected from their 
 class, are persons who generally bear a good character in New South Wales, 
 yet that opinion of them is by no means universal. Those, however, who 
 entertained a good opinion of them would have proved it by their notice, as 
 Mr M 'Arthur has been in the habit of doing, by the kind nnd marked notice 
 that he took of Mr Fitzgerald ; and those who entertained a different 
 opinion would not have contracted an aversion to the principle of their 
 introduction, from being obliged to witness what they considered to be an 
 indiscreet and enoneous application of it." Report, p. 150. 
 
 \Ve do not think Mr Bigge exactly seizes the sense of Colonel Macquarrie's 
 phrase, when the Colonel speaks of restoring men to the rank of society they 
 nave lost. Men may either be classed by wealth and education, or by 
 character. All honest men, whether counts or cobblers, are of the same 
 rank, if dassed by moral distinctions. It is a common phrase to say that 
 such a man can no longer be ranked among honest men ; that he has been 
 degraded from the class of respectable persons ; and, therefore, by restoring 
 a convict to the rank he has lost, the Governor may very fairly be supposed 
 to mean the moral nnk. In discussing the question of granting offices of 
 trust to convicts, the importance of the Scelerati must not be overlooked. 
 Their numbers are very considerable. They have one eighth of all the 
 granted land in the colony ; and there are among them individuals of very 
 laige fortune. Mr Redfem has 2600 acres, Mr Lord 4365 acres, and Mr 
 Samuel Terryig.ooo acres. As this man's history is a specimen of the mud 
 and dirt out of which great families often arise, let the Terry Filii, the future 
 warriors, legislators, and nobility of the Bay, learn from what, and whom, 
 they sprang. 
 
 "The first of these individuals, Samuel Terry, was transported to the 
 colony when young. He was placed in a gang of stonemasons at Paramatta, 
 and assisted in the building of the gaol. Mr Marsden states, that during 
 this period he was brought before him for neglect of duty, and punished ; 
 but, by his industry in other ways, he was enabled to set up a small retail 
 shop, in which he continued till the expiration of his term of service. He 
 then repaired to Sydney, where he extended his business, and, by marriage, 
 increased his capital. He for many years kept a public house and retail 
 ghop, to which the smaller settlers resorted from the country, and where, 
 after intoxicating themselves with spirits, they signed obligations and 
 powers of attorney to confess judgment, which were always kept ready for 
 execution. By these means, and by an active use of the common arts of 
 over-reaching ignorant and worthless men, Samuel Terry has been able to 
 accumulate a considerable capital, and a quantity of land in New South 
 Wales, inferior only to that which is held by Mr D'Arcy Wentwoi th. He 
 ceased, at the late regulations introduced by the magistrates at Sydney, in 
 February, 1820, to sell spirituous liquors, and he is now become one of the 
 principal speculators in the purchase of investments at Sydney, and lately 
 established a watermill in the swampy plains between that town and 
 Botany Bay, which did not succeed. Out of the 19,000 acres of land held
 
 BOTANY SAY. 435 
 
 by Samuel Terry, 140 only are stated to be cleared ; but he possesses 1450 
 head of horned cattle, and 3800 sheep. " Report, p. 141. 
 
 Upon the subject of the New South Wales Bank, Mr Bigge observes, 
 
 "Upon the first of these occasions, it became an object both with 
 Governor Macquarrie and Mr Judge-Advocate Wylde, who took an active 
 part in the establishment of the bank, to unite in its favour the support and 
 contributions of the individuals of all classes of the colony. Governor 
 Macquarrie felt assured, that, without such co-operation, the bank could 
 not be established ; for he was convinced that the emancipated convicts 
 were the most opulent members of the community. A committee was 
 formed for the purpose of drawing up the rules and regulations of the 
 establishment, in which are to be found the names of George Howe, the 
 printer of the Sydney Gazette, who was also a retail dealer ; Mr Simon 
 Lord, and Mr Edward Eager, all emancipated convicts, and the last only 
 conditionally. 
 
 "Governor Macquarrie had always^ understood, and strongly wished, 
 that in asking for the co-operation of all classes of the community in the 
 formation of the bank, a share in its direction and management should also 
 be communicated to them." Report, p. 150. 
 
 In the discussion of this question, we become acquainted with a piece of 
 military etiquette, of whicli we were previously ignorant. An officer, 
 invited to dinner by the Governor, cann.,: refuse, unless in case of sickness. 
 This is the most complete tyranny we ever heard of. If the officer comes 
 out to his duty at the proper minute, with his proper number of buttons and 
 epaulettes, what matters it to the Governor or any body else, where he 
 dines? He may as well be ordered what to eat, as where to dine be 
 confined to the upper or under side of the meat be denied gravy, or 
 refused melted butter. But there is no end to the small tyranny and 
 puerile vexations of a military life. 
 
 The mode of employing convicts upon their arrival appears to us very 
 objectionable. If a man is skilful as a mechanic, he is added to the Govern- 
 ment gangs ; and in proportion to his skill and diligence, his chance of 
 manumission, or of remission of labour, is lessened. If he is not skilful, or 
 not skilful in any trade wanted by Government, he is applied for by some 
 settler, to whom he pays from 5-f- to lor. a week ; and is then left at liberty 
 to go where, and work for whomsoever, he pleases. .In the same manner, 
 a convict who is rich is applied for, and obtains his weekly liberty and idle- 
 ness by the purchased permission of the person to whom he is consigned. 
 
 The greatest possible inattention or ignorance appears to have prevailed 
 in manumitting convicts for labour and for such labour ! not for cleansing 
 Augean stables, or draining Pontine marshes, or damming out a vast length 
 of the Adriatic, but for working five weeks with a single horse and cart in 
 making the road to Bathurst Plains. Was such labour worth five pounds ? 
 And is it to be understood, that liberty is to be restored to any man who 
 will do five pounds' worth of work in Australasia ? Is this comment upon 
 transportation to be circulated in the cells of Newgate, or in the haunts of 
 those persons who are doomed to inhabit them ? 
 
 "Another principle by which Governor Macquarrie has been guided in 
 bestowing pardons and indulgences, is that of considering them as rewards 
 for any particular labour or enterprise. It was upon this principle, that the 
 men who were employed in working upon the Bathurst Road, in the year
 
 436 BOTANY BA Y. 
 
 1815, and those who contributed to that operation by the loan of their own 
 carts and horses, or of those that they procured, obtained pardons, emanci- 
 pations, and tickets of leave. To 39 men who were employed as labourers 
 in this work, three free pardons were given, one ticket of leave, and 35 
 emancipations ; and two of them only had held tickets of leave before 
 they commenced their labour. Seven convicts received emancipations 
 for supplying horses and carts for the carriage of provisions and stores as 
 the party was proceeding ; six out of this number having previously held 
 tickets of leave. 
 
 "Eight other convicts (four of whom held tickets of leave) received 
 emancipations for assisting with carts, and one horse to each, in the trans- 
 port of provisions and baggage for the use of Governor Macquarrie and his 
 suite, on their journey from the River Nepean to Bathurst, in the year 
 1816 ; a service that did not extend beyond the period of five weeks, and 
 was attended with no risk, and very little exertion. 
 
 "Between the months of January, 1816, and June, 1818, nine convicts, 
 of whom six held tickets of leave, obtained emancipations for sending carts 
 and horses to convey provisions and baggage from Paramatta to Bathurst, 
 for the use of Mr Oxley, the surveyor-general, in his two expeditions into 
 the interior of the country. And in the same period, 23 convict labourers 
 and mechanics obtained emancipations for labour and service performed at 
 Bathurst. 
 
 "The nature of the services performed by these convicts, and the manner 
 in which some of them were recommended, excited much surprise in the 
 colony, as well as great suspicion of the purity of the channels through 
 which the recommendations passed. " Refort, pp. 122, 123. 
 
 If we are to judge from the number of jobs detected by Mr Bigge, Botany 
 Bay seems very likely to do justice to the mother-country from whence it 
 sprang. Mr Redfern, surgeon, seems to use the public rhubarb for his 
 private practice. Mr Hutchinson, superintendent, makes a very comfortable 
 thing of the assignment of convicts. Major Druit was found selling their 
 own cabbages to Government in a very profitable manner ; and many com- 
 fortable little practices of this nature are noticed by Mr Bigge. 
 
 Among other sources of profit, the superintendent of convicts was the 
 banker ; two occupations which seem to be eminently compatible with each 
 other, inasmuch as they afford to the superintendent the opportunity of 
 evincing his impartiality, and loading with equal labour every convict, with- 
 out reference to their banking accounts, to the profit they afford, or the 
 trouble they create. It appears, however (very strangely), from the Report, 
 that the money of convicts was not always recovered with the same readiness 
 it was received. 
 
 Mr Richard Fitzgerald, in September, 1819, was comptroller of provisions 
 in Emu Plains, storekeeper at Windsor, and superintendent of Government 
 works at the same place. He was also a proprietor of land and stock in the 
 neighbourhood, and kept a public house in Windsor, of which an emanci- 
 cipated Jew was the ostensible manager, upon whom Fitzgerald gave orders 
 for goods and spirits in payment for labour on the public works. These 
 two places are fifteen miles distant from each other, and convicts are to be 
 watched and managed at both. It cannot be imagined that the convicts 
 are slow in observing or following these laudable examples ; and their con- 
 duct will add another instance of the vigilance of Macquarrie's government. 
 
 - " The stores and materials used in the different buildings at Sydney are 
 kept in a magazine in the lumber yard, and are distributed according to
 
 BOTANY BAT. 437 
 
 the written requisitions of the different overseers that are made during the 
 day, and that are addressed to the storekeeper in the lumber yard. They 
 are conveyed from thence to the buildings by the convict mechanics ; and 
 no account of the expenditure or employment of the stores is kept by the 
 overseers, or rendered to the storekeeper. It was only in the early part of 
 the year 1820 that an account was opened by him of the different materials 
 used in each work or building; and in February, 1821, this account was 
 considerably in arrear. The temptation, therefore, that is afforded to the 
 convict mechanics who work in the lumber yard, in secreting tools, stores, 
 and implements, and to those who work at the different buildings, is very 
 great, and the loss to Government is considerable. The tools, moreover, 
 have not latterly been mustered as they used to be once a month, except 
 when one of the convicts is removed from Sydney to another station." 
 Report, pp. 36, 37. 
 
 If it were right to build fine houses in a new colony, common sense 
 seems to point out a control upon the expenditure, with such a description 
 of workmen. What must become of that country where the buildings are 
 useless, the Governor not wise, the public the paymaster, the accounts not 
 in existence, and all the artisans thieves ? 
 
 A horrid practice prevailed, of the convict accepting a sum of money 
 from the captain, in their voyage out, in lieu of their regular ration of pro- 
 visions. This ought to be restrained by the severest penalties. 
 
 What is it that can be urged for Governor Macquarrie, after the following 
 picture of the Hospital at Paramatta ? It not only justifies his recall, but 
 seems to require (if there are means of reaching such neglect) his severe 
 punishment. 
 
 " The women, who had become most profligate and hardened by habit, 
 were associated in their daily tasks with those who had very lately arrived, 
 to whom the customs and practices of the colony were yet unknown, and 
 who might have escaped the consequences of such pernicious lessons, if a 
 little care, and a small portion of expense, had been spared in providing 
 them with a separate apartment during the hours of labour. As a place 
 of employment, the factory at Paramatta was not only very defective, but 
 very prejudicial. The insufficient accommodation that it afforded to those 
 females who might be well disposed, presented an early incitement, if not 
 an excuse for their resorting to indiscriminate prostitution ; and on the 
 evening of their arrival at Paramatta, those who were not deploring their 
 state of abandonment and distress, were traversing the streets in search of 
 the guilty means of future support. The state in which the place itself was 
 kept, and the state of disgusting filth in which I found it, both on an early 
 visit after my arrival, and on one preceding my departure ; the disordered, 
 unruly, and licentious appearance of the women, manifested the little degree 
 of control in which the female convicts were kept, and the little attention 
 that was paid to any thing beyond the mere performance of a certain portion 
 of labour." Report, p. 70. 
 
 It might naturally be supposed, that any man sent across the globe with 
 a good salary, for the express purpose of governing, and, if possible, of 
 reforming convicts, would have preferred the morals of his convicts to the 
 accommodation of his horses. Let Mr Bigge, a very discreet and moderate 
 man, be heard upon these points. 
 
 " Having observed, in Governor Macquarrie's ans\yer to Mr Marsden,
 
 438 BOTANY BAY. 
 
 that he justified the delay that occurred, and was still to take place, in the 
 construction of a proper place of reception for the female convicts, by the 
 want of any specific instructions from your Lordship to nndertake such a 
 building, nnd which he states that he solicited at an early period of his 
 government, and considered indispensable, I felt it to be my duty to call 
 to the recollection of Governor Macquarrie, that he had undertaken several 
 buildings of much less urgent necessity than the factory at Paramatta, 
 without waiting for any such indispensable authority ; and I now find that 
 the construction of it was announced by him to your Lordship in the year 
 1817, as then in his contemplation, without making any specific allusion to 
 the evils which the want of it had so long occasioned ; that the contract for 
 building it was announced to the public on the 2ist May, 1818, and that 
 your Lordship's approval of it was not signified until the 24th August, 1818, 
 and could not have reached Governor Macquarrie's hands until nearly a 
 year after the work had been undertaken. It appears, therefore, that if 
 want of authority had been the sole cause oi the delay in building the 
 factory at Paramatta, that cause would not only have operated in the month 
 of March, 1818, but it would have continued to operate until the want of 
 authority had been formally supplied. Governor Macquarrie, however, 
 must be conscious, that after he had stated to Mr Marsden in the year 1815, 
 and with an appearance of regret, that the want of authority prevented him 
 from undertaking the construction of a building of such undeniable necessity 
 and importance as the factory at Paramatta, he had undertaken several 
 buildings, which, though useful in themselves, were of less comparative 
 importance; and had commenced, in the month of August, 1817, the 
 laborious and expensive construction of his own stables at Sydney, to -w hie hi 
 have already alluded, without any previous communication to your Lord- 
 ship, and in direct opposition to an instruction that must have then reached 
 him, and that forcibly warned him of the consequences. " Report, p. 7 1 . 
 
 It is the fashion very much among the Tories of the House of Commons, 
 and a'l those who love the effects of public liberty, without knowing or 
 caring how it is preserved, to attack every person who complains of abuses, 
 and to accuse him of gross exaggeration. No sooner is the name of any 
 public thief, or of any tormentor, or oppressor, mentioned in that Honour- 
 able House, than out bursts the spirit of jobbing eulogium, and there is 
 not a virtue under heaven which is not ascribed to the delinquent in 
 question, and vouched for by , the most irrefragable testimony. If Mr 
 Bennet or Sir Francis Burdett had attacked them, and they had now been 
 living, how many honourable members would have vouched for the 
 honesty of Dudley and Empson, the gentleness of Jeffries, or the genius of 
 Blackmore ? What human virtue did not Aris and the governor of 
 Ilchester gaol possess? Who was not ready to come forward to vouch for 
 the attentive humanity of Governor Macquarrie? What scorn and wit 
 would it have produced from the Treasury Bench, if Mr Bennet had stated 
 the superior advantages of the horses over the convicts? and all the hor- 
 rors and immoralities, the filth and wretchedness, of the female prison of 
 Paramatta? Such a case, proved, as this now is, beyond the power of 
 contradiction, ought to convince the most hardy and profligate scoffers, 
 that there is really a great deal of occasional neglect and oppression in the 
 conduct of public servants ; and that, in spite of all the official praise, 
 which is ever ready for the perpetrators of crime, there is a great deal of 
 real malversation which should be dragged to the light of day, by the 
 exertions of bold and virtuous men. If we had found, from the Report of 
 Mr Bigge, that the charges of Mr Bennet were without any, or without
 
 ROTAFV BAY. 439 
 
 adequate foundation, it would have given us great pleasure to have vindi. 
 cated the Governor ; but Mr Bennet has proved his indictment. It i 
 impossible to read the foregoing quotation, and not to perceive, that the 
 conduct and proceedings of Governor Macquarrie imperiously required the 
 exposure they have received ; and that it would have been much to the 
 credit of Government if he had been removed long ago from a situation 
 which, but for the exertions of Mr Bennet, we believe he would have held 
 to this day. 
 
 The sick, from Mr Bigge's Report, appear to have fared as badly as the 
 sinful. Good water was scarce, proper persons to wait upon the patients 
 could not be obtained ; and so numerous were the complaints from this 
 quarter, that the Governor makes an order for the exclusion of all hospital 
 grievances and complaints, except on one day in the month dropsy swelling, 
 however, fever burning, and ague shaking, in the mean time, without 
 waiting for the arrangements of Governor Macquarrie, or consulting the 
 mollia tent fora fandi. 
 
 In permitting individuals to distil their own grain, the Government of 
 Botany Bay appears to us to be quite right. It is impossible, in such a 
 colony, to prevent unlawful distillation to a considerable extent ; and it is 
 as well to raise upon spirits (as something must be taxed) that slight duty 
 which renders the contraband trade hot worth following. Distillation, too, 
 always insures a magazine against famine, by which New South Wales has 
 more than once been severely visited. It opens a market for grain where 
 markets are very distant, and where redundance and famine seem very often 
 to succeed each other. The cheapness of spirits, to such working people 
 as know how to use them with moderation, is a great blessing ; and we 
 doubt whether that moderation, after the first burst of ebriety, is not just as 
 likely to be leamt in plenty, as in scarcity. 
 
 \Ve were a little surprised at the scanty limits allowed to convicts fot 
 sleeping on board the transports. Mr Bigge (of whose sense and humanity 
 we really have not the slightest doubt) states eighteen inches to be quite 
 sufficient twice the length of a small sheet of letter paper. The printer's 
 devil, who carries our works to the press, informs us, that the allowance to 
 the demons of the type is double foolscap length, or twenty-four inches. 
 The great city upholsterers generally consider six feet as barely sufficient for 
 a person rising in business, and assisting occasionally at official banquets. 
 
 Mrs Fry's * system is well spoken of by Mr Bigge ; and its useful effect 
 in promoting order and decency among floating convicts fully admitted. 
 
 In a voyage to Botany Bay by Mr Read, he states that, while the con- 
 vict vessel lay at anchor, about to sail, a boat from shore reached the ship, 
 and from it stepped a clerk of the Bank of England. The convicts felici- 
 tated themselves upon the acquisition of so gentlemanlike a companion ; but 
 it soon turned out that the visitant had no intention of making so long a 
 voyage. Finding that they were not to have the pleasure of his company, 
 the convicts very naturally thought of picking his pockets ; the necessity of 
 
 * We are sorry it should have been imagined, from some of our late observations oil 
 prison discipline, that we meant to disparage the exertions of Mrs Fry. For prisoners 
 before trial, it is perfect; but where imprisonment is intended for punishment, and not 
 for detention, it requires, as we have endeavoured to show, a very different system. The 
 Prison Suciety (an excellent, honourable, and most useful i:.stituiin of some of the best 
 men in England) have certainly, in iheir first Numbers, fallen into the common mistake, 
 of supposing that the reformation of the culprit, and not the prevention of the crime, 
 was tr.e main object of imprisonment ; and have, in consequence, taken some fais'e views 
 of the method of treating prisoners the exposition of w'.nch, after the usual manner of 
 flesh and blood, makes them a little angry. But, in objects of SO high a nature, what 
 matters who is right 'the only question is, What is right ?
 
 440 BOTANY BA Y. 
 
 which professional measure was prevented by a speedy distribution of their 
 contents. Forth from his bill-case this votary of Plutus drew his nitid New- 
 lands ; all the forgers and utterers were mustered on deck ; and to each of 
 them was well and truly paid into his hand a five pound note ; less accept- 
 able, perhaps, than if privately removed from the person, but still joyfully 
 received. This was well intended on the part of the Directors : but the 
 consequences it is scarcely necessary to enumerate ; a large stock of rum 
 was immediately laid in from the circumambient slop boats ; and the mate- 
 rials of constant intoxication secured for the rest of the voyage. 
 
 The following account of pastoral convicts is striking and picturesque 
 
 "I observed that a great many of the convicts in Van Diemen's Land 
 wore jackets and trousers of the kangaroo skin, and sometimes caps of the 
 same material, which they obtain from the stock-keepers who are employed 
 in the interior of the country. The labour of several of them differs, in this 
 respect, from that of the convicts in New South Wales, and is rather pas- 
 toral and agricultural. Permission having been given, for the last five years, 
 to the settlers to avail themselves of the ranges of open plains and valleys 
 that lie on either side of the road leading from Austin's Ferry to Launces- 
 ton, a distance of 120 miles, their flocks and herds have been committed to 
 the care of convict shepherds and stock-keepers, who are sent to these cattle 
 ranges, distant sometimes 30 or 40 miles from their masters' estates. 
 
 ".The boundaries of these tracts are described in the tickets of occupation 
 by which they are held, and which are made renewable every year, on pay- 
 ment of a fee to the Lieutenant-Governor's clerk. One or more convicts 
 are stationed on them, to attend to the flocks and cattle, and are supplied 
 with wheat, tea, and sugar, at the monthly visits of the owner. They are 
 allowed the use of a musket and a few cartridges to defend themselves 
 against the natives ; and they have also dogs, with which they hunt the 
 kangaroos, whose flesh they eat, and dispose of their skins to persons pass- 
 ing from Hobart Town to Launceston, in exchange for tea and sugar. 
 They thus obtain a plentiful supply of food, and- sometimes succeed in cul- 
 tivating a few vegetables. Their habitat ions are made of turf, and thatched ; 
 as the bark of the dwarf eucalyptus, or gum-trees of the plains, and the 
 interior, in Van Diemen's Land, is not of sufficient expanse to form cover- 
 ing or shelter. Report, pp. 107, 108. 
 
 A London thief, clothed in kangaroo's skins, lodged under the bark of 
 the dwarf eucalyptus, and keeping sheep, fourteen thousand miles from 
 Piccadilly, with a crook bent into the shape of a picklock, is not an unin- 
 teresting picture ; and an engraving of it might have a very salutary effect 
 provided no engraving were made of his convict master, to whom the 
 sheep belong. 
 
 The Maroon Indians were hunted by dogs the fugitive convicts are re- 
 covered by the natives. 
 
 " The native blacks that inhabit the neighbourhood of Port Hunter and 
 Port Stephens have become very active in retaking the fugitive convicts. 
 They accompany the soldiers who are sent in pursuit ; and, by the extraor- 
 dinary strength of sight they possess, improved by their daily exercise of it in 
 pursuit of kangaroos and opossums, they can trace to a great distance, with 
 wonderful accuracy, the impressions of the human foot. Nor are they 
 afraid of meeting the fugitive convicts in the woods, when sent in their 
 pursuit, without the soldiers ; by their skill in throwing their long and 
 pointed wooden darts, they wound and disable them, strip them of their
 
 BOTANY BA Y. 44! 
 
 clothes, and bring them back as prisoners, by unknown roads and paths, 
 to the Coal River. 
 
 "They are rewarded for these enterprises by presents of maize and blan- 
 kets ; and, notwithstanding the apprehensions of revenge from the convicts 
 whom they bring back, they continue to live in Newcastle and its neigh- 
 bourhood ; but are observed to prefer the society of the soldiers to that of 
 the convicts." Report, p. 117. 
 
 Of the convicts in New South "Wales, Mr Bigge found about eight or 
 nine in a hundred to be persons of respectable character and conduct, 
 though the evidence respecting them is not quite satisfactory. But the most 
 striking and consolatory passage in the whole Report is the following : 
 
 " The marriages of the native-born youths with female convicts are very 
 rare ; a circumstance that is attributable to the general disinclination to 
 early marriage that is observable amongst them, and partly to the aban- 
 doned and dissolute habits of the female convicts ; but chiefly to a sense of 
 pride in the native-born youths, approaching to contempt for the vices and 
 depravity of the convicts, even when manifested in the persons of their own 
 parents." Report, p. 105. 
 
 Every thing is to be expected from these feelings. They convey to the 
 mother-country the first proof that the foundations of a mighty empire are 
 laid. 
 
 We are somewhat surprised to find Governor Macquarrie contending 
 with Mr Bigge, that it was no part of his, the Governor's duty, to select 
 and separate the useless from the useful convicts, or to determine, except 
 in particular cases, to whom they are to be assigned. In other words, 
 he wishes to effect the customary separation of salary and duty the grand 
 principle which appears to pervade all human institutions, and to be the 
 most invincible of all human abuses. Not only are Church, King, and 
 State, allured by this principle of vicarious labour, but the pot-boy has a 
 lower pot-boy, who, for a small portion of the small gains of his principal, 
 arranges, with inexhaustible sedulity, the subdivided portions of drink, and, 
 intensely perspiring, disperses, in bright pewter, the frothy elements of joy. 
 
 There is a very awkward story of a severe flogging inflicted upon three 
 freemen by Governor Macquarrie, without complaint to, or intervention of, 
 any magistrate ; a fact not denied by the Governor, and for which no 
 adequate apology, nor any thing approaching to an adequate apology, is 
 offered. These Asiatic and satrapical proceedings, however, we have 
 reason to think, are exceedingly disrelished by London juries. The profits 
 of having been unjustly flogged at Botany Bay (Scarlett for the plaintiff) is 
 
 food property, and would fetch a very considerable sum at the Auction 
 lart. The Governor, in many instances, appears to have confounded 
 diversity of opinion upon particular measures, with systematic opposition to 
 his Government, and to have treated as disaffected persons those whom, in 
 favourite measures, he could not persuade by his arguments, nor influence 
 by his example, and on points where every man has a right to judge for 
 himself, and where authority has no legitimate right to interfere, much less 
 to dictate. 
 
 To the charges confirmed by the statement of Mr Bigge, Mr Bennet adds, 
 from the evidence collected by the Jail Committee, that the fees in the 
 Governor's Court, collected by the authority of the Governor, are most 
 exorbitant and oppressive ; and that illegal taxes are collected under the 
 sole authority of the Governor, It has been made, by colonial regulations,
 
 44* BOTANY BA Y. 
 
 a capital offence to steal the wild cattle ; and, In 1816, three persons were 
 convicted of stealing a wild bull, the property of our Sovereign Lord the 
 Ki"Z- Now, our Sovereign Lord the King (whatever be his other merits 
 or demerits) is certainly a very good-natured man, and would be the first to 
 lament that an unhappy convict was sentenced to death for killing one of 
 his wild bulls on the other side of the world. The cases of Mr Moore and 
 of William Stewart, as quoted by Mr Bennet, are very strong. If they are 
 answerable, they should be answered. The concluding letter to Mr Stewart 
 is, to us, the most decisive proof of the unfitness of Colonel Macquarrie for 
 the situation in which he was placed. The ministry at home, after the 
 authenticity of the letter was proved, should have seized upon the first 
 decent pretext of recalling the Governor, of thanking him in the name of 
 his Sovereign for his valuable services (not omitting his care of the wild 
 bulls), and of dismissing him to half-pay and insignificance. 
 
 As to the Trial by Jury, we cannot agree with Mr Bennet, that it would 
 be right to introduce it at present, for reasons we have given in a previous 
 Article, and which we see no reason for altering. The time of course will 
 come when it would be in the highest degree unjust and absurd, to refuse 
 to that settlement the benefit of popular institutions. But they are too 
 young, too few, and too deficient for such civilized machinery at present. 
 " I cannot come to serve upon the jury the waters of the Hawksbury are 
 out, and I haive a mile to swim the kangaroos will break into my corn 
 the convicts have robbed me my little boy has been bitten by an ornitho- 
 rynchus paradoxus I have sent a man fifty miles with a sack of flour to 
 buy a pair of breeches for the assizes, and he is not returned." These are 
 the excuses which, in new colonies, always prevent Trial by Jury ; and 
 make it desirable, for the first half century of their existence, that they 
 should live under the simplicity and convenience of despotism such modi- 
 fied despotism (we mean) as a British House of Commons (always contain- 
 ing men as bold and honest as the member for Shrewsbury) will permit, in 
 the governors of their distant colonies. 
 
 Such are the opinions formed of the conduct of Governor Macquarrie by 
 Mr Bigge. Not the slightest insinuation is made against the integrity of his 
 character. Though almost every body else has a job, we do not perceive 
 that any is imputed to this gentleman ; but he is negligent, expensive, arbi- 
 trary, ignorant, and clearly deficient in abilities for the task committed to 
 his charge. It is our decided opinion, therefore, that Mr Bennet has ren- 
 dered a valuable service to the public, in attacking and exposing his conduct. 
 As a gentleman and an honest man, there is not the smallest charge against 
 the Governor ; but a gentleman, and a very honest man, may very easily 
 ruin a very fine colony. The colony, itself, disencumbered of Colonel 
 Lachlan Macquarrie, will probably become a very fine empire ; but we can 
 scarcely believe it is of any present utility as a place of punishment. The 
 history of emancipated convicts, who have made a great deal of money by 
 their industry and their speculations, necessarily reaches this country, anc 
 prevents men who are goaded by want, and hovering between vice and 
 virtue, from looking upon it as a place of suffering perhaps leads them to 
 consider it as the land of hope and refuge, to them unattainable, except by 
 the commission of crime. And so they fift up their heads at the Bar, hoping 
 to be transported, 
 
 " Stabant orantes primi transmitters ctirsum, 
 Tendebamque maims, ripae uhcrioris amore." 
 
 It is not possible, in the present state of the law, that these enticing 
 histories of convict prosperity should be prevented, by one uniform system
 
 GAME LA WS. 443 
 
 of severity exercised in New South Wales, upon all transported persons. 
 Such different degrees of guilt are included under the term of convict, that 
 it would violate every feeling of humanity, and every principle of justice, to 
 deal out one measure of punishment to all. We strongly suspect that this 
 is the root of the evil. We want new gradations of guilt to be established 
 by law new names for those gradations and a different measure of good 
 and evil treatment attached to those denominations. In this manner, the 
 mere convict, the rogue and convict, and the incorrigible convict, would ex- 
 pect, upon their landing, to be treated with very different degrees of severity. 
 The first might be merely detained in New South Wales without labour or 
 coercion ; the second compelled, at all events, to work out two thirds of his 
 time without the possibility of remission ; and the third be destined at once 
 for the Coal River.* If these consequences steadily followed these grada- 
 tions of conviction, they would soon be understood by the felonious world 
 at home. At present, the prosperity of the best convicts is considered to 
 be attainable by all ; and transportation to another hemisphere is looked 
 upon as the renovation of fallen fortunes, and the passport to wealth and 
 power. 
 
 Another circumstance, which destroys all idea of punishment in transporta- 
 tion to New South Wales, is the enormous expense which that settlement 
 would occasion if it really were made a place of punishment. A little wicked 
 tailor arrives, of no use to the architectural projects of the Governor. He 
 is turned over to a settler, who leases this sartorial Borgia his liberty for five 
 shillings per week, and allows him to steal and snip, what, when, and where 
 he can. The excuse for all this mockery of law and justice is, that the 
 expense of his maintenance is saved to the Government at home. But the 
 expense is not saved to the country at large. The nefarious needleman 
 writes home, that he is as comfortable as a finger in a thimble ! that though 
 a fraction of humanity, he has several wives, and is filled every day with 
 rum and kangaroo. This, of course, is not lost upon the shopboard ; and, 
 for the saving of fifteen pence per day, the foundation of many criminal 
 tailors is laid. What is true of tailors, is true of tinkers and all other 
 trades. The chances of escape from labour, and of manumission in the Bay, 
 we may depend upon it, are accurately reported, and perfectly understood, 
 in the flash-houses of St Giles ; and, while Earl Bathurst is full of jokes and 
 joy, public morals are thus sapped to their foundation. 
 
 GAME LAWS. (E. REVIEW, 1823.) 
 
 A Letter to the Chairman of the Committee of the House of Commons, on the Game 
 Laws. By the Hon. and Rev. WILLIAM HERBERT. Ridgway, 1833. 
 
 ABOUT the time of the publication of this little pamphlet of Mr Herbert, a 
 Committee of the House of Commons published a Report on the Game Laws, 
 containing a great deal of very curious information respecting the sale of 
 game, an epitome of which we shall now lay before our readers. The 
 country higglers who collect poultry, gather up the game from the depots 
 of the poachers, and transmit it in the same manner as poultry, and in the 
 same packages, to the London poulterers, by whom it is distributed to the 
 public ; and this traffic is carried on (as far as game is concerned) even from 
 the distance of Scotland. The same business is carried on by the porters 
 
 * This practice is now resorted to.
 
 444 GAME LA IVS. 
 
 of stage coaches ; and a great deal of game is sold clandestinely by lords of 
 manors, or by gamekeepers, without the knowledge of lords of manors ; 
 and principally, as the evidence states, from Norfolk and Suffolk, the great 
 schools of steel traps and spring guns. The supply of game, too, is proved 
 to be quite as regular as the supply of poultry ; the number of hares and 
 partridges supplied rather exceeds that of pheasants ; but any description of 
 game may be had to any amount. Here is a part of the evidence. 
 
 " Can you at any time procure any quantity of game ? I have no doubt 
 of it. If you were to receive almost an unlimited order, could you execute 
 it? Yes ; I would supply the whole city of London, any fixed day once a 
 week, all the year through, so that every individual inhabitant should have 
 game for his table. Do you think you could procure a thousand pheasants? 
 Yes ; I would be bound to produce ten thousand a week. You would be 
 bound to provide every family in London with a dish of game ? Yes ; a 
 partridge, or a pheasant, or a hare, or a grouse, or something or other. 
 How would you set about doing it ? I should, of course, request the per- 
 sons with whom I am in the habit of dealing, to use their influence to 
 bring me what they could by a certain day ; I should speak to the dealers 
 and the mail-guards, and coachmen, to produce a quantity ; and I should 
 send to my own connections in one or two manors where I have the privi- 
 lege of selling for those gentlemen ; and should send to Scotland to say, 
 that every week the largest quantity they could produce was to be sent. 
 Being but a petty salesman, I sell a very small quantity ; but I have had 
 about 4000 head direct from one man. Canyon state the quantity of game 
 which has been sent to you during the year ? No ; I may say, perhaps, 
 10,000 head ; mine is a limited trade ; I speak comparatively to that of 
 others ; I only supply private families." Report, p. 20. 
 
 Poachers who go out at night cannot, of course, like regular tradesmen, 
 proportion the supply to the demand, but having once made a contract, 
 they kill all they can ; and hence it happens that the game market is 
 sometimes very much overstocked, and great quantities of game either 
 thrown away, or disposed of by Irish hawkers to the common people at 
 very inferior prices. 
 
 " Does it ever happen to you to be obliged to dispose of poultry at the 
 same low prices you are obliged to dispose of game? It depends upon the 
 weather j often when there is a considerable quantity on hand, and, owing 
 to the weather, it will not keep to the following day, I am obliged to take 
 any price that is offered ; but we can always turn either poultry or game 
 into some price or other ; and if it was not for the Irish hawkers, hundreds 
 and hundreds of heads of game would be spoiled and thrown away. It is 
 out of the power of any person to conceive for one moment the quantity of 
 game that is hawked in the streets. I have had opportunity more than 
 other persons of knowing this ; for I have sold, I may say, more game than 
 any other person in the city ; and we serve hawkers indiscriminately, per- 
 sons who come and purchase probably six fowls or turkeys and geese, and 
 they will buy heads of game with them." Report, p. 22. 
 
 Live birds are sent up as well as dead ; eggs as well as birds. The price 
 of pheasants' eggs last year was &r. per dozen ; of partridges' eggs, 2s. 
 The price of hares was from 3^. to $s. 6d. ; of partridges, from is. (>d. to 
 2s. 6d. ; of pheasants, from 5-r. to 5-r. 6</. each } and sometimes as low as 
 is. 4.
 
 GAME LAWS. 445 
 
 "What have you given for game this year ? It is very low indeed ; I 
 am sick of it ; I do not think I shall ever deal again. We have got game 
 this season as low as half-a-crown a brace (birds), and pheasants as low as 
 7.f. a brace. It is so plentiful, there has been no end to spoiling it this 
 season. It is so plentiful, it is of no use. In war time itjwas worth having ; 
 then they fetched Js. and 8s. a brace." Report, p. 33. 
 
 All the poulterers, too, even the most respectable, state, that it is abso- 
 lutely necessary they should carry on this illegal traffic in the present state 
 of the game laws ; because their regular customers for poultry would in- 
 fallibly leave any poulterer's shop from whence they could not be supplied 
 with game. 
 
 " I have no doubt that it is the general wish at present of the trade not 
 to deal in the article ; but they are all, of course, compelled from their 
 connections. If they cannot get game from one person, they can from 
 another. 
 
 " Do you believe that poulterers are not to be found who would takeout 
 licences, and would deal with those very persons, for the purposes of ob- 
 taining a greater profit than they would have dealing as you would do ? I 
 think the poulterers in general are a respectable set of men, and would not 
 countenance such a thing ; they feel now that they are driven into a corner ; 
 that there may be men who would countenance irregular proceedings. I 
 have no doubt. Would it be their interest to do so, considering the 
 penalty ? No, I think not. The poulterers are perfectly well aware that 
 they are committing a breach of the law at present. Do you suppose that 
 those persons, respectable as they are, who are now committing a breach of 
 the law, would not equally commit that breach if the law were altered ? 
 No, certainly not ; at present it is so connected with their business that 
 they cannot help it. You said just now, that they were driven into a 
 corner ; what did you mean by that ? We are obliged to aid and abet those 
 men who commit those depredations, because of the constant demand for 
 game, from different customers whom we supply with poultry. Could you 
 carry on your business as a poulterer, if you refused to supply game ? By 
 no means ; because some of the first people in the land require it of me." 
 Report, p. 15. 
 
 When that worthy Errorist, Mr Bankes, brought in his bill of additional 
 severities against poachers, there was no man of sense and reflection who 
 did not anticipate the following consequences of the measure : 
 
 " Do you find that less game has been sold in consequence of the bill 
 rendering it penal to sell game ? Upon my word, it did not make the 
 slightest difference in the world. Not immediately after it was made? 
 No ; I do not think it made the slightest difference. It did not make the 
 slightest sensation? No; I never sold a bird less. Was not there a 
 resolution of the poulterers not to sell game? I was secretary to that com- 
 mittee. What was the consequence of that resolution ? A great deal of 
 ill blood in the trade. One gentleman who just left the room did not come 
 into ray ideas. I never had a head of game in my house ; all my neigh- 
 bours sold it ; and as we had people on the watch, who were ready to 
 watch it into the houses, it came to this, we were prepared to bring our 
 actions against certain individuals, after sitting, perhaps, from three to four 
 months, every week, which we did at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand ; 
 but we did not proceed with our actions, to prevent ill blood in the trade,
 
 446 GAME LA WS. 
 
 We regularly met, and, as we conceived at the time, formed a committee of 
 the most respectable of the trade. I was secretary of that committee. The 
 game was sold in the city, in the vicinity of the Royal Exchange, cheaper 
 than ever was known, because the people at our end of the town were 
 afraid. I, as a point of honour, never had it in my house. I never had a 
 head of game in my house that season. What was the consequence? I 
 lost my trade, and gave offence to gentlemen : a nobleman's steward, or 
 butler, or cook, treated it as contumely ; ' Good God ! what is the use of 
 your running your head against the wall ?' You were obliged to begin^the 
 trade again? Yes, and sold more than ever." Re6o>t, p. 18. 
 
 These consequences are confirmed by the evidence of every person before 
 the Committee. 
 
 All the evidence is very strong as to the fact, that dealing in game is not 
 discreditable ; that there are a great number of respectable persons, and, 
 among the rest, the first poulterers in London, who buy game knowing it 
 to have been illegally procured, but who would never dream of purchasing 
 any other article procured by dishonesty. 
 
 "Are there not, to your knowledge, a great many people in this town 
 who d_al in game, by buying or selling it, that would not on any account 
 buy or sell stolen property ? Certainly ; there are many capital tradesmen, 
 poulterers, who deal in game, that would have nothing to do with stolen 
 property ; and yet I do not think there is a poulterer's shop in London, 
 where they could not get game, if they wanted it. Do you think any dis- 
 credit attaches to any man in this town for buying or selling game? I think 
 none at all ; and I do not think that the men to whom I have just referred 
 would have any thing to do with stolen goods. Would it not, in the 
 opinion of the inhabitants of London, be considered a very different thing 
 dealing in stolen game or stolen poultry? Certainly. The one would be 
 considered disgraceful, and the other not ? Certainly ; they think nothing 
 of dealing in game ; and the farmers in the country will not give informa- 
 tion ; they will have a hare or two of the very men who work for them ; 
 and they are afraid to give us information." Report, p. 31. 
 
 The evidence of Daniel Bishop, one of the Bow Street officers, who has 
 been a good deal employed in the apprehension of poachers, is curious and 
 important, as it shows the enormous extent of the evil, and the ferocious 
 spirit which the game laws engender in the common people. "The 
 poachers," he says, " came 16 miles. The whole of the village from which 
 they were taken were poachers ; the constable of the village, and the shoe- 
 maker, and other inhabitants of the village. I fetched one man 22 miles. 
 There was the son of a respectable gardener ; one of these was a sawyer, 
 and another a baker, who kept a good shop there. If the village had been 
 alarmed, we should have had some mischief; but we were all prepared 
 with fire-arms. If poachers have a spite with the gamekeeper, that would 
 induce them to go out in numbers to resist him. This party I speak of had 
 something in their hats to distinguish them. They take a delight in setting- 
 to with the gamekeepers ; and talk it over afterwards how they served so 
 and so. They fought with the butt-ends of their guns at Lord Howe's ; 
 they beat the gamekeeper shockingly." " Does it occur to you (Bishop is 
 asked) to have had more applications, and to have detected more persons 
 this season than in any former one ? Yes ; I think within four months 
 there have been twenty-one transported that I have been at the taking of, 
 and through one man turning evidence in each case, and without that they
 
 GAME LA WS. 447 
 
 could not have been identified ; the gamekeepers could not, or would not, 
 identify them. The poachers go to the public house and spend their money ; 
 if they have a good night's work, they will go and get drunk with the 
 money. The gangs are connected together at different public houses, just 
 like a club at a public house ; they are all sworn together. If the keeper 
 took one of them, they would go and attack him for so doing." 
 
 Mr Stafford, chief clerk of Bow Street, says, "All the offences against 
 the game laws which are of an atrocious description I think are generally 
 reported to the public office in Bow Street, more especially in cases where 
 the keepers have either been killed, or dangerously wounded, and the assist- 
 ance of an officer from Bow Street is required. The applications have been 
 much more numerous of late years* than they were formerly. Some of 
 them have been cases of murder ; but I do not think many have amounted 
 to murder. There are many instances in which keepers have been very ill 
 treated they have been wounded, skulls have been fractured, and bones 
 broken ; and they have been shot at. A man takes a hare, or a pheasant, 
 with a very different feeling from that with which he would take a pigeon 
 or a fowl out of a farm-yard. The number of persons that assemble together 
 is more for the purpose of protecting themselves against those that may appre- 
 hend them, than from any idea that they are actually committing depredation 
 upon the property of another person ; they do not consider it as property. 
 I think there is a sense of morality and a distinction of crime existing in the 
 men's minds, although they are mistaken about it. Men feel that if they 
 go in a great body together, to break into a house or to rob a person, or to 
 .vte.il his poultry, or his sheep, they are committing a crime against that man's 
 property ; but I think with respect to the game, they do not feel that they 
 are doing any thing which is wrong ; but think they have committed no 
 crime when they have done the thing, and their only anxiety is to escape 
 detection." In addition, Mr Stafford states that he remembers not one 
 single conviction under Mr Banktis Act against buying game ; and not one 
 conviction for buying or selling game within the last year has been made at 
 Bow Street. 
 
 The inferences from these facts are exactly as we predicted, and as every 
 man of common sense must have predicted that to prevent the sale of 
 game is absolutely impossible. If game be plentiful, and cannot be ob- 
 tained at any lawful market, an illicit trade will be established, which it is 
 utterly impossible to prevent by any increased severity of the laws. There 
 never was a more striking illustration of the necessity of attending to public 
 opinion in all penal enactments. Mr Bankes (a perfect representative of all 
 the ordinary notions about forcing mankind by pains and penalties) took 
 the floor. To buy a partridge (though still considered as inferior to murder) 
 was visited with the very heaviest infliction of the law ; and yet, though 
 game is sold as openly in London as apples and oranges, though three years 
 have elapsed since this legislative mistake, the officers of the police can 
 hardly recollect a single instance where the information has been laid, or 
 the penalty levied ; and why ? because every man's feelings and every 
 man's understanding tell him, that it is a most absurd and ridiculous tyranny 
 to prevent one man, who has more game than he wants, from exchanging 
 it with another man, who has more money than he wants because magis- 
 
 * It is only of late years that men have been transported for shooting at night. There 
 are instances of men who have been transported at the Sessions for night poaching, who 
 made no resistance at all when taken ; but then their characters as old poachers weighed 
 against them characters estimated probably by the very lords of manors who had lost 
 their gamn. This disgraceful law is the occasion of all the murders committed for 
 game.
 
 448 GAME LA WS. 
 
 trates will not (if they can avoid it) inflict such absurd penalties because 
 even common informers know enough of the honest indignation of man- 
 kind, and are too well aware of the coldness of pump and pond to act under 
 the bill of the Lycurgus of Corfe Castle. 
 
 The plan now proposed is, to undersell the poacher, which may be suc- 
 cessful or unsuccessful ; but the threat is, if you attempt this plan there will 
 be no game and if there is no game, there will be no country gentlemen. 
 We deny every part of this enthymeme the last proposition as well as the 
 first We really cannot believe that all our rural mansions would be de- 
 serted, although no game was to be found in their neighbourhood. Some 
 come into the country for health, some for quiet, for agriculture, for 
 economy, from attachment to family estates, from love 01 retirement, from 
 the necessity of keeping up provincial interests, and from a vast variety of 
 causes. Partridges and pheasants, though they form nine tenths of human 
 motives, still leave a small residue, which may be classed under some other 
 head. Neither are a great proportion of those whom the love of shoot- 
 ing brings into the country of the smallest value or importance to the 
 country. A Colonel of the Guards, the second son just entered at Oxford, 
 three diners out from Piccadilly Major Rock, Lord John, Lord Charles, 
 the Colonel of the regiment quartered at the neighbouring town, two Irish 
 Peers, and a German Baron ; if all this honourable company proceed with 
 fustian jackets, dog-whistles, and chemical inventions, to a solemn destruc- 
 tion of pheasants, how is the country benefited by their presence ? or how 
 would earth, air, or sea, be injured by their annihilation ? There are cer- 
 tainly many valuable men brought into the country by a love of shooting, 
 who, coming there for that purpose, are useful for many better purposes ; 
 but a vast multitude of shooters are of no more service to the country than 
 the ramrod which condenses the charge, or the barrel which contains it. 
 We do not deny that the annihilation of the game laws would thin the 
 aristocratical population of the country ; but it would not thin that popula- 
 tion so much as is contended ; and the loss of many of the persons so 
 banished would be a good rather than a misfortune. At all events, we 
 cannot at all comprehend the policy of alluring the better classes of society 
 into the country, by the temptation of petty tyranny and injustice, or of 
 monopoly in sports. How absurd it would be to offer to the higher orders 
 the exclusive use of peaches, nectarines, and apricots, as the premium of 
 rustication to put vast quantities of men into prison as apricot eaters, 
 apricot buyers, and apricot sellers to appoint a regular day for beginning 
 to eat, and another for leaving off to have a lord of the manor for green 
 gages and to rage with a penalty of five pounds against the unqualified 
 eater of the gage ! And yet the privilege of shooting a set of wild poultry 
 is stated to be the bonus for the residence of country gentlemen. As far as 
 this immense advantage can be obtained without the sacrifice of justice and 
 reason, well and good but we would not oppress any order of society, or 
 violate right and wrong, to obtain any population of squires, however dense. 
 It is the grossest of all absurdities to say the present state of the law is ab- 
 surd and unjust, but it must not be altered, because the alteration would 
 drive gentlemen out of the country ! If gentlemen cannot breathe fresh air 
 without injustice, let them putrefy in Cranborne Alley. Make just laws, 
 and let squires live and die where they please. 
 
 The evidence collected in the House of Commons respecting the Game 
 Laws is so striking and so decisive against the gentlemen of the trigger, 
 that their only resource is to represent it as not worthy of belief. But why 
 not worthy of belief? It is not stated what part of it is incredible. Is it 
 the plenty of game in London for sale? the infrequency of convictions? the
 
 GAME LAWS. 449 
 
 occasional but frequent excess of supply above demand in an article sup- 
 plied by stealing ? or its destruction when the sale is not without risk, and 
 the price extremely low ? or the readiness of grandees to turn the excess of 
 their game into fish or poultry? All these circumstances appear to us so 
 natural and so likely, that we should, without any evidence, have had 
 little doubt of their existence. There are a few absurdities in the evidence 
 of one of the poulterers ; but, with this exception, we see no reason what- 
 ever for impugning the credibility and exactness of the mass of testimony 
 prepared by the Committee. 
 
 It is utterly impossible to teach the common people to respect property 
 in animals bred the possessor knows not where which he cannot recognise 
 by any mark, which may leave him the next moment, which are kept, not 
 for his profit, but for his amusement. Opinion never will be in favour of 
 such property : if the animus furandi exists, the propensity will be grati- 
 fied by poaching. It is in vain to increase the severity of the protecting 
 laws. They make the case weaker, instead of stronger ; and are more 
 resisted and worse executed, exactly in proportion as they are contrary to 
 public opinion : the case of the game laws is a memorable lesson upon 
 the philosophy of legislation. If a certain degree of punishment does not 
 cure the offence, it is supposed, by the Bankes' School, that there is 
 nothing to be done but to multiply this punishment by two, and then again 
 and again, till the object is accomplished. The efficient maximum of pun- 
 ishment, however, is not what the Legislature chooses to enact, but u'/iat 
 the great mass of mankind think the maximum ought to be. The moment 
 the punishment passes this Rubicon, it becomes less and less, instead of 
 greater and greater. Juries and Magistrates will not commit informers * 
 are afraid of public indignation poachers will not submit to be sent to 
 Botany Bay without a battle blood is shed for pheasants the public 
 attention is called to this preposterous state of the law and even ministers 
 (whom nothing pesters so much as the interests of humanity) are at last 
 compelled to come forward and do what is right. Apply this to the game 
 laws. It was before penal to sell game : within these few years, it ha; 
 been made penal to buy it. From the scandalous cruelty of the law, night 
 poachers are transported for seven years. And yet, never was so much 
 game sold, or such a spirit of ferocious resistance excited to the laws. One 
 fourth of all the commitments in Great Britain are for offences against the 
 game laws. There is a general feeling that some alteration must take 
 place a feeling not only among Reviewers, who never see nor eat game, 
 but among the double-barrelled, shot-belted members of the House of 
 Commons, who are either alarmed or disgusted by the vice and misery 
 which their cruel laws and childish passion for amusement are spreading 
 among the lower orders of mankind. 
 
 It is said, " In spite of all the game sold, there is game enough left ; let 
 the laws therefore remain as they are ; " and so it was said formerly, 
 " There is sugar enough ; let the slave trade remain as it." But at what 
 expense of human happiness is this quantity of game or of sugar, and this 
 state of poacher law and slave law, to remain ! The first object of a good 
 government is not that rich men should have their pleasures in perfection, 
 
 * There is a remarkable instance of this in the new Turnpike Act. The penalty for 
 taking more than the legal number of outside passengers is ten pounds per head, it the 
 coachman is in part or wholly the owner. This will rarely be levied ; because it is too 
 much. A penalty of .100 would produce perfect impunity. The maximum of prac- 
 tical severity would have been about five pounds. Any magistrate would cheerfully levy 
 this sum ; while doubling it will produce reluctance in the Judge, resistance in the cul- 
 prit, and unwillingness in the informer. 
 
 2 F
 
 450 GAME LAWS. 
 
 but that all orders of men should be good and happy ; and if crowded covies 
 and chuckling cock-pheasants are only to be procured by encouraging the 
 common people in vice, and leading them into cruel and disproportionate 
 punishment, it is the duty of the government to restrain the cruelties which 
 the country members, in reward for their assiduous loyalty, have been 
 allowed to introduce into the game laws. 
 
 The plan of the new bill (long since anticipated, in all its provisions, by 
 the acute author of the pamphlet before us), is, that the public at large 
 should be supplied by persons licensed by magistrates, and that all qualified 
 persons should be permitted to sell their game to these licensed distributors ; 
 and there seems a fair chance that such a plan would succeed. The ques- 
 tions are, Would sufficient game come into the hands of the licensed sales- 
 man? Would the licensed salesman confine himself to the purchase of 
 game from qualified persons ? Would buyers of game purchase elsewhere 
 than from the licensed salesman ? Would the poacher be undersold by the 
 honest dealer? Would game remain in the same plenty as before? It is 
 understood that the game laws are to remain as they are ; with this only 
 difference, that the qualified man can sell to the licensed man, and the 
 licentiate to the public. 
 
 It seems probable to us, that vast quantities of game would, after a little 
 time, find their way into the hands of licensed poulterers. Great people 
 are very often half eaten up by their establishments. The quantity of game 
 kilted in a large shooting party is very great; to eat it is impossible, and 
 to dispose of it in presents very troublesome. The preservation of game is 
 very expensive ; and, when it could be bought, it would be no more a com- 
 pliment to send it as a present than it would be to send geese and fowls. 
 If game were sold, very large shooting establishments might be made to 
 pay their own expenses. The shame is made by the law ; there is a dis- 
 grace in being detected and fined. If that barrier were removed, super- 
 fluous partridges would go to the poulterers as readily as superfluous venison 
 Joes to the venison butcher or as a gentleman sells the corn and mutton 
 0ff his farm which he cannot consume. For these reasons, we do not doubt 
 that the shops of licensed poulterers would be full of game in the season ; 
 and this part of the argument, we think, the arch-enemy, Sir John Shelley, 
 himself would concede to us. 
 
 The next question is, From whence they would procure it? A licence 
 for selling game, granted by country magistrates, would, from their jealousy 
 upon these subjects, be granted only to persons of some respectability and 
 property. The purchase of game from unqualified persons would, of course, 
 be guarded against by very heavy penalties, both personal and pecuniary ; 
 and these penalties would be inflicted, because opinion would go with them. 
 " Here is a respectable tradesman," it would be said, " who might have 
 bought as much game as he pleased in a lawful manner, but who, in order 
 to increase his profits by buying it a little cheaper, has encouraged a poacher 
 to steal it." Public opinion, therefore, would certainly be in favour of a 
 very strong punishment ; and a licensed vendor of game, who exposed him- 
 self to these risks, would expose himself to the loss of liberty, property, 
 character, and licence. The persons interested to put a stop to such a 
 practice, would not be the paid agents of Government, as in cases of 
 smuggling; but all the gentlemen of the country, the customers of the 
 tradesman for fish, poultry, or whatever else he dealt in, would have an 
 interest in putting down the practice. In all probability, the practice 
 would l>ecome disreputable, like the purchase of stolen poultry ; and this 
 would be a stronger barrier than the strongest laws. There would, of 
 course, be some exceptions to this statement. A few shabby people would,
 
 GAME LAWS. 451 
 
 fof the chauce of gaining sixpence, incur the risk of ruin and disgrace ; but 
 it is probable that the general practice would be otherwise. 
 
 For the same reasons, the consumers of game would rather give a little 
 more for it to a licensed poulterer, than expose themselves to severe pen- 
 alties by purchasing from poachers. The great mass of London consumers 
 are supplied now, not from shabby people, in whom they can have no con- 
 fidence not from hawkers and porters, but from respectable tradesmen, in 
 whose probity they have the most perfect confidence. Wen will brave the 
 law for pheasants, but not for sixpence or a shilling ; and the law itself is 
 much more difficult to be braved, when it allows pheasants to be bought at 
 some price, than when it endeavours to render them utterly inaccessible to 
 wealth. All the licensed salesmen, too, would have a direct interest in 
 stopping the contraband trade of game. They would lose no character in 
 doing so ; their informations would be reasonable and respectable. 
 
 If all this be true, the poacher would have to compete with a great mass 
 of game fairly and honestly poured into the market. He would be selling 
 with a rope about his neck, to a person who bought with a rope about his 
 neck ; his description of customers would be much the same as the custo- 
 mers for stolen poultry, and his profits would be very materially abridged. 
 At present, the poacher is in the same situation as the smuggler would be, 
 if rum and brandy could not be purchased of any fair trader. The great 
 check to the profits of the smuggler are, that, if you want his commodities, 
 and will pay a higher price, you may have them elsewhere without the risk 
 of disgrace. But forbid the purchase of these luxuries at any price. Shut 
 up the shop of the brandy-merchant, and you render the trade of the smug- 
 gler of incalculable value. The object of the intended bill is, to raise up 
 precisely the same competition to the trade of the poacher, by giving the 
 public an opportunity of buying lawfully and honestly the tempting articles 
 in which he now deals exclusively. Such an improvement would not, per- 
 haps, altogether annihilate his trade ; but it would, in all probability, act 
 as a very material check upon it 
 
 The predominant argument against all this is, that the existing prohibi- 
 tion against buying game, though partially violated, does deter many persons 
 from coming into the market ; that if this prohibition were removed, the 
 demand for game would be increased, the legal supply would be insufficient, 
 and the residue would, and must be, supplied by the poacher, whose trade 
 would, for these reasons, be as lucrative and nourishing as before. But it 
 is only a few years since the purchase of game has been made illegal ; and 
 the market does not appear to have been at all narrowed by the prohibition; 
 not one head of game the less has been sold by the poulterers ; and scarcely 
 one single conviction has taken place under that law. How, then, would 
 the removal of the prohibition, and the alteration of the law, extend the 
 market, and increase the demand, when the enactment of the prohibition 
 has had no effect in narrowing it ? But if the demand increases, why not 
 the legal supply also? Game is increased upon an estate by feeding them 
 in whiter, by making some abatement to the tenants for guarding against 
 depredations, by a large apparatus of gamekeepers and spies in short by 
 expense. But if this pleasure of shooting, so natural to country gentlemen, 
 be made to pay its own expenses, by sending superfluous game to market, 
 more men, it is reasonable to suppose, will thus preserve and augment their 
 game. The love of pleasure and amusement will produce in the owners of 
 game that desire to multiply game, which the love of gain does in the 
 farmer to multiply poultry. Many gentlemen of small fortune will remem- 
 ber, that they cannot enjoy to any extent this pleasure without this resource; 
 that the legal sale of poultry will discountenance poaching ; and they will
 
 452 CRUEL TREA TMENT OF UNTRIED PRISONERS. 
 
 open an account with the poulterer, not to get richer, but to enjoy a great 
 pleasure without an expense, in which, upon other terms, they could not 
 honourably and conscientiously indulge. If country gentlemen of moderate 
 fortune will do this (and we think after a little time they will do it), game 
 may be multiplied and legally supplied to any extent. Another keeper, 
 and another bean-stack, will produce their proportional supply of pheasants. 
 The only reason why the great lord has more game per acre than the little 
 squire is, that he spends more money per acre to preserve it. 
 
 For these reasons, we think the experiment of legalising the sale of game 
 ought to be tried. The game laws have been carried to a pitch of oppres- 
 sion which is a disgrace to the country. The prisons are half filled with 
 peasants, shut up for the irregular slaughter of rabbits and birds a sufficient 
 reason for killing a weasel, but not for imprisoning a man. Something 
 should be done ; it is disgraceful to a Government to stand by, and see such 
 enormous evils without interference. It is true, they are not connected 
 with the struggles of party : but still, the happiness of the common people, 
 whatever gentlemen may sny, ought every now and then to be considered. 
 
 CRUEL TREATMENT OF UNTRIED PRISONERS. 
 (E. REVIEW, 1824.) 
 
 1. A letter to the Right Honourable Robert Peel, one of His Majesty's Princij>:n 
 
 Secretaries of State, &*c. &*c. &>c., on Prison Labour. J>y JOHN- HEADLAM, .".I. A., 
 Chairman of the Quarter Sessions for the North Riding of the County of York. 
 London : Hatchard and Son. 1823. 
 
 2. Information and Observations, retpecting the proposed Improvements at York 
 
 Castle. Printed by Order of the Committee of ^laglstrates ) September, 1823. 
 
 IT has been the practice, all over England, for these last fifty years,* not 
 to compel prisoners to work before guilt was proved. Within these 
 last three or four years, however, the magistrates of the North Riding of 
 Yorkshire, considering it improper to support any idle person at the 
 county expense, have resolved, that prisoners committed to the House of 
 Correction for trial, and requiring county support, should work for their 
 livelihood ; and no sooner was the tread-mill brought into fashion, than that 
 machine was adopted in the North Riding as the species of labour by which 
 such prisoners were to earn their maintenance. If these magistrates did 
 not consider themselves empowered to burden the county rates for the 
 support of prisoners before trial, who would not contribute to support them- 
 selves, it does not appear, from the publication of the Reverend Chairman 
 of the Sessions, that any opinions of Counsel were taken as to the legality 
 of so putting prisoners to work, or of refusing them maintenance if they chose 
 to be idle ; but the magistrates themselves decided that such was the law of 
 the land. Thirty miles off, however, the law of the land was differently 
 interpreted ; and in the Castle of York large sums were annually expended 
 in the maintenance of idle prisoners before trial, and paid by the different 
 Ridings, without remonstrance or resistance, t 
 
 Such was the state of affairs in the county of York before the enactment 
 of the recent prison bill. After that period, enlargements and alterations 
 
 * Headlam. p. 6. 
 
 t We mention the case of the North Riding, to convince our readers that the practice 
 of condemning prisoners to work before trial has existed in some parts of England ; for 
 in questions like this we have always found it more difficult to prove the existence of 
 the facts, than to prove that they were mischievous and unjust.
 
 CRUEL TREA TMENT OF UNTRIED PRISONERS. 453 
 
 were necessary in the county jail ; and it was necessary also for these 
 arrangements, that the magistrates should know whether or not they were 
 authorised to maintain such prisoners at the expense of the county, as, being 
 accounted able and unwilling to work, still claimed the county allowance. 
 To questions proposed upon these points to three barristers the following 
 answers were returned : 
 
 "2dly, I am of opinion, that, the magistrates are empowered, and are 
 compelled to maintain, at the expense of the county, such prisoners before 
 trial as are able to work, unable to maintain themselves, and not willing to 
 work ; and that they have not the power of compelling such prisoners to 
 work, either at the tread-mill, or any other species of labour. 
 
 "J. GURNEY. 
 "Lincoln's Inn Fields, zd September, 1823." 
 
 "I think the magistrates are empowered, under the tenth section (ex- 
 plained by the 37th and 38th) to maintain prisoners before trial, who are 
 able to work, unable to maintain themselves by their own means, or by 
 employment which they themselves can procure, and not willing to work ; 
 and I think also, that the words 'shall be lawful,' in that section, do not 
 leave them a discretion on the subject, but are compulsory. Such prisoners 
 can only be employed in prison labour with their o-cn consent ; and it can- 
 not be intended that the Justices may force such consent by withholding from 
 them the necessaries of life, if they do not give it. Even those who are 
 convicted cannot be employed at the tread-mill, which I consider as a 
 species of severe labour. 
 
 < T T*ARKE 
 
 ' ' September 4!%, 1 823. " 
 
 "2dly, As to the point of compelling prisoners confined on criminal 
 charges, and receiving relief from the magistrates, to reasonable labour ; to 
 that of the tread-mill, for instance, in which, when properly conducted, 
 there is nothing severe or unreasonable ; had the question arisen prior to 
 the late Act, I should with confidence have said, I thought the magistrates 
 had a compulsory power in this respect. Those who cannot live without 
 relief in a jail, cannot live without labour out of it. Labour then is their 
 avocation. Nothing is so injurious to the morals and habits of the prisoner 
 as the indolence prevalent in prisons ; nothing so injurious to good order 
 in the prison. The analogy between this and other cases of public support 
 is exceedingly strong ; one may almost consider it a general principle that 
 those who live at the charge of the community shall, as far as they are able, 
 give the community a compensation through their labour. Ijpit the question 
 does not depend on mere abstract reasoning. The stat. 19 Ch. 2, c. 4, sect. 
 I, entitled, an ' Act for Relief of poor Prisoners, and setting them on work,' 
 speaks of persons committed for felony and other misdemeanors to the 
 common jail who many times perish before trial; and then proceeds as to 
 setting poor prisoners on work. Then stat. 31 G. 3, c. 46, sect. 13, orders 
 money to be raised for such prisoners of every description, as, being con- 
 fined within the said jails, or other places of confinement, are not able to 
 toork. A late stat. (52 G. 3, c. 1 60) orders parish relief to such debtors on 
 mesne process in jails, not county jails, as are not able to support themselves ; 
 but says nothing of finding or compelling work. Could it be doubted, that 
 if the Justices were to provide work, and the prisoner refused it, such 
 debtors might, like any other parish paupers, be refused the relief mentioned 
 by the statute? In all the above cases, the authority to insist on the 
 prisoner's labour, as the condition and consideration of relief granted him,
 
 454 CRUEL TREA TMENT OF UNTRIED PRISONERS. 
 
 is, I think, either expressed or necessarily implied : and, thus viewing the 
 subject, I think it was in the power of magistrates prior to the late statute, 
 to compel prisoners, subsisting in all or in part on public relief, to work at 
 the tread-mill. The objection commonly made is, that prisoners, prior to 
 trial, are to be accounted innocent, and to be detained, merely that they 
 may be secured for trial ; to this the answer is obvious, that the labour is 
 neither meant as a punishment, nor a disgrace, but simply as a compensa- 
 tion for the relief, at their own request, afforded them. Under the present 
 statute, I, however, have no doubt that poor prisoners are entitled to public 
 support, and that there can be no compulsory labour prior to trial. The 
 two statutes adverted to (19 Ch. 2, c. 4, and 31 G. 3) are, as far as this 
 subject is concerned, expressly repealed. The Legislature then had in con- 
 templation the existing power of magistrates to order labour before trial, 
 and having it in contemplation, repeals it ; substituting (sect. 38) a power 
 of setting to labour only scnteticed persons. The ijth rule, too, (p. 777,) 
 speaks of labour as connected with convicted prisoners, and sect. 37 speaks 
 in general terms of persons committed for trial, as labouring with their own 
 consent. In opposition to these clauses, I think it impossible to speak of 
 implied power, or power founded on general reasoning or analogy. So 
 strong, however, are the arguments in favour of a more extended authority 
 in Justices of the Peace, that it is scarcely to be doubted, that Parliament, 
 on a calm revision of the subject, would be willing to restore, in a more dis- 
 tinct manner than it has hitherto been enacted, a general discretion on the 
 subject. Were this done, there is one observation I will venture to make, 
 which is, that should some unfortunate association of ideas render the tread- 
 mill a matter of ignominy to common feelings, an enlightened magistracy 
 would scarcely compel an untried prisoner to a species of labour which 
 would disgrace him in his own mind, and in that of the public. 
 
 " S. W. NiCOLL. 
 
 " York, August 2-jik, 1823." 
 
 In consequence, we believe, of these opinions, the North Riding magis- 
 trates, on the I3th of October (the new bill commencing on the 1st of 
 September), passed the following resolution : " That persons committed 
 for trial, who are able to work, and have the means of employment offered 
 them by the visiting magistrates, by which they may earn their support, 
 but who obstinately refuse to work, shall be allowed bread and water 
 only." 
 
 By this resolution they admit, of course, that the counsel are right in 
 their interpretation of the present law ; and that magistrates are forced to 
 maintain prisoners before trial who do not choose to work. The magis- 
 trates say, however, by their resolution, that the food shall be of the 
 plainest and humblest kind, brea3 and water ; meaning, of course, that 
 such prisoners should have a sufficient quantity of bread and water, or 
 otherwise the evasion of the law would be in the highest degree mean and 
 reprehensible. But it is impossible to suppose any such thing to be in- 
 tended by gentlemen so higlily respectable. Their intention is not that 
 idle persons before trial shall starve, but that they shall have barely enough 
 of the plainest food for the support of life and health. 
 
 Mr Ileadlam has written a pamphlet to show that the old law was very 
 reasonable and proper ; that it is quite right that prisoners before trial, 
 who are able to support themselves, but unwilling to work, should be 
 compelled to work, and at the tread-mill, or that all support should be 
 refused them. 'We are entirely of an opposite opinion : and maintain that 
 it is neither legal nor expedient to compel prisoners before trial to work at
 
 CRUEL TREATMENT OF UNTRIED PRISONERS. 455 
 
 the tread-mill, or at any species of labour, and that those who iv." 
 work should be supported upon a plain healthy diet. We impute no sort 
 of blame to the magistrates of the North Riding, or to Mr Headlam, their 
 Chairman. We have no doubt but that they thought their measures the 
 wisest and the best for correcting evil, and that they adopted them in 
 pursuance of what they thought to be their duty. Nor do we enter into 
 any discussion with Mr Headlam, as Chairman of a Quarter Sessions, but 
 as the writer of a pamphlet. It is only in his capacity of author that we 
 have any thing to do with him. In answering the arguments of Mr 
 Headlam, we shall notice, at the same time, a few other observations com- 
 monly resorted to in defence of a system which we believe to be extremely 
 pernicious, and pregnant with the worst consequences ; and so thinking, we 
 contend against it, and in support of the law as it now stands. 
 
 We will not dispute with Mr Headlam, whether his exposition of the 
 old law be right or wrong ; because time cannot be more unprofitably 
 employed than in hearing gentlemen who are not lawyers discuss points of 
 law. We dare to say Mr Headlam knows as much of the laws of his 
 country as magistrates in general do ; but he will pardon us for believing, 
 that for the moderate sum of three guineas a much better opinion of what 
 the law is now, or was then, can be purchased, than it is in the power of 
 Mr Headlam or of any county magistrate, to give for nothing Cuilibet in 
 arte sua crcdeiuhtm est. It is concerning the expediency of such laws, and 
 upon that point alone, that we are at issue with Mr Headlam ; and do not 
 let this gentleman suppose it to be any answer to our remarks to state 
 what is done in the prison in which he is concerned, now the law is 
 altered. The question is, whether he is right or wrong in his reasoning 
 upon what the law ought to be ; we wish to hold out such reasoning to 
 public notice, and think it important it should be refuted doubly im- 
 portant, when it comes from an author, the leader of the Quorum, who 
 may say with the pious ^Eneas, 
 
 " Quxque ipse miserrima vidi, 
 
 Et quorum pars magna fui." 
 
 If, in this discussion, we are forced to insist upon the plainest and most 
 elementary truths, the fault is not with us, but with those who forget them; 
 and who refuse to be any longer restrained by those principles which have 
 hitherto been held to be as clear as they are important to human happiness. 
 
 To begin, then, with the nominative case and the verb we must remind 
 those advocates for the tread-mill, a parte ante (for with the millers a parte 
 post we have no quarrel), that it is one of the oldest maxims of common 
 sense, common humanity, and common law, to consider every man as in- 
 nocent till he is proved to be guilty ; and not or.ly to consider him to be 
 innocent, but to treat him as if lie were so ; to exercise upon his case not 
 merely a barren speculation, but one which produces practical effects, and 
 which secures to a prisoner the treatment of an honest, unpunished man. 
 Now, to compel prisoners before trial to work at the tread-mill, as the con- 
 dition of their support, must, in a great number of instances, operate as a 
 very severe 'punishment. A prisoner may be a tailor, a watchmaker, a 
 bookbinder, a printer, totally unaccustomed to any such species of labour. 
 Such a man may be cast into jail at the end of August,* and not tried till 
 
 * Mr Headlam, as we understand him, would extend this labour to all poor prisoners 
 before trial, in jails which are delivered twice a year at the Assizes, as well as to Houses 
 of Correction delivered four times a year at the Sessions; i.e. not extend the labour, 
 but refuse all support to those who refuse the labour a distinction, but not a dif- 
 ference.
 
 456 CRUEL TREATMENT OF UNTRIED PRISONERS. 
 
 the March following, is it no punishment to such a man to walk up hill like 
 a turnspit do_r, in an infamous machine, for six months ? and yet there are 
 gentlemen who suppose that the common people do not consider this as 
 punishment ! that the gayest and most joyous of human beings is a treader, 
 untried by a jury of his countrymen, in the fifth month of lifting up the leg, 
 and striving against the law of gravity, supported by the glorious informa- 
 tion which he receives from the turnkey, that he has all the time been 
 grinding flour on the other side of the wall ! If this sort of exercise, 
 necessarily painful to sedentary persons, is agreeable to persons accustomed 
 to labour, then make it voluntary give the prisoners their choice give 
 more money and more diet to those who can and will labour at the tread- 
 mill, if the tread-mill (now so dear to magistrates) is a proper punishment 
 for untried prisoners. The position we are contending against is, that all 
 poor prisoners who are able to work should be put to work upon the tread- 
 mill, the inevitable consequence of which practice is, a repetition of gross 
 injustice by the infliction of undeserved punishment ; for punishment, and 
 severe punishment, to such persons as we have enumerated, we must con- 
 sider it to be. 
 
 But punishments are not merely to be estimated by pain to the limbs, 
 but by the feelings of the mind. Gentlemen punishers are sometimes apt 
 to forget that the common people have any mental feelings at all, and 
 think, if body and belly are attended to, that persons under a certain in- 
 come have no right to likes and dislikes. The labour of the tread-mill is 
 irksome, dull, monotonous, and disgusting to the last degree. A man does 
 not see his work, does not know what he is doing, what progress he is 
 making ; there is no room for art, contrivance, ingenuity, and superior 
 skill all which are the cheering circumstances of human labour. The 
 husbandman sees the field gradually subdued by the plough ; the smith 
 beats the rude mass of iron by degrees into its meditated shape, and gives 
 it a meditated utility ; the tailor accommodates his parallelogram of cloth 
 to the lumps and bumps of the human body, and, holding it up, exclaims, 
 " This will contain the lower moiety of a human being." But the treader 
 does nothing but tread ; he sees no change of objects, admires no new rela- 
 tion of parts, imparts no new qualities to matter, and gives to it no new 
 arrangements and positions ; or, if he does, he sees and knows it not, but is 
 turned at once from a rational being, by a justice of peace, into kprimum 
 mobile, and put upon a level with a rush of water or a puff of steam. It is 
 impossible to get gentlemen to attend to the distinction between raw and 
 roasted prisoners, without which all discussion on prisoners is perfectly 
 ridiculous. Nothing can be more excellent than this kind of labour for 
 persons to whom you mean to make labour as irksome as possible ; but for 
 this very reason, it is the labour to which an untried prisoner ought not to 
 be put. 
 
 It is extremely uncandicl to say that a man is obstinately and incorrigibly 
 idle, because he will not submit to such tiresome and detestable labour as 
 that of the tread-mill. It is an old feeling among Englishmen that there is 
 a difference between tried and untried persons, between accused and con- 
 victed persons. These old opinions were in fashion before this new magis- 
 trate's plaything was invented ; and we are convinced that many industrious 
 persons, feeling that they have not had their trial, and disgusted witli the 
 nature of the labour, would refuse to work at the tread-mill, who would not 
 be averse to join in any common and fair occupation. Mr Headlam says, 
 that labour may be a privilege as well as a punishment. So may taking 
 physic be a privilege, in cases where it is asked for as a charitable relief, but 
 not if it is stuffed down a man's throat whether he say yea or nay. Certainly
 
 CRUEL TREATMENT OF UNTRIED PRISONERS. 457 
 
 labour is not necessarily a punishment : nobody has said it is so ; but Mr 
 Headlam's labour is a punishment, because it is irksome, infamous, unasked 
 for, and undeserved. This gentleman however observes, that committed 
 persons have offended the laws ; and the sentiment expressed in these words 
 is the true key to his pamphlet and his system a perpetual tendency to 
 confound the convicted and the accused. 
 
 "With respect to those sentenced to labour as a punishment, I appre- 
 hend there is no difference of opinion. All are agreed that it is a great 
 defect in any prison where such convicts are unemployed. But as to all 
 other prisoners, whether debtors, persons committed for trial, or convicts not 
 sentenced to hard labour, if they have no means of subsisting themselves, 
 and must, if discharged, either labour for their livelihood or apply for 
 parochial relief; it seems unfair to society at large, and especially to those 
 who maintain themselves by honest industry, that those who, by offending 
 the laws, have subjected themselves to imprisonment, should be lodged, and 
 clothed, and fed, without being called upon for the same exertions which 
 others have to use to obtain such advantages." Headlam, pp. 23, 24. 
 
 Now nothing can be more unfair than to say that such men have offended 
 the laws. That is the very question to be tried, whether they have offended 
 the laws or not? It is merely because this little circumstance is taken for 
 granted, that we have any quarrel at. ?iil with Mr Headlam and his school. 
 
 "I can make," says Mr Hesdlam, "every delicate consideration for the 
 rare case of a person perfectly innocent being committed to jail on suspicion 
 of crime. Such person is deservedly an object of compassion, for having 
 fallen under circumstances which subject him to be charged with crime, and, 
 consequently, to be deprived of his liberty : but if he has been in the habit 
 of labouring for his bread before his commitment, there does not appear to 
 be any addition to his misfortune in being called upon to work for his sub- 
 sistence in prison." Headlam, p. 24. 
 
 And yet Mr Ilcadlam describes this very punishment, which does not 
 add to the misfortunes of an innocent man, to be generally disagreeable, to 
 be dull, irksome, to excite a strong dislike, to be a dull, monotonous, labour, 
 to be a contrii'ance which connects the idea of discomfort with a jail (p. 36). 
 So that Mr Headlam looks upon it to be no increase of an innocent man's 
 misfortunes, to be constantly employed upon a dull, irksome, monotonous 
 labour, which excites a strong dislike, and connects the idea of discomfort 
 with a jail. We cannot stop, or stoop to consider, whether beating hemp 
 is more or less dignified than working in a mill. The simple rule is this, 
 whatever felons do, men not yet proved to be felons should not be com- 
 pelled to do. It is of no use to look into laws become obsolete by altera- 
 tion of manners. For these fifty years past, and before the invention of 
 tread-mills, untried men were not put upon felons' work ; but with the mill 
 came in the mischief. Mr Headlam asks, How can men be employed 
 upon the ancient trades in a prison? certainly they cannot ; but are human 
 occupations so few, and is the ingenuity of magistrates and jailers so limited, 
 that no occupations can be found for innocent men, but those which are 
 shameful and odious? Does Mr Headlam really believe, that grown up 
 and baptized persons are to be satisfied with such arguments, or repelled by 
 such difficulties. 
 
 It is some compensation to an acquitted person, that the labour he has 
 gone through unjustly in jail has taught him some trade, given him an in-
 
 458 CRUEL TREA TMEA'T OF UNTRIED PRISONERS. 
 
 sight into some species of labour in which he may hereafter improve him- 
 self ; but Mr Headlam's prisoner, after a verdict of acquittal, has learnt no 
 other art than that of walking up hill : he has nothing to remember or re- 
 compense him but three months of undeserved and unprofitable torment 
 The verdict of the Jury has pronounced him steady in his morals ; the con- 
 duct of the Justices has made him stiff in his joints. 
 
 But it is next contended by some persons, that the poor prisoner is not 
 compelled to work, because he has the alternative of starving, if he refuses 
 to work. You take up a poor man upon suspicion, deprive him of all his 
 usual methods of getting his livelihood, and then giving him the first view 
 of the tread-mill, he of the Quorum thus addresses him : "My amiable 
 friend, we use no compulsion with untried prisoners. You are free as air 
 till you are found guilty ; only it is my duty to inform you, as you have no 
 money of your own, that the disposition to eat and drink which you have 
 allowed you sometimes feel, and upon which I do not mean to cast any 
 degree of censure, cannot possibly be gratified but by constant grinding 
 in this machine. It has its inconveniences, I admit ; but balance them 
 against the total want of meat and drink, and decide for yourself. You are 
 perfectly at liberty to make your choice, and I by no means wish to influ- 
 ence your judgment." But Mr Nicoll has a curious remedy for all this 
 miserable tyranny ; he says it is not meant as a punishment. But if I am 
 conscious that I never have committed the offence, certain that I have 
 never been found guilty of it, and find myself tost into the middle of an 
 infernal machine, by the folly of those who do not know how to use the 
 power intrusted to them, is it any consolation to me to be told, that it is 
 not intended as a punishment, that it is a lucubration of Justices, a new 
 theory of prison-discipline, a valuable county experiment going on at thf; 
 expense of my arms, legs, back, feelings, character, and rights ? We must 
 tie those prsegustant punishers down by one question. Do you mean to 
 inflict any degree of punishment upon persons merely for being suspected ? 
 or at least any other degree of punishment than that without which 
 criminal justice cannot exist, detention ? If you do, why let any one out 
 upon bail ? For the question between us is not, how suspected persons are 
 to be treated, and whether or not they are to be punished ; but how sus- 
 pected poor persons are to be treated, who want county support in prison. 
 If to be suspected is deserving of punishment, then no man ought to be let 
 out upon bail, but every one should be kept grinding from accusation to trial ; 
 and so ought all prisoners to be treated for offences not bailable, and who 
 do not want the county allowance. And yet no grinding philosopher con- 
 tends, that all suspected persons should be put in the mill but only those 
 who are too poor to find bail, or buy provisions. 
 
 If there are, according to the doctrines of the millers, to be two punish- 
 ments, the first for being suspected of committing the offence, and the second 
 for committing it, there should be two trials as well as two punishments. 
 Is the man really suspected, or do his accusers only pretend to suspect him ? 
 Are the suspecting of better character than the suspected ? Is it a light 
 suspicion which may be atoned for by grinding a peck a day? Is it a 
 bushel case? or is it one deeply criminal, which requires the flour to be 
 .ground fine enough for French rolls ? But we must put an end to such 
 absurdities. 
 
 It is very untruly stated, that a prisoner, before trial, not compelled to 
 work, and kept upon a plain diet, merely sufficient to maintain him in 
 health, is better off than he wns previous to his accusation ; and it is asked, 
 with a triumphant leer, whether the situation of any man ought to be im- 
 proved, merely because he has become an object of suspicion to his fellow-
 
 CRUEL TREATMENT OF UNTRIED PRISONERS. 459 
 
 creatures ? This happy and fortunate man, however, is separated from his 
 wife and family ; his liberty is taken away ; he is confined within four 
 walls ; he has the reflection that his family are existing upon a precarious 
 parish support, that his little trade and property are wasting, that his char- 
 acter has become infamous, that he has incurred rain by the malice of 
 others, or by his own crimes, that in a few weeks he is to forfeit his life, or 
 be banished from every thing he loves upon earth. This is the improved 
 situation, and the redundant happiness which requires the penal circum- 
 volutions of the Justice's mill to cut off so unjust a balance of gratification, 
 and bring him a little nearer to what he was before imprisonment and accu- 
 sation. It would be just as reasonable to say, that an idle man in a fever 
 is better off than a healthy man who is well- and earns his bread. He may 
 be better off if you look to the idleness alone, though that is doubtful ; but 
 is he better off if all the aches, agonies, disturbances, deliriums, and the 
 nearness to death, are added to the lot ? 
 
 Mr Headlam's panacea for all prisoners before trial, is the tread-mill : we 
 beg his pardon for all poor prisoners ; but a man who is about to be tried 
 for his life, often wants all his leisure time to reflect upon his defence. The 
 exertions of every man within the walls of a prison are necessarily crippled 
 and impaired. What can a prisoner answer who is taken hot and reeking 
 from the tread-mill, and asked what he has to say in his defence? his 
 answer naturally is " I have been grinding corn instead of thinking of my 
 defence, and have never been allowed the proper leisure to think of pro- 
 tecting my character and my life." This is a very strong feature of cruelty 
 and tyranny in the mill. \Ve ought to be sure that every man has had the 
 fullest leisure to prepare for his defence, that his mind and body have not 
 been harassed by vexatious and compulsory employment. The public pur- 
 chase, at a great price, legal accuracy, and legal talent, to accuse a man 
 who has not, perhaps, one shilling to spend upon his defence. It is atro- 
 cious cruelty not to leave him full leisure to write his scarcely legible letters 
 to his witnesses, and to use all the melancholy and feeble means which sus- 
 pected poverty can employ for its defence against the long and heavy arm 
 of power. 
 
 A prisoner, upon the system recommended by Mr Headlam, is committed, 
 perhaps at the end of August, and brought to trial the March following ; 
 and, after all, the bill is either thrown out by the grand jury, or the prisoner 
 is fully acquitted ; and it has been found, we believe, by actual returns, 
 that, of committed prisoners, about a half are actually acquitted, or their 
 accusations dismissed by the grand jury. This may be very true, say the 
 advocates of this system, but we know that many men who are acquitted 
 are guilty. They escape through some mistaken lenity of the law, or some 
 corruption of evidence ; and as they have not had their deserved punish- 
 ment after trial, we are not sorry they had it before. The English law 
 says, better many guilty escape, than that one innocent man perish ; but 
 the humane notions of the mill are bottomed upon the principle, that all 
 had better be punished lest any escape. They evince a total mistrust in the 
 jurisprudence of the country, and say the results of trial are so uncertain, 
 that it is better to punish all the prisoners before they come into Court. Mr 
 Headlam forgets that general rules are not beneficial in each individual 
 instance, but beneficial upon the whole ; that they are preserved because 
 they do much more good than harm, though in some particular instances 
 they do more harm than good ; yet no respectable man violates them on 
 that account, but holds them sacred for the great balance of advantage they 
 confer upon mankind. It is one of the greatest crimes, for instance, to 
 take away the life of a man ; yet there are many men whose death would
 
 4*0 CRUEL TREA TMENT OF UNTRIED PRISONERS. 
 
 be a good to society, rather than an evil. Every good man respects the 
 property of others ; yet to take from a worthless miser, and to give it to a 
 virtuous man in distress, would be an advantage. Sensible men are never 
 staggered when they see the exception. They know the importance of the 
 rule, and protect it most eagerly at the very moment when it is doing more 
 harm than good. The plain rule of justice is, that no man should be 
 punished till he is found guilty ; but because Mr Headlam occasionally 
 sees a bad man acquitted under this rule, and sent out unpunished upon the 
 world, he forgets all the general good and safety of the principle is debauched 
 by the exception, and applauds and advocates a system of prison dis- 
 cipline which renders injustice certain, in order to prevent it from being 
 occasional. 
 
 The meaning of all preliminary imprisonment is, that the accused person 
 should be forthcoming at the time of trial. It was never intended as a 
 punishment. Bail is a far better invention than imprisonment, in cases 
 where the heavy punishment of the offence would not induce the accused 
 person to run away from any bail. Now, let us see the enormous difference 
 this new style of punishment makes between two men, whose only difference 
 is, that one is poor and the other rich. A and B are accused of some 
 bailable offence. A has no bail to offer, and no money to support himself 
 in prison, and takes, therefore, his four or five months in the tread-mill. 
 B gives bail, appears at his trial, and both are sentenced to two months' 
 imprisonment. In this case, the one suffers three times as much as the 
 other for the same offence : but suppose A is acquitted and B found guilty, 
 the innocent man has then laboured in the tread-mill five months because 
 he was poor, and the guilty man labours two months because he was rich. 
 We are aware that there must be, even without the tread-mill, a great and 
 an inevitable difference between men (in pari ddicto}, some of whom can 
 give bail, and some not ; but that difference becomes infinitely more bitter 
 and objectionable, in proportion as detention before trial assumes the 
 character of severe and degrading punishment. 
 
 If motion in the tread-mill was otherwise as fascinating as millers describe 
 it to be, still the mere degradation of the punishment is enough to revolt 
 every feeling of an untried person. It is a punishment consecrated to 
 convicted felons and it has every character that such punishment ought 
 to have. An untried person feels at once, in getting into the mill, that he 
 is put to the labour of the guilty ; that a mode of employment has been 
 selected for him, which renders him infamous before a single fact or argu- 
 ment has been advanced to establish his guilt. If men are put into the 
 tread-mill before trial, it is literally of no sort of consequence whether they 
 are acquitted or not. Acquittal does not shelter them from punishment, 
 for they have already been punished. It does not screen them from infamy, 
 for they have already been treated as if they were infamous ; and the 
 association of the tread-mill and crimes is not to be got over. The machine 
 flings all the power of Juries into the hands of the magistrates, and makes 
 every simple commitment more terrible than a conviction ; for, in a con- 
 viction, the magistrate considers whether the offence has been committed 
 or not ; and does not send the prisoner to jail unless he think him guilty ; 
 but in a simple commitment, a man is not sent to jail because the magis- 
 trate is convinced of his guilt, but because he thinks a fair question may be 
 made to a Jury whether the accused person is guilty or not. Still, how- 
 ever, the convicted and the suspected both go to the same mill ; and he who 
 is there upon the doubt grinds as much flour as the other whose guilt is 
 established by a full examination of conflicting evidence. 
 
 Where is the necessity for such a violation of common sense and common
 
 CRUEL TREATMENT OF UNTRIED PRISONERS. 461 
 
 justice? Nobody asks for the idle prisoner before trial more than a very 
 plain and moderate diet. Offer him, if you please, some labour which is 
 less irksome, and less infamous than the tread-mill, bribe him by im- 
 proved diet, and a share of the earnings ; there will not be three men out 
 of an hundred who would refuse such an invitation, and spurn at such an 
 improvement of their condition. A little humane attention and persuasion, 
 among men who ought, upon every principle of justice, to be considered 
 as innocent, we should have thought much more consonant to English 
 justice, and to the feelings of English magistrates, than the Rack and 
 ' Wheel of Cubit t.* 
 
 Prison discipline is an object of considerable importance ; but the com- 
 mon rights of mankind, and the common principles of justice, and humanity, 
 and liberty, are of greater consequence even than prison discipline. Right 
 and wrong, innocence and guilt, must not be confounded, that a prison- 
 fancying Justice may bring his friend into the prison and say, " Look what 
 a spectacle of order, silence, and decorum we have established here ! no 
 idleness, all grinding ! we produce a penny roll every second, our prison 
 is supposed to be the best regulated prison in England, Cubitt is making 
 us a new wheel of forty-felon power, look how white the flour is, all done 
 by untried prisoners as innocent as lambs ! " If prison discipline be to 
 supersede every other consideration, why are penniless prisoners alone to 
 be put into the mill before trial ? If idleness in jails is so pernicious, why 
 not put all prisoners in the tread-mill, the rich as well as those who are 
 unable to support themselves? Why are the debtors left out? If fixed 
 principles are to be given up, and prisons turned into a plaything for magis- 
 trates, nothing can be more unpicturesque than to see one half of the pri- 
 soners looking on, talking, gaping, and idling, while their poorer brethren 
 are grinding for dinners and suppers. 
 
 It is a very weak argument to talk of the prisoners earning their support, 
 and the expense to a county of maintaining prisoners before trial, as if any 
 rational man could ever expect to gain a farthing by an expensive mill, 
 where felons are the moving power, and justices the superintendents, or as 
 if such a trade must not necessarily be carried on at a great loss. If it were 
 just and proper that prisoners, before trial, should be condemned to the 
 mill, it would be of no consequence whether the county gained or lost by 
 the trade. But the injustice of the practice can never be defended by its 
 economy ; and the fact is, that it increases expenditure, while it violates prin- 
 ciple. We are aware, that by leaving out repairs, alterations, and first 
 costs, and a number of little particulars, a very neat account, signed by a 
 jailer, may be made up, which shall make the mill a miraculous combina- 
 tion of mercantile speculation and moral improvement ; but we are too old 
 for all this. We accuse nobody of intentional misrepresentation. This is 
 quite out of the question with persons so highly respectable ; but men 
 are constantly misled by the spirit of system, and egregiously deceive them- 
 selves even very good and sensible men. 
 
 Mr Headlam compares the case of a prisoner before trial, claiming sup- 
 port, to that of a pauper claiming relief from his parish. But it seems to 
 us that no two cases can be more dissimilar. The prisoner was no pauper 
 before you took him up, and deprived him of his customers, tools, and 
 market. It is by your act and deed that he is fallen into a state of 
 pauperism ; and nothing can be more preposterous, than first to make a 
 man a pauper, and then to punish him for being so. It is true, that the 
 
 * It is singular enough, that we use these observations in reviewing the pamphlet and 
 system of a gentleman remarkable for the urbanity of his manners, and the mildness and 
 humanity of his disposition.
 
 462 CRUEL TREATMENT OF UNTRIED PRISONERS. 
 
 apprehension and detention of the prisoner were necessary for the purposes 
 of criminal justice ; but the consequences arising from this necessary act 
 cannot yet be imputed to the prisoner. He has brought it upon himself, it 
 will be urged ; but that remains to be seen, and will not be known till he 
 is tried ; and till it is known you have no right to take it for granted, and 
 to punish him as if it were proved. 
 
 There seems to be in the minds of some gentlemen a notion, that when 
 once a person is in prison, it is of little consequence how he is treated after- 
 wards. The tyranny which prevailed, of putting a person in a particular 
 dress before trial, now abolished by act of Parliament, was justified by this 
 train of reasoning : The man has been rendered infamous by imprison- 
 ment. He cannot be rendered more so, dress him as you will. His 
 character is not rendered worse by the tread-mill than it is by being 
 sent to the place where the tread-mill is at work. The substance of this 
 way of thinking is, that when a fellow creature is in the frying-pan, there 
 is no harm in pushing him into the fire ; that a little more misery a little 
 more infamy a few more links, are of no sort of consequence in a prison- 
 life. If this monstrous style of reasoning extended to hospitals as well as 
 prisons, there would be no harm in breaking the small bone of a man's leg, 
 because the large one was fractured, or in peppering with small shot a per- 
 son who was wounded with a cannon-ball. The principle is, because a 
 man is very wretched, there is no harm in making him a little more so. 
 The steady answer to all this is, that a man is imprisoned before trial, solely 
 for the purpose of securing his appearance at his trial ; and that no punish- 
 ment nor privation, not clearly and candidly necessary for that purpose, 
 should be inflicted upon him. I keep you in prison, because criminal 
 justice would be defeated by your flight, if I did not ; but criminal justice 
 can go on very well without degrading you to hard and infamous labour, 
 or denying you any reasonable gratification. For these reasons, the first of 
 those acts is just, the rest are mere tyranny. 
 
 Mr Nicoll, in his opinion, tells us, that he has no doubt Parliament would 
 amend the bill, if the omission were stated to them. We, on the contrary, 
 have no manner of doubt that Parliament would treat such a petition with 
 the contempt it deserved. Mr Peel is much too enlightened and sensible to 
 give any countenance to such a great and glaring error. In this case, and 
 we wish it were a more frequent one the wisdom comes from within, and 
 the error from without the walls of Parliament. 
 
 A prisoner before trial who can support himself, ought to be allowed 
 every fair and rational enjoyment which he can purchase, not incompatible 
 with prison discipline. He should be allowed to buy ale or wine in mode- 
 ration, to use tobacco, or any thing else he can pay for, within the above- 
 mentioned limits. If he cannot support himself, and declines work, then 
 he should be supported upon a very plain, but still a plentiful diet (some- 
 thing better, we think, than bread and water) ; and all prisoners before 
 trial should be allffivad to work. By a liberal share of earnings (or rather 
 by rewards, for there would be no earnings), and also by an improved diet, 
 and hi the hands of humane magistrates,* there would soon appear to be 
 no necessity for appealing to the tread-mill till trial was over. 
 
 This tread-mill, after trial, is certainly a very excellent method of pun- 
 ishment, as far as we are yet acquainted with its effects. We think, at 
 present, however, it is a little abused ; and hereafter it is our intention to 
 
 * All magistrates should remember, that nothing is more easy to a person intrusted 
 with power than to convince himself it is his duty to treat his fellow creatures with 
 severity and rigour, and then to persuade himself that he is doing it very reluctantly, 
 and contrary to his real feeling.
 
 AMERICA. 463 
 
 express our opinion upon the limits to which it ought to be confined. Upon 
 this point, however, we do not much differ from Mr Headlam : although 
 in his remarks on the treatment of prisoners before trial, we think he has 
 made a very serious mistake, and has attempted (without knowing what he 
 was doing, and meaning, we are persuaded, nothing but what was honest 
 and just) to pluck up one of the ancient land-marks of human justice.* 
 
 AMERICA. (E. REVIEW, 1824.) 
 
 I. Travels through Part of the United States and Canada, in 1818 and 1819. By 
 JOHN M. DUNCAN, A. B. Glasgow, 1823. 
 
 3. Letters from North America, written during a Tour in tlit United States and 
 Canada. By ADAM HODGSON. London, 1824. 
 
 3. An' Excursion through the United States ami Canada, during the Years 1822-3. 
 By an English Gentleman. London, 1824. 
 
 THERE is a set of miserable persons in England, who are dreadfully afraid 
 of America and every thing American whose great delight is to see that 
 country ridiculed and vilified and who appear to imagine that all the 
 abuses which exist in this country acquire additional vigour and chance of 
 duration from every book of travels which pours forth its venom and false- 
 hood on the United States. We shall from time to time call the attention 
 of the public to this subject, not from any party spirit, but because we love 
 truth, and praise excellence wherever we find it ; and because we think the 
 example of America will in many instances tend to open the eyes of English- 
 men to their true interests. 
 
 * We hope this article will conciliate our old friend Mr Roscoe ; who is very angry 
 with us for some of our former lucubrations on prison discipline and, above all, because 
 we are not grave enough for him. The difference is thus stated : Six ducks are stolen. 
 Mr Roscoe would commit the man to prison for six weeks, perhaps, reason with him, 
 argue with him, give him tracts, send clergymen to him, work him gently at some useful 
 trade, and try to turn him from the habit of stealing poultry. We would keep him hard 
 at work twelve hours every day at the tread-mill, feed him only so as not to impair his 
 health, and then give him as much of Air Roscoe's system as was compatible with our 
 own ; and we think our method would diminish the number of duck-stealers more effec- 
 tually than that of the historian of Leo X. The primary duck-stealcr would, we think, 
 be as effectually deterred from repeating the offence by the terror of our imprisonment, 
 as by the excel ience of Mr Roscoe's education and, what is of infinitely greater conse- 
 quence, innumerable cluck-tealers would be prevented. Because punishment does not 
 annihilate crime, it is folly to say it does not lessen it, It did not stop the murder of Mrs 
 Donatty ; but how many Mrs Donattys has it kept alive ! When we recommend seve- 
 rity, we recommend, of course, that degree of severity which will not excite compassion 
 for the sufferer, and lessen the horror of the crime. This is why we do not recommend 
 torture and amputation of limbs. When a man has been proved to have committed a 
 crime, it is expedient that society should make use of that man for the diminution of 
 crime : he belongs to them for that purpose. Our primary duty, in such a case, is so to 
 treat the culprit that many other persons may be rendered better, or prevented from 
 being worse, by dread of the same treatment ; and, making this the principal object, to 
 combine with it as much as possible the improvement of the individual. The ruffian 
 who killed Mr Mumford was hung within forty-eight hours. Upon Mr Roscoe's prin- 
 ciples, this was wrong ; for it certainly was not the way to reclaim the man : We say, 
 < 'ii the contrary, the object was to do any thing with the man which would render murders 
 less frequent, and that the conversion of the man was a mere trifle compared to this. 
 His death probably prevented the necessity of reclaiming a dozen murderers. That 
 death will not, indeed, prevent all murders in that county ; but many who have seen 
 it, and many who have heard of it, will swallow their revenge from the dread of being 
 hanged. Mr Roscoe is very severe upon our style ; but poor dear Mr Roscoe should 
 remember that men have different tastes and different methods of going to work. We 
 feel these matters as deeply as he does. But why so cross upon this or any other 
 subject ?
 
 464 AMERICA. 
 
 The Economy of America is a great and important object for our imita- 
 tion. The salary of Mr Bagot, our late Ambassador, was, we believe, 
 rather higher than that of the President of the United States. The Vice- 
 President receives rather less than the second Clerk of the House of Com- 
 mons ; and all salaries, civil and military, are upon the same scale ; and 
 yet no country is better served than America ! Mr Hume has at last per- 
 suaded the English people to look a little into their accounts, and to see 
 liow sadly they are plundered. But we ought to suspend our contempt for 
 America, and consider whether we have not a very momentous lesson to 
 learn from this wise and cautious people on the subject of economy. 
 
 A lesson on the importance of Religious Toleration, we are determined, 
 it would seem, not to learn, either from America, or from any other 
 quarter of the globe. The high sheriff of New York, last year, was a Jew. 
 It was with the utmost difficulty that a bill was carried this year to allow 
 the first duke of England to carry a gold stick before the King because he 
 was a Catholic ! and yet we think ourselves entitled to indulge in imper- 
 tinent sneers at America, as if civilisation did not depend more upon 
 making wise laws for the promotion of human happiness, than in having 
 good inns, and post-horses, and civil waiters. The circumstances of the 
 Dissenters' marriage bill are such as would excite the contempt of a Chictaw 
 or Cherokee, if he could be brought to understand them. A certain class 
 of Dissenters beg they may not be compelled to say that they marry in the 
 name of the Trinity, because they do not believe in the Trinity. Never 
 mind, say the corruptionists, you must go on saying you marry in the name 
 of the Trinity whether you believe in it or not. We know that such a pro- 
 testation from you will be false : but, unless you make it, your wives shall 
 be concubines, and your children illegitimate. Is it possible to conceive a 
 greater or more useless tyranny than this ? 
 
 " In the religious freedom which America enjoys, I see a more unques- 
 tioned superiority. In Britain we enjoy toleration, but here they enjoy 
 liberty. If Government has a right to grant toleration to any particular 
 set of religious opinions, it has also a right to take it away ; and such a 
 right with regard to opinions exclusively religious I would deny in all 
 cases, because totally inconsistent with the nature of religion, in the proper 
 meaning of the word, and equally irreconcileable with civil liberty, rightly 
 so called. God has given to each of us his inspired word, and a rational 
 mind to which that word is addressed. He has also made known to us, 
 that each for himself must answer at his tribunal for his principles and con- 
 duct. What man, then, or body of men, has a right to tell me, ' You do 
 not think aright on religious subjects, but we will tolerate your error?' 
 The answer is a most obvious one, ' Who gave you authority to dictate ? 
 or what exclusive claim have you to infallibility?' If my sentiments do 
 not lead me into conduct inconsistent with the welfare of my fellow 
 creatures, the question as to their accuracy or fallacy is one between God 
 and my own conscience ; and, though a fair subject for argument, is none 
 for compulsion. 
 
 "The Inquisition undertook to regulate astronomical science, and kin;, r s 
 and parliaments have with equal propriety presumed to legislate upon 
 questions of theology. The world has outgrown the former, and it will 
 one day be ashamed that it has been so long outgrowing the latter. The 
 founders of the American republic saw the absurdity of employing the 
 attorney -general to refute deism and infidelity, or of attempting to 
 influence opinion on abstract subjects by penal enactment ; they saw 
 also the injustice of taxing the whole to support the religious opinions of
 
 AMERICA. 465 
 
 the few, and have set an example which older governments will one day 01 
 other be compelled to follow. 
 
 ' In America the question is not, What is his creed? but, What is his 
 conduct ? Jews have all the privileges of Christians ; Episcopalians, Pres- 
 byterians, and Independents, meet on common ground. No religious test 
 is required to qualify for public office, except in some cases a mere verbal 
 assent to the truth of the Christian religion ; and, in every court throughout 
 the country, it is optional whether you give your affirmation or your oath." 
 Duncan's Travel s t II. 328 330. 
 
 In fact, it is hardly possible for any nation to show a greater superiority 
 over another than the Americans, in this particular, have done over this 
 country. They have fairly and completely, and probably for ever, extin- 
 guished that spirit of religious persecution which has been the employment 
 and the curse of mankind for four or five centuries, not only that persecu- 
 tion which imprisons and scourges for religious opinions, but the tyranny 
 of incapacitation, which, by disqualifying from civil offices, and cutting a 
 man off from the lawful objects of ambition, endeavours to strangle reli- 
 gious freedom in silence, and to enjoy all the advantages, without the 
 blood, and noise, and fire of persecution. What passes in the mind of one 
 mean blockhead is the general history of all persecution. "This man 
 pretends to know better than me I cannot subdue him by argument ; but 
 I will take care he shall never be mayor or alderman of the town in which 
 he lives ; I will never consent to the repeal of the Test Act or to Catholic 
 Emancipation ; I will teach the fellow to differ from me in religious 
 opinions ! :> So says the Episcopalian to the Catholic and so the Catholic 
 says to the Protestant. But the wisdom of America keeps them all down 
 secures to them all their just rights gives to each of them their separate 
 pews, and bells, and steeples makes them all aldermen in their turns 
 and quietly extinguishes the faggots which each is preparing for the com- 
 bustion of the other. Nor is this indifference to religious subjects in the 
 American people, but pure civilisation a thorough comprehension of what 
 is best calculated to secure the public happiness and peace and a deter- 
 mination that this happiness and peace shall not be violated by the insolence 
 of any human being, in the garb, and under the sanction, of religion. In 
 this particular, the Americans are at the head of all the nations of the 
 world : and at the same time they are, especially in the Eastern and Mid- 
 land States, so far from being indifferent on subjects of religion, that they 
 may be most justly characterised as a very religious people : but they are 
 devout without being unjust (the great problem in religion) ; a higher 
 proof of civilisation than painted tea-cups, waterproof leather, or broad 
 cloth at two guineas a yard. 
 
 America is exempted, by its very newness as a nation, from many of the 
 evils of the old governments of Europe. It has no mischievous remains of 
 feudal institutions, and no violations of political economy sanctioned by 
 time, and older than the age of reason. If a man find a partridge upon his 
 ground eating his corn, in any part of Kentucky or Indiana, he may kill it 
 even if his father be not a Doctor of Divinity. The Americans do not ex- 
 clude their own citizens from any branch of commerce which they leave 
 open to all the rest of the world. 
 
 "One of them said, that he was well acquainted with a British subject, 
 residing at Newark, Upper Canada, who annually smuggled from 500 to 
 IOOO chests of tea into that province from the United States. lie mentioned 
 the n.iine of this man, who, he said, was growing very rich in consequence ; 
 
 2 o
 
 466 AMERICA. 
 
 and he stated the manner in which the fraud was managed. Now, as all the 
 tea ought to be brought from England, it is of course very expensive ; and 
 therefore the Canadian tea dealers, after buying one or two chests at Mon- 
 treal or elsewhere, which have the Custom-house mark upon them, fill them 
 up ever afterwards with tea brought from the United States. It is cal- 
 culated that near 10,000 chests are annually consumed in the Canadas, of 
 which not more than 2000 or 3000 come from Europe. Indeed, when I 
 had myself entered Canada, I was told that of every fifteen pounds of tea 
 sold there thirteen were smuggled. The profit upon smuggling this article 
 is from 50 to loo per cent, and, with an extensive and wild frontier like 
 Canada, cannot be prevented. Indeed it every year increases, and is brought 
 to a more perfect system. But I suppose that the English Government, 
 which is the perfection of wisdom, will never allow the Canadian merchants 
 to trade direct to China, in order that (from pure chanty) the whole profit 
 of the tea trade may be given up to the United Slates." Excursion, pp. 
 
 394, 395- 
 
 " You will readily conceive, that it is with no small mortification that I 
 hear these American merchants talk of sending their ships to London anil 
 Liverpool, to take in goods or specie, with which to purchase tea for the 
 supply of European ports almost within sight of our own shores. They 
 often taunt me, by asking me what our Government can possibly mean by 
 prohibiting us from engaging in a profitable trade, which is open to them 
 and to all the world ? or where can be our boasted liberties, while we tamely 
 submit to the infraction of our natural rights, to supply a monopoly as 
 absurd as it is unjust, and to honour the caprice of a company who exclude 
 their fellow subjects from a branch of commerce which they do not pursue 
 themselves, but leave to the enterprise of foreigners, or commercial rivals ? 
 On such occasions I can only reply, that both our Government and people 
 are growing wiser ; and that if the charter of the East India Company be 
 renewed, when it next expires, I will allow them to infer, that the people 
 of England have little influence hi the administration of their own 'affairs." 
 Hodgson's letters, II. 128, 129. 
 
 Though America is a confederation of republics, they are in many cases 
 much more amalgamated than the various parts of Great Britain. If a 
 citizen of the United States can make a shoe, he is at liberty to make a shoe 
 any where between Lake Ontario and New Orleans, he may sole on the 
 Mississippi, heel on the Missouri, measure Mr Birkbeck on the Little 
 Wabash, or take (which our best politicians do not find an easy matter) the 
 length of Mr Munro's foot on the banks of the Potowmac. But woe to the 
 cobbler, who, having made Hessian boots for the aldermen of Newcastle, 
 should venture to invest with these coriaceous integuments the leg of a liege 
 subject at York. A yellow ant in a nest of red ants a butcher's dog in a 
 fox-kennel a mouse in a bee-hive, all feel the effects of untimely intru- 
 sion ; but far preferable their fate to that of the misguided artisan, who, 
 misled by sixpenny histories of England, and conceiving his country to have 
 been united at the Heptarchy, goes forth from his native town to stitch 
 freely within the sea-girt limits of Albion. Him the mayor, him the alder- 
 fcian, him the recorder, him the quarter sessions would worry. Him the 
 justices before trial would long to get into the tread-mill ; * and would 
 
 * This puts us in mind of our friend Mr Headlam, who, we hear, has written an answer 
 to our Observations on the Tread-mill before Trial. It would have been a very eaty 
 thing for us to have hung Mr Headlam up as a spectacle to the United Kingdoms of 
 England, Scotland, and Ireland, the principality of Wales, and the town of Berwick-on- 
 Tweed ; but we have no wish to make a worthy and respectable man appear ridiculous.
 
 AMERICA. 467 
 
 much lament that, by a recent act, they could not do so, even with the 
 intruding tradesman's consent ; but the moment he was tried, they would 
 push him in with redoubled energy, and leave liim to tread himself into a 
 conviction of the barbarous institutions of his corporation-divided country. 
 
 Too much praise cannot be given to the Americans for their great atten- 
 tion to the subject of Education. All the public lands are surveyed accord- 
 ing to the direction of Congress. They are divided into township* of six 
 miles square, by lines running with the cardinal points, and consequently 
 crossing each other at right angles. Every township is divided into 36 
 sections, each a mile square, and containing 640 acres. One section in each 
 township is reserved, and given in perpetuity for the benefit of common 
 schools. In addition to this the states of Tennessee and Ohio have re- 
 ceived grants for the support of colleges and academies. The appropria- 
 tion generally in the new States for seminaries of the higher orders, amount 
 to one fifth of those for common schools. It appears from Seybert's Statis- 
 tical Annals, that the land, in the states and territories on the east side of 
 the Mississippi, in which appropriations have been made, amounts to 
 237,300 acres ; and according to the ratio above mentioned, the aggregate 
 on the east side of the Mississippi is 7,900,000. The same system of 
 appropriation applied to the west, will make, for schools and colleges, 
 6,600,000 ; and the total appropriation for literary purposes, in the new 
 states and territories, 14,500,000 acres, which, at two dollars per acre, 
 would be 29,000,000 dollars. These facts are very properly quoted by Mr 
 Hodgson ; and it is impossible to speak too highly' of their value and im- 
 portance. They quite put into the background every thing which has been 
 done in the Old World for the improvement of the lower orders, and confer 
 deservedly upon the Americans the character of a wise, a reflecting, and a 
 virtuous people. 
 
 It is rather surprising that such a people, spreading rapidly over so vast 
 a portion of the earth, and cultivating all the liberal and useful arts so suc- 
 cessfully, should be so extremely sensitive and touchy as the Americans are 
 said to be. We really thought at one tune they would have fitted out an 
 armament against the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, and burnt down 
 Mr Murray's and Mr Constable's shops, as we did the American Capitol. 
 We, however, remember no other anti- American crime of which we were 
 guilty, than a preference of Shakspeare and Milton over Joel Barlow and 
 Timothy Dwight. That opinion we must still take the liberty of retaining. 
 There is nothing in Dwight comparable to the finest passages of Paradise 
 Lost, nor is Mr Barlow ever humorous or pathetic, as the great Bard of the 
 English stage is humorous and pathetic. We have always been strenuous* 
 
 Fur thes; reasons we have not even looked at his pamphlet, and we decline entering into 
 a controversy upon a point, where, among men of sense and humanity (who had not 
 heated themselves in the dispute), there cannot possibly be any difference of opinion. 
 All members of both Houses of Parliament were unanimous in their condemnation of the 
 odious and nonsensical practice of working prisoners in the tread-mill before trial. It 
 had not one single advocate. Mr Headlam and the magistrates of the North Riding, in 
 their eagerness to save a relic of their prison system, forgot themselves so far as to peti- 
 tion to be intrusted with the power of putting prisoners to work before trial, -tviti'i tkeir 
 OT.UU consent the answer of the Legislature was, " We will not trust you," the severest 
 practical rebuke ever received by any public body. We will leave it to others to deter- 
 mine whether it was deserved. We have no doubt the great body of magistrates meant 
 well. They must have meant well but they have been sadly misled, and have thrown 
 odium on the subordinate administration of justice, which it is far from deserving on 
 other occasions, in their hands. This strange piece of nonsense is, however, now well 
 ended. Rcquiescat in pace ! 
 
 * Ancient women, whether in or out of breeches, will of course imagine that we are the 
 enemies of the institutions of our country', because we are the admirers of the institutions 
 of America: but circumstances differ. American institutions are too new, English institu-
 
 4 6S AMERICA. 
 
 advocates for, and admirers of, America not taking our ideas from the 
 overweening vanity of the weaker part of the Americans themselves, but 
 from what we have observed of their real energy and wisdom. It is very 
 natural that we Scotch, who live in a little shabby scraggy comer of a re- 
 mote island, with a climate which cannot ripen an apple, should be jealous 
 of the aggressive pleasantry of more favoured people ; but that Americans, 
 who have done so much for themselves, and received so much from nature, 
 should be flung into such convulsions by English Reviews and Magazines, 
 is really a sad specimen of Columbian juvenility. We hardly dare to quote 
 the following account of an American rout, for fear of having our motives 
 misrepresented, and strongly suspect that there are but few Americans 
 who could be brought to admit that a Philadelphia or Boston concern of 
 this nature is not quite equal to the most brilliant assemblies of London or 
 Paris. 
 
 " A tea party is a serious thing in this country ; and some of those at 
 which I have been present, in New York and elsewhere, have been on a 
 very large scale. In the modern houses the two principal apartments are 
 on the first floor, and communicate by large folding doors, which on gala- 
 days throw wide their ample portals, converting the two apartments into 
 one. At the largest party which I have seen, there were about thirty 
 young ladies present, and more than as many gentlemen. Every sofa, 
 chair, and footstool were occupied by the ladies, and little enough room 
 some of them appeard to have after all. The gentlemen were obliged to be 
 content with walking up and down, talking now with one lady, now with 
 another. Tea was brought in by a couple of blacks, carrying large trays, 
 one covered with cups, the other with cake. Slowly making the round, 
 and retiring at intervals for additional supplies, the ladies were gradually 
 gone over ; and after much patience the gentlemen began to enjoy the 
 beverage ' which cheers but not inebriates ;' still walking about or leaning 
 against the wall, with the cup and saucer in their hand. 
 
 "As soon as the first course was over, the hospitable trays again entered, 
 bearing a chaos of preserves peaches, pineapples, ginger, oranges, citrons, 
 pears, &c. in tempting display. A few of the young gentlemen now 
 accompanied the revolution of the trays, and sedulously attended to the 
 pleasure of the ladies. The party was so numerous that the period 
 between the commencement and the termination of the round was sufficient 
 to justify a new solicitation ; and so the ceremony continued, with very 
 little intermission, during the whole evening. Wine succeeded the 
 preserves, and dried fruit followed the wine ; which, in its turn, was sup- 
 ported by sandwiches in the name of supper, and a forlorn-hope of con- 
 fectionery and frost work. I pitied the poor blacks who, like Tantalus, 
 had such a profusion of dainties the whole evening at their finger ends, 
 without the possibility of partaking of them. A little music and dancing 
 gave variety to the scene ; which to some of us was a source of consider- 
 able satisfaction ; for when a number of ladies were on the floor, those who 
 cared not for the dance had the pleasure of getting a seat. About eleven 
 o'clock I did myself the honour of escorting a lady home, and was weii 
 pleased to have an excuse for escaping." Duncan's Travels, II. 279, 280. 
 
 The coaches must be given up ; so must the roads, and so must the inns. 
 
 tions are ready made to our hand?. If we were to build the house afresh, we might per- 
 haps avail ourselves of the improvements of a new plan ; but we have no sort of wi>h t.i 
 pull down an excellent house, strong, warm, and comfortable, because, upon second 
 trial, we might be able to alter and amend it, a principle which would perpetuate 
 demolition and construction. Onr plan, where circumstances are tolerable, is to sit 
 down and enjoy ourselves.
 
 AMERICA. 469 
 
 They are of course what these accommodations are in all new countries ; 
 and much like what English great-grandfathers talk about as existing 
 in this country at the first period of their recollection. The great incon- 
 venience of American inns, however, in the eyes of an Englishman, 
 is one which more sociable travellers must feel less acutely \ve mean the 
 impossibility of being alone, of having a room separate from the rest of the 
 company. There is nothing which an Englishman enjoys more than the 
 pleasure of sulkiness, of not being forced to hear a word from anybody 
 which may occasion to him the necessity of replying. It is not so much 
 that Mr Bull disdains to talk, as that Mr Bull has nothing to say. His 
 forefathers have been out of spirits for six or seven hundred years, and 
 seeing nothing but fog and vapour, he is out of spirits too ; and when there- 
 is no selling or buying, or no business to settle, he prefers being alone 
 and looking at the fire. If any gentleman were in distress, he would 
 willingly lend a helping hand ; but he thinks it no part of neighbourhood 
 to talk to a person because he happens to be near him. In short, with 
 many excellent qualities, it must be acknowledged that the English arc 
 the most disagreeable cf all the nations of Europe, more surly and 
 morose, with less disposition to please, to exert themselves for the good of 
 society, to make small sacrifices, and to put themselves out of their way. 
 They are content with Magna Charta and Trial by Jury ; and think they 
 are not bound to excel the rest of the world in small behaviour, if they are 
 superior to them in great institutions. 
 
 We are terribly afraid that some Americans spit upon the floor, even 
 when that floor is covered by good carpets. Now all claims to civilisation 
 are suspended till this secretion is otherwise disposed of. No English 
 gentleman has spit upon the floor since the Heptarchy. 
 
 The curiosity for which the Americans are so much laughed at, is not 
 only venial, but laudable. Where men live in woods and forests, as is the 
 case, of course, in remote American settlements, it is the duty of every man 
 to gratify the inhabitants by telling them his name, place, age, office, virtues, 
 crimes, children, fortune, and remarks : and with fellow travellers, it seems 
 to be almost a matter of necessity to do so. When men ride together for 
 300 or 400 miles through woods and prairies, it is of the greatest importance 
 that they should be able to guess at subjects most agreeable to each other, 
 and to multiply their common topics. Without knowing who your com- 
 panion is, it is difficult to know both what to say and what to avoid. You 
 may talk of honour and virtue to an attorney, or contend with a Virginian 
 planter that men of a fair colour have no right to buy and sell men of a 
 dusky colour. The following is a lively description of the rights of inter- 
 rogation, as understood and practised in America. 
 
 "As for the Inquisitivencss of the Americans, I do not think it has been 
 at all exaggerated. They certainly are, as they profess to be, a very in- 
 quiring people ; and if we may sometimes be disposed to dispute the claims 
 of their love of ktiowing to the character of a liberal curiosity, we must at 
 least admit that they make a most liberal use of every means in their power 
 to gratify it. I have seldom, however, had any difficulty in repressing their 
 home questions, if I wished it, and without offending them ; but I more 
 frequently amused myself by putting them on the rack, civilly, and appar- 
 ently unconsciously, eluded their inquiries for a time, and then awakening 
 their gratitude by such a discovery of myself as I might choose to make. 
 Sometimes a man would place himself at my side in the wilderness, and 
 . ride for a mile or two without the smallest communication between us, 
 except a slight nod of the head. He v.ould then, perhaps, make some
 
 470 AMERICA. 
 
 grave remark on the weather, and if I assented, in a monosyllable, he would 
 stick to my side for another mile or two, when he would commence his 
 attack. ' I reckon, stranger, you do not belong to these parts ? ' ' No, 
 sir ; I am not a native of Alabama.' ' I guess you are from the north?' 
 ' No, sir ; I am not from the north.' ' I guess you found the roads mighty 
 muddy, and the creeks swimming. You are come a long, way, I guess ? ' 
 ' No, not so very far ; we have travelled a few hundred miles since we . 
 
 turned our faces westward.' 'I guess you have seen Mr , or General 
 
 ?' (mentioning the names of some well-known individuals in the 
 
 Middle and Southern States, who were to serve as guide-post to detect our 
 route) ; but, 'I have not the pleasure of knowing any of them,' or, 'I have 
 the pleasure of knowing all,' equally defeated his purpose, but not his hopes. 
 ' I reckon, stranger, you have had a good crop of cotton this year ? ' ' I am 
 told, sir, the crops have been unusually abundant in Carolina and Georgia.' 
 'You grow tobacco, then, I guess?' (to track me to Virginia). 'No; 
 I do not grow tobacco.' Here a modest inquirer would give up in despair, 
 and trust to the chapter of accidents to develope my name and history ; but 
 I generally rewarded his modesty and excited his gratitude, by telling him 
 I would torment him no longer. 
 
 "The courage of a thorough-bred Yankee* would rise with his diffi- 
 culties ; and after a decent interval he would resume : ' I hope no offence, 
 sir ; but you know we Yankees lose nothing for want of asking. I guess, 
 stranger, you are from the old country?' 'Well, my friend, you have 
 guessed right at last, and I am sure you deserve something for your perse- 
 verance ; and now I suppose it will save us both trouble if I proceed to the 
 second part of the story, and tell you where I am going. I am going to 
 New Orleans.' This is really no exaggerated picture : dialogues, not 
 indeed in these very words, but to this effect, occurred continually, and some 
 of them more minute and extended than I can venture upon in a letter. 
 I ought, however, to say, that many questions lose much of their familiarity 
 when travelling in the wilderness. ' Where are you from ? ' and ' whither 
 are you bound ? ' do not appear impertinent interrogations at sea ; and often 
 in the western wilds I found myself making inquiries which I should have 
 thought very free and easy at home." Hodgson 's Letters, II. 32 35. 
 
 In all new and distant settlements the forms of law must, of course, be 
 very limited. No justice's warrant is current in the Dismal Swamp ; con- 
 stables are exceedingly puzzled in the neighbourhood of the Mississippi ; 
 and there is no tread-mill, either before or after trial, on the Little Wabash. 
 The consequence of this is, that the settlers take the law into their own 
 hands, and give notice to a justice-proof delinquent to quit the territory if 
 this notice is disobeyed, they assemble and whip the culprit, and this failing, 
 on the second visit, they cut off his ears. In short, Captain Rock has his 
 descendants in America. Mankind cannot live together without some ap- 
 proximation to justice ; and if the actual government will not govern well, 
 or cannot gorem well, is too wicked or too weak to do so then men prefer 
 Rock to anarchy. The following is the best account we have seen of this 
 system of irregular justice. 
 
 "After leaving Carlyle, I took the Shawnee town road, that branches off 
 to the S.E., and passed theWalnutt Hills, and Moore's Prairie. These two 
 places had a year or two before been infested by a notorious gang of robbers 
 
 * In America, the term Yankee is applied to the natives of New England only, and is 
 generally used with an air of pleasantry.
 
 AMERICA. 
 
 47' 
 
 And forgers, who had fixed themselves in these wild parts in order to avoid 
 justice. As the country became more settled, these desperadoes became 
 more and more troublesome. The inhabitants therefore took that method 
 of getting rid of them that had been adopted not many years ago in Hopkin- 
 son and Henderson counties, Kentucky, and which is absolutely necessary 
 in new and thinly settled districts, where it is almost impossible to punish a 
 criminal according to legal forms. 
 
 " On such occasions, therefore, all the quiet and industrious men of a 
 district form themselves into companies, under the name of " Regulators." 
 They appoint officers, put themselves under their orders, and bind them- 
 selves to assist and stand by each other. The first step they then take is 
 to send notice to any notorious vagabonds, desiring them to quit the state 
 in a certain number of days, under the penalty of receiving a domiciliary 
 visit. Should the person who receives the notice refuse to comply, they 
 suddenly assemble, and when unexpected, go in the night time to the rogue's 
 house, take him out, tie him to a tree, and give him a severe whipping, 
 every one of the party striking him a certain number of times. 
 
 " This discipline is generally sufficient to drive off the culprit ; but should 
 he continue obstinate, and refuse to avail himself of another warning, the 
 Regulators pay him a second visit, inflict a still severer whipping, with the 
 addition probably of cutting off both his ears. No culprit has ever been 
 known to remain after a second visit. For instance, an old man, the father 
 of a family, all of whom he educated as robbers, fixed himself at Moore's 
 Prairie, and committed numerous thefts, &c. &c. He was hardy enough to 
 remain after the first visit, when both he and his sons received a whipping. 
 At the second visit the Regulators punished him very severely, and cut off 
 his ears. This drove him off, together with his whole gang ; and travellers 
 can now pass in perfect safety where it was once dangerous to travel alone. 
 
 " There is also a company of Regulators near Vincennes, who have broken 
 up a notorious gang of coiners and thieves who had fixed themselves near 
 that place. These rascals, before they were driven off, had parties settled 
 at different distances in the woods, and thus held communication and passed 
 horses and stolen goods from one to another, from the Ohio to Lake Erie, 
 and from thence into Canada or the New England States. Thus it was 
 next to impossible to detect the robbers, or to recover the stolen property. 
 
 ' ' This practice of Regulating seems very strange to an European. I have 
 talked with some of the chief men of the Regulators, who all lamented the 
 necessity of such a system. They very sensibly remarked, that when the 
 country became more thickly settled, there would no longer be any necessity 
 for such proceedings, and that they should all be delighted at being able to 
 obtain justice in a more formal manner. I forgot to mention that the rascals 
 punished have sometimes prosecuted the Regulators for an assault. The 
 juries, however, knowing the bad character of the prosecutors, would give 
 but trifling damages, which, divided among among so many, amounted to 
 next to nothing for each individual." Excursion, pp. 233 236. 
 
 This same traveller mentions his having met at table three or four Ameri- 
 can ex-kings presidents who had served their time, and had retired into 
 private life ; he observes also upon the effect of a democratical government 
 in preventing mobs. Mobs are created by opposition to the wishes of the 
 people ; but when the wishes of the people are consulted so completely as 
 they are consulted in America all motives for the agency of mobs are done 
 way. 
 
 " It is, indeed, entirely a government of opinion. Whatever the people
 
 472 AMERICA. 
 
 wish is done. If they want any alteration oflaws, tariffs, &c., they inform 
 their representatives, and if there be a majority that wish it, the alteration 
 is made at once. In mo.st European countries there is a portion of the 
 population denominated the mob, who, not being acquainted with real 
 liberty, give themselves up to occasional fits of licentiousness. But in the 
 United States there is no mob, for every man feels himself free. At the 
 time of Burr's conspiracy, Mr Jefferson said, that there was little to be 
 apprehended from it, as every man felt himself a part of the general sove- 
 reignty. The event proved the truth of this assertion ; and Burr, who in 
 any other country would have been hanged, drawn, and quartered, is at 
 present leading an obscure life in the city of New York, despised by every- 
 one." Excursion, p. 70. 
 
 It is a real blessing for America to be exempted from that vast burthen 
 of taxes, the consequences of a long series of foolish, just, and necessary 
 wars, carried on to please kings and queens, or the waiting-maids and wait- 
 ing-lords or gentlemen, who have always governed kings and queens in the 
 Old World. The Americans owe this good to the newness of their govern- 
 ment ; and though there are few classical associations or historical recollec- 
 tions in the United States, this barrenness is well purchased by the absence 
 of all the feudal nonsense, inveterate abuses, and profligate debts of an old 
 country. 
 
 " The good effects of a free government are visible throughout the whole 
 country. There are no tithes, no poor-rates, no excise, no heavy internal 
 taxes, no commercial monopolies. An American can make candles if he 
 have tallow, can distil brandy if he have grapes or peaches, and can make 
 beer if he have malt and hops, without asking leave of any one, and much 
 less with any fear of incurring punishment. How would a farmer's wife 
 there be astonished, if told that it was contrary to law for her to make soap 
 out of the potass obtained on the farm, and of the grease she herself had 
 saved ! When an American has made these articles, he may build his little 
 vessel, and take them without hindrance to any part of the world ; for there 
 is no rich company of merchants that can say to him, ' You shall not trade 
 to India ; and you shall not buy a pound of tea of the Chinese ; as, by so 
 doing, you would infringe upon our privileges.' In consequence of this 
 freedom, all the seas are covered with their vessels, and the people at home 
 are active and independent. I never saw a beggar in any part of the 
 United States ; nor was I ever asked for charity but once and that was 
 by an Irishman." Excursion, pp. 70, 71. 
 
 America is so differently situated from the old governments of Europe, 
 that the United States afford no political precedents that are exactly applic- 
 able to our old governments. There is no idle and discontented population. 
 When they have peopled themselves up to the Mississippi, they cross to the 
 Missouri, and will go on till they are stopped by the Western Ocean ; ami 
 then, when there are a number of persons who have nothing to do, and 
 nothing to gain, no hope for lawful industry and great interest in promoting 
 changes, we may consider their situation as somewhat similar to our own, 
 and their example as touching us more nearly. The changes in the con- 
 stitution of the particular States seem to be very frequent, very radical, and 
 to us very alarming ; they seem, however, to be thought very little of in 
 that country, and to be very little heard of in Europe. Mr Duncan, in the 
 following passage, speaks of them with European feelings. 
 
 "The other great obstacle to the prosperity of the American nation.
 
 AMERICA. 
 
 473 
 
 universal suffrage,* will not exhibit the full extent of its evil tendency for a 
 long time to come ; and it is possible that ere that time some antidote may 
 be discovered, to prevent or alleviate the mischief which we might naturally 
 expect from it. It does, however, seem ominous of evil, that so little cere- 
 mony is at present used with the constitutions of the various States. The 
 people of Connecticut, not contented with having prospered abundantly 
 under their old system, have lately assembled a convention, composed of 
 delegates from all parts of the country, in which the former order of things 
 has been condemned entirely and a completely new constitution manufac- 
 tured ; which, among other things, provides for the same process being 
 again gone through as soon as the profannm vulgus takes it into its head to 
 desire it.t A sorry legacy the British Constitution would be to us, if it 
 were at the mercy of a meeting of delegates, to be summoned whenever a 
 majority of the people took a fancy for a new one ; and I am afraid, that 
 if the Americans continue to cherish a fondness for such repairs, the Iligh- 
 landman's pistol with its new stock, lock, and barrel, will bear a close resem- 
 blance to what is ultimately produced." Dnncaiis Travels, II. 335, 336. 
 
 In the Excursion there is a list of the American navy, which, in con- 
 junction with the navy of France, will one day or another, we fear, settle 
 the Catholic question in a way not quite agreeable to the Earl of Liverpool 
 for the time being, nor very creditable to the wisdom of those ancestors of 
 whom we hear, and from whom we suffer so much. The regulations of 
 the American navy seem to be admirable. The States are making great 
 exertions to increase this navy ; and since the capture of so many English 
 ships, it has become the favourite science of the people at large. Their 
 flotillas on the lakes completely defeated ours during the last war. 
 
 Fanaticism of every description seems to rage and flourish in America, 
 which has no Establishment, in about the same degree which it does here 
 under the nose of an Established Church ; they have their prophets and 
 prophetesses, their preaching encampments, female preachers, and every 
 variety of noise, folly, and nonsense, like ourselves. Among the most sin- 
 gular of these fanatics are the Harmom'tes. Rapp, their founder, was a 
 dissenter from the Lutheran Church, and therefore, of course, the Lutheran 
 clergy of Stutgard (near to which he lived) began to put Mr Rapp in white 
 sheets, to prove him guilty of theft, parricide, treason, and all the usual 
 crimes of which men dissenting from established churches are so often 
 guilty, and delicate hints were given respecting faggots ! Stutgard 
 abounds with underwood and clergy ; and away went Mr Rapp to the 
 United States, and, with a great multitude of followers, settled about 
 twenty-four miles from our countryman Mr Birkbeck. His people have 
 here built a large town, and planted a vineyard, where they make very 
 agreeable wine. They carry on also a very extensive system of husbandry, 
 and are the masters of many flocks and herds. They have a distillery, 
 brewery, tanner)', make hats, shoes, cotton and woollen cloth, and every 
 thing necessary to the comfort of life. Every one belongs to some particular 
 trade. But in bad weather, when there is danger of losing their crops, 
 Rapp blows a horn, and calls them all together. Over every trade there 
 is a head man, who receives the money and gives a receipt, signed by Rapp, 
 to whom all the money collected is transmitted. "When any of these work- 
 
 * In the greater number of the States, every white person, 21 years of age, who iioa 
 paid taxes for ons year, is a voter ; in others, some additional qualifications arc required, 
 but they are not such as materially to limit the privilege. 
 
 t The people of the State of New York have subsequently taken a similar fancy to 
 eltat the cauldron. (182*.)
 
 474 AMERICA. 
 
 men wants a hat or a coat, Rapp signs him an order for the garment, foi 
 which he goes to the store, and is fitted. They have one large store where 
 these manufactures are deposited. This store is much resorted to by the 
 neighbourhood, on account of the goodness and cheapness of the articles. 
 They have built an excellent house for their founder, Rapp, as it might 
 have been predicted they would have done. The Harmonites profess 
 equality, community of goods, and celibacy ; for the men and women (let 
 Mr Malthus hear this) live separately, and are not allowed the slightest 
 intercourse. In order to keep up their numbers, they have once or twice 
 sent over for a supply of Germans, as they admit no Americans, of any 
 intercourse with whom they are very jealous. The Harmonitcs dress and 
 live plainly. It is a part of their creed that they should do so. Rapp, 
 however, and the head men have no such particular creed for themselves ; 
 and indulge in wine, beer, grocery, and other irreligious diet. Rapp is 
 both governor and priest, preaches to them in church, and directs all their 
 proceedings in their working hours. In short, Rapp seems to have made 
 use of the religious propensities of mankind, to persuade one or two thousand 
 fools to dedicate their lives to his service ; and if they do not get tired, and 
 fling their prophet into a horse-pond, they will in all probability disperse 
 as soon as he dies. 
 
 Unitarians are increasing very fast in the United States, not being kept 
 clown by charges from bishops and archdeacons, their natural enemies. 
 
 The author of the Excursion remarks upon the total absence of all games 
 in America. No cricket, foot-ball, nor leap-frog all seems solid and pro- 
 fitable. 
 
 "One thing that I could not help remarking with regard to the Ameri- 
 cans in general, is the total want of all those games and sports that obtained 
 for our country the appellation of ' Merry England.' Although children 
 usually transmit stories and sports from one generation to another, and 
 although many of our nursery games and tales are supposed to have been 
 imported into England in the vessels of Hengist and Horsa, yet our brethren 
 in the United States seem entirely to have forgotten the childish amuse- 
 ments of our common ancestors. In America I never saw even the school- 
 boys playing at any game whatsoever. Cricket, foot-ball, quoits, &c., 
 appear to be utterly unknown ; and I believe that if an American were to 
 see grown-up men playing at cricket, he would express as much astonish- 
 ment as the Italians did when some Englishmen played at this finest of all 
 games in the Casina at Florence. Indeed, that joyous spirit which, in our 
 country, animates not only childhood, but also maturer age, can rarely or 
 never be seen among the inhabitants of the United States." Excursion, 
 pp. 502, 503. 
 
 These are a few of the leading and prominent circumstances respecting 
 America, mentioned in the various works before us : of which works we 
 can recommend the Letters of Mr Hodgson, and the Excursion into Canada, 
 as sensible, agreeable books, written in a very fair spirit. 
 
 America seems, on the whole, to be a country possessing vast advantages, 
 and little inconveniences ; they have a cheap government, and bad roads ; 
 they pay no tithes, and have stage coaches without springs. They have no 
 poor laws and no monopolies but their inns are inconvenient, and travellers 
 are teased with questions. They have no collections in the fine arts ; but 
 they have no Lord Chancellor, and they can go to law without absolute 
 ruin. They cannot make Latin verses, but they expend immense sums in 
 the education of the poor. In all this the balance is prodigiously in their
 
 MEMOIRS OF CAPTAIN ROCK. 475 
 
 favour : but then comes the great disgrace and danger of America the 
 existence of slavery, which, if not timeously corrected, will one day entail 
 (and ought to entail) a bloody servile war upon the Americans which will 
 separate America into slave states and states disclaiming slavery, and which 
 remains at present as the foulest blot in the moral character of 'that people. 
 A high-spirited nation, who cannot endure the slightest act of foreign 
 aggression, and who revolt at the very shadow of domestic tyranny, beat 
 with cart- whips, and bind with chains, and murder for the merest trifles, 
 wretched human beings who are of a more dusky colour than themselves ; 
 and have recently admitted into their Union a new State, with the express 
 permission of ingrafting this atrocious wickedness into their constitution ! 
 No one can admire the simple wisdom and manly firmness of the Americans 
 more than we do, or more despise the pitiful propensity which exists among 
 Government runners to vent their small spite at their character ; but on the 
 subject of slavery, the conduct of America is, and has been, most reprehen- 
 sible. It is impossible to speak of it with too much indignation and con- 
 tempt ; but for it we should look forward with unqualified pleasure to such 
 a land of freedom and such a magnificent spectacle of human happiness. 
 
 MEMOIRS OF CAPTAIN ROCK. (E. REVIEW, 1824.) 
 
 Memoirs of Captain Rock, the celebrated Irish Chieftain : toiik some Account of hi* 
 Ancestors. Written by Himself. Fourth Edition. i2rao. London, 1824. 
 
 THIS agreeable and witty book is generally supposed to have been written 
 by Mr Thomas Moore, a gentleman of small stature, but full of genius, and 
 a steady friend of all that is honourable and just. He has here borrowed 
 the name of a celebrated Irish leader, to typify that spirit of violence and 
 insurrection which is necessarily generated by systematic oppression, and 
 rudely avenges its crimes ; and the picture he has drawn of its prevalence 
 in that unhappy country is at once piteous and frightful. Its effect in exciting 
 our horror and indignation is in the long run increased, we think, though 
 at first it may seem counteracted, by the tone of levity, and even jocularity, 
 under which he has chosen to veil the deep sarcasm and substantial terrors 
 of his story. We smile at first, and are amused and wonder as we pro- 
 ceed, that the humorous narrative should produce conviction and pity 
 shame, abhorrence, and despair ! 
 
 England seems to have treated Ireland much in the same way as Mrs 
 Brownrigg treated her apprentice for which Mrs Brownrigg is hanged in 
 the first volume of the Newgate Calendar. Upon the whole, we think the 
 apprentice is better off than the Irishman : as Mrs Brownrigg merely starves 
 and beats her, without any attempt to prohibit her from going to any shop, 
 or praying at any church, her apprentice might select ; and once or twice, 
 if we remember rightly, Brownrigg appears to have felt some compassion. 
 Not so Old England, who indulges rather in a steady baseness, uniform 
 brutality, and unrelenting oppression. 
 
 Let us select from this entertaining little book a short history of dear 
 Ireland, such as even some profligate idle member of the House of Com- 
 mons, voting as his master bids him, may perchance throw his eye upon, 
 and reflect for a moment upon the iniquity to which he lends his support. 
 
 For some centuries after the reign of Henry II. the Irish were killed like 
 game, by persons qualified or unqualified. Whether dogs were used does 
 not appear quite certain, though it is probable they were, spaniels as well
 
 476 MEMOIRS OF CAPTALV ROCK:. 
 
 as pointers ; and that, after a regular point by Basto, well backed by Ponto 
 and Cajsar, Mr O'Donnel or Mr O'Leary bolted from the thicket, and were 
 bagged by the English sportsman. With Henry II. came in tithes, to 
 which, in all probability, about one million of lives may have been sacri- 
 ficed in Ireland. In the reign of Edward I. the Irish who were settled 
 near the English requested that the benefit of the English laws might be 
 extended to them ; but the remonstrance of the barons with the hesitating 
 king was in substance this : "You have made us a present of these wild 
 gentlemen, and we particularly request that no measures may be adopted 
 lo check us in that full range of tyranny and oppression in which we con- 
 sider the value of such a gift to consist. You might as well give us sheep, 
 and prevent us from shearing the wool, or roasting the meat." This rea- 
 soning prevailed, and the Irish were kept to their barbarism, and the barons 
 preserved their live stock. 
 
 "Read 'Orange faction' (says Captain Rock) here and you have the 
 wisdom of our rulers, at the end of near six centuries, in statu quo. The 
 grand periodic year of the stoics, at the close of which every thing was to 
 begin again, and the same events to be all reacted in the same order, is, on 
 a miniature scale, represented in the history of the English government in 
 Ireland every succeeding century being but a new revolution of the same 
 follies, the same crimes, and the same turbulence that disgraced the former. 
 But ' Vive 1'ennemi ! ' say I : whoever may suffer by such measures, Cap- 
 tain Rock, at least, will prosper. 
 
 " And such was the result at the period of which I am speaking. The 
 rejection of a petition, so humble and so reasonable, was followed, as a 
 matter of course, by one of those daring rebellions into which the revenge 
 of an insulted people naturally breaks forth. The M'Cartys, the O'Briens, 
 and all the other Macs and O's, who have been kept on the alert by similar 
 causes ever since, flew to arms under the command of a chieftain of my 
 family ; and, as the proffered handle of the sword had been rejected, made 
 their inexorable masters at least feel its edge." (pp. 23 25.) 
 
 Fifty years afterwards the same request was renewed and refused. Up 
 again rose Mac and O, a. just and necessary icar ensued ; and after the 
 usual murders, the usual chains were replaced upon the Irishry. All 
 Irishmen were excluded from every species of office. It was high treason 
 to marry with the Irish blood, and highly penal to receive the Irish into 
 religious houses. War was waged also against their Thomas Moores, 
 Samuel Rogerses, and Walter Scotts, who went about the country harping 
 and singing against English oppression. No such turbulent guests were to 
 be received. The plan of making them poets-laureate, or converting them 
 to loyalty by pensions of 100 per annum, had not then been thought of. 
 They debarred the Irish even from the pleasure of running away, and fixed 
 them to the soil like negroes. 
 
 " I have thus selected," says the historian of Rock, " cursorily and at 
 random, a few features of the reigns preceding the Reformation, in order 
 to show what good use was made of those three or four hundred years in 
 attaching the Irish people to their English governors ; and by what a gentle 
 course of alternatives they were prepared for the inoculation of a new 
 religion, which was now about to be attempted upon them by the same 
 skilful and friendly hands. 
 
 " Henry the Seventh appears to have been the first monarch to whom 
 it occurred, that matters were not managed exactly as they ought in this
 
 MEMOIRS OF CAPTAIN ROCK. 477 
 
 Sort of his dominions ; and \ve find him with a simplicity which is still 
 esh and youthful among our rulers expressing his surprise that ' his sub- ' 
 jects of this land should be so prone to faction and rebellion, and that so 
 little advantage had been hitherto derived from the acquisitions of his pre- 
 decessor, notwithstanding the fruitfulness and natural advantages of Ireland.' 
 Surprising, indeed, that a policy, such as we have been describing, 
 should not have converted the whole country into a perfect Atlantis of 
 happiness should not have made it like the imaginary island of Sir Thomas 
 More, where ' tola insiila vehtt tin a familia est I ' most stubborn, truly, 
 and ungrateful, must that people be, upon whom, up to the very hour in 
 which I write, such a long and unvarying course of penal laws, confisca- 
 tions, and Insurrection Acts has been tried, without making them in the 
 least degree in love with their rulers. 
 
 " Heloise tells her tutor Abelard, that the correction which he inflicted 
 upon her only served to increase the ardour of her affection for him ; but 
 bayonets and hemp are no such ' atncris stimuli.'' One more characteristic 
 anecdote of those times, and I have done. At the battle of Knocktow, in 
 the reign of Henry VII., when that remarkable man, the Earl of Kildare, 
 assisted by the great O'Neal and other Irish chiefs, gained a victory over 
 Clanricard of Connaught, most important to the English Government, Lord 
 Gormanstown, after the battle, in the first insolence of success, said, turn- 
 ing to the Earl of Kildare, ' We have now slaughtered our enemies, but, to 
 complete the good deed, we must proceed yet further, and cut the throats 
 of those Irish of our own party ! '* Who can wonder that the Rock family 
 were active in those times? " (pp. 33 35.) 
 
 Henry VIII. persisted in all these outrages, and aggravated them by in- 
 sulting the prejudices of the people. England is almost the only country 
 in the world (even at present), where there is not some favourite religious 
 sport, where absurd lies, little bits of cloth, feathers, rusty nails, splinters, 
 and other invaluable relics, are treasured up, and in defence of which the 
 whole population are willing to turn out and perish as one man. Such 
 was the shrine of St Kieran, the whole treasures of which the satellites of 
 that corpulent tyrant turned out into the street, pillaged the sacred church 
 of Clonmacnoisc, scattered the holy nonsense of the priests to the winds, 
 and burnt the real and venerable crosier of St Patrick, fresh from the 
 silversmith's shop, and formed of the most costly materials. Modern 
 princes change the uniform of regiments : Henry changed the religion of 
 kingdoms, and was determined that the belief of the Irish should undergo 
 a radical and Protestant conversion. With what success this attempt was 
 made, the present state of Ireland is sufficient evidence. 
 
 "Be not dismayed," said Elizabeth, on hearing that O'Neal meditated 
 some designs against her government; "tell my friends, if he arise, it 
 will turn to their advantage there -will be estates for those who want." Soon 
 after this prophetic speech, Munster was destroyed by famine and the 
 sword, and near 600,000 acres forfeited to the Crown, and distributed 
 among Englishmen. Sir Walter Raleigh (the virtuous and good) butchered 
 the garrison of Limerick in cold blood, after Lord Deputy Gray had selected 
 700 to be hanged. There were, during the reign of Elizabeth, three in- 
 vasions of Ireland by the Spaniards, produced principally by the absurd 
 measures of this princess for the reformation of its religion. The Catholic 
 clergy, in consequence of these measures, abandoned their cures, the churches 
 fell to ruin, and the people were left without any means of instruction. Add 
 
 * Lcland gives this anecdote on the authority of an Englishman.
 
 478 MEMOIRS OF CAPTAIN ROCK. 
 
 to these circumstances the murder of M'Mahon, the imprisonment of 
 M'Toole* and O'Dogherty, and the kidnapping of O'Donnel all truly 
 Anglo-Hibernian proceedings. The execution of the laws was rendered 
 detestable and intolerable by the queen's officers of justice. The spirit 
 raised by these transactions, besides innumerable smaller insurrections, 
 gave rise to the great wars of Desmond and Hugh O'Neal ; which, 
 after they had worn out the ablest generals, discomfited the choicest 
 troops, exhausted the treasure, and embarrassed the operations of Elizabeth, 
 were terminated by the destruction of these two ancient families, 
 and by the confiscation of more than half the territorial surface of the 
 island. The two last years of O'Neal's wars cost Elizabeth .140,000 
 per annum, though the whole revenue of England at that period fell con- 
 siderably short of .500,000. Essex, after the destruction of Norris, led 
 into Ireland an army of above 20,000 men, which was totally baffled and 
 destroyed by Tyrone, within two years of their landing. Such was the 
 importance of Irish rebellions two centuries before the time in which we 
 live. Sir G. Carew attempted to assassinate the Lugan Earl Mountjoy com- 
 pelled the Irish rebels to massacre each other. In the course of a few months, 
 3000 men were starved to death in Tyrone. Sir Arthur Chichester, Sir 
 Richard Manson, and other commanders, saw three children feeding on the 
 flesh of their dead mother. Such were the golden days of good Queen Bess ! 
 By the rebellions of Dogherty in the reign of James I., six northern 
 counties were confiscated, amounting to 500,000 acres. In the same manner, 
 64,000 acres were confiscated in Athlone. The whole of his confiscations 
 amount to nearly a million acres ; and if Leland means plantation acres, 
 they constitute a twelfth of the whole kingdom according to Newenham, 
 and a tenth according to Sir W. Petty. The most shocking and scandalous 
 action in the reign of James, was his attack upon the whole property of 
 the province of Connaught, which he would have effected, if he had not been 
 bought off by a sum greater than he hoped to gain by his iniquity, besides 
 the luxury of confiscation. The Irish, during the reign of James I., suffered 
 under the double evils of a licentious soldiery, and a religious persecution. 
 
 Charles the First took a bribe of 120,000 from his Irish subjects, to 
 grant them what in those days were called Graces, but in these days would 
 be denominated the Elements of Justice. The money was paid, but the 
 graces were never granted. One of these graces is curious enough : " That 
 the clergy were not to be permitted to keep henceforward any private prisons 
 of their own, but delinquents were to be committed to the public jails." 
 The idea of a rector, with his own private jail full of dissenters, is the most 
 ludicrous piece of tyranny we ever heard of. The troops in the beginning 
 of Charles's reign were supported by the weekly fines levied upon the 
 Catholics for non-attendance upon established worship. The Archbishop 
 of Dublin went himself, at the head of a file of musketeers, to disperse a 
 Catholic congregation in Dublin, which object he effected after a consider- 
 able skirmish with the priests. "The favourite object " (says Dr Leland, 
 a Protestant clergyman, and dignitary of the Irish Church) "of the Irish 
 Government and the English Parliament, was, the utter extermination of all 
 the Catholic inhabitants of Ireland." The great rebellion took place in 
 this reign, and Ireland was one scene of blood and cruelty and confiscation. 
 
 * There are not a few of the best and most humane Englishmen of the present day, 
 who, when under the influence of fear or anger, would think it no great crime to put to 
 death people whose names begin with O or Mac. The violent death of Smith, Green, or 
 Thomson, would throw the neighbourhood into convulsions, and the regular forms would 
 be adhered to but little would be really thought of the death of anybody called 
 O'Dojjherty or O'Toole.
 
 MEMOIRS OF CAPTAIN ROCK. 479 
 
 Cromwell began his career in Ireland by massacring for five days the 
 garrison of Drogheda, to whom quarter had 1>ecn promised. Two millions 
 and a half of acres were confiscated. Whole towns were put up in lots, 
 and sold. The Catholics were banished from three fourths of the kingdom, 
 and confined to Connaught. After a certain day, every Catholic found out 
 of Connaught was to be punished whh death. Flcetwood complains 
 peevishly "that the people do not transport readily " but adds, " it is 
 Doubtless a u<ork in -which the Lord -will appear." Ten thousand Irish were 
 sent as recruits to the Spanish army. 
 
 " Such was Crom-veirs way of settling the affairs of Ireland and if a 
 nation is to be ruined, this method is, perhaps, as good as any. It is, at 
 least, move humane than the slow lingering process of exclusion, disap- 
 pointment, and degradation, by which their hearts are worn out under 
 more specious forms of tyranny ; and that talent of despatch which Moliere 
 attributes to one of his physicians, is no ordinary merit in a practitioner 
 like Cromwell: "C'est un homme cxpeditif, qui aime a depecher ses 
 malades ; et quand on a a mourir, cela se fait avec lui le plus vite du 
 monde." A certain military Duke, who complains that Ireland is but 
 half-conquered, would, no doubt, npon an emergency, try his hand in the 
 same line of practice, and, like that "stern hero," Mirmillo, in the Dis- 
 pensary, 
 
 " While others meanly take whole months to slay, 
 Despatch the grateful patient in a day ! " 
 
 " Among other amiable enactments against the Catholics at this period, 
 the price of five pounds was set on the head of a Romish priest being 
 exactly the same sum offered by the same legislators for the head of a wolf. 
 The Athenians, we are told, encouraged the destruction of wolves by a 
 similar reward (five drachmas) ; but it does not appear that these heathens 
 bought up the heads of priests at the same rate such zeal in the cause of 
 religion being reserved for times of Christianity and Protestantism." (pp. 
 9799-) 
 
 Nothing can show more strongly the light in which the Irish were held by 
 Cromwell, than the correspondence with Henry Cromwell, respecting the 
 peopling of Jamaica from Ireland. Secretary Thurloe sends to Henry, the 
 Lord Deputy in Ireland, to inform him that "a stock of Irish girls, and 
 Irish young men, are wanting for the peopling of Jamaica." The answer 
 of Henry Cromwell is as follows : " Concerning the supply of young 
 men, although we must use force in taking them up, yet it being so much for 
 their own good, and likely to be of so great advantage to the public, it is 
 not the least doubted but that you may have such a number of them as you 
 may think fit to make use of on this account. 
 
 " I shall not need repeat any thing respecting the girls, not doubting to 
 answer your expectations to the full in that ; and I. think it might be of 
 like advantage to your affairs there, and ours here, if you should think fit 
 to send 1 500 or 2000 boys to the place [above mentioned. We can -well 
 spare them ; and who knows but that it may be the means of making them 
 Englishmen, I mean rather Christians ? As for the girls, I suppose you 
 will make provisions -of clothes, and other accommodations for them." 
 Upon this, Thurloe informs Henry Cromwell that the council have voted 
 4000 girls, and as many boys, to go to Jamaica. 
 
 Every Catholic priest found in Ireland was hanged, and five pounds 
 paid to the informer.
 
 480 MEMOIRS OF CAPTAIN" ROCK. 
 
 "About the years 1652 and 1653," says Colonel Lawrence, in hi* 
 Interests of Ireland, " the plague and famine had so swept away whole 
 counties, that a man might travel twenty or thirty miles and not see a living' 
 creature, either man, or beast, or bird, they being all dead, or had quitted 
 those desolate places. Our soldiers would tell stories of the places where 
 they saw smoke it was so rare to see either smoke by day, or fire or candle 
 by night." In this manner did the Irish live and die under Cromwell, 
 :-uffering by the sword, famine, pestilence, and persecution, beholding the 
 confiscation of a kingdom and the banishment of a race. " So that there 
 perished (says Sir W. Petty) in the year 1641, 650,000 human beings 
 whose blood somebody must atone for to God and the King ! ! 
 In the reign of Charles II., by the Act of Settlement, four millions and a 
 half of acres were for ever taken from the Irish. " This country," says the 
 Karl of Essex, Lord Lieutenant in 1675* "has been perpetually rent and 
 torn, since his Majesty's restoration. I can compare it to nothing better 
 than the flinging the reward on the death of a deer among the pack of 
 hounds where every one pulls and tears where he can for himself. :> All 
 wool grown in Ireland was, by Act of Parliament, compelled to be sold to 
 England ; and Irish cattle were excluded from England. The English, 
 however, were pleased to accept 30,000 head of cattle, sent as a gift from 
 J i eland to the sufferers in the great fire ! and the first day of the Sessions, 
 after this act of munificence, the Parliament passed fresh acts of exclusion 
 against the productions of that country. 
 
 " Among the many anomalous situations in which the Irish have been 
 placed, by those 'marriage vows, false as dicers' oaths,' which bind their 
 country to England, the dilemma in which they found themselves at the 
 Revolution was not the least perplexing or cruel.* If they were loyal to 
 the King de jure, they were hanged by the King de facto ; and if they 
 escaped with life from the King de facto, it was but to be plundered and 
 proscribed by the King dc jure afterwards. 
 
 " ' Hac geiier atque socer coeant mercede suorum.' VIRGIL. 
 " ' In a manner so summary, prompt, and high-mettled. 
 'Twi.\t father and son-in-law matters were settled." 
 
 14 In fact, most of the outlawries in Ireland were for treason committed 
 the very day on which the Prince and Princess of Orange accepted the 
 crown in the Banqueting-house ; though the news of this event could not 
 possibly have reached the other side of the Channel on the same day, and 
 the Lord-Lieutenant of King James, wiih an army to enforce obedience, was 
 at that time in actual possession of the government, so little was common, 
 sense consulted, or the mere decency of forms observed, by that rapacious 
 spirit, which nothing less than the confiscation of the whole island could 
 satisfy ; and which having, in the reign of James I. and at the Restoration, 
 despoiled the natives of no less than ten million six hundred and thirty-six 
 thousand eight hundred and thirty-seven acres, now added to its plunder 
 one million sixty thousand seven hundred and ninety-two acres more, being 
 the amount, altogether (according to Lord Clare's calculation), of the 
 whole superficial contents of the island ! 
 
 " Thus, not only had all Ireland suffered confiscation in the course of 
 
 * " Among the persons most puzzled and perplexed by the two opposite Roy.il claims 
 on their allegiance, were the clergymen of the Established Church ; who having first 
 prayed for King James as their lawful sovereign, as soon as William was proclaimed took 
 to praying for him : but again, on the success of the Jacobite forces in the north, very 
 prudently prayed for King James once more, till the arrival of Schomberg, when, as far 
 as his quarters reached, they returned to praying for King William again. '
 
 MEMOIRS OF CAPTAIN ROCK. 481 
 
 this century, but no inconsiderable portion of it had been twice and even 
 thrice confiscated. Well might Lord Clare say ' that the situation of the 
 Irish nation, at the Revolution, stands unparalleled in the history of the 
 inhabited world.' " (pp. 111113). 
 
 By the Articles of Limerick, the Irish were promised the free exercise of 
 their religion ; but from that period to the year 1788, every year produced 
 
 to marry a Protestant ; and any Catholic who sent a son to Catholic coun- 
 tries for education was to forfeit all his lands. In the reign of Queen Anne, 
 any son of a Catholic who chose to turn Protestant got possession of the 
 father's estate. No Papist was allowed to purchase freehold property, or 
 to take a lease for more than thirty years. If a Protestant dies intestate, 
 the estate is to go to the next Protestant heir, though all to the tenth gener- 
 ation should be Catholic. In the same manner, if a Catholic dies intestate 
 his estate is to go to the next Protestant. No Papist is to dwell in Limerick 
 or Galway. No Papist is to take an annuity for life. The widow of a 
 Papist turning Protestant to have a portion of the chattels of deceased in 
 spite of any will. Every Papist teaching schools to be presented as a 
 regular Popish convict. Prices of catching Catholic priests from 50?. to 
 10, according to rank. Papists are to answer all questions respecting 
 other Papists, or to be committed to jail for twelve months. No trust to 
 be undertaken for Papists. No Papist to be on Grand Juries. Some 
 notion may be formed of the spirit of those times, from an order of the 
 House of Commons, " that the Sergeant at Arms should take into custody 
 all Papists that should presume to come into the gallery /" (Commons 1 
 Journal, vol. iii. fol. 976). During this reign, the English Parliament 
 legislated as absolutely for Ireland as they do now for Rutlandshire an 
 evil not to be complained of, if they had done it as justly. In the reign of 
 George I., the horses of Papists were seized for the militia, and rode by 
 Protestants ; towards which the Catholics paid double, and were compelled 
 to find Protestant substitutes. They were prohibited from voting at vestries, 
 or being high or petty constables. An act of the English Parliament in 
 this reign opens as follows : " Whereas attempts have been lately made 
 to shake off the subjection of Ireland to the Imperial Crown of these 
 realms, be it enacted," &c. &c. In the reign of George II. four sixths of 
 the population were cut off from the right of voting at elections, by the 
 necessity under which they were placed of taking the oath of supremacy. 
 Barristers and solicitors marrying Catholics are exposed to all the penalties 
 of Catholics. Persons robbed by privateers during a war with a Catholic 
 State, are to be idemnified by a levy on the Catholic inhabitants of the 
 neighbourhood. All marriages between Catholics and Protestants art 
 annulled. All Popish priests celebrating them are to be hanged. "Thii. 
 system " (says Arthur Young) " has no other tendency than that of driving 
 out of the kingdom all the personal wealth of the Catholics, and extinguish- 
 ing their industry within it ! and the face of the country, every object 
 which presents itself to travellers, tells him how effectually this has been 
 done." Young's Tcur in Ireland, vol. ii. p. 48. 
 
 Such is the history of Ireland for we are now at our own times ; and 
 the only remaining question is, whether the system of improvement and 
 conciliation begun in the reign of George III. shall be pursued, and the 
 remaining incapacities of the Catholics removed, or all these concessions 
 be made insignificant by an adherence to that spirit of proscription which 
 
 2 H
 
 482 MEMOIRS OF CAPTAIN ROCK. 
 
 they professed to abolish ? Looking to the sense and reason of the thing, 
 and to the ordinary working of humanity and justice, when assisted, as they 
 are here, by self-interest and worldly policy, it might seem absurd to doubt 
 of the result. But looking to the facts and the persons by which we are 
 now surrounded, we are constrained to say, that we greatly fear that these 
 incapacities never will be removed, till they are removed by fear. What 
 else, indeed, can we expect when we see them opposed by such enlightened 
 men as Mr Peel faintly assisted by men of such admirable genius as Mr 
 Canning, when Royal Dukes consider it as a compliment to the memory 
 of their father to continue this miserable system of bigotry and exclusion, 
 when men act ignominiously and contemptibly on this question, who do so 
 on no other question, when almost the only person zealously opposed to 
 this general baseness and fatuity are a few Whigs and Reviewers, or here 
 and there a virtuous poet like Mr Moore? We repeat again, that the 
 measure never will be effected but by fear. In the midst of one of our 
 just and necessary wars, the Irish Catholics will compel this country to 
 grant them a great deal more than they at present require, or even con- 
 template. We regret most severely the protraction of the disease, and 
 the danger of the remedy ; but in this way it is that human affairs are 
 carried on ! 
 
 We are sorry we have nothing for which to praise Administration on the 
 subject of the Catholic question but it is but justice to say, that they have 
 been very zealous and active in detecting fiscal abuses in Ireland, in improv- 
 ing mercantile regulations, and in detecting Irish jobs. The commission 
 on which Mr Wallace presided has been of the greatest possible utility, and 
 does infinite credit to the Government. The name of Mr Wallace, in any 
 commission, has now become a pledge to the public that there is a real 
 intention to investigate and correct abuse. He stands in the singular pre- 
 dicament of being equally trusted by the rulers and the ruled. It is a new 
 era in Government, when such men are called into action ; and, if there 
 were not proclaimed and fatal limits to that ministerial liberality which, 
 so far as it goes, we welcome without a grudge, and praise without a sneer 
 we might yet hope that, for the sake of mere consistency, they might be 
 led to falsify our forebodings. But alas ! there are motives more imme- 
 diate, and therefore irresistible ; and the time is not yet come, when it will 
 be believed easier to govern Ireland by the love of the many than by the 
 power of the few when the paltry and dangerous machinery of bigoted 
 faction and prostituted patronage may be dispensed with, and the vessel of 
 the state be propelled by the natural current of popular interests and the 
 breath of popular applause. In the mean time, we cannot resist the 
 temptation of gracing our conclusion with the following beautiful passage, 
 in which the author alludes to the hopes that were raised af. another great 
 era of partial concession and liberality that of the revolution of 1782, 
 when, also, benefits were conferred which proved abortive, because they 
 were incomplete and balm poured into the wound, where the envenomed 
 shaft was yet left to rankle. 
 
 "And here," says the gallant Captain Rock, " as the free confession of 
 weaknesses constitutes the chief charm and use of biography I will candidly 
 own that the dawn of prosperity and concord, which I now saw breaking 
 over the fortunes of my country, so dazzled and deceived my youthful eyes, 
 and so unsettled every hereditary notion of what I owed to my name and 
 family, that shall I confess it I even hailed with pleasure the prospects 
 of peace and freedom that seemed opening around me ; nay, was ready, in 
 the boyish enthusiasm of the moment, to sacrifice all my own personal
 
 BEN THAMES BOOK OF FALLACIES. 483 
 
 interest in all future riots and rebellions, to the one bright, seducing object 
 of my country's liberty and repose. 
 
 " When I contemplated such a man as the venerable Charlemont, whose 
 nobility was to the people like a fort over a valley elevated above them 
 solely for their defence ; who introduced the polish of the courtier into the 
 camp of the freeman, and served his country with all that pure, Platonic 
 devotion, which a true knight in the time of chivalry proffered to his mis- 
 tress ; when I listened to the eloquence of Grattan, the very music of 
 Freedom her first, fresh matin song, after a long night of slavery, degrada- 
 tion, and sorrow ; when I saw the bright offerings which he brought to the 
 shrine of his country, wisdom, genius, courage, and patience, invigorated 
 and embellished by all those social and domestic virtues, without which the 
 loftiest talents stand isolated in the moral waste around them, like the 
 pillars of Palmyra towering in a wilderness ! when I reflected on all this, 
 it not only disheartened me for the mission of discord which I had under- 
 taken, but made me secretly hope that it might be rendered unnecessary ; 
 and that a country, which could produce such men and achieve such a 
 revolution, might yet in spite of the joint efforts of the Government and 
 my family take her rank in the scale of nations, and be happy ! 
 
 " My father, however, who saw the momentary dazzle by which I was 
 affected, soon drew me out of this false light of hope in which I lay bask- 
 ing, and set the truth before me in a way but too convincing and ominous. 
 ' Be not deceived, boy,' he would say, ' by the fallacious appearances before 
 you. Eminently great and good as is the man to whom Ireland owes this 
 short era of glory, our work, believe me, will last longer than his. We 
 have a power on our side that " will not willingly let us die ;" and, long 
 after Grattan shall have disappeared from earth, like that arrow shot into 
 the clouds by Alcestes effecting nothing, but leaving a long train of light 
 behind him, the family of the ROCKS will continue to flourish in all their 
 native glory, upheld by the ever-watchful care of the Legislature, and fos- 
 tered by that "nursing-mother of Liberty," the Church.'" 
 
 BENTHAM ON FALLACIES. (E. REVIEW, 1825.) 
 
 The Book of Fallacies : from Unfinished Papers of Jeremy Bentham. By a Friend. 
 London: J. and H. L. Hunt 1824, 
 
 THERE are a vast number of absurd and mischievous fallacies, which pass 
 readily in the world for sense and virtue, while in truth they tend only to 
 fortify error and encourage crime. Mr Bentham has enumerated the most 
 conspicuous of these in the book before us. 
 
 "Whether it be necessary there should be a middleman between the culti- 
 vator and the possessor, learned economists have doubted ; but neither 
 gods, men, nor booksellers can doubt the necessity of a middleman between 
 Mr Bentham and the public. Mr Bentham is long ; Mr Bentham is occa- 
 sionally involved and obscure ; Mr Bentham invents new and alarming 
 expressions ; Mr Bentham loves division and subdivision and he loves 
 method itself, more than its consequences. Those only, therefore, who 
 know his originality, his knowledge, his vigour, and his boldness, will recur 
 to the works themselves. The grent mass of readers will not purchase 
 improvement at so dear a rate ; but will choose rather to become acquainted 
 with Mr Bentham through the medium of Reviews after that eminent 
 philosopher has been washed, trimmed, shaved, and forced into clean linen.
 
 484 BENTHAM'S BOOK OF FALLACIES. 
 
 One great use of a Review, indeed, is to make men wise in ten pages, who 
 have no appetite for a hundred pages ; to condense nourishment, to work 
 with pulp and essence, and to guard the stomach from idle burden and un- 
 meaning bulk. For half a page, sometimes for a whole page, Mr Bentham. 
 writes with a power which few can equal ; and by selecting and omitting, 
 an admirable style may be formed from the text. Using this liberty, we 
 shall endeavour to give an account of Mr Bentham's doctrines, for the 
 most part in his own words. Wherever any expression is particularly 
 happy, let it be considered to be Mr Bentham's : the dulness we take to 
 ourselves. 
 
 Our Wise Ancestors the Wisdom of our Ancestors the Wisdom of Ages 
 venerable Antiquity Wisdom of Old Times. This mischievous and 
 absurd fallacy springs from the grossest perversion of the meaning of words. 
 Experience is certainly the mother of wisdom, and the old have, of course, 
 a greater experience than the young ; but the question is, who are the 
 old? and who are the young? Of individuals living at the same period, 
 the oldest has, of course, the greatest experience ; but among generations ot 
 men the reverse of this is true. Those who come first (our ancestors), are 
 the young people, and have the least experience. We have added to their 
 experience the experience of many centuries ; and, therefore, as far as 
 experience goes, are wiser, and more capable of forming an opinion than 
 they were. The real feeling should be, not, can we be so presumptuous as 
 to put our opinions in opposition to those of our ancestors ? but can such 
 young, ignorant, inexperienced persons as our ancestors necessarily were, 
 be expected to have understood a subject as well as those who have seen so 
 much more, lived so much longer, and enjoyed the experience of so many 
 centuries ? All this cant, then, about our ancestors is merely an abuse of 
 words, by transferring phrases true of contemporary men to succeeding 
 ages. Whereas (as we have before observed) of living men the oldest has, 
 cceteris paribus, the most experience ; of generations, the oldest has, ctzterii 
 fiaribus, the least experience. Our ancestors, up to the Conquest, were 
 children in arms ; chubby boys in the time of Edward the First ; striplings 
 under Elizabeth ; men in the reign of Queen Anne ; and we only are the 
 white-bearded, silver-headed ancients, who have treasured up, and are pre- 
 pared to profit by, all the experience which human life can supply. We 
 are not disputing with our ancestors the palm of talent, in which they may 
 or may not be our superiors, but the palm of experience, in which it is 
 utterly impossible they can be our superiors. And yet, whenever the 
 Chancellor comes forward to protect some abuse, or to oppose some plan 
 which has the increase of human happiness for its object, his first appeal is 
 always to the wisdom of our ancestors ; and he himself, and many noble 
 lords who vote with him, are, to this hour, persuaded that all alterations 
 and amendments on their devices are an unblushing controversy between 
 youthful temerity and mature experience ! and so, in truth, they are only 
 that much-loved magistrate mistakes the young for the old, and the old fot 
 the young and is guilty of that very sin against experience which he attri- 
 butes to the lovers of innovation. 
 
 We cannot of course be supposed to maintain that our ancestors wanted 
 wisdom, or that they were necessarily mistaken in their institutions, because 
 their means of information were more limited than ours. But we do con- 
 fidently maintain that when we find it expedient to change any thing which 
 our ancestors have enacted, we are the experienced persons, and not they. 
 The quantity of talent is always varying in any great nation. To say that 
 we are more or less able than our ancestors, is an assertion that requires to 
 be explained. All the able men of all ages, who have ever lived in England,
 
 BENTHAM'S BOOK OF FALLACIES. 485 
 
 probably possessed, if taken altogether, more intellect than all the able 
 men now in England can boast of. But if authority must be resorted to 
 rather than reason, the question is, What was the wisdom of that single age 
 which enacted the law, compared with the wisdom of the age which pro- 
 poses to alter it ? What are the eminent men of one and the other period ? 
 If you say that our ancestors were wiser than us, mention your date and 
 year. If the splendour of names is equal, are the circumstances the same ? 
 If the circumstances are the same, we have a superiority of experience, of 
 which the difference between the two periods is the measure. It is necessary 
 to insist upon this ; for upon sacks of wool, and on benches forensic, sit 
 grave men, and agricolous persons in the Commons, crying out " Ancestors, 
 Ancestors ! hodie non ! Saxons, Danes, save us ! Fiddlefrig, help us ! 
 Howel, Ethelwolf, protect us ! " Any cover for nonsense any veil for 
 trash any pretext for repelling the innovations of conscience and of 
 duty! 
 
 " So long as they keep to vague generalities so long as the two objects 
 of comparison are each of them taken in the lump wise ancestors in one 
 lump, ignorant and foolish mob of modern times in the other the weakness 
 of the fallacy may escape detection. But let them assign for the period of 
 superior wisdom any determinate period whatsoever, not only will the 
 groundlessness of the notion be apparent (class being compared with class in 
 that period and the present one), but, unless the antecedent period be com- 
 paratively speaking a very modem one, so wide will be the disparity, and to 
 such an amount in favour of modern times, that, in comparison of the lowest 
 class of the people in modern times (always supposing them proficients in 
 the art of reading, and their proficiency employed in the reading of news- 
 papers), the very highest and best informed class of these wise ancestors will 
 turn out to be grossly ignorant. 
 
 "Take, for example, any year in the reign of Henry the Eighth, from 
 1509 to 1546. At that time the House of Lords would probably have been 
 in possession of by far the larger proportion of what little instruction the 
 age afforded : in the House of Lords, among the laity, it might even then be 
 a question whether, without exception, their lordships were all of them able 
 so much as to read. But even supposing them all in the fullest possession 
 of that useful art, political science being the science in question, what 
 instruction on the subject could they meet with at that time of clay? 
 
 " On no one branch of legislation was any book extant from which, with 
 regard to the circumstances of the then present times, any useful instruction 
 could be derived : distributive law, penal law, international law, political 
 economy, so far from existing as sciences, had scarcely obtained a name : 
 in all those departments under the head of quid faciendum, a mere blank : 
 the whole literature of the age consisted of a meagre chronicle or two, con- 
 taining short memorandums of the usual occurrences of war and peace, 
 battles, sieges, executions, revels, deaths, births, processions, ceremonies, 
 and other external events ; but with scarce a speech or an incident that 
 could enter into the composition of any such work as a history of the human 
 mind with scarce an attempt at investigation into causes, characters, or the 
 state of the people at large. Even when at last, little by little, a scrap or 
 two of political instruction came to be obtainable, the proportion of error 
 and mischievous doctrine mixed up with it was so great, that whether a blank 
 unfilled might not have been less prejudicial than a blank thus filled, may 
 reasonably be matter of doubt. 
 
 " If we come down to the reign of James the First, we shall find that 
 Solomon of his time eminently eloquent as well as learned, not only among
 
 486 BEXTHAArs BOOK OF FALLACIES. 
 
 crowned but among uncrowned heads, marking out for prohibition and 
 punishment the practices of devils and witches, and without any the 
 slightest objection on the part of the great characters of that day in their 
 high situations, consigning men to death and torment for the misfortune 
 of not being so well acquainted as he was with the composition of the 
 Godhead. 
 
 "Under the name of Exorcism the Catholic liturgy contains a fonn of 
 procedure for driving out devils ; even with the help of this instrument, 
 the operation cannot be performed with the desired success, but by an 
 operator qualified by holy orders for the working of this as well as so many 
 other wonders. In our days and in our country the same object is attained, 
 and beyond comparison more effectually, by so cheap an instrument as a 
 common newspaper : before this talisman, not only devils but ghosts, 
 vampires, witches, and all their kindred tribes, are driven out of the land, 
 never to return again ! The touch of holy water is not so intolerable to 
 them as the bare smell of printers' ink." (pp. 74 77.) 
 
 Fallacy of irrevocable Laws. A law, says Mr Bentham (no matter to 
 what effect) is proposed to a legislative assembly, who are called upon to 
 reject it, upon the single ground, that by those who in some former period 
 exercised the same power, a regulation was made, having for its object 
 to preclude for ever, or to the end of an unexpired period, all suc- 
 ceeding legislators from enacting a law to any such effect as that now pro- 
 posed. 
 
 Now it appears quite evident that, at every period of time, every Legis- 
 lature must be endowed with all those powers which" the exigency of the 
 times may require : and any attempt to infringe on this power is inadmissible 
 and absurd. The sovereign power, at any one period, can only fonn a 
 blind guess at the measures which may be necessary for any future period : 
 but by this principle of immutable laws, the government is transferred 
 from those who. are necessarily the best judges of what they want, to others 
 who can know little or nothing about the matter. The thirteenth century 
 decides for the fourteenth. The fourteenth makes laws for the fifteenth. 
 The fifteenth hermetically seals up the sixteenth, which tyrannises over the 
 seventeenth, which again tells the eighteenth how it is to act, under cir- 
 cumstances which cannot be foreseen, and how it is to conduct itself in 
 exigencies which no human wit can anticipate. 
 
 " Men who have a century more of experience to ground their judgments 
 on, surrender their intellect to men who had a century less experience, and 
 who, unless that deficiency constitutes a claim, have no claim to preference. 
 If the prior generation were, in respect of intellectual qualification, ever so 
 much superior to the subsequent generation if it understood so much 
 better than the subsequent generation itself the interest of that subsequent 
 generation could it have been in an equal degree anxious to promote that 
 interest, and consequently equally attentive to those facts with which, 
 though in order to form a judgment it ought to have been, it is impossible 
 that it should have been acquainted ? In a word, will its love for that 
 subsequent generation be quite so great as that same generation's love for 
 itself? 
 
 "Not even here, after a moment's deliberate reflection, will the assertion 
 be in the affirmative. And yet it is their prodigious anxiety for the welfare 
 of their posterity that produces the propensity of these sages to tie up the 
 hands of this same posterity for evermore to act as guardians to its
 
 BENTHAM'S BOOK OF FALLACIES. 4 Sy 
 
 perpetual and incurable weakness, and take its conduct for ever out of its 
 own hands. 
 
 "If it be right that the conduct of the igth century should be deter- 
 mined not by its own judgment, but by that of the l8th, it will be equally 
 right that the conduct of the 2Oth century should be determined, not by its 
 own judgment, but by that of the iQth. And if the same principle were 
 still pursued, what at length would be the consequence? that in process 
 of time the practice of legislation would be at an end. The conduct and 
 fate of all men would be determined by those who neither knew nor cared 
 any thing about the matter ; and the aggregate body of the Living would 
 remain for ever in subjection to an inexorable tyranny, exercised as it were 
 by the aggregate body of the Dead." (pp. 84 86.) 
 
 The despotism, as Mr Bentham well observes, of Nero or Caligula, 
 would be more tolerable than an irrevocable law. The despot, through fear 
 or favour, or in a lucid interval, might relent ; but how are the Parliament, 
 who made the Scotch Union, for example, to be awakened from that dust 
 in which they repose the jobber and the patriot, the speaker and the 
 doorkeeper, the silent voters and the men of rich allusions Cannings and 
 cultivators, Barings and beggars making irrevocable laws for men who 
 toss their remains about with spades, and use the relics of these legis- 
 lators, to give breadth to broccoli, and to aid the vernal eruption o! 
 asparagus ? 
 
 If the law be good, it will support itself ; if bad, it should not be sup- 
 ported by the irrevocable theory, which is never resorted to but as the veil of 
 abuses. All living men must possess the supreme power over their own 
 happiness at every particular period. To suppose that there is any thing 
 which a whole nation cannot do, which they deem to be essential to their 
 happiness, and that they cannot do it, because anotlier generation, long ago 
 dead and gone, said it must not be done, is mere nonsense. While you are 
 captain of the vessel, do what you please ; but the moment you quit the 
 ship, I become as omnipotent as you. You may leave me as much advice 
 as you please, but you cannot leave me commands ; though, in fact, this is 
 the only meaning which can be applied to what are called irrevocable laws. 
 It appeared to the Legislature for the time being to be of immense import- 
 ance to make such and such a law. Great good was gained, or great evil 
 avoided by enacting it. Pause before you alter an institution which has been 
 deemed to be of so much importance. This is prudence and common sense ; 
 the rest is the exaggeration of fools, or the artifice of knaves, who eat up 
 fools. What endless nonsense has been talked of our navigation laws ! 
 What wealth has been sacrificed to either before they were repealed ! How 
 impossible it appeared to Noodledom to repeal them ! They were con- 
 sidered of the irrevocable class a kind of law over which the dead only 
 were omnipotent, and the living had no power. Frost, it is true, cannot 
 be put off by act of Parliament, nor can Spring be accelerated by any 
 majority of both Houses. It is however quite a mistake to suppose that 
 any alteration of any of the Articles of Union is as much out of the jurisdic- 
 tion of Parliament as these meteorological changes. In every year, and 
 every day of that [year, living men have a right to make their own laws, 
 and manage their own affairs ; to break through the tyranny of the ante- 
 spirants the people who breathed before them, and to do what they please 
 for themselves. Such supreme power cannot indeed be well exercised by 
 the people at large ; it must be exercised therefore by the delegates, or 
 Parliament whom the people choose ; and such Parliament, disregarding
 
 488 BENTHAM^S BOOK OF FALLACIES. 
 
 the superstitious reverence for irrevocable laws, can have no other criterion 
 of wrong and right than that of public utility. 
 
 When a law is considered as immutable, and the immutable law happens 
 at the same time to be too foolish and mischievous to be endured, instead 
 of being repealed, it is clandestinely evaded, or openly violated ; and thus 
 the authority of all law is weakened. 
 
 Where a nation has been ancestorially bound by foolish and improvident 
 treaties, ample notice must be given of their termination. Where the state 
 has made ill-advised grants, or rash bargains with individuals, it is necessary 
 to grant proper compensation. The most difficult case, certainly, is that 
 of the union of nations, where a smaller number of the weaker nation is 
 admitted into the larger senate of the greater nation, and will be over- 
 powered if the question come to a vote ; but the lesser nation must run this 
 risk ; it is not probable that any violation of articles will take place, till 
 they are absolutely called for by extreme necessity. But let the danger be 
 what it may, no danger is so great, no supposition so foolish, as to consider 
 any human law as irrevocable. The shifting attitude of human affairs 
 would often render such a condition an intolerable evil to all parties. The 
 absurd jealousy of our countrymen at the Union secured heritable jurisdic- 
 tion to the owners ; nine and thirty years afterwards they were abolished, 
 in the very teeth of the Act of Union, and to the evident promotion of the 
 public good. 
 
 Continuity of a Law by Oath. The Sovereign of England at his Corona- 
 tion takes an oath to maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the 
 Gospel, and the Protestant religion, as established by law, and to preserve 
 to the Bishops and Clergy of this realm the rights and privileges which by 
 law appertain to them, and to preserve inviolate the doctrine, discipline, 
 worship, and government of the Church. It has been suggested that by 
 this oath the King stands precluded from granting those indulgences to the 
 Irish Catholics, which are included in the bill for their emancipation. The 
 true meaning of these provisions is of course to be decided, if doubtful, 
 by the same legislative authority which enacted them. But a different 
 notion it seems is now afloat. The King for the time being (we are putting 
 an imaginary case) thinks as an individual, that he is not maintaining the 
 doctrine, discipline, and rights of the Church of England, if he grant any 
 extension of civil rights to those who are not members of that Church, that 
 he is violating his oath by so doing. This oath, then, according to this 
 reasoning, is the great palladium of the Church. As long as it remains invio- 
 late the Church is safe. How then can any monarch who has taken it ever 
 consent to repeal it ? How can he, consistently with his oath for the pre- 
 servation of the privileges of the Church, contribute his part to throw down 
 so strong a bulwark as he deems his oath to be ! The oath, then, cannot 
 be altered. It must remain under all circumstances of society the same. 
 The King, who has taken it, is bound to continue it, and to refuse his 
 sanction to any bill for its future alteration ; because it prevents him, and, 
 he must needs think, will prevent others, from granting dangerous immuni- 
 ties to the enemies of the Church. 
 
 Here, then, is an irrevocable law a piece of absurd tyranny exercised by 
 the rulers of Queen Anne's time upon the government of 1825 a certain 
 art of potting and preserving a kingdom, in one shape, attitude, and flavour 
 and m this way it is that an institution appears like old Ladies' Sweet- 
 meats and made Wines Apricot Jam 1822 Currant Wine 1819 Court of 
 Chancery 1427 Penal Laws against Catholics 1676. The difference is, 
 that the Ancient Woman is a better judge of mouldy commodities than the 
 liberal part of his Majesty'r, Ministers. The potting lady goes sniffing
 
 BEN THAMES BOOK OF FALLACIES. 489 
 
 $.bout and admitting light and air to prevent the progress of decay ; while 
 to him of the Woolsack, all seems doubly dear in proportion as it is anti- 
 quated, worthless, and unusable. It ought not to be in the power of the 
 Sovereign to tie up his own hands, much less the hands of his successors. 
 If the Sovereign be to oppose his own opinion to that of the two other 
 branches of the legislature, and himself to decide what he considers to be 
 for the benefit of the Protestant Church, and what not, a king who has 
 spent his whole life in the frivolous occupation of a court, may, by perver- 
 sion of understanding, conceive measures most salutary to the Church to be 
 most pernicious ; and persevering obstinately in his own error, may frus- 
 trate the wisdom of his parliament, and perpetuate the most inconceivable 
 folly ! If Henry VIII. had argued in this manner, we should have had 
 ho Reformation. If George III. had always argued in this manner, the 
 Catholic Code would never have been relaxed. And thus, a king, how- 
 ever incapable of forming an opinion upon serious subjects, has nothing to 
 do but to pronounce the word Conscience, and the whole power of the coun- 
 try is at his feet. 
 
 Can there be greater absurdity than to say that a man is acting contrary 
 to his conscience who surrenders his opinion upon any subject to those who 
 must understand the subject better than himself? I think my ward has a 
 claim to the estate ; but the best lawyers tell me he has none. I think my 
 son capable of undergoing the fatigues of a military life ; but the best phy- 
 sicians say he is much too weak. My Parliament say this measure will do 
 the Church no harm ; but I think it very pernicious to the Church. Am I 
 acting contrary to my conscience because I apply much higher intellectual 
 powers than my own to the investigation and protection of these high 
 interests ? 
 
 " According to the form in which it is conceived, any such engagement 
 is in effect either a check or a licence : a licence under the appearance of 
 a check, and for that very reason but the more efficiently operative. 
 
 " Chains to the man in power? Yes : but only such as he figures with 
 on the stage : to the spectators as imposing, to himself as light as possible. 
 Modelled by the wearer to suit his own purposes, they serve to rattle, but 
 not to restrain. 
 
 " Suppose a king of Great Britain and Ireland to have expressed his 
 fixed determination, in the event of any proposed law being tendered to 
 him for his assent, to refuse such assent, and this not on the persuasion 
 that the law would not be ' for the utility of the subjects,' but that by his 
 coronation oath he stands precluded from so doing : the course proper to 
 be taken by parliament, the course pointed out by principle and precedent, 
 would be, a vote of abdication : a vote declaring the king to have abdi- 
 cated his royal authority, and that, as in case of death or incurable mental 
 derangement, now is the time for the person next in succession to take his 
 place. 
 
 "In the celebrated case in which a vote to this effect was actually passed, 
 the declaration of abdication was in lawyers' language a fiction in plain 
 truth a falsehood and that falsehood a mockery ; not a particle of his 
 power was it the wish of James to abdicate, to part with ; but to increase it 
 to a maximum was the manifest object of all his efforts. But in the case 
 here supposed, with respect to a part, and that a principal part, of the royal 
 authority, the will and purpose to abdicate is actually declared : and this, 
 being such a part, without which the remainder cannot, ' to the utility ol 
 the subjects,' be exercised, the remainder must of necessity be, on their 
 part, and for their sake, added." (pp. no, in.)
 
 490 BENTHAM'S BOOK OF FALLACIES. 
 
 Stlf-trumpetei' s Fallacy. Mr Bcntham explains the self-trumpeter's fal- 
 lacy as follows : 
 
 " There are certain men in office who, in discharge of their functions, 
 arrogate to themselves a degree of probity, which is to exclude all imputa- 
 tions and all inquiry. Their assertions are to be deemed equivalent to 
 proof ; their virtues are guarantees for the faithful discharge of their duties ; 
 and the most implicit confidence is to be reposed in them on all occasions. 
 If you expose any abuse, propose any reform, call for securities, inquiry, or 
 measures to promote publicity, they set Jup a cry of surprise, amounting 
 almost to indignation, as if their integrity were questioned, or their honour 
 wounded. With all .this, they dexterously mix up intimations, that the 
 most exalted patriotism, honour, and perhaps religion, are the only sources 
 of all their actions." (p. 120.) 
 
 Of course every man will try what he can effect by these means ; but (as 
 Mr Bentham observes) if there be any one maxim in politics more certain 
 than another, it is that no possible degree of virtue in the governor can ren- 
 der it expedient for the governed to dispense with good laws and good 
 institutions. Madame de Stael (to her disgrace) said to the Emperor of 
 Russia, "Sire, your character is a constitution for your country, and your 
 conscience its guarantee." His reply was, " Quand cela serai t, je ne serais 
 jamais qu'un accident heureux ; " and this we think one of the truest and 
 most brilliant replies ever made by monarch. 
 
 Laudatory Personalities. "The object of laudatory personalities is to 
 effect the rejection of a measure on account of the alleged good character of 
 those who oppose it : and the argument advanced is, ' The measure is ren- 
 dered unnecessary by the virtues of those who are in power their opposition 
 is a sufficient authority for the rejection of the measure. The measure pro- 
 posed implies a distrust of the members of His Majesty's Government ; but 
 so great is their integrity, so complete their disinterestedness, so uniformly 
 do they prefer the public advantage to their own, that such a measure is 
 altogether unnecessary. Their disapproval is sufficient to warrant an oppo- 
 sition ; precautions can only be requisite where danger is apprehended: 
 here, the high character of the individuals in question is a sufficient guarantee 
 against any ground of alarm. '" (pp. 123, 124.) 
 
 The panegyric goes on increasing with the dignity of the lauded person. 
 All are honourable and delightful men. The person who opens the door of 
 the office is a person of approved fidelity ; the junior clerk is a model of 
 assiduity ; all the clerks are models seven years' models, eight years' 
 models, nine years' models and upwards. The first clerk is a paragon 
 and ministers the very perfection of probity and intelligence ; and as for the 
 highest magistrate of the state, no adulation is equal to describe the extent of 
 his various merits ! It is too condescending perhaps to refute such folly as this. 
 But we would just observe, that if the propriety of the measure in question 
 be established by direct arguments, these must be at least as conclusive 
 against the character of those who oppose it, as their character can be 
 against the measure. 
 
 The effect of such an argument is, to give men of good or reputed good 
 character, the power of putting a negative on any question not agreeable 
 to their inclinations. 
 
 " In every public trust, the legislator should, for the purpose of preven-
 
 BENTHAM'S BOOK OF FALLACIES. 491 
 
 tion, suppose the trustee disposed to break the trust in every imaginable way 
 in which it would be possible for him to reap, from the breach of it, any 
 personal advantage. This is the principle on which public institutions 
 ought to be formed ; and when it is applied to all men indiscriminately, it 
 is injurious to none. The practical inference is, to oppose to such possible 
 (and what will always be probable) breaches of trust, every bar that can be 
 opposed, consistently with the power requisite for the efficient and due dis- 
 charge of the trust. Indeed, these arguments, drawn from the supposed 
 virtues of men in power, are opposed to the first principles on which all 
 laws proceed. 
 
 " Such allegations of individual virtue are never supported by specific 
 proof, are scarce ever susceptible of specific disproof; and specific dis- 
 proof, if offered, could not be admitted in either House of Parliament. 
 If attempted elsewhere, the punishment would fall, not on the unworthy 
 tnistee, but on him by whom the unworthiness had been proved." (pp. 
 125, 126.) 
 
 Fallacies of pretended danger. Imputation of bad design of bad char- 
 acter of bad motives of inconsistency of suspicious connections. 
 
 The object of this class of fallacies is to draw aside attention from the 
 measure to the man, and this in such a manner, that, for some real or sup- 
 posed defect in the author of the measure, a corresponding defect shall be 
 imputed to the measure itself. Thus, "the author of the measure enter- 
 tains a bad design ; therefore the measure is bad. His character is bad, 
 therefore the measure is bad ; his motive is bad, I will vote against the 
 measure. On former occasions, this same person who proposed the measure 
 was its enemy, therefore the measure is bad. He is on a footing of inti- 
 macy with this or that dangerous man, or has been seen in his company, 
 or is suspected of entertaining some of his opinions, therefore the measure 
 is bad. He bears a name that at a former period was borne by a set of 
 men now no more, by whom bad principles were entertained therefore the 
 measure is bad ! " 
 
 Now, if the measure be really inexpedient, why not at once show it to be 
 so ? If the measure be good, is it bad because a bad man is its author? If 
 bad, is it good because a good man has produced it ? What are these argu- 
 ments, but to say to the assembly who are to be the judges of any measure, 
 that their imbecility is too great to allow them to judge of the measure by 
 its own merits, and that they must have recourse to distant and feebler pro- 
 babilities for that purpose ? 
 
 " In proportion to the degree of efficiency with which a man suffers tKese 
 instruments of deception to operate upon his mind he enables bad men to 
 exercise over him a sort of power, the thought of which ought to cover him 
 with shame. Allow this argument the effect of a conclusive one, you put 
 it into the power of any man to draw you at pleasure from the support of 
 every measure, which in your own eyes is good, to force you to give your 
 support to any and every measure which in your own eyes is bad. Is it 
 good? the bad man embraces it, and, by the supposition, you reject it 
 Is it bad? he vituperates it, and that suffices for driving you into its em- 
 brace. You split upon the rocks, because he has avoided them ; you miss 
 the harbour, because he has steered into it ! Give yourself up to any such 
 blind antipathy, you are no less in the power of your adversaries, than if, 
 by a correspondently irrational sympathy and obsequiousness, you put your- 
 self into the power of your friends." (pp. 132, 133.) 
 
 " Besides, nothing but laborious application, and a clear and comprehen-
 
 492 BENTHAM'S BOOK OF FALLACIES. 
 
 sive intellect, can enable a man, on any given subject, to employ successfully 
 relevant arguments drawn from the subject itself. To employ personalities, 
 neither labour nor intellect is required. In this sort of contest, the most 
 idle and the most ignorant are quite on a par with, if not superior to, the 
 most industrious and the most highly-gifted individuals. Nothing can be 
 more convenient for those who would speak without the trouble of thinking. 
 The same ideas are brought forward over and over again, and all that is 
 required is to vary the turn of expression. Close and relevant arguments 
 have very little hold on the passions, and serve rather to quell than to 
 inflame them ; while in personalities there is always something stimulant, 
 whether on the part of him who praises or him who blames. Praise forms 
 a kind of connection between the party praising and the party praised, and 
 vituperation gives an air of courage and independence to the party who 
 blames. 
 
 ' ' Ignorance and indolence, friendship and enmity, concurring and con- 
 flicting interest, servility and independence, all conspire to give personalities 
 the ascendency they so unhappily maintain. The more we lie under the 
 influence of our own passions, the more we rely on others being affected in 
 a similar degree. A man who can repel these injuries with dignity, may 
 often convert them into triumph : ' Strike me, but hear,' says he, and the 
 fury of his antagonist redounds to his own discomfiture." (pp. 141, 142.) 
 
 No Innovation I To say that all new things are bad, is to"say that all old 
 things were bad in their commencement : for of all the old things ever seen 
 or heard of, there is not one that was not once new. Whatever is now 
 establishment was once innovation. The first inventor of pews and parish 
 clerks, was no doubt considered as a Jacobin in his day. Judges, juries, 
 criers of the court, are all the inventions of ardent spirits, who filled the 
 world with alarm, and were considered as the great precursors of ruin and 
 dissolution. No inoculation, no turnpikes, no reading, no writing, no 
 popery ! The fool sayeth in his heart, and crieth with his mouth, " I will 
 have nothing new 1 " 
 
 Fallacy of Distrust!" What's at the Bottom?" This fallacy begins 
 with a virtual admission of the propriety of the measure considered in itself, 
 and thus demonstrates its own futility, and cuts up from under itself the 
 ground which it endeavours to make. A measure is to be rejected for 
 something that, by bare possibility, may be found amiss in some other 
 measure ! This is vicarious reprobation ; upon this principle Herod insti- 
 tuted his massacre. It is the argument of a driveller to other drivellers 
 who says, We are not able to decide upon the evil when it arises our only 
 safe way is to act upon the general apprehension of evil. 
 
 Official Malefactor's Screen. "Attack us -you attack Govtrnment." 
 
 If this notion is acceded to, every one who derives at present any advan- 
 tage from misrule has it in fee-simple ; and all abuses, present and future, 
 are without remedy. So long as there is any thing amiss in conducting the 
 business of government, so long as it can be made better, there can be no 
 other mode of bringing it nearer to perfection, than the indication of such 
 imperfections as at the time being exist. 
 
 " But so far is it from being true that a man's aversion or contempt for 
 the hands by which the powers of Government, or even for the system 
 under which they are exercised, is a proof of his aversion or contempt 
 towards Government itself, that, even in proportion to the strength of that 
 aversion or contempt, it is a proof of the opposite affection. What, in 
 consequence of such contempt or aversion, he wishes for, is, not that there
 
 BENTHAM'S BOOK OF FALLACIES. 493 
 
 l>e no hands at all to exercise these powers, but that the hands may be 
 better regulated ; not that those powers should not be exercised at all, but 
 that they should be better exercised ; not that in the exercise of them, no 
 rules at all should be pursued, but that the rules by which they are exercised 
 should be a better set of rules. 
 
 " All government is a trust ; every branch of government is a trust ; and 
 immemorially acknowledged so to be : it is only by the magnitude of the 
 scale that public differ from private trusts. I complain of the conduct of a 
 person in the character of guardian, as domestic guardian, having the care 
 of a minor or insane person. In so doing, do I say that guardianship is a 
 bad institution ? Does it enter into the head of any one to suspect me of so 
 doing ? I complain of an individual in the character of a commercial agent, 
 or assignee of the effects of an insolvent. In so doing, do I say that com- 
 mercial agency is a bad thing ? that the practice of vesting in the hands of 
 trustees or assignees the effects of an insolvent, for the purpose of their being 
 divided among his creditors, is a bad practice ? Does any such conceit ever 
 enter into the head of man, as that of suspecting me of so doing?" (pp. 
 162, 163.) 
 
 There are no complaints against government in Turkey no motions in 
 Parliament, no Morning Chronicles, and no Edinburgh Reviews : yet of all 
 countries in the world, it is that in which revolts and revolutions are the 
 most frequent. 
 
 It is so far from true, that no good government can exist consistently with 
 such disclosure, that no good government can exist without it. It is quite 
 obvious, to all who are capable of reflection, that by no other means than 
 by lowering the governors in the estimation of the people, can there be hope 
 or chance of beneficial change. To infer from this wise endeavour to lessen 
 the existing rulers in the estimation of the people, a wish of dissolving the 
 government, is either artifice or error. The physician who intentionally 
 weakens the patient by bleeding him has no intention he should perish. 
 
 The greater the quantity of respect a man receives, independently of good 
 conduct, the less good is his behaviour likely to be. It is the interest, there- 
 fore, of the public, in the case of each, to see that the respect paid to him 
 should, as completely as possible, depend upon the goodness of his behaviour 
 in the execution of his trust But it is, on the contrary, the interest of the 
 trustee, that the respect, the money, or any other advantage he receives in 
 virtue of his office, should be as great, as secure, and as independent of 
 conduct as possible. Soldiers expect to be shot at ; public men must expect 
 to be attacked, and sometimes unjustly. It keeps up the habit of consider- 
 ing their conduct as exposed to scrutiny ; on the part of the people at large, 
 it keeps alive the expectation of witnessing such attacks, and the habit of 
 looking out for them. The friends and supporters of government have 
 always greater facility in keeping and raising it up, than its adversaries have 
 for lowering it. 
 
 Accusation-scarer's Device. "Infamy must attach somewhere." 
 
 This fallacy consists in representing the character of a calumniator as 
 necessarily and justly attaching upon him who, having made a charge of 
 misconduct against any person possessed of political power or influence, 
 fails of producing evidence sufficient for their conviction. 
 
 "If taken as a general proposition, applying to all public accusations, 
 nothing can be more mischievous as well as fallacious. Supposing the 
 charge unfounded, the delivery of it may have been accompanied with 
 nala JiJes (consciousness of its injustice), with Umerity only, or it may
 
 494 BENTHAM'S BOOK OF FALLACIES. 
 
 have been perfectly blameless. It is in the first case alone that infamy can 
 with propriety attach upon him who brings it forward. A charge really 
 groundless may have been honestly belici'ed to be well founded, i.e. believed 
 with a sort of provisional credence, sufficient for the purpose of engaging a 
 man to do his part towards the bringing about an investigation, but without 
 sufficient reasons. But a charge may be perfectly groundless without attach- 
 ing the smallest particle of blame upon him who brings it forward. Suppose 
 him to have heard from one or more, presenting themselves to him in the 
 character of percipient witnesses, a story, which, either in Mo, or perhaps 
 only in circumstances, though in circumstances of the most material import- 
 ance, should prove false and mendacious how is the person who hears 
 this, and acts accordingly, to blame? What sagacity can enable a man 
 previously to legal investigation, a man who has no power that can enable 
 him to insure correctness or completeness on the part of this extrajudicia! 
 testimony, to guard against deception in such a case?" (pp. 185, 186.) 
 
 Fallacy 'of False Consolation. " What is the matter with you? What 
 would you hare? Look at the people there, and there; think funv much 
 better off you are than they are. Your prosperity and liberty are objects of 
 their envy ; your institutions models of their imitation. " 
 
 It is not the desire to look to the bright side that is blamed : but when 
 a particular suffering, produced by an assigned cause, has been pointed out, 
 the object of many apologists is to turn the eyes of inquirers and judges 
 into any other quarter in preference. If a man's tenants were to come with 
 a general encomium on the prosperity of the country, instead of a specified 
 sum, would it be accepted? In a court of justice, in an action for damages, 
 did ever any such device occur as that of pleading assets in the hands of a 
 third person? There is, in fact, no country so poor and so wretched in 
 every element of prosperity, in which matter for this argument might not 
 be found. Were the prosperity of the country tenfold as great as at present, 
 the absurdity of the argument would not in the least degree be lessened. 
 Why should the smallest evil be endured, which can be cured, because 
 others suffer patiently under greater evils ? Should the smallest improve- 
 ment attainable be neglected, because others remain contented in a state of 
 still greater inferiority ? 
 
 " Seriously and pointedly in the character of a bar to any measure of 
 relief, no, nor to the most trivial improvement, can it ever be employed. 
 Suppose a bill brought in for converting an impassable road any where into 
 a passable one, would any man stand up to oppose it who could find 
 nothing better to urge against it than the multitude and goodness of the 
 roads we have already ? No : when in the character of a serious bar to the 
 measure in hand, be that measure what it may, an argument so palpably 
 inapplicable is employed, it can only be for the purpose of creating a 
 diversion ; of turning aside the minds of men from the subject really in 
 hand, to a picture, which by its beauty, it is hoped, may engross the atten- 
 tion of the assembly, and make them forget for the moment for what pur- 
 pose they came there." (pp., 196, 197.) 
 
 The Quielist, or no Complaint. " A new law or measure being proposed 
 in the character of a remedy for some incontestable abuse or evil, an objec- 
 tion is frequently started to the following effect : ' The measure is unne- 
 cessary. Nobody complains of disorder in that shape, in which it is the 
 aim of your measure to propose a remedy to it. But even when no cause 
 of complaint has been found to exist, especially under governments which 
 admit of complaints, men have in general not been slow to complain j much
 
 BENTHAM'S BOOK OF FALLACIES. 495 
 
 less where any just cause of complaint has existed.' The argument amounts 
 to this : Nobody complains, therefore nobody suffers. It amounts to a 
 veto on all measures of precaution or prevention, and goes to establish a 
 maxim in legislation directly opposed to the most ordinary prudence of 
 common life ; it enjoins us to build no parapets to a bridge till the number 
 of accidents has raised an universal clamour. (pp. 190, 191.) 
 
 Procrastinator's Argument. " Wait a little, f/iis is not the time." 
 This is the common argument of men, who, being in reality hostile to a 
 measure, are ashamed or afraid of appearing to be so. To-day is the plea 
 eternal exclusion commonly the object. It is the same sort of quirk as a 
 plea of abatement in law which is never employed but on the side of a 
 dishonest defendant, whose hope it is to obtain an ultimate triumph, by 
 overwhelming his adversary with despair, impoverishment, and lassitude. 
 Which is the properest day to do good? which is the properest day to 
 remove a nuisance ? we answer, the very first day a man can be found to 
 propose the removal of it ; and whoever opposes the removal of it on that 
 day will (if he dare) oppose it on every other. There is in the minds of 
 many feeble friends to virtue and improvement, an imaginary period for the 
 removal of evils, which it would certainly be worth while to wait for, if 
 there was the smallest chance of its ever arriving a period of unexampled 
 peace and prosperity, when a patriotic king and an enlightened mob united 
 their ardent efforts for the amelioration of human affairs ; when the oppressor 
 is as delighted to give up the oppression, as the oppressed is to be liberated 
 from it ; when the difficulty and the unpopularity would be to continue the 
 evil, not to abolish it ! These arc the periods when fair-weather philoso- 
 phers are willing to venture out, and hazard a little for the general good, 
 but the history of human nature is so contrary to all this, that almost all 
 improvements are made after the bitterest resistance, and in the midst of 
 tumults and civil violence the worst period at which they can be made, 
 compared to which any period is eligible, and should be seized hold of by 
 the friends of salutary reform. 
 
 StiaiTs Pace Argument. " One thing at a time! Not too fast I Slffiu 
 and sure ! Importance of the business extreme difficulty of the business 
 clanger of innovation need of caution and circumspection impossibility 
 of foreseeing all consequences danger of precipitation every thing should 
 be gradual one thing at a time this is not the time great occupation at 
 present wait for more leisure people well satisfied no petitions pre- 
 sented no complaints heard no such mischief has yet taken place stay 
 till it has taken place ! Such is the prattle which the magpie in office, 
 who, understanding nothing, yet understands that he must have something 
 to say on every subject, shouts out among his auditors as a succedaneum to 
 thought." (pp. 203, 204.) 
 
 Vague Generalities. Vague generalities comprehend a numerous class of 
 fallacies resorted to by those who, in preference to the determinate expres- 
 sions which they might use, adopt others more vague and indeterminate. 
 
 Take, for instance, the terms government, laws, morals, religion. Every 
 body will admit that there are in the world bad governments, bad laws, 
 bad morals, and bad religions. The bare circumstance, therefore, of being 
 engaged in exposing the defects of government, law, morals, and religion, 
 does not of itself afford the slightest presumption that a writer is engaged 
 in any thing blamable. If his attack be only directed against that which is 
 bad in each, his efforts may be productive of good to any extent. This
 
 496 BENTHA&rS BOOK OF FALLACIES. 
 
 essential distinction, however, the defender of abuses uniformly takes care 
 to keep out of sight j and boldly imputes to his antagonists an intention to 
 subvert all government, law, morals, and religion. Propose any thing with 
 a view to the improvement of the existing practice, in relation to law, 
 government, and religion, he will treat you with an oration upon the 
 necessity and utility of law, government, and religion. Among the several 
 cloudy appellatives which have been commonly employed as cloaks for 
 misgovernment, there is none more conspicuous in this atmosphere of illu- 
 sion than the word order. As often as any measure is brought forward 
 which has for its object to lessen the sacrifice made by the many to the few, 
 social order is the phrase commonly opposed to its progress. 
 
 "By a defalcation made from any part of the mass of factitious delay, 
 vexation, and expense, out of which, and in proportion to which, lawyers' 
 profit is made to flow by any defalcation made from the mass of needless 
 and worse than useless emolument to office, with or without service or pre- 
 tence of service by any addition endeavoured to be made to the quantity, 
 or improvement in the quality of service rendered, or time bestowed in ser- 
 vice rendered in return for such emolument by every endeavour that has 
 for its object the persuading the people to place their fate at the disposal of 
 any other agents than those in whose hands breach of trust is certain, due 
 fulfilment of it morally and physically impossible social order is said to be 
 endangered, and threatened to be destroyed." (p. 234.) 
 
 In the same way Establishment is a word in use to protect the bad parts 
 of establishments, by charging those who wish to remove or alter them, with 
 a wish to subvert all good establishments. 
 
 Mischievous fallacies also circulate from the convertible use of what Mr 
 B. is pleased to call dyslogistic and eulogistic terms. Thus a vast concern 
 is expressed for the liberty of the press, and the utmost abhorrence for its 
 licentiousness : but then, by the licentiousness of the press is meant every 
 disclosure by- which any abuse is brought to light and exposed to shame 
 by the liberty of the press is meant only publications from which no such 
 inconvenience is to be apprehended j and the fallacy consists in employing 
 the sham approbation of liberty as a mask for the real opposition to all free 
 discussion. To write a pamphlet so ill that nobody will read it ; to anim- 
 advert in terms so weak and insipid upon great evils, that no disgust is 
 excited at the vice, and no apprehension in the evil doer, is a fair use of the 
 liberty of the press, andis not only pardoned by the friends of government, 
 but draws from them the most fervent eulogium. The licentiousness of the 
 press consists in doing the thing boldly and well, in striking terror into the 
 guilty, and in rousing the attention of the public to the defence of their 
 highest interests. This is the licentiousness of the press held in the greatest 
 horror by timid and corrupt men, and punished by semianimous semicada- 
 verous judges, with a captivity of many years. In the same manner the 
 dyslogistic and eulogistic fallacies are used in the case of reform. 
 
 "Between all abuses whatsoever, there exists that connection between 
 all persons who see each of them, any one abuse in which an advantage 
 results to himself, there exists, in point of interest, that close and sufficiently 
 understood connection, of which intimation has been given already. To 
 no one abuse can correction be administered without endangering the exist* 
 ence of every other. 
 
 "If, then, with this inward determination not to suffer, so far as depends 
 upon himself, the adoption of any reform which he is able to prevent, it^hould
 
 BENTHAM'S BOOK OF FALLACIES. 497 
 
 seem to him necessary or advisable to put on for a cover, the profession or 
 appearance of a desire to contribute to such reform in pursuance of the 
 device or fallacy here in question, he will represent that which goes by the 
 name of reform as distinguishable into two species ; one of them a fit subject 
 for approbation, the other for disapprobation. That which he thus professes 
 to have marked for approbation, he will accordingly, for the expression of 
 such approbation, characterise by some adjunct of the etdogistic cast, such as 
 moderate, for example, or temperate, or practical, or practicable. 
 
 " Tio the other of these nominally distinct species, he will, at the same 
 time, attach some adjunct of the dyslogistic cast, such as violent, intemperate, 
 extravagant, outrageous, theoretical, speculative, and so forth. 
 
 " Thus, then, in profession and to appearance, there are in his conception 
 of the matter two distinct and opposite species of reform, to one of which 
 his approbation, to the other his disapprobation, is attached. But the 
 species to which his approbation is attached is an empty species a species 
 in which no individual is, or is intended to be, contained. 
 
 "The species to which his disapprobation is attached is, on the contrary, 
 a crowded species, a receptacle in which the whole contents of the genus 
 of the genus Reform are intended to be included." (pp. 277, 278.) 
 
 Anti-rational Fallacies. When reason is in opposition to a man's interests, 
 his study will naturally be to render the faculty itself, and whatever issues 
 from it, an object of hatred and contempt. The sarcasm and other figures 
 of speech employed on the occasion are directed not merely against reason 
 but against thought, as if there were something in the faculty of thought 
 that rendered the exercise of it incompatible with useful and successful 
 practice. Sometimes a plan, which would not suit the official person's 
 interest, is without more ado pronounced a speculative one ; and, by this 
 observation, all need of rational and deliberate discussion is considered to 
 be superseded. The first effort of the corruptionist is to fix the epithet 
 Speculative upon any scheme which he thinks may cherish the spirit of 
 reform. The expression is hailed with the greatest delight by bad and 
 feeble men, and repeated with the most unwearied energy ; and to the 
 word Speculative, by way of reinforcement, are added, theoretical, visionary, 
 chimerical, romantic, Utopian. 
 
 " Sometimes a distinction is taken, and thereupon a concession made. 
 The plan is good in theory, but it would be bad in practice, i.e. its being 
 good in theory does not hinder its being bad in practice. 
 
 " Sometimes, as if in consequence of a farther progress made in the art 
 of irrationality, the plan is pronounced to be too good to be practicable ; and 
 its being so good as it is, is thus represented as the very cause of its being 
 bad in practice. 
 
 "In short, such is the perfection at which this art is at length arrived, 
 that the very circumstance of a plan's being susceptible of the appellation 
 of a plan, has been gravely stated as a circumstance sufficient to warrant its 
 being rejected : rejected, if not with hatred, at any rate with a sort of 
 accompaniment, which, to the million, is commonly felt still more galling 
 with contempt." (p. 296.) 
 
 There is a propensity to push theory too far ; but what is the just infer- 
 ence? not that theoretical propositions (i.e. all propositions of any consider- 
 able comprehension or extent) should, from such their extent, be considered 
 to be false in toto, but only that, in the particular case, inquiry should be 
 made whether, supposing the proposition to be in the character of a rule 
 
 2 I
 
 jo8 BENTHAM'S BOOK OF FALLACIES. 
 
 generally true, an exception ought to be taken out of it. It might almost 
 be imagined that there was something wicked or unwise in the exercise of 
 thought; for everybody feels a necessity for disclaiming it. "I am not 
 given to speculation, I am no friend to theories." Can a man disclaim 
 theory, can he disclaim speculation, without disclaiming thought ? 
 
 The description of persons by whom this fallacy is chiefly employed are 
 those who, regarding a plan as adverse to their interests, and not finding it 
 on the ground of general utility exposed to any preponderant objection, have 
 recourse to this objection in the character of an instrument of contempt, in 
 the view of preventing those from looking into it who might have been 
 otherwise disposed. It is by the fear of seeing it practised that they are 
 drawn to speak of it as impracticable. "Upon the face of it (exclaims 
 some feeble or pensioned gentleman), it carries that air of plausibility, that, 
 if you were not upon your guard, might engage you to bestow more or less 
 attention upon it ; but were you to take the trouble, you would find that 
 (as it is with all these plans which promise so much) practicability would at 
 last be wanting to it. To save yourself from this trouble, the wisest course 
 you can take is to put the plan aside, and to think no more about the 
 matter." This is always accompanied with a peculiar grin of triumph. 
 
 The whole of these fallacies may be gathered together in a little oration, 
 which we will denominate the 
 
 Noodlfs Oration. 
 
 " What would our ancestors say to this, Sir ? How does this measure 
 tally with their institutions ? How does it agree with their experience ? 
 Are we to put the wisdom of yesterday in competition with the wisdom of 
 centuries? (Hear, heart) Is beardless youth to show no respect for the 
 decisions of mature age? (Loud cries of hear I hear 1} If this measure be 
 right, would it have escaped the wisdom of those Saxon progenitors to 
 whom we are indebted for so many of our best political institutions? 
 Would the Dane have passed it over? Would the Norman have rejected 
 it ? Would such a notable discovery have been reserved for these modem 
 and degenerate times? Besides, Sir, if the measure itself is good, I ask 
 the honourable gentleman if this is the time for carrying it into execution 
 whether, in fact, a more unfortunate period could have been selected than 
 that which he has chosen? If this were an ordinary measure, I should 
 not oppose it with so much vehemence ; but, Sir, it calls in question the 
 wisdom of an irrevocable law of a law passed at the memorable period of 
 the Revolution. What right have we, Sir, to break down this firm column 
 on which the great men of that age stamped a character of eternity ? Are 
 not all authorities against this measure Pitt, Fox, Cicero, and the Attorney 
 and Solictor General ? The proposition is new, Sir ; it is the first time it 
 was ever heard in this House. I am not prepared, Sir this House is not 
 prepared, to receive it. The measure implies a distrust of his Majesty's 
 government ; their disapproval is sufficient to warrant opposition. Pre- 
 caution only is requisite where danger is apprehended. Here the high 
 character of the individuals in question is a sufficient guarantee against any 
 ground of alarm. Give not, then, your sanction to this measure ; for, 
 whatever be its character, if you do give your sanction to it, the same map 
 by whom this is proposed, will propose to you others to which it will be 
 impossible to give your consent. I care very little, Sir, for the ostensible 
 measure ; but what is there behind ? What are the honourable gentleman's 
 future schemes ? If we pass this bill, what fresli concessions may he not 
 require? What further degradation is he planning for his country? Talk
 
 BENTHAM'S BOOK OF FALLACIES. 499 
 
 of evil and inconvenience, Sir ! look to other countries study other aggrega- 
 tions and societies of men, and then see whether the laws of this country 
 demand a remedy or deserve a panegyric. Was the honourable gentleman 
 (let me ask him) always of this way of thinking? Do I not remember 
 when he was the advocate in this House of very opposite opinions ? I not 
 only quarrel with his present sentiments, Sir, but I declare very frankly I 
 do not like the party with which he acts. If his own motives were as pure 
 as possible, they cannot but suffer contamination from those with whom he 
 is politically associated. This measure may be a boon to the constitution, 
 but I will accept no favour . to the constitution from such hands. (Loud 
 cries of hear! hear!) I profess myself, Sir, an honest and upright member 
 of the British Parliament, and I am not afraid to profess myself an enemy to 
 all change, and all innovation. I am satisfied with things as they are ; and it 
 will be my pride and pleasure to hand down this country to my children 
 as I received it from those who preceded me. The honourable gentleman 
 pretends to justify the severity with which he has attacked the Noble Lord 
 who presides in the Court of Chancery. But I say such attacks are pregnant 
 with mischief to government itself. Oppose Ministers, you oppose Govern- 
 ment ; disgrace Ministers, you disgrace Government ; bring Ministers 
 into contempt, you bring Government into contempt ; and anarchy and 
 civil war are the consequences. Besides. Sir, the measure is unnecessary. 
 Nobody complains of disorder in that shape in which it is the aim of your 
 measure to propose a remedy to it. The business is one of the greatest 
 importance ; there is need of the greatest caution and circumspection. Do 
 not let us be precipitate, Sir ; it is impossible to foresee all consequences. 
 Every thing should be gradual ; the example of a neighbouring nation 
 should fill us with alarm ! The honourable gentleman has taxed me with 
 illiberality, Sir. I deny the charge. I hate innovation, but I love 
 improvement. I am an enemy to the corruption of Government, but I 
 defend its influence. I dread reform, but I dread it only when it is in- 
 temperate. I consider the liberty of the press as the great Palladium of the 
 Constitution ; but, at the same time, I hold the licentiousness of the press 
 in the greatest abhorrence. Nobody is more conscious than I am of the 
 splendid abilities of the honourable mover, but I tell him at once, his 
 scheme is too good to be practicable. It savours of Utopia. It looks well 
 in theory, but it won't do in practice. It will not do, I repeat, Sir, in 
 practice ; and so the advocates of the measure will find, if, unfortunately, it 
 should find its way through Parliament. (C/ieers. ) The source of that cor- 
 ruption to which the honourable member alludes, is in the minds of the 
 people ; so rank and extensive is that corruption, that no political reform 
 can have any effect in removing it. Instead of reforming others instead 
 of reforming the State, the Constitution, and every thing that is most 
 excellent, let each man reform himself ! let him look at home, he will find 
 there enough to do, without looking abroad, and aiming at what is out of 
 his power. (Loud Cheers.') And now, Sir, as it is frequently the custom 
 in this House to end with a quotation, and as the gentleman who preceded 
 me in the debate has anticipated me in my favourite quotation of the 
 'Strong pull and the long pull,' I shall end with the memorable words of 
 the assembled barons Nolumus leges Anglice mutari." 
 
 ' Upon the whole, the following are the characters which appertain in 
 common to all the several arguments here distinguished by the name of 
 fallacies : 
 
 "i. Whatsoever be the measure in hand, they are, with relation to it, 
 
 irrelevant.
 
 500 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 
 
 "2. They are all of them such, that the application of these irrelevant 
 arguments affords a presumption either of the weakness or total absence of 
 relevant arguments on the side on which they are employed. 
 
 "3. To any good purpose they are all of them unnecessary. 
 
 "4. They are all of them not only capable of being applied, but actually 
 in the habit of being applied, and with advantage, to bad purposes ; viz. 
 to the obstruction and defeat of all such measures as have for their object 
 the removal of the abuses or other imperfections still discernible in the frame 
 and practice of the government. 
 
 "5. By means of their irrelevancy, they all of them consume and mis- 
 apply time, thereby obstructing the course and retarding the progress of all 
 necessary and useful business. 
 
 "6. By that irritative quality which, in virtue of their irrelevancy, with 
 the improbity or weakness of which it is indicative, they possess, all of them, 
 in a degree more or less considerable, but in a more particular degree such of 
 them as consist in personalities, they are productive of ill-humour, which in 
 some instances has been productive of bloodshed, and is continually pro- 
 ductive, as above, of waste of time and hinderance of business. 
 
 " 7. On the part of those who, whether in spoken or written discourses, 
 give utterance to them, they are indicative either of improbity or intellectual 
 weakness, or of a contempt for the understanding of those on whose minds 
 they are destined to operate. 
 
 "8. On the part of those on whom they operate, they are indicative of 
 intellectual weakness ; and on the part of those in and by whom they are 
 pretended to operate, they are indicative of improbity, viz. in the shape of 
 insincerity. 
 
 "The practical conclusion is, that in proportion as the acceptance, and 
 thence the utterance, of them can be prevented, the understanding of the 
 public will be strengthened, the morals of the pnblic will be purified, and 
 the practice of government improved." (pp. 359, 360.) 
 
 WATERTON. (E. REVIEW, 1826.) 
 
 Wanderings in South America, the North-West of the United States, and the Antilles, 
 in the Years 1812, 1816, 1820, and 1824 ; with original Instructions for the per- 
 fect Preservation of Birds, &>c., for Cabinets of Natural History. By CHARLES 
 WATERTON, Esq. London : Mawman. 410. 1825. 
 
 MR WATERTON is a Roman Catholic gentleman of Yorkshire, of good 
 fortune, who, instead of passing his life at balls and assemblies, has pre- 
 ferred living with Indians and monkeys in the forests of Guiana. He 
 appears in early life to have been seized with an unconquerable aversion to 
 Piccadilly, and to that train of meteorological questions and answers, which 
 forms the great staple of polite English conversation. From a dislike to 
 the regular form of a journal, he throws his travels into detached pieces, 
 which he, rather affectedly, calls Wanderings and of which we shall pro- 
 ceed to give some account. 
 
 His first Wandering was in the year 1812, through the wilds of Demerara 
 and Essequibo, a part of ci-devant Dutch Guiana, in South America. The 
 sun exhausted him by day, the mosquitoes bit him by night ; but on went 
 Mr Charles Waterton ! 
 
 The first thing which strikes us in this extraordinary chronicle, is the 
 genuine zeal and inexhaustible delight with which all the barbarous countriei
 
 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 501 
 
 he visits are described. He seems to love the forests, the tigers, and the 
 apes ; to be rejoiced that he is the only man there ; that he has left his 
 species far away ; and is at last in the midst of his blessed baboons ! He 
 writes with a considerable degree of force and vigour ; and contrives to infuse 
 into his reader that admiration of the great works, and undisturbed scenes 
 of Nature, which animates his style, and has influenced his life and practice. 
 There is something, too, to be highly respected and praised in the conduct 
 of a country gentleman who, instead of exhausting life in the chase, has 
 dedicated a considerable portion of it to the pursuit of knowledge. There 
 are so many temptations to complete idleness hi the life of a country 
 gentleman, so many examples of it, and so much loss to the community 
 from it, that every exception from the practice is deserving of great praise. 
 Some country gentlemen must remain to do the business of their counties ; 
 but, in general, there are many more than are wanted ; and, generally 
 speaking also, they are a class who should be stimulated to greater exer- 
 tions. Sir Joseph Banks, a squire of large fortune in Lincolnshire, might 
 have given up his existence to double-barrelled guns and persecutions of 
 poachers and all the benefits derived from his wealth, industry, and 
 personal exertion in the cause of science, would have been lost to the 
 community. 
 
 Mr Waterton complains, that the trees of Guiana are not more than six 
 yards in circumference a magnitude in trees which it is not easy for a 
 Scotch imagination to reach. Among these, pre-eminent in height rises 
 the mora upon whose top branches, when naked by age, or dried by 
 accident, is perched the toucan, too high for the gun of the fowler ; 
 around this are the green heart, famous for hardness ; the tough hackea ; 
 the ducalabaly, surpassing mahogany ; the ebony and letter-wood, exceed- 
 ing the most beautiful woods of the Old World ; the locust-tree, yielding 
 copal ; and the hayawa and olou-trees, furnishing sweet-smelling resin. 
 Upon the top of the mora grows the fig-tree. The bush-rope joins tree 
 and tree, so as to render the forest impervious, as, descending from on high, 
 it takes root as soon as its extremity touches the ground, and appears like 
 shrouds and stays supporting the main-mast of a line-of-battle ship. 
 
 Demerara yields to no country in the world in her birds. The mud is 
 naming with the scarlet curlew. At sunset the pelicans return from the sea 
 to the courada trees. Among the flowers are the humming-birds. The 
 columbine, gallinaceous, and pesserine tribes people the fruit-trees. At the 
 close of the day, the vampires, or winged bats, suck the blood of the traveller, 
 and cool him by the flap of their wings. Nor has Nature forgotten to amuse 
 herself here in the composition of snakes, the camoudi has been killed 
 from thirty to forty feet long ; he does not act by venom, but by size and 
 convolution. The Spaniards affirm that he grows to the length of eighty 
 feet, and that he will swallow a bull ; but Spaniards love the superlative. 
 There is a -whipsnake of a beautiful green. The labarri snake of a dirty 
 brown, who kills you in a few minutes. Every lovely colour under heaven 
 is lavished upon the counachouchi, the most venomous of reptiles, and 
 known by the name of the bush-master. Man and beast, says Mr Waterton, 
 fly before him, and allow him to pursue an undisputed path. 
 
 We consider the following description of the various sounds hi these 
 wild regions as very striking, and done with very considerable powers of 
 style. 
 
 "He whose eye can distinguish the various beauties of uncultivated 
 nature, and whose ear is not shut to the wild sounds in the woods, will be 
 delighted in passing up the river Demerara. Every now and then, the
 
 502 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 
 
 maam or tinamou sends forth one long and plaintive whistle from the depth 
 of the forest and then stops ; whilst the yelping of the toucan, and the 
 shrill voice of the bird called pi-pi-yo, is heard during the interval. The 
 campanero never fails to attract the attention of the passenger : at a dis- 
 tance of nearly three miles you may hear this snow-white bird tolling every 
 four or five minutes, like the distant convent bell. From six to nine in the 
 morning, the forests resound with the mingled cries and strains of the 
 feathered race ; after this they gradually die away. From eleven to three 
 all nature is hushed as in a midnight silence, and scarce a note is heard, 
 saving that of the campanero and the pi-pi-yo ; it is then that, oppressed by 
 the solar heat, the birds retire to the thickest shade, and wait for the 
 refreshing cool of evening. 
 
 "At sundown the vampires, bats, and goatsuckers, dart from their 
 lonely retreat, and skim along the trees on the river's bank. The different 
 kinds of frogs almost stun the ear with their hoarse and hollow sounding 
 croaking, while the owls and goatsuckers lament and mourn all night long. 
 
 " About two hours before daybreak you will hear the red monkey moan- 
 ing as though in deep distress ; the houtou, a solitary bird, and only found 
 in the thickest recesses of the forest, distinctly articulates, ' houtou, houtou,' 
 in a low and plaintive tone, an hour before sunrise ; the maam whistles about 
 the same hour ; the hannaquoi, pataca, and maroudi announce his near 
 approach to the eastern horizon, and the parrots and parroquets confirm his 
 arrival there." (pp. 13 15.) 
 
 Our good Quixote of Demerara is a little too fond of apostrophising : 
 " Traveller ! dost thou think? Reader, dost thou imagine?" Mr Water- 
 ton should remember, that the whole merit of these violent deviations from 
 common style depends upon their rarity, and that nothing does, for ten 
 pages together, but the indicative mood. This fault gives an air of affecta- 
 tion to the writing of Mr Waterton, which we believe to be foreign from 
 his character and nature. We do not wish to deprive him of these indul- 
 gences altogether ; but merely to put him upon an allowance, and upon 
 such an allowance, as will give to these figures of speech the advantage of 
 surprise and relief. 
 
 This gentleman's delight and exultation always appear to increase as he 
 loses sight of European inventions, and comes to something purely Indian. 
 Speaking of an Indian tribe, he says, 
 
 "They had only one gun, and it appeared rusty and neglected; but 
 their poisoned weapons were in fine order. Their blow-pipes hung from 
 the roof of the hut, carefully suspended by a silk grass cord ; and on taking 
 a nearer view of them, no dust seemed to have collected there, nor had the 
 spider spun the smallest web on diem ; which showed that they were in 
 constant use. The quivers were close by them, with the jaw-bone of the 
 fish pirai tied by a string to their brim, and a small wicker-basket of wild 
 cotton, which hung down to the centre : they were nearly full of poisoned 
 arrows. It was with difficulty these Indians could be persuaded to part 
 with any of the Wourali poison, though a good price was offered for it : 
 they gave us to understand that it was powder and shot to them, and very 
 difficult to be procured." (pp. 34, 35.) 
 
 A wicker-basket of wild cotton, full of poisoned arrows, for shooting fish J 
 This is Indian with a vengeance. We fairly admit that, in the contempla- 
 tion of such utensils, every trait of civilised life is completely and effectually 
 banished.
 
 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 503 
 
 One of the strange and fanciful objects of Mr Waterton's journey was, to 
 obtain a better knowledge of the composition and nature of the Wourali 
 poison, the ingredient with which the Indians poison their arrows. In the 
 wilds of Essequibo, far away from any European settlements, there is a 
 tribe of Indians known by the name of Macoushi. The Wourali poison is 
 used by all the South American savages, betwixt the Amazon and the 
 Oroonoque ; but the Macoushi Indians manufacture it with the greatest 
 skill, and of the greatest strength. A vine grows in the forest called 
 Wourali ; and from this vine, together with a good deal of nonsense and 
 absurdity, the poison is prepared. When a native of Macoushia goes in 
 quest of feathered game, he seldom carries his bow and arrows. It is the 
 blow-pipe he then uses. The reed grows to an amazing length, as the part 
 the Indians use is from 10 to II feet long, and no tapering can be per- 
 ceived, one end being as thick as another ; nor is there the slightest appear- 
 ance of a knot or joint. The end which is applied to the mouth is tied 
 round with a small silk grass cord. The arrow is from 9 to 10 inches 
 long ; it is made out of the leaf of a palm-tree, and pointed as sharp as a 
 needle : about an inch of the pointed end is poisoned : the other end is 
 burnt to make it still harder ; and wild cotton is put round it for an inch 
 and a half. The quiver holds from 500 to 600 arrows, is from 12 to 14 
 inches long, and in shape like a dice-box. With a quiver of these poisoned 
 arrows over his shoulder, and his blow-pipe in his hand, the Indian stalks 
 into the forest in quest of his feathered game. 
 
 " These generally sit high up in the tall and tufted trees, but still are 
 not out of the Indian's reacli ; for his blow-pipe, at its greatest elevation, 
 will send an arrow three hundred feet. Silent as midnight he steals under 
 them, and so cautiously does he tread the ground, that the fallen leaves 
 rustle not beneath his feet. His ears are open to the least sound, while his 
 eye, keen as that of the lynx, is employed in finding out the game in the 
 thickest shade. Often he imitates their cry, and decoys them from tree to 
 tree, till they are within range of his tube. Then taking a poisoned arrow 
 from his quiver, he puts it in the blow-pipe, and collects his breath for the 
 fatal puff. 
 
 " About two feet from the end through which he blows, there are 
 fastened two teeth of the acouri, and these serve him for a sight. Silent 
 and swift the arrow flies, and seldom fails to pierce the object at which it 
 is sent. Sometimes the wounded bird remains in the same tree where it 
 was shot, but in three minutes falls down at the Indian's feet. Should he 
 take wing, his flight is of short duration, and the Indian, following in the 
 direction he has gone, is sure to find him dead. 
 
 " It is natural to imagine that, when a slight wound only is inflicted, 
 the game will make its escape. Far otherwise ; the Wourali poison in- 
 stantaneously mixes with blood or water, so that if you wet your finger, 
 and dash it along the poisoned arrow hi the quickest manner possible, you 
 are sure to carry off some of the poison. 
 
 " Though three minutes generally elapse before the convulsions come on 
 in the wounded bird, still a stupor evidently takes place sooner, and this 
 stupor manifests itself by an apparent unwillingness in the bird to move. 
 This was very visible in a dying fowl." (pp. 6062.) 
 
 The flesh of the game is not in the slightest degree injured by the poison ; 
 nor does it appear to be corrupted sooner than that killed by the gun or 
 knife. For the larger animals, an arrow with a poisoned spike is used. 
 
 " Thus armed with deadly poison, and hungry as the hyaena, he ranges
 
 504 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 
 
 through the forest in quest of the wild beasts' track. No hound can act a 
 surer part. Without clothes to fetter him, or shoes to bind his feet, he 
 observes the footsteps of the game, where an European eye could not 
 discern the smallest vestige. He pursues it through all its turns and 
 windings, with astonishing perseverance, and success generally crowns his 
 efforts. The animal, after receiving the poisoned arrow, seldom retreats 
 two hundred paces before it drops. 
 
 "In passing over land from the Essequibo to the Demerara, we fell in 
 with a herd of wild hogs. Though encumbered with baggage, and fatigued 
 with a hard day's walk, an Indian got his bow ready, and let fly a poisoned 
 arrow at one of them. It entered the cheek-bone, and broke off. The 
 wild hog was found quite dead about one hundred and seventy paces from 
 the place where he had been shot. He afforded us an excellent and 
 wholesome supper." (p. 65.) 
 
 Being a Wourali poison fancier, Mr Waterton has recorded several 
 instances of the power of his favourite drug. A sloth poisoned by it went 
 gently to sleep, and died ! a large ox, weighing one thousand pounds, was 
 shot with three arrows ; the poison took effect in 4 minutes, and in 25 
 minutes he was dead. The death seems to be very gentle, and resembles 
 more a quiet apoplexy, brought on by hearing a long story, than any 
 other kind of death. If an Indian happen to be wounded with one of 
 these arrows, he considers it as certain death. We have reason to con- 
 gratulate ourselves, that our method of terminating disputes is by sword 
 and pistol, and not by these medicated pins ; which, we presume, will 
 become the weapons of gentlemen in the New Republics of South America. 
 
 The second journey of Mr Waterton, in the year 1816, was to Pernam- 
 buco, in the southern hemisphere, on the coast of Brazil, and from thenc: 
 he proceeds to Cayenne. His plan was, to have ascended the Amazon 
 from Para, and got into the Rio Negro, and from thence to have returned 
 towards the source of the Essequibo, in order to examine the Crystal 
 Mountains, and to look once more for Lake Parima, or the White Sea ; 
 but on arriving at Cayenne, he found that to beat up the Amazon would be 
 long and tedious ; he left Cayenne, therefore, in an American ship for 
 Paramaribo, went through the interior to Coryntin, stopped a few days at 
 New Amsterdam, and proceeded to Demerara. 
 
 " Leave behind you (he says to the traveller) your high-seasoned dishes, 
 your wines, and your delicacies ; carry nothing but what is necessary for 
 your own comfort, and the object in view, and depend upon the skill of an 
 Indian, or your own, for fish and game. A sheet, about twelve feet long, 
 ten wide, painted, and with loop-holes on each side, will be of great service : 
 in a few minutes you can suspend it betwixt two trees in the shape of a roof. 
 Under this, in your hammock, you may defy the pelting shower, and sleep 
 heedless of the dews of night. A hat, a shirt, and a light pair of trousers, 
 will be all the raiment you require. Custom will soon teach you to tread 
 lightly and barefoot on the little inequalities of the ground, and show you 
 how to pass on, unwounded, amid the mantling briers." (pp. 112, 113.) 
 
 Snakes are certainly an annoyance ; but the snake, though high-spirited, 
 is not quarrelsome ; he considers his fangs to be given for defence, and not 
 for annoyance, and never inflicts a wound but to defend existence. If you 
 tread upon him, he puts you to death for your clumsiness, merely because 
 he does not understand what your clumsiness means ; and certainly a snake, 
 who feels fourteen or fifteen stone stamping upon !'ij tail, has little time
 
 V/ANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA, 505 
 
 for reflection, and may be allowed to be poisonous and peevish. American 
 tigers generally run away from which several respectable gentlemen in 
 Parliament inferred, in the American war, that American soldiers would 
 run away also ! 
 
 The description of the birds is very animated and interesting ; but how 
 far does the gentle reader imagine the campanero may be heard, whose size 
 is that of a jay ? Perhaps 300 yards. Poor innocent, ignorant reader ! 
 unconscious of what Nature has done in the forests of Cayenne, and measur- 
 ing the force of tropical intonation by the sounds of a Scotch duck ! The 
 campanero may be heard three miles ! this single little bird being 
 
 more powerful than the belfry of a cathedral, ringing for a new dean 
 
 just appointed on account of shabby politics, small understanding, and good 
 family J 
 
 "The fifth species is the celebrated campanero of the Spaniards, called 
 clara by the Indians, and bell-bird by the English. He is about the size of 
 the jay. His plumage is white as snow. On his forehead rises a spiral 
 tube nearly three inches long. It is jet black, dotted all over with small 
 white feathers. It has a communication with the ,'palate, and when filled 
 with air, looks like a spire ; when empty, it becomes pendulous. His 
 note is loud and clear, like the sound of a bell, and may be heard at the 
 distance of three miles. In the midst of these extensive wilds, generally on 
 the dried top of an aged mora, almost out of gun reach, you will see the 
 campanero. No sound or song from any of the winged inhabitants of the 
 forest, not even the clearly pronounced ' Whip-poor- Will,' from the goat- 
 sucker, cause such astonishment as the toll of the campanero. 
 
 " With many of the feathered race he pays the common tribute of a 
 morning and an evening song ; and even when the meridian sun has shut 
 in silence the mouths of almost the whole of animated nature, the campan- 
 ero still cheers the forest. You hear his toll, and then a pause for a minute, 
 then another toll, and then a pause again, and then a toll, and again a 
 pause." (pp. 117, 1 1 8.) 
 
 It is impossible to contradict a gentleman who has been in the forests of 
 Cayenne ; but we are determined, as soon as a campanero is brought to 
 England, to make him toll in a public place, and have the distance measured. 
 The toucan has an enormous bill, makes a noise like a puppy dog, and lays 
 his eggs in hollow trees. How astonishing are the freaks and fancies of nature! 
 To what purpose, we say, is a bird placed in the woods of Cayenne with a 
 bill a yard long, making a noise like a puppy dog, and laying eggs in hollow 
 trees ? The toucans, to be sure, might retort, to what purpose were gentle- 
 men in Bond Street created ? To what purpose were certain foolish prating 
 Members of Parliament created ? pestering the House of Commons with 
 their ignorance and folly, and impeding the business of the country ? There 
 is no end of such questions. So we will not enter into the metaphysics of 
 the toucan. The houtou ranks high in beauty ; his whole body is green, 
 his wings and tail blue, his crown is of black and blue ; he makes no nest, 
 but rears his young in the sand. 
 
 "The cassique, in size, is larger than the starling ; he courts the society 
 of man, but disdains to live by his labours. When Nature calls for support, 
 he repairs to the neighbouring forest, and there partakes of the store of 
 fruits and seeds which she has produced in abundance for her aerial tribes. 
 When his repast is over, he returns to man, and pays the little tribute which 
 he owes him for his protection ; he takes his station on a tree close to his
 
 506 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 
 
 house ; nnd there, for hours together, pours forth a succession of imitative 
 notes. His own song is sweet, but very short. If a toucan be yelping in 
 the neighbourhood, he drops it, and imitates him. Then he will amuse 
 his protector with the cries of the different species of the woodpecker ; and 
 when the sheep bleat, he will distinctly answer them. Then comes his own 
 song again, and if a puppy dog or a guinea fowl interrupt him, he takes 
 them off admirably, and by his different gestures during the time, you would 
 conclude that he enjoys the sport. 
 
 "The cassique is gregarious, and imitates any sound he hears with such 
 exactness, that he goes by no other name than that of mocking-bird amongst 
 the colonists." (pp. 127, 128.) 
 
 There is no end to the extraordinary noises of the forest of Cayenne. 
 The woodpecker, in striking against the tree with his bill, makes a sound 
 so loud, that Mr Waterton says it reminds you more of a wood-cutter than 
 a bird. While lying in your hammock, you hear the goatsucker lamenting 
 like one in deep distress a stranger would take it for a Weir murdered by 
 ThurtelL 
 
 " Suppose yourself in hopeless sorrow, begin with a high loud note, and 
 pronounce, ' ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ' each note lower and lower, till the 
 last is scarcely heard, pausing a moment or two betwixt every note, and you 
 will have some idea of the moaning of the largest goatsucker in Demerara." 
 (p. 141.) 
 
 One species of the goatsucker cries, "Who are you? who are you?" 
 Another exclaims, "Work away, work away;" A third, "Willy, come 
 go, Willy, come go." A fourth, " Whip-poor- Will, Whip-poor- Will." 
 It is very flattering to us that they should all speak English I though we 
 cannot much commend the elegance of their selections. The Indians never 
 destroy these birds, believing them to be the servants of Jumbo, the African 
 devil. 
 
 Great travellers are very fond of triumphing over civilised life ; and Mr 
 Waterton does not omit the opportunity of remarking, that nobody ever 
 stopt him in the forests of Cayenne to ask him for his licence, or to inquire 
 if he had a hundred a year, or to take away his gun, or to dispute the limits 
 of a manor, or to threaten him with a tropical justice of the peace. We 
 hope, however, that in this point we are on the eve of improvement. Mr 
 Peel, who is a man of high character and principles, may depend upon it 
 that the time is come for his interference, and that it will be a loss of reputa- 
 tion to him not to interfere. If any one else can and will carry an alteration 
 through Parliament, there is no occasion that the hand of Government 
 should appear ; but some hand must appear. The common people are 
 becoming ferocious, and the perdricide criminals are more numerous than 
 the violators of all the branches of the Decalogue. 
 
 "The king of the vultures is very handsome, and seems to be the only 
 bird which claims regal honours from a surrounding tribe. It is a fact be- 
 yond all dispute, that when the scent of carrion has drawn together hun- 
 dreds of the common vultures, they all retire from the carcase as soon as 
 the king of the vultures makes his appearance. When his majesty has 
 satisfied the cravings of his royal stomach with the choicest bits from the 
 most stinking and corrupted parts, he generally retires to a neighbouring 
 tree, and then the common vultures return in crowds to gobble down his 
 leavings. The Indians, as well as the whites, have observed this ; for when
 
 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 507 
 
 one of thm, who has learned a little English, sees the king, and wishes 
 you to have a proper notion of the bird, he says, ' There is the governor of 
 the carrion crows. ' 
 
 "Now, the Indians have never heard of a personage in Demerara higher 
 than that of governor ; and the colonists, through a common mistake, call 
 the vultures carrion crows. Hence the Indian, in order to express the 
 dominion of this bird over the common vultures, tells you he is governor 
 of the carrion crows. The Spaniards have also observed it, for, through 
 all the Spanish Main he is called Rey de Zamuros, king of the vultures." 
 (P- 146.) 
 
 This, we think, explains satisfactorily the origin of kingly government. 
 As men have " learnt from the dog the physic of the field," they may prob- 
 ably have learnt from the vulture those high lessons of policy upon which, 
 in Europe, we suppose the whole happiness of society, and the very exist- 
 ence of the human race, to depend. 
 
 Just before his third journey, Mr Waterton takes leave of Sir Joseph 
 Banks, and speaks of him with affectionate regret. "I saw" (says Mr 
 W.), " with sorrow, that death was going to rob us of him. We talked of 
 stuffing quadnipeds ; I agreed that the lips and nose ought to be cut off, 
 and stuffed with wax." This is the way great naturalists take an eternal 
 farewell of each other ! Upon stuffing animals, however, we have a word 
 to say. Mr Waterton has placed at the head of his book the picture of 
 what he is pleased to consider a nondescript species of monkey. In this 
 exhibition our author is surely abusing his stuffing talents, and laughing at 
 the public. It is clearly the head of a Master in Chancery whom we 
 have often seen backing in the House of Commons after he has delivered 
 his message. It is foolish thus to trifle with science and natural history. 
 Mr Waterton gives an interesting account of the sloth, an animal of which 
 he appears to be fond, and whose habits he has studied with peculiar 
 attention. 
 
 " Some years ago I kept a sloth in my room for several months. I often 
 took him out of the house and placed him upon the ground, in order to 
 have an opportunity of observing his motions. If the ground were rough, 
 he would pull himself forwards, by means of his fore legs, at a pretty good 
 pace ; and he invariably shaped his course towards the nearest tree. But if 
 I put him upon a smooth and well-trodden part of the road, he appeared to 
 be in trouble and distress : his favourite abode was the back of a chair ; 
 and after getting all his legs in a line upon the topmost part of it, he would 
 hang there for hours together, and often, with a low and inward cry, would 
 seem to invite me to take notice of him." (p. 164.) 
 
 The sloth, in its wild state, spends its life in trees, and never leaves them 
 but from force or accident. The eagle to the sky, the mole to the ground, 
 the sloth to the tree ; but what is most extraordinary, he lives not upon the 
 branches, but under them. He moves suspended, rests suspended, sleeps 
 suspended, and passes his life in suspense like a young clergyman distantly 
 related to a bishop. Strings of ants may be observed, says our good tra- 
 veller, a mile long, each carrying in its mouth a green leaf the size of a six- 
 pence J he does not say whether this is a loyal procession, like Oak-apple 
 Day, or for what purpose these leaves are earned ; but it appears, while 
 they are carrying the leaves, that three sorts of ant-bears are busy in eating 
 them. The habits of the largest of these three animals are curious, and to 
 us new. We recommend the account to the attention of the reader.
 
 5o8 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 
 
 ' " He is chiefly found in the inmost recesses of the forest, and seems par- 
 tial to the low and swampy parts near creeks, where the Troely tree grows. 
 There he goes up and down in quest of ants, of which there is never the 
 least scarcity ; so that he soon obtains a sufficient supply of food, with very 
 little trouble. He cannot travel fast ; man is superior to him in speed. 
 Without swiftness to enable him to escape from his enemies, without teeth, 
 the possession of which would assist him in self-defence, and without the 
 power of burrowing in the ground, by which he might conceal himself from 
 his pursuers, he still is capable of ranging through these wilds in perfect 
 safety ; nor does he fear the fatal pressure of the serpent's fold, or the teeth 
 of the famished Jaguar. Nature has formed his fore legs wonderfully thick, 
 and strong, and muscular, and armed his feet with three tremendous sharp 
 and crooked claws. Whenever he seizes an animal with these formidable 
 weapons, he hugs it close to his body, and keeps it there till it dies through 
 pressure, or through want of food. Nor does the ant-bear, in the mean 
 time, suffer much from loss of aliment, as it is a well-known fact that he 
 can go longer without food than perhaps any other animal, except the land 
 tortoise. His skin is of a texture that perfectly resists the bite of a dog ; 
 his hinder parts are protected by thick and shaggy hair, while his immense 
 tail is large enough to cover his whole body. 
 
 "The Indians have a great dread of coming in contact with the ant- 
 bear ; and after disabling him in the chase, never think of approaching 
 him till he be quite dead." (pp. 171, 172.) 
 
 The vampire measures about 26 inches from wing to wing. There are 
 two species, large and small. The large suck men, and the smaller birds. 
 Mr W. saw some fowls which had been sucked the night before, and they 
 were scarcely able to walk. 
 
 " Some years ago T went to the river Paumaron with a Scotch gentleman, 
 by name Tarbet. We hung our hammocks in the thatched loft of a planter'? 
 house. Next morning I heard this gentleman muttering in his hammock, 
 and now and then letting fall an imprecation or two, just about the time he 
 ought to have been saying his morning prayers. ' What is the matter, 
 Sir?' said I, softly; ' is any thing amiss?' 'What's the matter?' answered 
 he, surlily ; ' why the vampires have been sucking me to death. ' As soon 
 as there was light enough, I went to his hammock, and saw it much stained 
 with blood. 'There,' said he, thrusting his foot out of the hammock, 'see 
 how these infernal imps have been drawing my life's blood.' On examin- 
 ing his foot, I found the vampire had tapped his great toe : there was a 
 wound somewhat less than that made by a leech ; the blood was still oozing 
 from it ; I conjectured he might have lost from ten to twelve ounces of 
 blood. Whilst examining it, I think I put him into a worse humour by 
 remarking, that an European surgeon would not have been so generous as 
 to have blooded him without making a charge. He looked up in my face, 
 but did not say a word : I saw he was of opinion that I had better have 
 spared this piece of ill-timed levity." (pp. 176, 177.) 
 
 The story which follows this account is vulgar, unworthy of Mr Waterton, 
 and should have been omitted. 
 
 Every animal has his enemies. The land tortoise has two enemies man 
 and the boa constrictor. The natural defence of the land tortoise is to 
 draw himself up in his shell, and to remain quiet. In this state, the tiger, 
 however famished, can do nothing with him, for the shell is too strong for 
 the stroke of his paw. Man, however, takes him home and roasts him
 
 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 509 
 
 and the boa constrictor swallows him whole, shell nnd all, and consumes 
 him slowly in the interior, as the Court of Chancery does a great estate. 
 
 The danger seems to be much less with snakes and wild beasts, if you 
 conduct yourself like a gentleman, and are not abruptly intrusive. If you 
 will pass on gently, you may walk unhurt within a yard of the Labairi 
 snake, who would put you to death if you rushed upon him. The taguan 
 knocks you down with a blow of his paw, if suddenly interrupted, but will 
 run away, if you will give him time to do so. In short, most animals look 
 upon man as a very ugly customer ; and, unless sorely pressed for food, or 
 from fear of their own safety, are not fond of attacking him. Mr Waterton, 
 though much given to sentiment, made a Labairi snake bite itself, but no 
 bad consequences ensued nor would any bad consequences ensue, if a 
 court-martial were to order a sinful soldier to give himself a thousand 
 lashes. It is barely possible that the snake had some faint idea whom and 
 what he was biting. 
 
 Insects are the curse of tropical climates. The bete rouge lays the 
 foundation of a tremendous ulcer. In a moment you are covered with 
 ticks. Chigoes bury themselves in your flesh, and hatch a large colony of 
 young chigoes hi a few hours. They will not live together, but every chigoe 
 sets up a separate ulcer, and has his own private portion of pus. Flies get 
 entry into your mouth, into your eyes, into your nose ; you eat flies, drink 
 flies, and breathe flies. Lizards, cockroaches, and snakes, get into the bed ; 
 ants eat up the books ; scorpions sting you on the foot. Every thing bites, 
 stings, or bruises ; every second of your existence you are wounded by some 
 piece of animal life that nobody has ever seen before, except Swammerdam 
 and Meriam. An insect with eleven legs is swimming in your teacup, a 
 nondescript with nine wings is struggling in the small beer, or a caterpillar 
 with several dozen eyes in his belly is hastening over the bread and butter ! 
 All natxire is alive, and seems to be gathering all her entomological hosts 
 to eat you up, as you are standing, out of your coat, waistcoat, and 
 breeches. Such are the tropics. All this reconciles us to our dews, fogs, 
 vapours, and drizzle to our apothecaries rushing about with gargles and 
 tinctures to our old, British, constitutional coughs, sore throats, and swelled 
 faces. 
 
 We come now to the counterpart of St George and the Dragon. Every 
 one knows that the large snake of tropical climates throws himself upon his 
 prey, twists the folds of his body round the victim, presses him to death, 
 and then eats him. Mr Waterton wanted a large snake for the sake of its 
 skin ; and it occurred to him, that the success of this sort of combat de- 
 pended upon who began first, and that if he could contrive to fling himself 
 upon the snake, he was just as likely to send the snake to the British 
 Museum, as the snake, if allowed the advantage of prior occupation, was to 
 eat him up. The opportunities which Yorkshire squires have of combating 
 with the boa constrictor are so few, that Mr Waterton must be allowed to 
 tell his own story in his own manner. 
 
 " We went slowly on in silence, without moving our arms or heads, in 
 order to prevent all alarm as much as possible, lest the snake should glide 
 off, or attack us in self-defence. I carried the lance perpendicularly 
 before me, with the point about a foot from the ground. The snake had 
 not moved ; and on getting up to him, I struck him with the lance on the 
 near side, just behind the neck, and pinned him to the ground. That 
 moment the negro next to me seized the lance and held it firm in its place, 
 while I dashed head foremost into the den to grapple with the snake, and 
 to get bold of his tail before he could do any mischief.
 
 510 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 
 
 " On pinning him to the ground with the lance, he gave a tremendous 
 loud hiss, and the little dog ran away, howling as he went. We had a 
 sharp fray in the den, the rotten sticks flying on all sides, and each party 
 struggling for superiority. I called out to the second negro to thro%v him- 
 self upon me, as I found I was not heavy enough. He did so, and the 
 additional weight was of great service. I had now got firm hold of his 
 tail ; and after a violent struggle or two, he gave in, finding himself over- 
 powered. This was the moment to secure him. So, while the first negro 
 continued to hold the lance firm to the ground, and the other was helping 
 me, I contrived to unloose my braces, and with them tied up the snake's 
 mouth. 
 
 " The snake, now finding himself in an unpleasant situation, tried to 
 better himself, and set resolutely to work, but we overpowered him. We 
 contrived to make him twist himself round the shaft of the lance, and then 
 
 Erepared to convey him out of the forest. I stood at his head, and held it 
 rm under my arm, one negro supported the belly, and the other the tail. 
 In this order we began to move slowly towards home, and reached it after 
 resting ten times ; for the snake was too heavy for us to support him 
 without stopping to recruit our strength. As we proceeded onwards with 
 him, he fought hard for freedom, but it was all in vain. " (pp. 202 204. ) 
 
 One of these combats we should have thought sufficient for glory, and 
 for the interests of the British Museum. But Hercules killed two snakes, 
 and Mr Waterton would not be content with less. 
 
 " There was a path where timber had formerly been dragged along. 
 Here I observed a young coulacanara, ten feet long, slowly moving on- 
 wards ; I saw he was not thick enough to break my arm, in case he got 
 twisted round it. There was not a moment to be lost. I laid hold of his 
 tail with the left hand, one knee being on the ground j with the right I 
 took off my hat, and held it as you would hold a shield for defence. 
 
 " The snake instantly turned, and came on at me, with his head about a 
 yard from the ground, as if to ask me what business I had to take liberties 
 with his tail. T let him come, hissing and open-mouthed, within two feet 
 of my face, and then, with all the force I was master of, I drove my fist, 
 shielded by my hat, full in his jaws. He was stunned and confounded by 
 the blow, and ere he could recover himself, I had seized his throat with 
 both hands, in such a position that he could not bite me ; I then allowed 
 him to coil himself round my body, and marched off with him as my 
 lawfid prize. He pressed me hard, but not alarmingly so." (pp, 206, 207.) 
 
 When the body of the large snake began to smell, the vultures immedi- 
 ately arrived. The king of the vultures first gorged himself, and then 
 retired to a large tree while his subjects consumed the remainder. It does 
 not appear that there was any favouritism. When the king was full, all 
 the mob vultures ate alike ; neither could Mr Waterton perceive that there 
 was any division into Catholic and Protestant vultures, or that the majority 
 of the flock thought it essentially vulturish to exclude one third of their 
 numbers from the blood and entrails. The vulture, it is remarkable, 
 never eats live animals. He seems to abhor every thing which has 
 not the relish of putrescence and flavour of death. The following is p 
 characteristic specimen of the little inconveniences to which travellers are 
 liable, who sleep on the feather beds of the forest. To see a rat in a room 
 in Europe insures a night of horror. Every thing is by comparison.
 
 WANDERINGS IN SO UTH AMERICA. < 1 1 
 
 " About midnight, as I was lying awake, and in great pain, I heard the 
 Indians say, ' Massa, massa, you nt> hear tiger ? ' I listened attentively, 
 and heard the softly sounding tread of his feet as he approached us. The 
 moon had gone down ; but every now and then we could get a glance o. 
 him by the light of our fire : he was the jaguar, for I could see the spots 
 on his body. Had I wished to have fired at him, I was not able to take a 
 sure aim, for I was in such pain that I could not turn myself in my ham- 
 mock. The Indian would have fired, but I would not allow him to do so, 
 as I wanted to see a little more of our new visitor ; for it is not every day 
 or night that the traveller is favoured with an undisturbed sight of the 
 jaguar in his own forest. 
 
 ' ' Whenever the fire got low, the jaguar came a little nearer, and when 
 the Indian renewed it, he retired abruptly ; sometimes he would come 
 within twenty yards, and then we had a view of him, sitting on his hind 
 legs like a dog ; sometimes he moved slowly to and fro, and at other times 
 we could hear him mend his pace, as if impatient. At last the Indian, not 
 relishing the idea of having such company in the neighbourhood, could 
 contain himself no longer, and set up a most tremendous yell. The jaguar 
 bounded off like a race-horse, and returned no more : it appeared, by the 
 print of his feet the next morning, that he was a full-grown jaguar. " (pp. 
 212, 213.) 
 
 \Ve have seen Mr Waterton fling himself upon a snake ; we shall now 
 mount him upon a crocodile, undertaking that this shall be the last of his 
 feats exhibited to the reader. He had baited for a cayman or crocodile, the 
 hook was swallowed, and the object was to pull the animal up and to secure 
 him. "If you pull him up," say the Indians, "as soon as he sees you 
 on the brink of the river, he will run at you and distroy you." "Never 
 mind," says our traveller, "pull away, and leave the rest to me." And 
 accordingly he places himself upon the shore, with the mast of the canoe in 
 his hand, ready to force it down the throat of the crocodile as soon as he 
 makes his appearance. 
 
 ' ' By the time the cayman was within two yards of me, I saw he was in 
 a state of fear and perturbation ; I instantly dropped the mast, sprung up, 
 and jumped on his back, turning half round as I vaulted, so that I gained 
 my seat with my face in a right position. I immediately seized his fore 
 legs, and, by main force, twisted them on his back ; thus they served me 
 for a bridle. 
 
 " He now seemed to have recovered from his surprise, and probably fancy- 
 ing himself in hostile company, he began to plunge furiously, and lashed 
 the sand with his long and powerful tail. I was out of reach of the 
 strokes of it, by being near his head. He continued to plunge and strike, 
 and made my seat very uncomfortable. It must have been a fine sight for 
 an unoccupied spectator. 
 
 " The people roared out in triumph, and were so vociferous, that it was 
 ome time before they heard me tell them to pull me and my beast of burden 
 farther in land. I was apprehensive the rope might break, and thexi there 
 would have been every chance of going down to the regions under water 
 with the cayman. That would have been more perilous than Arion's marine 
 morning ride : 
 
 ' Delphini insidens, vada carrula sulcat Arion.'" 
 
 " The people now dragged us above forty yards on the sand : it was the 
 first and last time I was ever on a cayman's back. Should it be asked, how
 
 512 PANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 
 
 I managed to keep my seat, I would answer I hunted some years with 
 Lord Darlington's foxhounds." (pp. 231, 232.) 
 
 The Yorkshire gentlemen have long been famous for their equestrian 
 skill ; but Mr Waterton is the first among them of whom it could be said 
 that he has a' fine hand upon a crocodile. This accursed animal, so ridden 
 by Mr Waterton, is the scourge and terror of all the large rivers in South 
 America near the Line. Their boldness is such, that a cayman has some- 
 times come out of the Oroonoque, at Angustura, near the public walks 
 where the_ people were assembled, seized a full-grown man, as big as Sir 
 William Curtis after dinner, and hurried him into the bed of the river 
 for his food. The governor of Angustura witnessed this circumstance 
 himself. 
 
 Our Eboracic traveller had now been nearly eleven months in the desert, 
 and not in vain. Shall we express our doubts, or shall we confidently state 
 at once the immense wealth he had acquired? a prodigious variety of 
 insects, two hundred and thirty birds, ten land tortoises, live armadillas, 
 two large serpents, a sloth, an ant-bear, and a cayman. At Liverpool, the 
 Custom-house officers, men ignorant of Linnseus, got hold of his collection, 
 detained it six weeks, and, in spite of remonstrances to the Treasury, he 
 was forced to pay very high duties. This is really perfectly absurd ; that a 
 man of science cannot bring a pickled armadilla, for a collection of natural 
 history, without paying a tax for it. This surely must have happened in 
 the dark days of Nicolas. We cannot doubt but that such pakry exactions 
 have been swept away by the manly and liberal policy of Robinson and 
 Huskisson. That a great people should compel an individual to make 
 them a payment before he can be permitted to land a stuffed snake upon 
 their shores, is, of all the paltry Custom-house robberies we ever heard of, 
 the most mean and contemptible but Major remm ordo nacitur. 
 
 Thefourt/t journey of Mr Waterton is to the United States. It is pleas- 
 antly written ; but our author does not appear as much at home among 
 men as among beasts. 
 
 Shooting, stuffing, and pursuing are his occupations. He is lost in places 
 where there are no bushes, snakes, nor Indians but he is full of good and 
 amiable feeling wherever he goes. We cannot avoid introducing the fol- 
 lowing passage : 
 
 " The steam-boat from Quebec to Montreal had above five hundred Irish 
 emigrants on board. They were going ' they hardly knew whither,' far 
 away from dear Ireland. It made one's heart ache to see them all huddled 
 together, without any expectation of ever revisiting their native soil. We 
 feared that the sorrow of leaving home for ever, the miserable accommoda- 
 tions on board the ship which had brought them away, and the tossing of 
 the angry ocean, in a long and dreary voyage, would have rendered them 
 callous to good behaviour. But it was quite otherwise. They conducted 
 themselves with great propriety. Every American on board seemed to 
 feel for them. And then, 'they were so full of wretchedness. Need 
 and oppression stared within their eyes. Upon their backs hung ragged 
 misery. The world was not their friend.' ' Poor dear Ireland,' exclaimed 
 an aged female, as I was talking to her, ' I shall never see it any more ! ' " 
 (PP- 259, 260). 
 
 And thus it is in every region of the earth ! There is no country where 
 an Englishman can set his foot, that he does not meet these miserable vic- 
 tims of English cruelty and oppression banished from their country by
 
 GRANBY. 
 
 513 
 
 the stupidity, bigotry, and meanness of the English people, who trample on 
 their liberty and conscience, because each man is afraid, in another reign, of 
 being out of favour, and losing his share in the spoil. 
 
 We are always glad to see America praised (slavery excepted). And yet 
 there is still, we fear, a party in this countiy, who are glad to pay their 
 court to the timid and the feeble, by sneering at this great spectacle of human 
 happiness. We never think of it without considering it as a great lesson 
 to the people of England, to look into their own affairs, to watch and sus- 
 pect their rulers, and not to be defrauded of happiness and money by pom- 
 pous names, and false pretences. 
 
 " Our western brother is in possession of a country replete with every thing 
 that can contribute to the happiness and comfort of mankind. His code of 
 laws, purified by experience and common sense, has fully answered the ex- 
 pectations of the public. By acting up to the true spirit of this code, he has 
 reaped immense advantages from it. His advancement, as a nation, has 
 been rapid beyond all calculation ; and, young as he is, it may be remarked, 
 without any impropriety, that he is now actually reading a salutary lesson 
 to the rest of the civilised world." (p. 273.) 
 
 Now, what shall we say, after all, of Mr Waterton ? That he has spent 
 a great part of his life in wandering in the wild scenes he describes, and that 
 he describes them with entertaining zeal and real feeling. His stories draw 
 largely sometimes on our faith ; but a man who lives in the woods of Cayenne 
 must do many odd things, and see many odd things things utterly unknown 
 to the dwellers in Hackney and Highgate. We do not want to rein up Mr 
 Waterton too tightly because we are convinced he goes best with his head 
 free. But a little less of apostrophe, and some faint suspicion of his own 
 powers of humour, would improve this gentleman's style. As it is, he has 
 a considerable talent at describing. He abounds with good feeling ; and 
 has written a very entertaining book, which hurries the reader out of his 
 European parlour, into the heart of tropical forests, and gives, over the 
 rules and the cultivation of the civilised parts of the earth, a momentary 
 superiority to the freedom of the savage, and the wild beauties of Nature. 
 We honestly recommend the book to our readers : it is well worth the 
 perusal. 
 
 GRANBY. (E. REVIEW, 1826.) 
 
 Granty. A Novel in Three Volumes. London : Colburn. 1816. 
 THERE is nothing more amusing in the spectacles of the present day, than 
 to see the Sir John's and Sir Thomas's of the House of Commons struck 
 aghast by the useful science and wise novelties of Mr Huskisson and the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer. Treason, Disaffection, Atheism, Republi- 
 canism, and Socinianism the great guns in the Noodle's park of artillery 
 they cannot bring to bear upon these gentlemen. Even to charge with a 
 regiment of ancestors is not quite so efficacious as it used to be ; and all 
 that remains, therefore, is to rail against Peter M'Culloch and Political 
 Economy ! In the meantime, day after day, down goes one piece of non- 
 sense or another. The most approved trash, and the most trusty clamours, 
 are found to be utterly powerless. Twopenny taunts and trumpery truisms 
 have lost their destructive omnipotence ; and the exhausted common- 
 placemen, and the afflicted fool, moan over the ashes of Imbecility, and 
 
 2K
 
 514 GRANBY. 
 
 strew flowers on the um of Ignorance ! General Elliot found the London 
 tailors in a state of mutiny, and he raised from them a regiment of light 
 cavalry, which distinguished itself in a very striking manner at the battle of 
 Minden. In humble imitation of this example, we shall avail ourselves of 
 the present political disaffection and unsatisfactory idleness of many men of 
 rank and consequence, to request their attention to the Novel of Granby 
 written, as we have heard, by a young gentleman of the name of Lister,* 
 and from which we have derived a considerable deal of pleasure and 
 entertainment. 
 
 The main question as to a novel is did it amuse ? were you surprised at 
 dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten, and twelve for 
 eleven ? were you too late to dress ? and did you sit up beyond the usual 
 hour ? If a novel produces these effects, it is good ; if it does not story, 
 language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please ; 
 and it must do that, or it does nothing. Now Granby seems to us to 
 answer this test extremely well ; it produces unpunctuality, makes the 
 reader too late for dinner, impatient of contradiction, and inattentive, 
 even if a bishop is making an observation, or a gentleman, lately from the 
 Pyramids, or the Upper Cataracts, is let loose upon the drawing-room. 
 The objection, indeed, to these compositions, when they are well done, is, 
 that it is impossible to do any thing, or perform any human duty, while we 
 are engaged in them. Who can read Mr Hallam's Middle Ages, or extract 
 the root of an impossible quantity, or draw up a bond, when he is in the 
 middle of Mr Trebeck and Lady Charlotte Duncan ? How can the boy's 
 lesson be heard, about the Jove-nourished Achilles, or his six miserable 
 verses upon Dido be corrected, when Henry Granby and Mr Courtenay are 
 both making love to Miss Jermyn ? Common life palls in the middle of 
 these artificial scenes. All is emotion when the book is open all dull, flat, 
 and feeble when it is shut. 
 
 Granby, a young man of no profession, living with an old uncle in the 
 country, falls in love with Miss Jermyn, and Miss Jermyn with him ; but 
 Sir Thomas and Lady Jermyn, as the young gentleman is not rich, having 
 discovered, by long living in the world and patient observation of its ways, 
 that young people are commonly Malthus-proof and have children, and that 
 young and old must eat, very naturally do what they can to discourage the 
 union. The young people, however, both go to town meet at balls 
 flutter, blush, look and cannot speak speak and cannot look, suspect, 
 misinterpret, are sad and mad, peevish and jealous, fond and foolish ; but 
 the passion, after all, seems less near to its accomplishment at the end of 
 the season than the beginning. The uncle of Granby, however, dies, and 
 leaves to his nephew a statement accompanied with the requisite proofs 
 that Mr Tyrrel, the supposed son of Lord Malton, is illegitimate, and that 
 he, Granby, is the heir to Lord Malton's fortune. The second volume is 
 now far advanced, and it is time for Lord Malton to die. Accordingly Mr 
 Lister very judiciously despatches him ; Granby inherits the estate his 
 rirtues (for what shows off virtue like land ?) are discovered by the Jermyns 
 and they marry in the last act. 
 
 Upon this slender story, the author has succeeded in making a very 
 agreeable and interesting novel ; and he has succeeded, we think, chiefly 
 by the very easy and natural picture of manner^ as they really exist among 
 the upper classes : by the description of new characters judiciously drawn 
 and faithfully preserved ; and by the introduction of many striking and 
 
 * This is the gentleman who now keeps the keys of Life and Death, the Janitor of the 
 World.
 
 GRANBY. 5! 5 
 
 well-managed incidents ; and we are particularly struck throughout the 
 whole with the discretion and good sense of the author. He is never 
 nimious ; there is nothing in excess ; there is a good deal of fancy and a 
 great deal of spirit at work, but a directing and superintending judgment 
 rarely quits him. 
 
 We would instance, as a proof of his tact and talent, the visit at Lord 
 Daventry's, and the description of characters of which the party is com- 
 posed. There are absolutely no events ; nobody runs away, goes mad, or 
 dies. There is little of love, or of hatred ; no great passion comes into 
 play ; but nothing can be further removed from dulness and insipidity. 
 Who has ever lived in the world without often meeting the Miss Cliftons ? 
 
 " The Miss Cliftons were good-humoured girls : not handsome, but of 
 pleasing manners, and sufficiently clever to keep up the ball of conversation 
 very agreeably for an occasional half hour. They were always au courant 
 du jour, and knew and saw the first of every thing were in the earliest 
 confidence of many a bride elect, and could frequently tell that a marriage 
 was 'off' long after it had been announced as 'on the tapis' in the morning 
 papers always knew something of the new opera, or the new Scotch novel, 
 before any body else did were the first who made fizgigs, or acted charades 
 contrived to have private views of most exhibitions, and were supposed 
 to have led the fashionable throng to the Caledonian Chapel, Cross Street, 
 Hatton Garden. Their employments were like those of most other girls : 
 they sang, played, drew, rode, read occasionally, spoiled much muslin, 
 manufactured purses, handscreens, and reticules for a repository, and tran- 
 scribed a considerable quantity of music out of large fair print into diminu- 
 tive manuscript. 
 
 " Miss Clifton was clever and accomplished ; rather cold, but very con- 
 versible ; collected seals, franks, and anecdotes of the day ; and was a great 
 retailer of the latter. Anne was odd and entertaining ; was a formidable 
 quizzer, and no mean caricaturist ; liked fun in most shapes ; and next to 
 making people laugh, had rather they stared at what she said. Maria was 
 the echo of the other two : vouched for all Miss Clifton's anecdotes, and 
 led the laugh at Anne's repartees. They were plain, and they knew it ; 
 and cared less about it than young ladies usually do. Their plainness, 
 however, would have been less striking, but for that hard, pale, parboiled 
 town look, that stamp of fashion, with which late hours and hot rooms 
 generally endow the female face." (pp. 103 105.) 
 
 Having introduced our reader to the Miss Cliftons, we must make him 
 acquainted with Mr Trebeck, one of those universally appearing gentlemen 
 and tremendous table tyrants, by whom London society is so frequently 
 governed : 
 
 " Mr Trebeck had great powers of entertainment, and a keen and lively 
 turn for satire ; and could talk down his superiors, whether in rank or 
 talent, with very imposing confidence. He saw the advantages of being 
 formidable, and observed with derision, how those whose malignity he 
 pampered with ridicule of others, vainly thought to purchase by subserviency 
 exemption for themselves. He had sounded the gullibility of the world ; 
 knew the precise current value of pretension ; and soon found himself the 
 acknowledged umpire, the last appeal, of many contented followers. 
 
 ' ' He seldom committed himself by praise or recommendation, but rather 
 left his .example and adoption to work its way. As for censure, he had 
 both ample and witty store ; but here too he often husbanded his remarks.
 
 516 GRANBY. 
 
 and where it was needless or dangerous to define a fault, could check 
 admiration by an incredulous smile, and depress pretensions of a season's 
 standing by the raising of an eyebrow. He had a quick perception of the 
 foibles of others, and a keen relish for bantering and exposing them. No 
 keeper of a menagerie could better show off a monkey than he could an 
 'original.' He could ingeniously cause the unconscious subject to place 
 his own absurdities in the best point of view, and would cloak his derison 
 under the blandest cajolery. Imitators he loved much ; but to baffle them 
 mora. He loved to turn upon the luckless adopters of his last folly, and 
 see them precipitately back out of the scrape into which he himself had led 
 them. 
 
 "In the art of cutting he shone unrivalled ; he knew the 'when,' the 
 'where,' and the 'how.' Without affecting useless short-sightedness, he 
 could assume that calm but wandering gaze, which veers, as if uncon- 
 sciously, round the proscribed individual ; neither fixing, nor to be fixed ; 
 not looking on vacancy, nor on any one object ; neither occupied nor 
 abstracted ; a look which perhaps excuses you to the person cut, and, at 
 any rate, prevents him from accosting you. Originality was his idol. He 
 wished to astonish, even if he did not amuse ; and had rather say a silly 
 thing than a common-place one. He was led by this sometimes even to 
 approach the verge of rudeness and vulgarity ; but he had considerable tact, 
 and a happy hardihood, which generally carried him through the difficul- 
 ties into which his fearless love of originality brought him. Indeed, he 
 well knew that what would, in the present condition of his reputation, be 
 scouted in any body else, would pass current with the world in him. Such 
 was the far-famed and redoubtable Mr Trebeck." (pp. 109 112.) 
 
 This sketch we think exceedingly clever. But we are not sure that its 
 merit is fully sustained by the actual presentment of its subject. He 
 makes his debut at dinner veiy characteristically, by gliding in quietly 
 after it is half over ; but in the dialogue which follows with Miss Jermyn, 
 he seems to us a little too resolutely witty, and somewhat affectedly odd 
 though the whole scene is executed with spirit and talent. 
 
 " The Duke had been discoursing on cookery, when Mr Trebeck turned 
 to her, and asked in a low tone if she had ever met the Duke before ' I 
 assure you,' said he, ' that upon that subject he is well worth attending to. 
 He is supposed to possess more true science than any amateur of his day. 
 By the by, what is the dish before you? It looks well, and I see you are 
 eating some of it. Let me recommend it to him upon your authority ; I 
 dare not upon my own.' 'Then pray do not use mine.' 'Yes I will, 
 with your permission ; I '11 tell him you thought, by what dropped from 
 him in conversation, that it would exactly suit the genius of his taste. 
 Shall I? Yes. Duke' (raising his voice a little, and speaking across the 
 table), ' Oh, no ! how can you?' ' Why not? Duke (with a glance at 
 Caroline), 'will you allow me to take wine with you?' 'I thought,' said 
 she, relieved from her trepidation, and laughing slightly, ' you would never 
 say any thing so very strange.' ' You have too good an opinion of me ; I 
 blush for my unworthiness. But confess, that in fact you were rather 
 alarmed at the idea of being held up to such a critic as the recommender of 
 a bad dish.' ' Oh no, I was not thinking of that ; but I hardly know the 
 Duke : and it would have seemed so odd ; and perhaps he might have 
 thought that I had really told you to say something of that kind.' ' Of 
 course he would ; but you must not suppose that he would have been at all 
 surprised at it. I 'm afraid you are not aware of the full extent of your
 
 GRANBY. 517 
 
 privileges, and are not conscious how many things young ladies can, and 
 may, and will do.' 'Indeed I am not perhaps you will instruct me.' 
 ' Ah, I never do that for any body. I like to see young ladies instruct 
 themselves. It is better for them, and much more amusing to me. But, 
 however, for once I will venture to tell you, that a very competent know- 
 ledge of the duties of women may, with proper attention, be picked up m 
 a. ball room." 'Then I hope,' said she, laughing, 'you will attribute my 
 deficiency to my little experience of balls. I have only been at two.' 
 ' Only two ! and one of them I suppose a race ball. Then you have not 
 yet experienced any of the pleasures of a London season ? Never had the 
 dear delight of seeing and being seen, in a well of tall people at a rout, or 
 passed a pleasant hour at a ball upon a staircase ? I envy you. You have 
 much to enjoy.' 'You do not mean that I really have?' 'Yes really. 
 But let me give you a caution or two. Never dance with any man without 
 first knowing his character and condition, on the word of two credible 
 chaperons. At balls, too, consider what you come for to dance, of 
 course, and not to converse ; therefore, never talk yourself, nor encourage 
 it in others.' ' I "m afraid I can only answer for myself.' ' Why, if foolish, 
 well-meaning people will choose to be entertaining, I question if you have 
 the power of frowning them down in a very forbidding manner ; but I 
 would give them no countenance nevertheless.' ' Your advice seems a 
 little ironical.' ' Oh, you may either follow it or reverse it that is its chief 
 beaut}-. It is equally good taken either way.' After a slight pause he 
 continued ' I hope you do not sing, or play, or draw, or do any thing 
 that every body else does.' ' I am obliged to confess that I do a little 
 very little in each.' ' I understand your "very little ;" I'm afraid you 
 are accomplished.' ' You need have no fear of that. But why are you an 
 enemy to all accomplishments?' 'All accomplishments ? Nay, surely, 
 you do not think me an enemy to all ? What can you possibly take me 
 for?' 'I do not know,' said she, laughing slightly. 'Yes, I see you do 
 not know exactly what to make of me and you are not without your 
 apprehensions. I can perceive that, though you try to conceal them. But 
 never mind. I am a safe person to sit near sometimes. I am to-day. 
 This is one of my lucid intervals. I 'm much better, thanks to my keeper. 
 There he is, on the other side of the table the tall man in black ' (point- 
 ing out Mr Bennet), ' a highly respectable kind of person. I came with 
 him here for change of air. How do you think I look at present ?' Caro- 
 line could not answer him for laughing. ' Nay,' said he, ' it is cmel to 
 laugh on such a subject. It is very hard that you should do that, and mis- 
 represent my meaning too. ' ' Well then,' said Caroline, resuming a respect- 
 able portion of gravity, ' that I may not be guilty of that again, what 
 accomplishments do you allow to be tolerable?' ' Let me see,' said he, 
 with a look of consideration ; ' you may play a waltz with one hand, and 
 dance as little as you think convenient. You may draw caricatures of 
 your intimate friends. You may not iing a note of Rossini ; nor sketch 
 gate-posts and donkeys after nature. You may sit to a harp, but you need 
 not play it. You must not paint miniatures nor copy Swiss costumes. 
 But you may manufacture any thing from a cap down to a pair of shoes 
 always remembering that the less useful your work the better. Can you 
 remember all this?' 'I do not know,' said she, 'it comprehends so 
 much; and I am rather puzzled between the "mays" and "must nots." 
 However, it seems, according to your code, that very little is to be required 
 of me ; for you have not mentioned any thing that I positively must do.' 
 ' Ah, well, I can reduce all to a very small compass. You must be an 
 archeress in the summer, and a skater in the winter, and play well at
 
 518 GRANBY. 
 
 billiards all the year ; and if you do these extremely well, my admiration 
 will have no bounds.' ' I believe I must forfeit all claim to your admira- 
 tion then, for unfortunately I am not so gifted.' ' Then you must place it 
 to the account of your other gifts.' ' Certainly when it comes.' ' Oh ! it 
 is sure to come, as you well know : but, nevertheless, I like that incredu- 
 lous look extremely.' He then turned away, thinking probably that he 
 had paid her the compliment of sufficient attention, and began a conversa- 
 tion with the Duchess, which was carried on in such a well-regulated 
 under tone, as to be perfectly inaudible to any but themselves." (pp. 
 9299.) 
 
 The bustling importance of Sir Thomas Jermyn, the fat Duke and his 
 right-hand man the blunt toad-eater, Mr Charlecote, a loud noisy sportsman, 
 and Lady Jermyn's worldly prudence, are all displayed and managed with 
 considerable skill and great power of amusing. One little sin against good 
 taste, our author sometimes commits an error from which Sir Walter 
 Scott is not exempt. We mean the humour of giving characteristic names 
 to persons and places ; for instance, Sir Thomas Jermyn is Member of Par- 
 liament for the town of Rottenborough. This very easy and appellative 
 jocularity seems to us, we confess, to savour a little of vulgarity ; and is 
 therefore quite as unworthy of Mr Lister, as Dr Dryasdust is of Sir Walter 
 Scott. The plainest names which can be found (Smith, Thomson, John- 
 son, and Simson, always excepted) are the best for novels. Lord Ches- 
 terton we have often met with ; and suffered a good deal from his Lordship : 
 a heavy, pompous, meddling peer, occupying a great share of the conver- 
 sation saying things in ten words which required only two, and evidently 
 convinced that he is making a great impression ; a large man, with a large 
 head, and very landed manner ; knowing enough to torment his fellow 
 creatures, not to instruct them the ridicule of young ladies, and the natural 
 butt and target of wit It is easy to talk of carnivorous animals and beasts 
 of prey ; but does such a man, who lays waste a whole party of civilised 
 beings by prosing, reflect upon the joys he spoils, and the misery he creates, 
 in the course of his life ? and that any one who listens to him through polite- 
 ness, would prefer toothache or earache to his conversation ? Does he 
 consider the extreme uneasiness which ensues, when the company have dis- 
 covered a man to be an extremely absurd person, at the same time that it 
 is absolutely impossible to convey, by Avords or manner, the most distant 
 suspicion of the discovery ? And then, who punishes this bore ? What 
 sessions and what assizes for him ? What bill is found against him ? Who 
 indicts him ? When the judges have gone their vernal and autumnal rounds 
 the sheep-stealer disappears the swindler gets ready for the Bay the 
 solid parts of the murderer are preserved in anatomical collections. But, 
 after twenty years of crime, the bore is discovered in the same house, in the 
 same attitude, eating the same soup, unpunished, untried, undissected 
 no scaffold, no skeleton no mob of gentlemen and ladies to gape over his 
 last dying speech and confession. 
 
 The scene of quizzing the country neighbours is well imagined, and not 
 ill executed ; though there are many more fortunate passages in the book. 
 The elderly widows of the metropolis beg, through us, to return their 
 thanks to Mr Lister for the following agreeable portrait of Mrs Dormer. 
 
 " It would be difficult to find a more pleasing example than Mrs Dormer, 
 of that much libelled class of elderly ladies of the world, who are presumed 
 to be happy only at the card table ; to grow in bitterness as they advanced 
 in years, and to haunt, like restless ghosts, those busy circles which they no
 
 GRANBY. 519 
 
 longer either enliven or adorn. Such there may be ; but of these she was 
 not one. She was the frequenter of society, but not its slave. She had 
 great natural benevolence of disposition ; a friendly vivacity of manners, 
 which endeared her to the young, and a steady good sense, which com- 
 manded the respect of her contemporaries ; and many, who did not agree 
 with her on particular points, were willing to allow that there was a good 
 deal of reason in Mrs Dormer's prejudices. She was, perhaps, a little blind 
 to the faults of her friends ; a defect of which the world could not cure her ; 
 but she was very kind to their virtues. She was fond of young people, and 
 had an unimpaired gaiety about her, which seemed to expand in the con- 
 tact with them ; and she was anxious to promote, for their sake, even 
 those amusements for which she had lost all taste herself. She was but 
 aftej: all, she will be best described by negatives. She was not a match- 
 maker, or mischief-maker ; nor did she plume herself upon her charity, in 
 implicitly believing only just half of what the world says. She was no re- 
 tailer of scandalous ' on dits. ' She did not combat wrinkles with rouge ; 
 nor did she labour to render years less respected by a miserable affectation 
 of girlish fashions. She did not stickle for the inviolable exclusiveness of 
 certain sects ; nor was she afraid of being known to visit a friend in an un- 
 fashionable quarter of the town. She was no worshipper of mere rank. 
 She did not patronise oddities, nor sanction those who delight in braving 
 the rules of common decency. She did not evince her sense of propriety, 
 by shaking hands with the recent defendant in a Crim. Con. cause ; nor 
 exhale her devotion in Sunday routs." (pp. 243, 244.) 
 
 Mrs Clotworthy, we are afraid, will not be quite so well pleased with 
 the description of her rout. Mrs Clotworthy is one of those ladies who 
 have ices, fiddlers, and fine rooms, but no fine friends. But fine friends 
 may always be had, where there are ices, fiddlers, and fine rooms : and so, 
 with ten or a dozen stars and an Oonalaska chief, and followed by all vicious 
 and salient London, Mrs Clotworthy takes the field. 
 
 " The poor woman seemed half dead with fatigue already ; and we can- 
 not venture to say whether the prospect of five hours more of this high- 
 wrought enjoyment tended much to brace her to the task. It was a brilliant 
 sight, and an interesting one, if it could have been viewed from some fair 
 vantage ground, with ample space, in coolness and in quiet. Rank, beauty, 
 and splendour were richly blended. The gay attire ; the glittering jewels ; 
 the more resplendent features they adorned, and too frequently the rouged 
 cheek of the sexagenarian : the vigilant chaperon ; the fair but languid form 
 which she conducted ; well curled heads, well propped with starch ; well 
 whiskered guardsmen ! and here and there fat good-humoured elderly 
 gentlemen, with stars upon their coats ; all these united in one close 
 medley a curious piece of living mosaic. Most of them came to see and 
 be seen ; some of the most youthful professedly to dance ; yet how could 
 they ? at any rate they tried. They stood, if they could, with their vis-a- 
 vis facing them, and sidled across and back again and made one step, 
 or two if there was room, to the right or left, and joined hands and set 
 perhaps, and turned their partners, or dispensed with it if necessary and 
 so on to the end of ' La Finale ; ' and then comes a waltz for the few who 
 choose it and then another squeezy quadrille and so on and on, till 
 the weary many 'leave ample room and verge enough' for the persevering 
 few to figure in with greater freedom. 
 
 "But then they talk ; oh ! ay ! true, we must not forget the charms of 
 conversation. And what passes between nine tenths of them ! Remarks on
 
 520 CRANE Y. 
 
 the heat of the room ; the state of the crowd ; the impossibility of dancing, 
 and the propriety nevertheless of attempting it ; that on last Wednesday 
 was a bad Almack's, and on Thursday a worse Opera ; that the new ballet 
 is supposed to be good ; mutual inquiries how they like Pasta, or Catalan!, 
 or whoever the syren of the day may be ; whether they have been at Lady 
 A.'s, and whether they are going to Mrs B.'s ; whether they think Miss 
 Such-a-one handsome ; and what is the name of the gentleman talking to 
 her ; whether Rossini's music makes the best quadrilles, and whether 
 Collinet's band are the best to play them. There are many who pay in 
 better com ; but the small change is much of this description." (I. 249 
 251.) 
 
 We consider the following description of London, as it appears to a 
 person walking home after a rout, at four or five o'clock in the morning, 
 to be as poetical as any thing written on the forests of Guiana, or the falls 
 of Niagara : 
 
 " Granby followed them with his eyes ; and now, too full of happiness to 
 be accessible to any feelings of jealousy or repining, after a short reverie of 
 the purest satisfaction, he left the ball, and sallied out into the fresh cool 
 air of a summer morning suddenly passing from the red glare of lamp- 
 light, to the clear sober brightness of returning day. He walked cheer- 
 fully onward, refreshed and exhilarated by the air of morning, and 
 interested with the scene around him. It was broad day-light, and he 
 viewed the town under an aspect in which it is alike presented to the late 
 retiring votary of pleasure, and to the early rising sons of business. He 
 stopped on the pavement of Oxford Street, to contemplate the effect. The 
 whole extent of that long vista, unclouded by the mid-day smoke, was 
 distinctly visible to his eye at once. The houses shrank to half their span, 
 while the few visible spires of the adjacent churches seemed to rise less 
 distant than before, gaily tipped with early sunshine, and much diminished 
 in apparent size, but heightened in distinctness and in beauty. Had it not 
 been for the cool grey tint which slightly mingled with every object, the 
 brightness was almost that of noon. But the life, the bustle, the busy din, 
 the flowing tide of human existence, were all wanting to complete the 
 similitude. All was hushed and silent ; and this mighty receptacle of 
 human beings, which a few short hours would wake into active energy and 
 motion, seemed like a city of the dead. 
 
 "There was little to break this solemn illusion. Around were the 
 monuments of human exertion, but the hands which formed them were no 
 longer there. Few, if any, were the symptoms of life. No sounds Were 
 heard but the heavy creaking of a solitary waggon ; the twittering of an 
 occasional sparrow ; the monotonous tone of the drowsy watchman ; and 
 the distant rattle of the retiring carriage, fading on the ear till it melted 
 into silence : and the eye that searched for living objects fell on nothing 
 but the grim great-coated guardian of the night, muffled up into an appear- 
 ance of doubtful character between bear and man, and scarcely distinguish- 
 able, by the colour of his dress, from the brown flags along which he 
 sauntered." (pp. 297 299.) 
 
 One of the most prominent characters of the book, and the best drawn, 
 Is that of Tyrrel, son of Lord Malton, a noble black-leg, a titled gamester, 
 and a profound plotting villain a man, in comparison of whom nine tenths 
 of the persons hung in Newgate are pure and perfect. The profound dis- 
 simulation and wicked artifices of this diabolical person are painted with
 
 GRANBY. 521 
 
 great energy and power of description. The party at whist made to take 
 in Granby is very good, and that part of the story where Granby compels 
 Tyrrel to refund what he has won of Courtemay is of first-rate dramatic 
 excellence ; and if any one wishes for a short and convincing proof of the 
 powers of the writer of this novel to that scene we refer him. It shall 
 be the taster of the cheese, and we are convinced it will sell the whole 
 article. We are so much stnick with it that we advise the author to 
 consider seriously whether he could not write a good play. It is many 
 years since a good play has been written. It is about time, judging from 
 the common economy of nature, that a good dramatic writer should 
 appear. We promise Mr Lister sincerely, that the Edinburgh Review 
 shall rapidly undeceive him if he mistake his talents : and that his delusion 
 shall not last beyond the first tragedy or comedy. 
 
 The picture at the exhibition is extremely well managed, and all the 
 various love-tricks of attempting to appear indifferent, are, as well as we 
 can remember, from the life. But it is thirty or forty years since we have 
 been in love. 
 
 The horror of an affectionate and dexterous mamma is a handsome young 
 man without money ; and the following lecture deserves to be committed 
 to memory by all managing mothers, and repeated at proper intervals to 
 the female progeny. 
 
 " 'True, my love, but understand me. I don't wish you positively to 
 avoid him. I would not go away, for instance, if I saw him coming, or 
 even turn my head that I might not see him as he passed. That would be 
 too broad and marked. People might notice it. It would look, particular. 
 We should never do any thing that looks particular. No, I would answer 
 him civilly and composedly whenever he spoke to me, and then pass on, 
 just as you might in the case of any body else. But I leave all this to your 
 own tact and discretion, of which nobody has more for her age. I am sure 
 you can enter into all these niceties, and that my observations will not be 
 lost upon you. And now, my love, let me mention another thing. You 
 must get over that little embarrassment which I see you show whenever you 
 meet him. It was very natural and excusable the first time, considering 
 our long acquaintance with him and the General : but we must make our 
 conduct conform to circumstances ; so try to get the better of this little 
 flutter ; it does not look well, and might be observed. There is no quality 
 more valuable in a young person than self-possession. So you must keep 
 down these blushes,' said she, patting her on the check, ' or I believe I must 
 rouge you : though it would be a thousand pities, with the pretty natural 
 colour you have. But you must remember what I have been saying. Be 
 more composed in your behaviour. Try to adopt the manner which I do. 
 It may be difficult; but you see I contrive it, and I have known Mr 
 Granby a great deal longer than you have, Caroline.' " (pp. 21, 22.) 
 
 These principles are of the highest practical importance in an age when the 
 art of marrying daughters is carried to the highest pitch of excellence, when 
 love must be made to the young men of fortune, not only by the young 
 lady, who must appear to be dying for him, but by the father, mother, 
 aunts, cousins, tutor, gamekeeper, and stable-boy assisted by the parson of 
 the parish, and the churchwardens. If any of these fail, Dives pouts, and 
 the match is off. 
 
 The merit of this writer is, that he catches delicate portraits, which a less 
 skilful artist would pass over, from not thinking the features sufficiently 
 marked. We are struck, however, with the resemblance, and are pleased
 
 523 GRANBY. 
 
 with the conquest of difficulties we remember to have seen such faces, and 
 are sensible that they form an agreeable variety to the expression of more 
 marked and decided character. Nobody, for instance, can deny that he is 
 acquainted with Miss Darrell. 
 
 " Miss Darrell was not strictly a beauty. She had "not, as was frequently 
 observed by her female friends, and unwillingly admitted by her male ad- 
 mirers, a single truly good feature in her face. But who could quarrel 
 with the tout ensemble? who but must be dazzled with the graceful anima- 
 tion with which these features were lighted up ? Let critics hesitate to pro- 
 nounce her beautiful ; at any rate they must allow her to be fascinating. 
 Place her a perfect stranger in a crowded assembly, and she would first 
 attract his eye ; correcter beauties would pass unnoticed, and his first 
 attention would be riveted by her. She was all brilliancy and effect ; but 
 it were hard to say she studied it ; so little did her spontaneous, airy 
 graces convey the impression of premeditated practice. She was a spark- 
 ling tissue of little affectations, which, however, appeared so interwoven 
 with herself, that their seeming artlessness disarmed one's censure. Strip 
 them away, and you destroyed at once the brilliant being that so much 
 attracted you ; and it thus became difficult to condemn what you felt unable, 
 and indeed, unwilling, to remove. With positive affectation, malevolence 
 itself could rarely charge her ; and prudish censure seldom exceeded the 
 guarded limits of a dry remark, that Miss Darrell had ' a good deal of 
 manner.' 
 
 "Eclat she sought, and gained. Indeed, she was both formed to gam 
 it, and disposed to desire it. But she required an extensive sphere. A 
 ball-room was her true arena: for she waltzed 'A ravir,' and could talk 
 enchantingly about nothing. She was devoted to fashion, and all its fickle- 
 nesses, and went to the extreme whenever she could do so consistently with 
 grace. But she aspired to be a leader as well as a follower ; seldom, if 
 ever, adopted a mode that was unbecoming to herself, and dressed to suit 
 the genius of her face." (pp. 28, 29.) 
 
 Tremendous is the power of a novelist ! If four or five men are in a room, 
 and show a disposition to break the peace, no human magistrate (not even 
 Mr Justice Bayley) could do more than bind them over to keep the peace, 
 and commit them if they refused. 
 
 But the writer of the novel stands with a pen in his hand, and can run 
 any of them through the body, can knock down any one individual, and 
 keep the others upon their legs ; or, like the last scene in the first tragedy 
 written by a young man of genius, can put them all to death. Now, an 
 author possessing such extraordinary privileges, should not have allowed Mr 
 Tyrrel to strike Granby. This is ill managed ; particularly as Granby does 
 not return the blow, or turn him out of the house. Nobody should suffer 
 his hero to have a black eye, or to be pulled by the nose. The Iliad would 
 never have come down to these times if Agamemnon had given Achilles a 
 box on the ear. We should have trembled for the ^Eneid, if any Tyrian 
 nobleman had kicked the pious ^Eneas in the 4th book. ^Eneas may have 
 deserved it ; but he could not have founded the Roman Empire after so 
 distressing an accident.
 
 HAMIL TON'S METHOD OF TEA CHING LANGUA GES. 523 
 
 HAMILTON'S METHOD OF TEACHING LANGUAGES. 
 (E. REVIEW, 1826.) 
 
 1. The Gospel of St Jo/in, in Latin, adapted to the Hamiltonian System, by an Analy- 
 
 tical and Interlineary Translation. Executed under the immediate Direction of 
 JAMES HAMILTON. London, 1834. 
 
 2. The Gospel of St John, adapted to the Hamiltonian System, by an Analytical ana. 
 
 Interlineary Translation from the Italian, -with full Instructions for its use, 
 even by those who are wholly ignorant of the Language. For theUse of Schools- 
 By JAMES HAMILTON, Author of the Hamiltonian System. London, 1825. 
 
 WE have nothing whatever to do with Mr Hamilton personally. He may 
 be the wisest or the weakest of men ; most dexterous or most unsuccessful 
 in the exhibition of his system ; modest and proper, or prurient and pre- 
 posterous in its commendation ; by none of these considerations is his 
 system itself affected. 
 
 The proprietor of Ching's Lozenges must necessarily have recourse to a 
 newspaper, to rescue from oblivion the merit of his vermifuge medicines. 
 In the same manner, the Amboyna tooth-powder must depend upon the 
 Herald and the Morning Post. Unfortunately, the system of Mr Hamilton 
 has been introduced to the world by the same means, and has exposed 
 itself to those suspicions which hover over splendid discoveries of genius, 
 detailed in the daily papers, and sold in sealed boxes at an infinite diversity 
 of prices but with a perpetual inclusion of the stamp, and with an equit- 
 able discount for undelayed payment. 
 
 It may have been necessary for Mr Hamilton to have had recourse to 
 these means of making known his discoveries, since he may not have had 
 friends whose names and authority might have attracted the notice of the 
 public ; but it is a misfortune to which his system has been subjected, and 
 a difficulty which it has still to overcome. There is also a singular and 
 somewhat ludicrous condition of giving warranted lessons ; by which is 
 meant, we presume, that the money is to be returned, if the progress is not 
 made. We should be curious to know, how poor Mr Hamilton would 
 protect himself from some swindling scholars, who, having really learnt all 
 that the master professed to teach, should counterfeit the grossest ignorance 
 of the Gospel of St John, and refuse to construe a single verse, or to pay a 
 farthing. 
 
 Whether Mr Hamilton's translations are good or bad is not the question. 
 The point to determine is, whether very close interlineal translations are 
 helps in learning a language ? not whether Mr Hamilton has executed these 
 translations faithfully and judiciously. Whether Mr Hamilton is or is not 
 the inventor of the system which bears his name, and what his claims to 
 originality may be, are also questions of very second-rate importance ; but 
 they merit a few observations. That man is not the discoverer of any art 
 who first says the tiling ; but he who says it so long, and so loud, and so 
 clearly, that he compels mankind to hear him the man who is so deeply 
 impressed with the importance of the discovery that he will take no denial, 
 but, at the risk of fortune, and fame, pushes through all opposition, and is 
 determined that what he thinks he has discovered shall not perish for want 
 of a fair trial. Other persons had noticed the effect of coal gas in producing 
 light ; but Winsor worried the town with bad English for three winters 
 before he could attract any serious attention to his views. Many persons 
 broke stone before Macadam, but Macadam felt the discovery more strongly, 
 stated it more clearly, persevered in it with greater tenacity, wielded his 
 hammer, in short, with greater force than other men and finally succeeded 
 in bringing his plan into general use.
 
 524 HAMIL TON 'S ME THOD OF TEA CHING LANGUA GES. 
 
 Literal translations are not only not used in our public schools, but are 
 generally discountenanced in them. A literal translation, or any trans- 
 lation of a school-book, is a contraband article in English schools, which a 
 schoolmaster would instantly seize, as a Custom-house officer would a barrel 
 of gin. Mr Hamilton, on the other hand, maintains, by books and lectures, 
 that all boys ought to be allowed to work with literal translations, and that 
 it is by far the best method of learning a language. If Mr Hamilton's 
 system is just, it is sad trifling to deny his claim to originality, by stating 
 that Mr Locke has said the same thing, or that others have said the same 
 thing, a century earlier than Hamilton. They have all said it so feebly, 
 that their observations have passed sub silentio; and if Mr Hamilton suc- 
 ceeds in being heard and followed, to him be the glory because from him 
 have proceeded the utility and the advantage. 
 
 The works upon this subject on this plan, published before the time of 
 Mr Hamilton, are Montanus's edition of the Bible, with Pignini's inter- 
 lineary Latin version ; Lubin's New Testament having the Greek interlined 
 with Latin and German ; Abbe L'Olivet's Pensees de Ciceron ; and a 
 French work by the Abbe Radonvilliers, Paris, 1768 and Locke upon 
 Education. 
 
 One of the first principles of Mr Hamilton is, to introduce very strict 
 literal, interlinear translations, as aids to lexicons and dictionaries, and to 
 make so much use of them as that the dictionary or lexicon will be for a 
 long time little required. We will suppose the language to be the Italian, 
 and the book selected to be the Gospel of St John. Of this Gospel Mt 
 Hamilton has published a key, of which the following is an extract : 
 
 Nel principio era il Verbo, e il Verbo era appresso Dio, 
 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word wat near to God, 
 
 e il Verbo era Dio. 
 and the Word was God. 
 
 ti 2 Questo era nel principio appresso Dio. 
 This was in the beginning mar to God. 
 
 Per mezzo di lui tutte le cose furon fatte : e senza di lui 
 
 3 By means of him all the things were made : and without of him 
 
 nulla fu fatto di cio, che e stata fatto. 
 nothing was made of that, of which is been made. 
 
 K In lui era la vita, e la vita era la luce degli uomini : 
 
 4 In him was the life, and the life was the light of the men : 
 
 (t _ E la luce splende tra le tenebre, e le tenebre hanno 
 ' And the light shines among the darkness, and the darknesses have 
 
 non ammessa la. 
 not admitted her. 
 
 f Vi fu un uomo mandato da Dio che nomava si Giovanni. 
 There was a man sent by God who did name himself John. 
 
 t( ^ Questi venne qual testimone, affin di rendere testimonianza alia 
 ' This came like as witness, in order of to render testimony to th^ 
 
 luce, onde per mezza di lui tutti credessero." 
 iight, whence by mean of him all might belitvt"
 
 ffAMIL TON'S METHOD OF TEA CHING LANGUA GES. 525 
 
 In this way Mr Hamilton contends (and appears to us to contend justly), 
 that the language may be acquired with much greater ease and despatch, 
 than by the ancient method of beginning with grammar, and proceeding 
 with the dictionary. We will presume at present, that the only object is to 
 read, not to write, or speak Italian, and that the pupil instructs himself from 
 the Key without a master, and is not taught in a class. We wish to com- 
 pare the plan of finding the English word in such a literal translation, to 
 that of finding it in dictionaries and the method of ending with grammar, 
 or of taking the grammar at an advanced period of knowledge in the lan- 
 guage, rather than at the beginning. Every one will admit, that of all the 
 disgusting labours of life, the labour of lexicon and dictionary is the most 
 intolerable. Nor is there a greater object of compassion than a fine boy, 
 full of animal spirits, set down in a bright sunny day, with a heap of 
 unknown words before him, to be turned into English, before supper, by 
 the help of a ponderous dictionary alone. The object in looking into a dic- 
 tionary can only be to exchange an unknown sound for one that is known. Now, 
 it seems indisputable, that the sooner this exchange is made the better. The 
 greater the number of such exchanges which can be made in a given time, the 
 greater is the progress, the more abundant the copia verborum obtained by the 
 scholar. Would it not be of advantage if the dictionary at once opened at the 
 required page, and if a self-moving index at once pointed to the requisite word ? 
 Is any advantage gained to the world by the time employed first in finding 
 the letter P, and then in finding the three guiding letters P R I ? This appears 
 to us to be pure loss of time, justifiable only if it be inevitable ; and even 
 after this is done, what an infinite multitude of difficulties are heaped at 
 once upon the wretched beginner ! Instead of being reserved for his greater 
 skill and maturity in the language, he must employ himself in discovering 
 in which of many senses which his dictionary presents the word is to be 
 used ; in considering the case of the substantive, and the syntaxical arrange- 
 ment in which it is to be placed, and the relation it bears to other words. 
 The loss of .time in the merely mechanical part of the old plan is immense. 
 We doubt very much, if an average boy, between ten and fourteen, will 
 look out or find more than sixty words in an hour ; we say nothing at pre- 
 sent of the time employed in thinking of the meaning of each word when 
 he has found it, but of the mere naked discovery of the word in the lexicon 
 or dictionary. It must be remembered, we say an average boy not what 
 Master Evans, the show boy, can do, nor what Master Macarthy, the boy 
 who is whipt every day, can do, but some boy between Macarthy and 
 Evans ; and not what this medium boy can do, while his mastigophorous 
 superior is frowning over him ; but what he actually does, when left in the 
 midst of noisy boys, and with a recollection, that, by sending to the neigh- 
 bouring shop, he can obtain any quantity of unripe gooseberries upon credit. 
 Now, if this statement be true, and if there are 10,000 words in the Gospel 
 of St John, here are 160 hours employed in the mere digital process of turn- 
 ing over leaves ! But, in much less time than this, any boy of average 
 quickness might learn, by the Hamiltonian method, to construe the whole 
 four Gospels, with the greatest accuracy, and the most scrupulous correct- 
 ness. The interlineal translation of course spares the trouble and time of 
 this mechanical labour. Immediately under the Italian word is placed the 
 English word. The unknown sound therefore is instantly exchanged for 
 one that is known. The labour here spared is of the most irksome nature ; 
 and it is spared at a time of life the most averse to such labour ; and so pain- 
 ful is this labour to many boys, that it forms an insuperable obstacle to their 
 progress. They prefer to be flogged, or to be sent to sea. It is useless to 
 say of any medicine that it is valuable, if it is so nauseous that the patient
 
 526 HAMILTON'S METHOD OF TEACHING LANGUAGES. 
 
 flings it away. You must give me, not the best medicine you have in your 
 shop, but the best you can get me to take. 
 
 We have hitherto been occupied with finding the word] we will now 
 suppose, after running a dirty finger down many columns, and after many 
 sighs and groans, that the word is found. We presume the little fellow 
 working in the true orthodox manner without any translation ; he is in pur- 
 suit of the Greek word BaXXw, and, after a long chase, seizes it, as greedily 
 as a bailiff possesses himself of a fugacious captain. But, alas I the vanity 
 of human wishes ! the never-sufficiently-to-be-pitied-stripling has scarcely 
 congratulated himself upon his success, when he finds BaXXw to contain the 
 following meanings in Hederick's Lexicon: I. Jacio ; 2. Jaculor; 3. Ferio ; 
 4. Figo ; 5. Saucio ; 6. Attingo ; 7. Projicio ; 8. Emitto ; 9. Profundo ; 
 IO. Pono; II. Immitto ; 12. Trado; 13. Committo; 14. Condo ; 15. 
 ^Edifico ; 1 6. Verso ; 17. Flecto. Suppose the little rogue, not quite at 
 home in the Latin tongue, to be desirous of affixing English significations 
 to these various words, he has then, at the moderate rate of six meanings 
 to every Latin word, one hundred and two meanings to the word BaXXw ; 
 or if he is content with the Latin, he has then only seventeen.* 
 
 Words, in their origin, have a natural or primary sense. The accidental 
 associations of the people who use it, afterwards give to that word a great 
 number of secondary meanings. In some words the primary meaning is 
 very common, and the secondary meaning very rare. In other instances 
 it is just the reverse ; and in very many the particular secondary meaning 
 is pointed out by some proposition which accompanies it, or some case by 
 which it is accompanied. But an accurate translation points these things 
 out gradually as it proceeds. The common and most probable meanings 
 of the word BaXXw, or of any other word, are, in the Hamiltonian method, 
 insensibly but surely fixed on the mind, which, by the Lexicon method, 
 must be done by a tentative process, -frequently ending in gross error, 
 noticed with peevishness, punished with severity, consuming a great deal 
 of time, and for the most part only corrected, after all, by the accurate 
 vivd voce translation of the master or, in other words, by the Hamiltonian 
 method. 
 
 The recurrence to a translation is treated in our schools as a species of 
 imbecility and meanness ; just as if there was any other dignity here than 
 utility, any other object in learning languages, than to turn something you 
 do not understand into something you do understand, and as if that was 
 not the best method which effected this object in the shortest and simplest 
 manner. Hear upon this point the judicious Locke : " But if such a man 
 cannot be got, who speaks good Latin, and being able to instruct your son 
 in all these parts of knowledge, will undertake it by this method ; the next 
 best is to have him taught as near this way as may be which is by taking 
 some easy and pleasant book, such as ^Esop's Fables, and writing the 
 English translation (made as literal as it can be) in one line, and the Latin 
 words which answer each of them just over it in another. These let him 
 read every day over and over again, till he perfectly understands the Latin ; 
 and then go on to another fable, till he be also perfect in that, not omitting 
 
 * In addition to the other needless difficulties and miseries entailed upon children who 
 are learning languages, their Greek Lexicons give a Latin instead of an English transla- 
 tion ; and a boy of twelve or thirteen years of age, whose attainments in Latin are of 
 course but moderate, is expected to make it the vehicle of knowledge for other languages. 
 This is setting the short-sighted and blear-eyed to lead the blind ; and is one of those 
 afflicting pieces of absurdity which escape animadversion, because they are, and have 
 long been, of daily occurrence. Mr Jones has published an English and Greek Lexicon, 
 which we recommend to the notice of all persons engaged in education, and not sacra- 
 merited against all improvement.
 
 HAMIL TON'S ME THOD OF TEA CHING LANGUA GES. $2'/ 
 
 what he is already perfect in, but sometimes reviewing that, to keep it in, 
 his memory ; and when he comes to write, let these be set him for copies, 
 which, with the exercise of his hand, will also advance him in Latin. 
 This being a more imperfect way than by talking Latin unto him, the 
 formation of the verbs first, and afterwards the declensions of the nouns 
 and pronouns perfectly learned by heart, may facilitate his acquaintance 
 with the genius and manner of the Latin tongue, which varies the significa- 
 tion of verbs and nouns not as the modern languages do, by particles pre- 
 fixed, but by changing the last syllables. More than this of grammar I 
 think he need not have till he can read himself " Sanctii Minerva " with 
 Scioppius and Perigonius's notes." Locke on Education, p. 74, folio. 
 
 Another recommendation which we have not mentioned in the Hamil- 
 tonian system is, that it can be combined, and is constantly combined, 
 with the system of Lancaster. The Key is probably sufficient for those 
 who have no access to classes and schools : but in a Hamiltonian school 
 during the lesson, it is not left to the option of the child to trust to the 
 Key alone. The master stands hi the middle, translates accurately and 
 literally the whole verse, and then asks the boys the English of separate 
 words, or challenges them to join the words together, as he has done. A 
 perpetual attention and activity is thus kept up. The master, or a scholar 
 (turned into a temporary Lancasterian master), acts as a living lexicon ; 
 and, if the thing is well done, as a lively and animating lexicon. How is 
 it possible to compare this with the solitary wretchedness of a poor lad ot 
 the desk and lexicon, suffocated with the nonsense of grammarians, over- 
 whelmed with every species of difficulty disproportionate to his age, and 
 driven by despair to peg-top, or marbles ? 
 
 "Taking these principles as a basis, the teacher forms his class of eight, 
 ten, twenty, or one hundred, the number is of little moment, it being as 
 easy to teach a greater as a smaller one, and brings them at once to the 
 language itself, by reciting, with a loud articulate voice, the first verse thus : 
 In in, principio in beginning, Verbum Word, erat was, et and, Verbum 
 Word, erat was, apud at, Deum God, et and, Verbum Word, erat was, 
 Deus God. Having recited the verse once or twice himself, it is then 
 recited precisely in the same manner by any person of the class whom he 
 may judge most capable ; the person copying his manner and intonations 
 as much as possible. When the verse has been thus recited by six or eight 
 persons of the class, the teacher recites the 2d verse in the same manner, 
 which is recited as the former by any members of the class ; and thus con- 
 tinues until he has recited from ten to twelve verses which usually constitute 
 the first lesson of one hour. In three lessons, the first Chapter may be 
 thus readily translated, the teacher gradually diminishing the number of 
 repetitions of the same verse till the fourth lesson, when eack member of 
 the class translates his verse in turn from the mouth of the teacher ; from 
 which period fifty, sixty, or even seventy, verses may be translated in the 
 time of a lesson, or one hour. At the seventh lesson, it is invariably found 
 that the class can translate without the assistance of the teacher farther than 
 for occasional correction, and for those words which they may not have 
 met in the preceding chapters. But, to accomplish this, it is absolutely 
 necessary that every member of the class know every word of all the preced- 
 ing lessons, which is however an easy task, the words being always taught 
 him in class, and the pupil besides being able to refer to the key whenever 
 he is at a loss the key being translated in the very words which the 
 teacher has used in the class, from which, as before remarked, he must 
 never deviate. In ten lessons, it will be found that the class can readily
 
 528 HA MIL TON'S ME THOD OF TEA CH1NG LANGUA GES. 
 
 translate the whole of the gospel of St John, which is called the first section 
 of the course. Should any delay, from any cause, prevent them, it is in my 
 classes always for account of teacher, who gives the extra lesson or lessons 
 always gratis. It cannot be too deeply impressed on the mind of the pupil that 
 a perfect knowledge of every word of his first section is most important to the 
 ease and comfort of his future progress. At the end of ten lessons, or first 
 section, the custom of my establishments is to give the pupil the Epitanuz 
 Hisloria Satne, which is provided with a key in the same manner. It was 
 first used in our classes for the first and second sections ; we now teach it 
 in one section of ten lessons, which we find easier than to teach it in two 
 sections before the pupil has read the Testament. When he has read the 
 Epitome, it will be then time to give him the theory of the verbs and other 
 words which change their terminations. He has already acquired a good 
 practical knowledge of these things ; the theory becomes then very easy. 
 A grammar containing the declensions and conjugations, and printed 
 specially for my classes, is then put into the pupil's hands (not to be got by 
 heart, nothing is ever got by rote on this system), but that he may com- 
 prehend more readily his teacher, who lectures on grammar generally, but 
 especially on the verbs. From this time, that is, from the beginning of the 
 third section, the pupil studies the theory and construction of the language 
 as well as its practice. For this purpose he reads the ancient authors, 
 beginning with Caesar, which, together with the Selecta e Profanis, fills 
 usually the third and fourth sections. When these with the preceding 
 books are well known, the pupil will find little difficulty in reading the 
 authors usually read in schools. The ffth and sixth sections consist of 
 Virgil and Horace, enough of which is read to enable the pupil to read 
 them with facility, and to give him correct ideas of Prosody and Versifica- 
 tion. Five or six months, with mutual attention on the part of pupil and 
 teacher, will be found sufficient to acquire a knowledge of this language, 
 which hitherto has rarely been the result of as many years. " 
 
 We have before said, that the Hamiltonian system must not depend upon 
 Mr Hamilton's method of carrying it into execution ; for instance, he 
 banishes from his schools the effects of emulation. The boys do not take 
 each other's places. This, we think, is a sad absurdity. A cook might as 
 well resolve to make bread without fermentation, as a pedagogue to carry 
 on a school without emulation. It must be a sad doughy lump without this 
 vivifying principle. Why are boys to be shut out from a class of feelings 
 to which society owes so much, and upon which their conduct in future life 
 must (if they are worth any thing) be so closely constructed ? Poet A 
 writes verses to outshine poet B. Philosopher C sets up roasting Titanium, 
 and boiling Chromium, that he may be thought more of than philosopher 
 D. Mr Jackson strives to out-paint Sir Thomas ; Sir Thomas Lethbridge 
 to overspeak Mr Canning ; and so society gains good chemists, poets, 
 painters, speakers, and orators ; and why are not boys to be emulous as 
 well as men ? 
 
 If a boy were in Paris, would he learn the language better by shutting 
 himself up to read French books with a dictionary, or by conversing freely 
 with all whom he met ? and what is conversation but an Hamiltonian 
 school ? Every man you meet is a living lexicon and grammar who is 
 perpetually changing your English into French, and perpetually instructing 
 you, in spite of yourself, in the terminations of French substantives and 
 verbs. The analogy is still closer, if you converse with persons of whom 
 you can ask questions, and who will be at the trouble of correcting you. 
 What madness would it be to run away from these pleasing facilities, as
 
 HAMIL TON 'S ME THOD OF TEACHING LANGUA GES. 529 
 
 too dangerously easy to stop your ears, to double-lock the door, and to 
 look out chickens ; taking a walk ; and fine weather, in Beyer's Dictionary 
 and then, by the help of Chambaud's Grammar, to construct a sentence 
 which should signify, ' ' Come to my house, and eat some chickens, if it is 
 fine I" But there is in England almost a love of difficulty and needless 
 labour. We are so resolute and industrious in raising up impediments 
 which ought to be overcome, that there is a sort of suspicion against the 
 removal of these impediments, and a notion that the advantage is not 
 fairly come by without the previous toil. If the English were in a paradise 
 of spontaneous productions, they would continue to dig and plough, though 
 they were never a peach nor a pine-apple the better for it. 
 
 A principal point to attend to in the Hamiltonian system, is the pro- 
 digious number of words and phrases which pass through the boy's mind, 
 compared with those which are presented to him by the old plan. As a 
 talkative boy learns French sooner in France than a silent boy, so a trans- 
 lator of books leams sooner to construe, the more he translates. An 
 Hamiltonian makes, in six or seven lessons, three or four hundred times as 
 many exchanges of English for French or Latin, as a grammar schoolboy 
 can do ; and if he lose 50 per cent, of all he hears, his progress is still, 
 beyond all possibility of comparison, more rapid. 
 
 As for pronunciation of living languages, we see no reason why that con- 
 sideration should be introduced in this place. We are decidedly of 
 opinion, that all living languages are best learnt in the country where they 
 are spoken, or by living with those who come from that country ; but if 
 that cannot be, Mr Hamilton's method is better than the grammar and 
 dictionary method. Cczteris paribns, Mr Hamilton's method, as far as 
 French is concerned, would be better in the hands of a Frenchman, and his 
 Italian method in the hands of an Italian ; but all this has nothing to do 
 with the system. 
 
 " Have I read through Lilly? have I learnt by heart that most atrocious 
 monument of absurdity, the Westminster Grammar ? have I been whipt 
 for the substantives? whipt for the verbs? and whipt for and with the 
 interjections ? have I picked the sense slowly, and word by word, out of 
 Hederick ? and shall my son Daniel be exempt from all this misery ? 
 Shall a little unknown person in Cecil Street, Strand, No. 25, pretend to 
 tell me that all this is unnecessary? Was it possible that I might have 
 been spared all this ? The whole system is nonsense, and the man an im- 
 postor. If there had been any truth in it, it must have occurred to some 
 one else before this period." This is a very common style of observation 
 upon Mr Hamilton's system, and by no means an uncommon wish of the 
 mouldering and decaying part of mankind, that the next generation should 
 not enjoy any advantages from which they themselves have been precluded. 
 " Av, ay, it's all mighty-well but I went through this myself, and I am 
 determined my children sJiall do the same." We are convinced that a great 
 deal of opposition to improvement proceeds from this principle. Crabbe 
 might make a good picture of an unbenevolent old man, slowly retiring 
 from this sublunary scene, and lamenting that the coming race of men 
 would be less bumped on the roads, better lighted in the streets, and less 
 tormented with grammars and lexicons, than in the preceding age. A 
 creat deal of compliment to the wisdom of ancestors, and a great degree of 
 alarm at the dreadful spirit of innovation, are soluble into mere jealousy 
 and envy. 
 
 But what is to become of a boy who has no difficulties to grapple with ? 
 How enervated will that understanding be, to which every thing is made so 
 clear, plain, and easy ! no hills to walk up, no chasms to step over ; every 
 
 2 L
 
 530 HAMILTON'S METHOD OF TEACHING LANGUAGES. 
 
 thing graduated, soft, and smooth. All this, however, is an objection ta 
 the multiplication table, to Napier's bones, and to every invention for the 
 abridgment of human labour. There is no dread of any lack of difficulties. 
 Abridge intellectual labour by any process you please multiply mechanical 
 powers to any extent there will be sufficient, and infinitely more than 
 sufficient, of laborious occupation for the mind and body of man. Why is 
 the boy to be idle ? By and by comes the book without a key ; by and 
 by comes the lexicon. They do come at last though at a better period. 
 But if they did not come if they were useless, if language could be attained 
 without them would any human being wish to retain difficulties for their 
 own sake, which led to nothing useful, and by the annihilation of which our 
 faculties were left to be exercised by difficulties which do lead to something 
 useful by mathematics, natural philosophy, and every branch of useful 
 knowledge ? Can any be so anserous as to suppose, that the faculties of 
 young men cannot be exercised, and their industry and activity called into 
 proper action, because Mr Hamilton teaches, in three or four years, what 
 has (in a more vicious system) demanded seven or eight ? Besides, even in 
 the Hamiltonian method it is very easy for one boy to outstrip another. 
 Why may not a clever and ambitious boy employ three hours upon his key 
 by himself, while another boy has only employed one ? There is plenty of 
 corn to thrash, and of chaff to be winnowed away, in Mr Hamilton's 
 system ; the difference is, that every blow tells, because it is properly 
 directed. In the old way half their force was lost in air. There is a 
 mighty foolish apophthegm of Dr Bell's,* that it is not what is done for a 
 boy that is of importance, but what a boy does for himself. This is just as 
 wise as to say, that it is not the breeches which are made for a boy that can 
 cover his nakedness, but the breeches he makes for himself. All this 
 entirely depends upon a comparison of the time saved, by showing the boy 
 how to do a thing, rather than by leaving him to do it for himself. Let the 
 object be, for example, to make a pair of shoes. The boy will effect this 
 object much better if you show him how to make the shoes, than if you 
 merely give him wax, thread, and leather, and leave him to find out all the 
 ingenious abridgments of labour which have been discovered by experience. 
 The object is to turn Latin into English. The scholar will do it much 
 better and sooner if the word is found for him, than if he finds it much 
 better and sooner if you point out the effect of the terminations, and the 
 nature of the Syntax, than if you leave him to detect them for himself. 
 The thing is at last done by the pupil himself 'for he reads the language 
 which was the thing to be done. All the help he has received has only 
 enabled him to make a more economical use of his time, and to gain his 
 end sooner. Never be afraid of wanting difficulties for your pupils ; if 
 means are rendered more easy, more will be expected. The animal will be 
 compelled or induced to do all that he can do. Macadam has made the roads 
 better. Dr Bell would have predicted, that the horses would get too fat ; 
 but the actual result is, that they are compelled to go ten miles an hour 
 instead of eight. 
 
 " For teaching children, this, too, I think is to be observed, that, in most 
 cases, where they stick, they are not to be further puzzled, by putting them 
 upon finding it out themselves ; as by asking such questions as these ; viz. 
 which is the nominative case in the sentence they are to construe ? or 
 demanding what ' aufero ' signifies, to lead them to the knowledge what 
 'abstulere' signifies, &c., when they cannot readily tell. This wastes time 
 
 * A very foolish old gentleman, seized on eagerly by the Church of England to defraud 
 Lancaster of his discovery.
 
 HAMIL TORY'S METHOD OF TEA CHING LAXGUA GES. 531 
 
 only, in disturbing them ; for whilst they are learning, and apply themseU'es 
 with attention, they are to be kept in good humour, and every thing made 
 easy to them, and as pleasant as possible. Therefore, wherever they are at 
 a stand, and are willing to go forwards, help them presently over the diffi- 
 culty, without any rebuke or chiding ; remembering that, where harsher 
 ways are taken, they are the effect only of pride and peevishness in the 
 teacher, who expects children should instantly be masters of as much as he 
 knows ; whereas he should rather consider, that his business is to settle in 
 them habits, not angrily to inculcate rules." Locte on Education, p. 74. 
 
 Suppose the first five books of Herodotus to be acquired by a key, or 
 literal translation after the method of Hamilton, so that the pupil could 
 construe them with the greatest accuracy ; we do not pretend, because the 
 pupil could construe this book, that he could construe any other book 
 equally easy ; we merely say, that the pupil has acquired, by these means, 
 a certain copia verborum, and a certain practical knowledge of grammar, 
 which must 'materially diminish the difficulty of reading the next book ; 
 that his difficulties diminish in a compound ratio with every fresh book he 
 reads with a key till at last he reads any common book, without a key 
 and that he attains this last point of perfection in a time incomparably less, 
 and with difficulties incomparably smaller, than in the old method. 
 
 There are a certain number of French books, which when a boy can con- 
 strue accurately, he may be said, for all purposes of reading, to be master 
 of the French language. No matter how he has attained this power of 
 construing the books. If you try him thoroughly, and are persuaded he is 
 perfectly master of the books then he possesses the power in question he 
 understands the language. Let these books, for the sake of the question, 
 be Telemachus, the History of Louis XIV., the Henriade, the Plays of 
 Racine, and the Revolutions of Vertot. We would have Hamiltonian keys 
 to all these books, and the Lancasterian method of instruction. We believe 
 these books would be mastered in one sixth part of the time, by these means, 
 that they would be by the old method, of looking out the words in the dic- 
 tionary, and then coming to say the lesson to the master ; and we believe 
 that the boys, long before they came to the end of this series of books, 
 would be able to do without their keys to fling away their cork jackets, 
 and to swim alone. But boys who learn a language in four or five months, 
 it is said, are apt to forget it again. Why, then, does not a young person, 
 who has been five or six months in Paris, forget his French four or five 
 years afterwards? It has been obtained without any of that labour, which 
 the objectors to the Hamiltonian system deem to be so essential to memory. 
 It has been obtained in the midst of tea and bread and butter, and yet is in 
 a great measure retained for a whole life. In the same manner tlie pupils 
 o/ this new school use a colloquial living dictionary, and, from every prin- 
 ciple of youthful emulation, contend with each other in catching the inter, 
 pretation, and in applying to the lesson before them. 
 
 " If you wish boys to remember any language, make the acquisition of it 
 very tedious and disgusting." This seems to be an odd rule ; but if it be 
 good for language, it must be good also for every species of knowledge- 
 music, mathematics, navigation, architecture. In all these sciences aversion 
 should be the parent of memory impediment the cause of perfection. If 
 difficulty is the sauce of memory, the boy who learns with the greatest diffi- 
 culty will remember with the greatest tenacity ; in other words, the acqui- 
 sitions of a dunce will be greater and more important than those of a clever 
 boy. Where is the love of difficulty to end ? Why not leave a boy to 
 compose his own dictionary and grammar ? It is not what is done for a 
 boy, but what he does for himself, that is of any importance, Are there.
 
 532 HA MIL TON'S ME THOD OF TEA CHING LANGUA GES. 
 
 difficulties enough in the old method of acquiring languages ? Would it be 
 better if the difficulties were doubled, and thirty years given to languages, 
 instead of fifteen? All these arguments presume the difficulty to be got 
 over, and then the memory to be improved. But what if the difficulty is 
 shrunk from ? What if it put an 'end to power, instead of increasing it ; 
 and extinguish, instead of exciting, application? And when these effects 
 are produced, you not only preclude all hopes of learning, or language, but 
 you put an end for ever to all literary habits, and to all improvements from 
 study. The boy who is lexicon-struck in early youth looks upon all books 
 afterwards with horror, and goes over to the blockheads. Every boy would 
 be pleased with books, and pleased with school, and be glad to forward 
 the views of his parents, and obtain the praise of his master, if he found it 
 possible to make tolerably easy progress ; but he is driven to absolute de- 
 spair by gerunds, and wishes himself dead ! Progress is pleasure activity 
 is pleasure. It is impossible for a boy not to make progress, and not to be 
 active, in the Hamiltonian method ; and this pleasing state of mind we con- 
 tend to be more favourable to memory, than the languid jaded spirit which 
 much commerce with lexicons never fails to produce. 
 
 Translations are objected to in schools justly enough, when they are 
 paraphrases and not translations. It is impossible, from a paraphrase or 
 very loose translation, to make any useful progress they retard rather than 
 accelerate a knowledge of the language to be acquired, and are the princi- 
 pal causes of the discredit into which translations have been brought, as 
 instruments of education. 
 
 " Infandum Regina jubes renovare dolorem, 
 Regina, jubes renovare dolorem infandum." 
 
 Oh t Queen, thou orderest to renew grief not to be spoken of. 
 Oh ! Queen, in pursuance of your commands, I enter upon the narrative 
 of misfortunes almost too great for utterance. 
 
 The first of these translations leads us directly to the explication of a 
 foreign language, as the latter insures a perfect ignorance of it. 
 
 It is difficult enough to introduce any useful novelty in education without 
 enhancing its perils by needless and untenable paradox. Mr Hamilton has 
 made an assertion in his Preface to the Key of the Italian Gospel, which 
 has no kind of foundation in fact, and which has afforded a conspicuous 
 mark for the aim of his antagonists. 
 
 ' ' I have said that each word is translated by its one sole undeviating 
 meaning, assuming as an incontrovertible principle in all languages that, 
 with very few exceptions, each word has one meaning only, and can usually 
 be rendered correctly into another by one word only, which one word 
 should serve for its representative at all times and on all occasions." 
 
 Now, it is probable that each word had one meaning only in its origin ; 
 but metaphor and association are so busy with human speech, that the same 
 word comes to serve in a vast variety of senses, and continues to do so long 
 after the metaphors and associations which called it into this state of activity 
 are buried in oblivion. Why may not jubeo be translated order as well as 
 command, or dolorem rendered grief as well as sorrow ? Mr Hamilton has 
 expressed himself loosely ; but he perhaps means no more than to say, that 
 in school translations, the metaphysical meaning should never be adopted, 
 when the word can be rendered by its primary signification. We shall
 
 HAMILTON'S METHOD OF TEACHING LANGUAGES. 533 
 
 allow him, however, to detail his own method of making the translation in 
 question. 
 
 "Translations on the Hamiltonian system, according to which this 
 book is translated, must not be confounded with translations made accord- 
 ing to Locke, Clarke, Sterling, or even according to Diimarsais, Fre- 
 mont, and a number of other Frenchmen, who have made what have 
 been and are yet sometimes called literal and interlineal translations. 
 The latter are, indeed, interlineal, but no literal translation had ever 
 appeared in any language before those called Hamiltonian, that is, before 
 my Gospel of St John from the French, the Greek, and Latin Gospels 
 published in London, and L'Hommond's Epitome of the Historia Sacra. 
 These and these only were and are truly literal ; that is to say, that 
 every word is rendered in English by a corresponding part of speech ; that 
 the grammatical analysis of the phrase is never departed from ; that the 
 case of every noun, pronoun, adjective, or particle, and the mood, tense, 
 and person of every verb, are accurately pointed out by appropriate and 
 unchanging signs, so that a grammarian not understanding one word of 
 Italian, would, on reading any part of the translation here given, be in- 
 stantly able to parse it. In the translations above alluded to, an attempt is 
 made to preserve the correctness of the language into which the different 
 works are translated, but the wish to conciliate this correctness with a literal 
 translation has only produced a barbarous and uncouth idiom, while it has 
 in every case deceived the unlearned pupil by a translation altogether false 
 and incorrect. Such translations may, indeed, give an idea of what is con- 
 tained in the book translated, but they will not assist, or at least very little, 
 in enabling the pupil to make out the exact meaning of each word, which is 
 the principal object of Hamiltonian translations. The reader will under- 
 stand this better by an illustration : A gentleman has lately given a transla- 
 tion of Juvenal according to the plan of the above mentioned authors, be- 
 ginning with the words semper ego, which he joins and translates, ' shall I 
 always be ' if his intention were to teach Latin words, he might as well have 
 said, ' shall I always eat beefsteaks ? ' True, there is nothing about beef- 
 steaks in semper ego, but neither is there about ' shall be : ' the whole trans- 
 lation is on the same plan, that is to say, that there is not one line of it 
 correct, I had almost said one word, on which the pupil can rely, as the 
 exact equivalent in English of the Latin word above it. Not so the trans- 
 lation here given. 
 
 " As the object of the author has been that the pupil should know every 
 word as well as he knows it himself, he has uniformly given it the one sole, 
 precise, meaning which it has in our language, sacrificing every where the 
 beauty, the idiom, and the correctness of the English language to the 
 original, in order to show the perfect idiom, phraseology and picture of 
 that original as in a glass. So far is this carried, that where the English 
 language can express the precise meaning of the Italian phrase only by a 
 barbarism, this barbarism is employed without scruple as thus : ' e le 
 tenebre non 1'hanno ammessa.' Here the word tenebre being plural, if you 
 translate it darkness, you not only give a false translation of the word itself, 
 which is used by the Italians in the plural number, but, what is much more 
 important, you lead the pupil into an error about its government, it being 
 the nominative case to hanno, which is the third person plural ; it is there- 
 fose translated not darkness but darknesses." 
 
 To make these keys perfect, we rather think there should be a free 
 translation added to the literal one. Not a paraphrase, but only so free as 
 to avoid any awkward or barbarous expression. The comparison between
 
 534 HAMTL TON'S ME TffOD OF TEA CH1NG LANGUA GES. 
 
 the free and the literal translation would immediately show to young people 
 the peculiarities of the language in which they were engaged. 
 
 Literal translation or key Oh! Queen, thou orderest me to renew grief not 
 to be spoken of. 
 
 Free, " Oh ! Queen, thou orderest ,me to renew my grief, too great for 
 utterance. " 
 
 The want of this accompanying free translation is not felt in keys of the 
 Scriptures, because, in fact, the English Bible is a free translation, great 
 part of which the scholar remembers. But in a work entirely unknown, of 
 which a key was given, as full of awkward and barbarous expressions as a 
 key certainly ought to be, a scholar might be sometimes puzzled to arrive 
 at the real sense. We say as full of awkward and barbarous expressions as 
 it ought to be, because we thoroughly approve of Mr Hamilton's plan, of 
 always sacrificing English and elegance to sense, when they cannot be 
 united in the key. We are rather sorry Mr Hamilton's first essay has been 
 in a translation of the Scriptures, because every child is so familiar with 
 them, that it may be difficult to determine whether the apparent progress is 
 ancient recollection or recent attainment ; and because the Scriptures are 
 so full of Hebraisms and Syriacisms, and the language so different from 
 that of Greek authors, that it does not secure a knowledge of the language 
 equivalent to the time employed upon it. 
 
 The Keys hitherto published by Mr Hamilton are the Greek, Latin, 
 F'rench, Italian, and German keys to the Gospel of St John, Perrin's 
 Fables, Latin Historia Sacra, Latin, French, and Italian Grammar and 
 Studia Metrica. One of the difficulties under which the system is labour- 
 ing, is a want of more Keys. Some of the best Greek and Roman classics 
 should be immediately published, with Keys, and by very good scholars. 
 We shall now lay before our readers an extract from one of the public 
 papers respecting the progress made in the Hamiltonian schools. 
 
 Extract from the Morning Chronicle of Wednesday, Noi>emler l6t/t, 1825. 
 " Hamiltonian System. We yesterday were present at an examination 
 of eight lads who have been under Mr Hamilton since some time in the 
 month of May last, with a view to ascertain the efficacy of his system in 
 communicating a knowledge of languages. These eight lads, all of them 
 between the ages of twelve and fourteen, are the children of poor people, 
 who, when they were first placed under Mr Hamilton, possessed no other 
 instruction than common reading and writing. They were obtained from 
 a common country school, through the interposition of a Member of Parlia- 
 ment, who takes an active part in promoting charity schools throughout 
 the country ; and the choice was determined by the consent of the parents, 
 and not by the cleverness of the boys. 
 
 "They have been employed in learning Latin, French, and latterly 
 Italian ; and yesterday they were examined by several distinguished 
 individuals, among whom we recognized John Smith, Esq., M.P. ; G. 
 Smith, Esq., M.P. ; Mr J. Mill, the historian of British India; Major 
 Camac ; Major Thompson, Mr Cowell, &c. &c. They first read different 
 portions of the Gospel of St John in Latin, and Csesar's Commentaries, 
 selected by the visitors. The translation was executed with an ease which 
 it would be in vain to expect in any of the boys who attend our common 
 schools, even in their third or fourth year ; and proved, that the principle 
 of exciting the attention of boys to the utmost, during the process by which 
 the meaning of the words is fixed in their memory, had given them a great 
 familiarity with so much of the language as is contained in the books above 
 alluded to. Their knowledge of the parts of speech was respectable, but
 
 HA MIL TON'S ME THOD OF TEA CH1NG LANGUA GES. 535 
 
 not so remarkable ; as the Hamiltonian system follows the natural mode of 
 acquiring language, and only employs the boys in analysing, when they have 
 already attained a certain familiarity with any language. 
 
 "The same experiments were repeated in French and Italian with the 
 same success, and, upon the whole, we cannot but think the success has 
 been complete. It is impossible to conceive a more impartial mode of 
 putting any system to the test, than to make such an experiment on the 
 children of our peasantry. 
 
 Into the truth of this statement we have personally inquired, and it seems 
 to us to have fallen short of the facts, from the laudable fear of overstating 
 them. The lads selected for the experiment were parish boys of the most 
 ordinary description, reading English worse than Cumberland curates, and 
 totally ignorant of the rudiments of any other language. They were pur- 
 posely selected for the experiment by a gentleman who defrayed its expense, 
 and who had the strongest desire to put strictly to the test the efficacy of the 
 Hamiltonian system. The experiment was begun the middle of May 1825, 
 and concluded on the day of November in the same year mentioned in the 
 extract, exactly six months after. The Latin books set before them were 
 the Gospel of St John, and parts of Cresar's Commentaries. Some Italian 
 book or books (what we know not), and a selection of French histories. 
 The visitors put the boys on where they pleased, and the translation was 
 (as the reporter says) executed with an ease which it would be vain to 
 expect in any of the boys who attend our common schools, even in their 
 third or fourth year.* 
 
 From experiments and observations which have fallen under our own 
 notice, we do not scruple to make the following assertions. If there were 
 keys to the four Gospels, as there is to that of St John, any boy or girl of 
 thirteen years of age, and of moderate capacity, studying four hours a dav, 
 and beginning with an utter ignorance even of the Greek character, would 
 learn to construe the four Gospels with the most perfect and scrupulous 
 accuracy, in six weeks. Some children, utterly ignorant of French or 
 Italian, would learn to construe the four Gospels, in either of these 
 languages, in three weeks ; the Latin in four weeks ; the German in five 
 weeks. We believe they would do it in a class ; but, not to run any risks, 
 we will presume a master to attend upon one student alone for these 
 periods. We assign a master principally because the application of a 
 solitary boy at that age could not be depended upon ; but if the sedulity of 
 the child were;certain, he would do it nearly as well alone. A greater time 
 is allowed for German and Greek, on account of the novelty of the charac- 
 ter. A person of mature habits, eager and energetic in his pursuits, and 
 reading seven or eight hours per day, might, though utterly ignorant of a 
 letter of Greek, leam to construe the four Gospels, with the most punctili- 
 ous accuracy, in three weeks, by the Key alone. These assertions we make, 
 not of the Gospels alone, but of any tolerably easy book of the same extent. 
 We mean to be very accurate ; but suppose we are wrong add 10, 20, 30 
 per cent, to the time an average boy of thirteen, in an average school, 
 cannot construe the four Gospels in two years from the tune of his begin- 
 ning the language. 
 
 All persons would be glad to read a foreign language, but all persons do 
 not want the same scrupulous and comprehensive knowledge of grammar 
 
 * We have left with the bookseller'the names of two gentlemen who have verified this 
 account to us, and who were present at the experiment. Their names will at once put 
 an end to all scepticism as to the fact. Two more candid and enlightened judges could 
 not be found.
 
 536 HAMIL TON'S ME THOD OF TEA CHING LANGUA GES. 
 
 which a great Latin scholar possesses. Many persons may, and do, derive 
 great pleasure and instruction from French, German, and Italian books, 
 who can neither speak nor write these languages who know that certain 
 terminations when they see them, signify present or past time, but who, if they 
 wished to signify present or past time, could not recall these terminations. 
 For many purposes and objects, therefore, very little grammar is wanting. 
 
 The Hamiltonian method begins with what all persons want a facility 
 of construing, and leaves every scholar to become afterwards as profound in 
 grammar as he (or those who educate him) may choose ; whereas the old 
 method aims at making all more profound grammarians than three fourths 
 wish to be, or than nineteen twentieths can be. One of the enormous 
 follies of the enormously foolish education in England is, that all young 
 men dukes, fox-hunters, and merchants are educated as if they were to 
 keep a school, and serve a curacy ; while scarcely an hour in the Hamil- 
 tonian education is lost for any variety of life. A grocer may learn enough 
 of Latin to taste the sweets of Virgil ; a cavalry officer may read and un- 
 derstand Homer, without knowing that fij/u comes from eu with a smooth 
 breathing, and that it is formed by an improper reduplication. In the mean 
 time, there is nothing in that education which prevents a scholar from 
 knowing (if he wishes to know) what Greek compounds draw back their 
 accents. He may trace verbs in I/M from polysyllables in l<a, or derive end- 
 less glory from marking down derivatives in TTTW, changing the e of their 
 primitives into iota. 
 
 Thus, in the Hamiltonian method, a good deal of grammar necessarily 
 impresses itself upon the mind (cfieminfaisant), as it does in the vernacular 
 tongue, without any rule at all, and merely by habit. How is it possible 
 to read many Latin Keys, for instance, without remarking, willingly or un- 
 willingly, that the first persons of verbs end in o, the second in s, the thinl 
 in t? that the same adjective ends in us or a, accordingly as the connected 
 substantive is masculine or feminine, and other such gross and common 
 rules ? An Englishman who means to say, / will go to London, does not 
 say, I could go to London. He never read a word of grammar in his life ; 
 but he has learnt, by habit, that the word go signifies to proceed or set 
 forth, and by the same habit he learns that future intentions are expressed 
 by I will ; and by the same habit the Hamiltonian pupil, reading over and 
 comprehending twenty times more words and phrases than the pupil of the 
 ancient system, insensibly but infallibly fixes upon his mind many rules of 
 grammar. We are far from meaning to say, that the grammar thus acquired 
 will be sufficiently accurate for a first-rate Latin and Greek scholar ; but 
 there is no reason why a young person arriving at this distinction, and edu- 
 cated in the Hamiltonian system, may not carry the study of grammar to 
 any degree of minuteness and accuracy. The only difference is, that he 
 begins grammar as a study, after he has made a considerable progress in 
 the language, and not before a very important feature in the Hamiltonian 
 system, and a very great improvement in the education of children. 
 
 The imperfections of the old system proceed in a great measure from a 
 bad and improvident accumulation of difficulties, which must all perhaps, 
 though in a less degree, at one time or .another be encountered, but which 
 may be, and in the Hamiltonian system are, much more wisely distributed. 
 A boy who sits down to Greek with lexicon and grammar, has to master an 
 unknown character of an unknown language to look out words in a lexicon, 
 in the use of which he is inexpert to guess, by many trials, in which of the 
 numerous senses detailed in the lexicon he is to use the word to attend to 
 the inflexions of cases and tense to become acquainted with the syntax of 
 the language and to become acquainted with these inflexions and this
 
 HAMILTON'S METHOD OF TEACHING LANGUAGES. 557 
 
 syntax from books written in foreign languages, and full of the most absurd 
 and barbarous terms, and this at the tenderest age, when the mind is utterly 
 unfit to grapple with any great difficulty ; and the boy, who revolts at all 
 this folly and absurdity, is set down for a dunce, and must go into a march- 
 ing regiment, or on board a man of war ! The Hamiltonian pupil has 
 his word looked out for him, its proper sense ascertained, the case of the 
 substantive, the inflexions of the verb pointed out, and the syntaxical 
 arrangement placed before his eyes. Where, then, is he to encounter these 
 difficulties ? Does he hope to escape them entirely ? . Certainly not, if it be 
 his purpose to become a great scholar ; but he will enter upon them when 
 the character is familiar to his eye when a great number of Greek words 
 are familiar to his eye and ear when he has practically mastered a great 
 deal of grammar when the terminations of verbs convey to him different 
 modifications of time, the terminations of substantives different varieties of 
 circumstance when the rules of grammar, in short, are a confirmation of 
 previous observation, not an irksome multitude of directions, heaped up 
 without any opportunity of immediate application. 
 
 The real way of learning a dead language, is to imitate, as much as 
 possible, the method in which a living language is naturally learnt. When 
 do we ever find a well-educated Englishman or Frenchman embarrassed by 
 an ignorance of the grammar of their respective languages ? They first 
 learn it practically and unerringly ; and then, if they choose to look back 
 and smile at the idea of having proceeded by a number of rules without 
 knowing one of them by heart, or being conscious that they had any rule at 
 all, this is a philosophical amusement : but who ever thinks of learning the 
 grammar of their own tongue before they arc very good grammarians? Let 
 us hear what Mr Locke says upon this subject : " If grammar ought to bc- 
 taught at any time, it must be to one that can speak the language already ; 
 how else can he be taught the grammar of it ? This at least is evident, 
 from the practice of the wise and learned nations amongst the ancients. 
 They made it a part of education to cultivate their own, not foreign languages. 
 The Greeks counted all other nations barbarous, and had a contempt for 
 their languages. And though the Greek learning grew in credit amongst 
 the Romans towards the end of their commonwealth, yet it was the Roman 
 tongue that was made the study of their youth : their own language they 
 were to make use of, and therefore it was their own language they were 
 instructed and exercised in. 
 
 " But, more particularly, to determine the proper season for grammar, I 
 do not see how it can raasonably be made any one's study, but as an intro- 
 duction to rhetoric. When it is thought time to put any one upon the care 
 of polishing his tongue, and of speaking better than the illiterate, then is 
 the time for him to be instructed in the rules of grammar, and not before. 
 For grammar being to teach men not to speak, but to speak correctly, and 
 according to the exact rules of the tongue, which is one part of elegancy, 
 there is little use of the one to him that has no need of the other. Where 
 rhetoric is not necessary, grammar may be spared. I know not why any 
 one should waste his time, nnd beat his head about the Latin grammar, who 
 does not intend to be a critic, or make speeches, and write despatches in it. 
 When any one finds in himself a necessity or disposition to study any foreign 
 language to the bottom, and to be nicely exact in the knowledge of it, it will 
 be time enough to take a grammatical survey of it. If his use of it be only 
 to understand some books writ in it, without a critical knowledge of the 
 tongue itself, reading alone, as I have said, will attain that end, without 
 charging the mind with the multiplied rules and intricacies of grammar." 
 Locke on Education, p. 78, folio.
 
 53 HAMIL TON'S ME THOD OF TEA CHING LANGUA GES. 
 
 In the Eton Grammar, the following very plain and elementary informa- 
 tion is conveyed to young gentlemen utterly ignorant of every syllable of the 
 language : 
 
 " Nomina anomala quae contrahuntur sunt, OXoTrafljJ, qua; contrahuntur in 
 omnibus, ut 700? yovs, &c. 'QXiyoiraOfj, quse in paucioribus casibus contra- 
 huntur, ut substantiva Barytonia in vp. Imparyllatria in ovp," &c. &c. 
 
 From the Westminster Grammar we make the following extract and 
 some thousand rules, conveyed in poetry of equal merit, must be fixed upon 
 the mind of the youthful Grecian, before he advances into the interior of 
 the language : 
 
 " finis thematis finis utriusque futuri est 
 
 Post liquidam in primo, vel in unoquoque secundo, 
 
 to circumflexum est. Ante w finale character 
 
 Explicitus ffe primi est implicitusque futuri 
 
 ta itaque in quo <r quasi plexum est solitu in <ru." 
 
 Westminster Greek Grammar, 1814. 
 
 Such are the easy initiations of our present methods of teaching. The 
 Hamiltonian system, on the other hand, r. teaches an unknown tongue by 
 the closest interlinear translation, instead of leaving a boy to explore his way 
 by the lexicon or dictionary. 2. It postpones the study of grammar till a 
 considerable progress has been made in the language, and a great degree of 
 practical grammar has been acquired. 3. It substitutes the cheerfulness 
 and competition of the Lancasterian system for the dull solitude of the dic- 
 tionary. By these means, a boy finds he is making a progress, and learning 
 something from the very beginning. He is not overwhelmed with the first 
 appearance of insuperable difficulties ; he receives some little pay from the 
 first moment of his apprenticeship, and is not compelled to wait for remu- 
 neration till he is out of his time. The student, having acquired the great 
 art of understanding the sense of what is written in another tongue, may go 
 into the study of the language as deeply and as extensively as he pleases. 
 The old system aims at beginning with a depth and accuracy which many 
 men never will want, which disgusts many from arriving even at moderate 
 attainments, and is a less easy, and not more certain road to a profound 
 skill in languages, than if attention to grammar had been deferred to a later 
 period. 
 
 In fine, we are strongly persuaded, that the time being given, this system 
 will make better scholars ; and the degree of scholarship being given, a 
 much shorter time will be needed. If there be any truth in this, it will 
 make Mr Hamilton one of the most useful men of his age ; for if there be 
 any thing which fills reflecting men with melancholy and regret, it is the 
 waste of mortal time, parental money, and puerile happiness, in the present 
 method of pursuing Latin and Greek.
 
 COUNSEL FOR PRISONERS. 539 
 
 COUNSEL FOR PRISONERS. (E. REVIEW, 1826.) 
 
 Stockton on the Practice of not allowing Counsel for Prisoners accused of Felony 
 8vo. London, 1826. 
 
 ON the sixth of April, 1824, Mr George Lamb (a gentleman who is 
 always the advocate of whatever is honest and liberal) presented the follow- 
 ing petition from several jurymen in the habit of serving on juries at the Old 
 Bailey : 
 
 " That your petitioners, fully sensible of the invaluable privilege of Jury 
 trials, and desirous of seeing them as complete as human institutions will 
 admit, feel it their duty to draw the attention of the House to the restric- 
 tions imposed on the prisoner's counsel, which, they humbly conceive, have 
 strong claims to a legislative remedy. With every disposition to decide 
 justly, the petitioners have found, by experience, in the course of their atten- 
 dances as jurymen in the Old Bailey, that the opening statements for the 
 prosecution too frequently leave an impression more unfavourable to the 
 prisoner at the bar, than the evidence of itself could have produced ; and it 
 has always sounded harsh to the petitioners to hear it announced from the 
 bench, that the counsel, to whom the prisoner has committed his defence, 
 cannot be permitted to address the jury in his behalf, nor reply to the 
 charges which have, or have not, been substantiated by the witnesses. The 
 petitioners have felt their situation peculiarly painful and embarrassing when 
 the prisoner's faculties, perhaps surprised by such an intimation, are too 
 much absorbed in the difficulties of his unhappy circumstances to admit of 
 an effort towards his own justification, against the statements of the prose- 
 cutor's counsel, often unintentionally aggravated through zeal or misconcep- 
 tion ; and it is purely with a view to the attainment of impartial justice, that 
 the petitioners humbly submit to the serious consideration of the House the 
 expediency of allowing ever)' accused person the full benefit of counsel, as 
 in cases of misdemeanour, and according to the practice of the civil courts." 
 
 With the opinions so sensibly and properly expressed by these jurymen, 
 we most cordially agree. We have before touched incidentally on this 
 subject ; but shall now give to it a more direct and fuller examination. We 
 look upon it as a very great blot in our over-praised criminal code ; and no 
 effort of ours shall be wanting, from time to time, for its removal. 
 
 We have now the benefit of discussing these subjects under the govern- 
 ment of a Home Secretary of State, whom we may (we believe) fairly call 
 a wise, honest, and high-principled man as he appears to us, without 
 wishing for innovation, or having any itch for it, not to be afraid of innova- 
 tion,* when it is gradual and well considered. He is, indeed, almost the 
 only person we remember in his station, who has not considered sound 
 sense to consist in the rejection of every improvement, and loyalty to be 
 proved by the defence of every accidental, imperfect, or superannuated 
 institution. 
 
 If this petition of jurymen be a real bona fde petition, not the result of 
 solicitation and we have no reason to doubt it it is a warning which the 
 
 * We must always except the Catholic question. Mr Feel's opinions on this subject 
 (giving him credit for sincerity) have always been a subject of real surprise to us. It 
 must surely be some mistake between the Right Honourable Gentleman and his chaplain I 
 They have been travelling together, and some of the parson's notions have been put up 
 in Mr Peel's head by mistake. We yet hope he will return them to their rightful owner.
 
 5}0 COUNSEL FOR PRISONERS. 
 
 Legislature cannot neglect, if it mean to avoid the disgrace of seeing the 
 lower and middle orders of mankind making laws for themselves, which the 
 government is at length compelled to adopt as measures of their own. The 
 Judges and the Parliament would have gone on to this day, hanging, by 
 wholesale, for the forgeries of bank notes, if juries had not become weary 
 of the continual butchery, and resolved to acquit. The proper execution 
 *f laws must always depend, in great measure, upon public opinion ; and it 
 is undoubtedly most discreditable to any men intrusted with power, when 
 the governed turn round upon their governors, and say, " Your laws are so 
 cruel, or so foolish, we can not, and will not, act upon them." 
 
 The particular improvement, of allowing counsel to those who are accused 
 of felony, is so far from being unnecessary, from any extraordinary indul- 
 gence shown to English prisoners, that we really cannot help suspecting, 
 that not a year elapses in which many innocent persons are not found guilty. 
 How is it possible, indeed, that it can be otherwise ? There are seventy or 
 eighty persons to be tried for various offences at the Assizes, who have lain 
 in prison for some months ; and fifty of whom, perhaps, are of the lowest 
 order of the people, without friends in any better condition than themselves, 
 and without one single penny to employ in their defence. How are they 
 to obtain witnesses ? No attorney can be employed no subpcena can be 
 taken out ; the witnesses are fifty miles off, perhaps totally uninstructed 
 living from hand to mouth uttetly unable to give up their daily 
 occupation to pay for their journey, or for their support when arrived 
 at the town of trial and, if they could get there, not knowing where 
 to go, or what to do. It is impossible but that a human being, in such 
 a helpless situation, must be found guilty ; for as he cannot give evidence 
 for himself, and has not a penny to fetch those who can give it for him, 
 any story told against him must be taken for true (however false) ; 
 since it is impossible for the poor wretch to contradict it. A brother 
 or a sister may come and support every suffering and privation themselves 
 in coming ; but the prisoner cannot often have such claims upon the per- 
 sons who have witnessed the transaction, nor any other claims but those 
 which an unjustly accused person has upon those whose testimony can ex- 
 culpate him and who probably must starve themselves and their families 
 to do it It is true, a case of life and death will rouse the poorest persons, 
 every now and then, to extraordinary exertions, and they may tramp through 
 mud and dirt to the Assize town to save a life though even this effort is 
 precarious enough : but imprisonment, hard labour, or transportation, 
 appeal less forcibly than death and would often appeal for evidence in 
 vain, to the feeble and limited resources of extreme poverty. It is not that 
 a great proportion of those accused are not guilty but that some are not 
 and are utterly without means of establishing their innocence. We do not 
 believe they are often accused from wilful and corrupt perjury ; but the pro- 
 secutor is himself mistaken. The crime has been committed ; and in his 
 thirst for vengeance, he has got hold of the wrong man. The wheat was 
 stolen out of the barn ; and, amidst many other collateral circumstances, 
 the witnesses (paid and brought up by a wealthy prosecutor, who is repaid 
 by the county) swear that they saw a man, very like the prisoner, with a 
 sack of corn upon his shoulder, at an early hour of the morning, going from 
 the barn in the direction of the prisoner's cottage ! Here is one link, and 
 a very material link, of a long chain of circumstantial evidence. Judge and 
 jury must give it weight, till it is contradicted. In fact, the prisoner did 
 not steal the corn ; he was, to be sure, out of his cottage at the same hour 
 and that also is proved but travelling in a totally different direction 
 and was seen to be so travelling by a stage coachman passing by, and by a
 
 COUNSEL FOR PRISONERS. 541 
 
 market gardener. An attorney with money in his pocket, whom every 
 moment of such employ made richer by six-and-eight-pence, would have 
 had the two witnesses ready, and at rack and manger, from the first day of 
 the assize ; and the innocence of the prisoner would have been established : 
 but by .what possible means is the destitute ignorant wretch himself to find 
 or to produce such witnesses ? or how can the most humane jury, and the 
 most acute Judge, refuse to consider him as guilty, till his witnesses are 
 produced ? We have not the slightest disposition to exaggerate,- and, en 
 the contrary, should be extremely pleased to be convinced that our appre- 
 hensions were unfounded : but we have often felt extreme pain at the hope- 
 less and unprotected state of prisoners ; and we cannot find any answer to 
 our suspicions, or discover any means by which this perversion of justice, 
 under the present state of the law, can be prevented from taking place. 
 Against the prisoner are arrayed all the resources of an angry prosecutor, 
 who lias certainly (let who will be the culprit) suffered a serious injury. 
 He has his hand, too, in the public purse ; for he prosecutes at the expense 
 of the county. He cannot even relent ; for the magistrate has bound him 
 over to indict. His witnesses cannot fail him ; for they are all bound over 
 by the same magistrate to give evidence. He is out of prison, too, and can 
 exert himself. 
 
 The prisoner, on the other hand, comes into Court, squalid and depressed 
 from long confinement utterly unable to tell his own story from want of 
 words and want of confidence, and as unable to produce evidence for want 
 of money. His fate accordingly is obvious ; and that there are many 
 innocent men punished every year, for crimes they have not committed, 
 appears to us to be extremely probable. It is, indeed, scarcely possible it 
 should be otherwise ; and, as if to prove the fact, every now and then, a 
 case of this kind is detected. Some circumstances come to light between 
 sentence and execution ; immense exertions are made by humane men ; time 
 is gained ; and the innocence of the condemned person completely estab- 
 lished. In Elizabeth Caning's case, two women were capitally convicted, 
 ordered for execution and at last found innocent, and respited. Such, 
 too, was the case of the men who were sentenced ten years ago, for the 
 robbery of Lord Cowper's steward. " I have myself" (says Mr Scarlett) 
 " often seen persons I thought innocent convicted, and the guilty escape, for 
 want of some acute and intelligent counsel to show the bearings of the dif- 
 ferent circumstances on the conduct and situation of the prisoner. " (House 
 of Commons Debates, April 25^, 1826.) We are delighted to see, in this 
 last debate, both Mr Brougham and Mr Scarlett profess themselves friendly 
 to Mr Lamb's motion. 
 
 But in how many cases has the injustice proceeded without any suspicion 
 being excited ? and even if we could reckon upon men being watchful in 
 capital cases, where life is concerned, we are afraid it is in such cases alone 
 that they ever besiege the Secretary of State, and compel his attention. 
 'NYe never remember any such interference to save a man unjustly con- 
 demned to the hulks or the tread-mill ; and yet there are certainly more 
 condemnations of these minor punishments than to the gallows : but then 
 it is all one who knows or cares about it ? If Harrison or Johnson has 
 been condemned, after regular trial by jury, to six months' tread-mill, 
 because Harrison and Johnson were without a penny to procure evidence 
 who knows or cares about Harrison or Johnson ? how can they make them- 
 selves heard ? or in what way can they obtain redress ? It worries rich and 
 comfortable people to hear the humanity of our penal laws called in ques- 
 tion. There is a talk of a society for employing discharged prisoners i 
 might not something be effected by a society instituted for the purpose of
 
 543 COUNSEL FOR PRISONERS. 
 
 providing to poor prisoners a proper defence, and a due attendance of wit- 
 nesses? But we must hasten on from this disgraceful neglect of poor pri- 
 soners, to the particular subject of complaint we have proposed to ourselves. 
 
 The proposition is, 77iat the prisoner accused of felony ought to have the 
 same power of selecting counsel tt> speak for him as he has in cases of treason 
 and misdemeanour, and as defendants have in all civil actions. 
 
 Nothing can be done in any discussion upon any point of law in England, 
 without quoting Mr Justice Blackstone. Mr Justice Blackstone, we be- 
 lieve, generally wrote his Commentaries late in the evening, with a bottle 
 of wine before him ; and little did he think, as each sentence fell from the 
 glass and pen, of the immense influence it might hereafter exercise upon the 
 laws and usages of his country. " It is" (says this favourite writer) "not 
 at all of a piece with the rest of the humane treatment of prisoners by the 
 English law ; for upon what face of reason can that assistance be denied to 
 save the life of a man, which yet is allowed him in prosecutions for every 
 petty trespass?" Nor, indeed, strictly speaking, is it a part of our ancient 
 law ; for the Mirror, having observed the necessity of counsel in civil suits, 
 who know how to forward and defend the cause by the rules of law and 
 customs of the realm, immediately subjoins, "and more necessary are they 
 for defence upon indictment and appeals of felony, than upon any other 
 venial crimes." To the authority of Blackstone may be added that of Sir 
 John Hall, in Hollis's case ; of Sir Robert Atkyns, in Lord Russell's case ; 
 and of Sir Bartholomew Shower, in the arguments for a new Bill of Rights, 
 in 1682. " In the name of God," says this judge, " what harm can accrue 
 to the public in general, or to any man in particular, that, in cases of State- 
 treason, counsel should not be allowed to the accused ? What rule of jus- 
 tice is there to warrant its denial, when, in a civil case of a halfpenny cake, 
 he may plead either by himself or by his advocate ? That the Court is 
 counsel for the prisoner can be no effectual reason ; for so they are for each 
 party, that right may be done." (Seiners' Tracts, vol. ii. p. 568.) In the 
 trial of Thomas Rosewell, a dissenting clergyman, for high treason, in 1684, 
 y udge Jeffries, in summing up, confessed to the jury, "that he thought it 
 a hard case, that a man should have counsel to defend himself for a two- 
 penny trespass, and his witnesses be examined upon oath ; but if he stole, 
 committed murder, or felony, nay, high treason, where life, estate, honour, 
 and all were concerned, that he should neither have counsel, nor have his 
 witnesses examined upon oath." HovaelFs State Trials, vol. x. p. 207. 
 
 There have been two capital errors in the criminal codes of feudal 
 Europe, from which a great variety of mistake and injustice have proceeded : 
 the one, a disposition to confound accusation with guilt ; the other, to mis- 
 take a defence of prisoners accused by the Crown, for disloyalty and dis- 
 affection to the Crown ; and from these errors our own code has been 
 slowly and gradually recovering, by all those struggles and exertions which 
 it always costs to remove folly sanctioned by antiquity. In the early periods 
 of our history, the accused person could call no evidence : then, for a 
 long time, his evidence against the King could not be examined upon oath ; 
 consequently, he might as well have produced none, as all the evidence 
 against him was upon oath. Till the reign of Anne, no one accused of 
 felony could produce witnesses upon oath ; and the old practice was 
 vindicated, in opposition to the new one, introduced under the statute of 
 that day, on the grounds of humanity and tenderness to the prisoner ! 
 because, as his witnesses were not restricted by an oath, they were at 
 liberty to indulge in simple falsehood as much as they pleased ; so argued 
 the blessed defenders of nonsense in those days. Then it was ruled to be 
 indecent and improper that counsel should be employed against the Crown - f 

 
 COUNSEL FOR PRISONERS. 543 
 
 and, therefore, the prisoner accused of treason could have no counsel. In 
 like manner, a party accused of felony could have no counsel to assist him 
 in the trial. Counsel might indeed stay in the court, but apart from the 
 prisoner, with whom they could have no communication. They were not 
 allowed to put any question, or to suggest any doubtful point of law ; but 
 if the prisoner (likely to be a weak unlettered man) could himself suggest 
 any doubt in matter of law, the Court determined first if the question of law 
 should be entertained, and then assigned counsel to argue for it. In those 
 times, too, the jury were punishable if they gave a false verdict against the 
 King, but were not punishable if they gave a false verdict against the prisoner. 
 The preamble of the Act of 1696 runs thus : " Whereas it is expedient that 
 persons charged with high treason should make a full and sufficient defence." 
 Might it not be altered to persons cJiarged -with any species or degree of crime ? 
 All these errors have given way to the force of truth, and to the power of 
 common sense and common humanity the Attorney and Solicitor General, 
 for the time being, ahvays protesting against each alteration, and regularly 
 and officially prophesying the utter destruction of the whole jurisprudence 
 of Great Britain. There is no man now alive perhaps, so utterly foolish, 
 as to propose that prisoners should be prevented from producing evidence 
 upon oath, and being heard by their counsel in cases of high treason ; and 
 yet it cost a struggle for seven sessions to get this measure through the two 
 houses of Parliament But mankind are much like the children they beget 
 they always make wry faces at what is to do them good ; and it is neces- 
 sary sometimes to hold the nose, and force the medicine down the throat. 
 They enjoy the health and vigour consequent upon the medicine ; but cuff 
 the doctor, and sputter at his stuff ! 
 
 A most absurd argument was advanced in the honourable House, that 
 the practice of employing counsel would be such an expense to the prisoner ! 
 just as if any thing was so expensive as being hanged ! What a fine 
 topic for the ordinary ! " You are going " (says that exquisite divine) "to 
 be hanged to-dmorrow, it is true, but consider what a sum you have saved ! 
 Mr Scarlett or Mr Brougham might certainly have presented arguments to 
 the jury, which would have insured your acquittal ; but do you forget that 
 gentlemen of their eminence must be recompensed by large fees, and that, 
 if your life had been saved, you would actually have been out of pocket 
 above ^20? You will now die with the consciousness of having obeyed 
 the dictates of a wise economy ; and with a grateful reverence for the laws 
 of your country, which prevents you from running into such unbounded 
 expense so let us now go to prayers." 
 
 It is ludicrous enough to recollect, when the employment of counsel is 
 objected to on account of the expense to the prisoner, that the same merciful 
 law, which, to save the prisoner's money, has denied him counsel, and 
 produced his conviction, seizes upon all his savings the moment he is con- 
 victed. 
 
 Of all false and foolish dicta, the most trite and the most absurd is that 
 which asserts that the Judge is counsel for the prisoner. We do not hesi- 
 tate to say that this is merely an unmeaning phrase, invented to defend a 
 pernicious abuse. The Judge cannot be counsel for the prisoner, ought not 
 to be counsel for the prisoner, never is counsel for the prisoner. To force 
 an ignorant man into a court of justice, and to tell him that the Judge is 
 his counsel, appears to us quite as foolish as to set a hungry man down to 
 his meals, and to tell him that the table was his dinner. In the first place, 
 a counsel should always have private and previous communication with the 
 prisoner, which the Judge, of course, cannot have. The prisoner reveals 
 to his counsel hov,- far he is guilty, or he is not ; states to him all the circum-
 
 544 COUNSEL FOR PRISONERS. 
 
 stances of his case and might often enable his advocate, if his advocate 
 were allowed to speak, to explain a long string of circumstantial evidence, 
 in a manner favourable to the innocence of his client. Of all these advan- 
 tages, the Judge, if he had every disposition to befriend the prisoner, is of 
 course deprived. Something occurs to a prisoner in the course of the cause ; 
 he suggests it in a whisper to his counsel, doubtful if it is a wise point to 
 urge or not. His counsel thinks it of importance, and would urge it, if his 
 mouth were not shut. Can a prisoner have this secret communication with 
 a Judge, and take his advice, whether or not he, the Judge, shall mention 
 it to the jury? The counsel has (after all the evidence has been given) a 
 bad opinion of his client's case ; but he suppresses that opinion ; and it is 
 his duty to do so. He is not to decide ; that is the province of the jury ; 
 and, in spite of his own opinion, his client maybe innocent. He is brought 
 there (or would be brought there if the privilege of speech were allowed) 
 for the express purpose of saying all that could be said on one side of the 
 question. He is a weight in one scale, and some one else holds the balance. 
 This is the way in which truth is elicited in civil, and would be in criminal 
 cases. But does the Judge ever assume the app'earance of believing a 
 prisoner to be innocent whom he thinks to be guilty? If the prisoner 
 advances inconclusive or weak arguments, does not the Judge say they are 
 weak and inconclusive, and does he not often sum up against his own 
 client? How then is he counsel for the prisoner? If the counsel for the 
 prisoner were to see a strong point, which the counsel for the prosecution 
 had missed, would he supply the deficiency of his antagonist, and urge what 
 had been neglected to be urged? But is it not the imperious duty of the 
 Judge to do so? How then can these two functionaries stand in the same 
 relation to the prisoner ? In fact, the only meaning of the phrase is this, 
 that the Judge will not suffer any undue advantage to be taken of the 
 ignorance and helplessness of the prisoner that he will point out any 
 evidence or circumstance in his favour and see that equal justice is done 
 to both parties. But in this sense he is as much the counsel of the pro- 
 secutor as of the prisoner. This is all the Judge can do, or even pretends, 
 to do ; but he can have no previous communication with the prisoner he 
 can have no confidential communication in court with the prisoner before 
 he sums up ; he cannot fling the whole weight of his understanding into the 
 opposite scale against the counsel for the prosecution, and produce that 
 collision of faculties, which, in all other cases but those of felony, is sup- 
 posed to be the happiest method of arriving at truth. Baron Garrow, in 
 his charge to the grand jury at Exeter, on the i6th of August, 1824, thus 
 expressed his opinion of a Judge being counsel for the prisoner : " It has 
 been said, and truly said, that in criminal courts, Judges were counsel for 
 the prisoners. So undoubtedly they were, as tar as they could to prevent 
 undue prejudice, to guard against improper influence being excited against 
 prisoners ; but it was impossible for them to go further than this ; for they 
 could not suggest the course of defence prisoners ought to pursue ; for Judges 
 only saw the depositions so short a time before the accused appeared at the 
 bar of their country, that it was quite impossible for them to act fully in 
 that capacity." The learned Baron might have added, that it would be 
 more correct to call the Judge counsel for the prosecution ; for his only 
 previous instructions were the depositions for the prosecution, from which, 
 in the absence of counsel, he examined the evidence against the prisoner. 
 On the prisoner's behalf he had no instructions at all. 
 
 Can any thing, then, be more flagrantly and scandalously unjust, than, in 
 long case of circumstantial evidence, to refuse to a prisoner the benefit of 
 counsel ? A footmark, a word, a sound, a tool dropped, all gave birth to
 
 COUNSEL FOR PRISOA'ERS. 545 
 
 the most ingenious inferences ; and the counsel for the prosecution is so far 
 from being blamable for entering into all these things, that they are all 
 essential to the detection of guilt, and they are all links of a long and in- 
 tricate chain : but if a close examination into, and a logical statement of, 
 .ill these circumstances be necessary for the establishment of guilt, is not the 
 same closeness of reasoning and the same logical statement necessary for the 
 establishment of innocence ? If justice cannot be done to society without 
 the intervention of a practised and ingenious mind, who may connect all 
 these links together, and make them clear to the apprehension of a jury, can 
 justice be done to the prisoner, unless similar practice and similar ingenuity 
 are employed to detect the flaws of the chain, and to point out the discon- 
 nection of the circumstances ? 
 
 Is there any one gentleman in the House of Commons, who, in yielding 
 his vote to this paltry and perilous fallacy of the Judge being counsel for the 
 prisoner, does not feel, that, were he himself a criminal, he would prefer 
 almost any counsel at the bar, to the tender mercies of the Judge ? How 
 strange that any man who could make his election would eagerly and dili- 
 gently surrender this exquisite privilege, and addict himself to the perilous 
 practice of giving fees to counsel ! Nor let us forget, in considering Judges 
 as counsel for the prisoner, that there have been such men as Chief Justice 
 Jeffries, Mr Justice Page, and Mr Justice Alybone, and that, in bad times, 
 such men may reappear. " If you do not allow me counsel, my Lords (says 
 Lord Lovat), it is impossible for me to make any defence, by reason of my 
 infirmity. I do not see, I do not hear. I come up to the bar at the hazard of 
 my life. I have fainted several times ; I have been up so early, ever since 
 four o'clock this morning. I therefore ask for assistance ; and if you do not 
 allow me counsel, or such aid as is necessary, it will be impossible for me 
 to make any defence at all." Though Lord Lovat's guilt was evident, yet 
 the managers of the impeachment felt so strongly the injustice which was 
 done, that, by the hands of Sir W. Young, the chief manager, a bill was 
 brought into Parliament, to allow counsel to persons impeached by that 
 House, which was not previously the case ; so that the evil is already done 
 away with, in a great measure, to persons of rank : it so happens in legis- 
 lation, when a gentleman suffers, public attention is awakened to the evil 
 of laws. Every man who makes laws says, "This may be my case :" but 
 it requires the repeated efforts of humane men, or, as Mr North calls them, 
 dilettanti philosophers, to awaken the attention of law-makers to evils from 
 which they are themselves exempt We do not say this to make the leaders 
 of mankind unpopular, but to rouse their earnest attention in cases where 
 the poor only are concerned, and where neither good nor evil can happen 
 to themselves. 
 
 A great stress is laid upon the moderation of the opening counsel ; that 
 is, he does not conjure the farmers in the jury-box, by the love which they 
 bear to their children he does not declaim upon blood-guiltiness he does 
 not describe the death of Abel by Cain, the first murderer he docs not de- 
 scribe scattered brains, ghastly wounds, pale features, and hair clotted with 
 gore he does not do a thousand things, which are not in English taste, and 
 which it would be very foolish and very vulgar to do. We readily allow 
 all this. But yet, if it be a cause of importance, it is essentially necessary 
 *jo our counsellor's reputation that this man should be hung ! And accord- 
 ;ngly, with a very calm voice and composed manner, and with many expres- 
 sions of candour, he sets himself to comment astutely upon the circumstances. 
 Distant events are immediately connected ; meaning is given to insignificant 
 tacts ; new motives are ascribed to innocent actions ; farmer gives way after 
 farmer in the jury-box ; and a rope of eloquence is woven round the pi> 
 
 2 M
 
 546 COUNSEL FOR PJRISOXEAS. 
 
 soner's neck ! Every one is delighted with the talents of the advocate ; and 
 because there has been no noise, no violent action, and no consequent pers- 
 piration, he is praised for his candour and forbearance, and the lenity of our 
 laws is the theme of universal approbation. In the mean time, the speech- 
 maker and the prisoner know better. 
 
 We should be glad to know of any one nation in the world, taxed by 
 kings, or even imagined by poets (except the English), who have refused to 
 prisoners the benefit of counsel. Why is the voice of humanity heard every 
 where else, and disregarded here ? In Scotland, the accused have not only- 
 counsel to speak for them, but a copy of the indictment, and a list of the 
 witnesses. In France, in the Netherlands, in the whole of Europe, counsel 
 are allotted as a matter of course. Every where else but here, accusation 
 is considered as unfavourable to the exercise of human faculties. It is ad- 
 mitted to be that crisis in which, above all others, an unhappy man wants 
 the aid of eloquence, wisdom, and coolness. lu France, the Napoleon Code 
 has provided not only that counsel should be allowed to the prisoner, but 
 tltat, as with us in Scotlroid, his counsel should have the last word. 
 
 It is a most affecting moment in a court of justice, when the evidence has 
 all been heard, and the Judge asks the prisoner what he has to say in his 
 defence. The prisoner, who has (by great exertions, perhaps of his friends) 
 saved up money enough to procure counsel, says to the Judge, "that he 
 leaves his defence to his counsel." We have often blushed for English 
 humanity to hear the reply. " Your counsel cannot speak for you, you must 
 speak for yourself;" and this is the reply given to a poor girl of eighteen 
 to a foreigner to a deaf man to a stammerer to the sick to the feeble 
 to the old to the most abject and ignorant of human beings I It is a 
 reply, we must say, at which common sense and common feeling revolt : 
 for it is full of brutal cruelty, and of base inattention of those who make 
 laws, to the happiness of those for whom laws were made. We wonder 
 that any juryman can convict under such a shocking violation of all natural 
 justice. The iron age of Clovis and Clottaire can produce no more atrocious 
 violation of every good feeling, and every good principle. Can a sick man 
 find strength and nerves to speak before a large assembly? can an ignorant 
 man find words? can a low man find confidence ? Is not he afraid of be- 
 coming an object of ridicule t can he believe that his expressions will be 
 understood ? How often have we seen a poor wretch, struggling against 
 tlie agonies of his spirit, and the rudeness of his conceptions, and his awe of 
 better-dressed men and better-taught men, and the shame which the accusa- 
 tion has brought upon his head, and the sight of his parents and children 
 gazing at him in the Court, for the last time, perhaps, and after a long 
 absence ! The mariner sinking hi the wave does not want a helping hand 
 more than does this poor wretch. But help is denied to all ! Age cannot 
 have it, nor ignorance, nor the modesty of women ! One hard uncharitable 
 rule silences the defenders of the wretched, in the worst of human evils ; 
 and at the bitterest of human moments, mercy is blotted out from the ways 
 of men ! 
 
 f Suppose a crime to have been committed under the influence of insanity ; 
 is the insane man, now convalescent, to plead his own insanity ? to offer 
 arguments to show that he must have been mad ? and, by the glimmerings 
 of his returning reason, to prove that at a former period that same reason 
 was utterly extinct? These are the cruel situations into which Judges and 
 Courts of Justice are thrown by the present state of the law. 
 
 There is a Judge now upon the bench, who never took away the life of 
 a fellow-creature without shutting himself up alone, and giving the most 
 profound attention to every circumstance of the case ! and this solemn act
 
 COUNSEL FOR PRISONERS. 
 
 he always premises with his own beautiful prayer to God, that I 
 enlighten him -with his Divine Spirit in the exercise of this terrible privi- 
 lege ! Now, -would it not be an immense satisfaction to this feeling and 
 honourable magistrate, to be sure that every witness on the side of the 
 prisoner had been heard, and that every argument which could be urged in 
 his favour had been brought forward, by a man whose duty it was to see 
 only on one side of the question, and whose interest and reputation were 
 thoroughly embarked in this partial exertion ? If a Judge fail to get at the 
 truth, after these instruments of investigation are used, his failure must be 
 attributed to the limited powers of man not to the want of good inclina- 
 tion, or wise institutions. We are surprised that such a measure does not 
 come into Parliament, with the strong recommendation of the Judges. I: 
 is surely better to be a day longer on the circuit, than to murder rapidly in 
 ermine. 
 
 It is argued that, among the various pleas for mercy that are offered, no 
 prisoner has ever urged to the Secretary- of State the disadvantage of having 
 no counsel to plead for him ; but a prisoner who dislikes to undergo his 
 sentence naturally addresses to those who can reverse it such arguments 
 only as will produce, in the opinion of the referee, a pleasing effect. He 
 does not therefore find fault with the established system of jurisprudence, 
 but brings forward facts and arguments to prove his own innocence. 
 Besides, how few people there are who can elevate themselves from the 
 acquiescence in what is, to the consideration of what ought to be; and if 
 they could do so, the way to get rid of a punishment is not (as we have 
 just observed) to say, "You have no right to punish me in .this manner," 
 but to say, " I am innocent of the offence." The fraudulent baker at Con- 
 stantinople, who is about to be baked to death in his own oven, does not 
 complain of the severity of baking bakers, but promises to use more flour 
 and less fraud. 
 
 Whence comes it (we should like to ask Sir John Singleton Copley, who 
 seems to dread so much the conflicts of talent in criminal cases) that a 
 method of getting at truth which is found so serviceable in civil cases 
 should be so much objected to in criminal cases? Would you have all this 
 wrangling and bickering, it is asked, and contentious eloquence, when the 
 life of a man is concerned ? Why not, as well as when his property is con- 
 cerned? It is either a good means of doing justice, or it is not, that two 
 understandings should be put in opposition to each other, and that a third 
 should decide between them. Does this open every view which can bear 
 upon the question ? Does it in the most effectual manner watch the Judge, 
 detect perjury, and sift evidence? If not, why is it suffered to disgrace our 
 civil institutions ? If it effect all these objects, why is it not incorporated 
 into our criminal law ? Of what importance is a little disgust at professional 
 tricks, if the solid advantage gamed be a nearer approximation to truth ? 
 Can any thing be more preposterous than this preference of taste to justice, 
 and of solemnity to truth? What an eulogium of a trial to say, " I am by 
 no means satisfied that the Jury were right in finding the prisoner guilty ; 
 but every thing was carried on with the utmost decorum ! The verdict was 
 wrong ; but there was the most perfect propriety and order in the pro- 
 ceedings. The man will be unfairly hanged; but all was genteel i :> If 
 solemnity is what is principally wanted in a court of justice, we had better 
 study the manners of the old Spanish Inquisition ; but if battles wiih the 
 Judge, and battles among the counsel, are the best method, as they certainly 
 are, of getting at the truth, better tolerate this philosophical BilliB^ate, 
 than persevere, because the life of a man is at stake, in solemn and poJUhed 
 injustice.
 
 548 COUNSEL FOR PRISONERS. 
 
 Why should it not be just as" wise and equitable to leave the defendant 
 without counsel in civil cases and to tell him that the Judge was his coun- 
 sel? And if the reply is to produce such injurious effects as are anticipated 
 upon the minds of the Jury in criminal cases, why not in civil cases also ? 
 In twenty-eight cases out of thirty, the verdict in civil cases is correct ; in 
 the two remaining cases, the error may proceed from other causes than the 
 right of reply ; and yet the right of reply has existed in all. In a vast ma- 
 jority of cases, the verdict is for the plaintiff, not because there is a right of 
 reply, but because he who has it in his power to decide .whether he will go 
 to law or not, and resolves to expose himself to the expense and trouble of 
 a law-suit, has probably a good foundation for his claim. Nobody, of 
 course, can intend to say that the majority of verdicts in favour of plaintiffs 
 are against justice, and merely attributable to the advantage of a last speech. 
 If this were the case, the sooner advocates are turned out of court the better 
 and then the improvement of both civil and criminal law would be an 
 abolition of all speeches ; fur those who dread the effect of the last word 
 upon the fate of the prisoner must remember that there is at present always 
 a last speech against the prisoner ; for, as the counsel for the prosecution 
 cannot be replied to, his is the last speech. 
 
 There is certainly this difference between a civil and a criminal case 
 that in one a new trial can be granted, in the other not. But you must 
 first make up your mind whether this system of contentious investigation by 
 opposite advocates is or is not the best method of getting at truth : if it be, 
 the more irremediable the decision, the more powerful and perfect should 
 be the means of deciding ; and then it would be a less oppression if the 
 civil defendant were deprived of counsel than the criminal prisoner. When 
 an error has been committed, the advantage is greater to the latter of these 
 persons than to the former ; the criminal is not tried again, but pardoned ; 
 while the civil defendant must run the chance of another Jury. 
 
 If the effect of reply, and the contention of counsel, have all these baneful 
 consequences in felony, why not also in misdemeanour and high treason ? 
 Half the cases at Sessions are cases of misdemeanour, where counsel are 
 employed and half-informed Justices preside instead of learned Judges. 
 There are no complaints of the unfairness of verdicts, though there are 
 every now and then of the severity of punishments. Now, if the reasoning 
 of Mr Lamb's opponents were true, the disturbing force of the prisoner's 
 counsel must fling every thing into confusion. The Court for misdemean- 
 ours must be a scene of riot and perplexity ; and the detection and punish- 
 ment of crime must be utterly impossible : and yet, in the very teeth of 
 these objections, such courts of justice are just as orderly in one set of 
 offences as the other j and the conviction of a guilty person just us certain 
 and as easy. 
 
 The prosecutor (if this system were altered) would have the choice of 
 counsel ; so he has now with this difference, that, at present, his counsel 
 cannot be answered nor opposed. It would be better in all cases, if 
 two men of exactly equal talent could be opposed to each other ; but as 
 this is impossible, the system must be taken with this inconvenience ; but 
 there can be no inequality between counsel so great as that between any 
 counsel and the prisoner pleading for himself. " It has been lately my 
 lot," says Mr Denman, " to try two prisoners who were deaf and dumb, 
 and who could only be made to understand what was passing by the signs 
 of their friends. The cases were clear and simple ; but if they had been 
 circumstantial cases, in what a situation would the Judge and Jury be 
 placed, when the prisoner could have no counsel to plead for him 1 " 
 Debates of the House of Commons, April 25, 1826.
 
 COUNSEL FOR PRISONERS. 
 
 549 
 
 The folly of being counsel for yourself is so notorious in civil cases, that 
 it has grown into a proverb. But the cruelty of the law compels a man, 
 in criminal cases, to be guilty of a much greater act of folly, and to trust 
 his life to an advocate, who, by the common sense of mankind, is pro- 
 nounced to be inadequate to defend the possession of an acre of land. 
 
 In all cases it must be supposed, that reasonably convenient instruments 
 are selected to effect the purpose in view. A Judge may be commonly 
 presumed to understand his profession, and a Jury to have a fair allowance 
 of common sense ; but the objectors to the improvement we recommend 
 appear to make no such suppositions. Counsel are always to make flashy 
 addresses to the passions. Juries are to be so much struck with them, that 
 they are always to acquit or to condemn, contrary to justice ; and Judges 
 are always to be so biassed, that they are to fling themselves rashly into the 
 opposite scale against the prisoner. Many cases of misdemeanour consign 
 a man to infamy, and cast a blot upon his posterity. Judges and Juries 
 must feel these cases as strongly as any cases of felony ; and yet, in spite of 
 this, and in spite of the free permission of counsel to speak, they preserve 
 their judgment, and command their feelings surprisingly. Generally speak- 
 ing, we believe none of these evils would take place. Trumpery declama- 
 tion would be considered as discreditable to the counsel, and would be 
 disregarded by the Jury. The Judge and Jury (as in civil cases) would 
 gain the habit of looking to the facts, selecting the arguments, and coming 
 to reasonable conclusions. It is so in all other countries and it would be 
 so in this. But the vigilance of the Judge is to relax, if there is counsel for 
 the prisoner. Is, then, the relaxed vigilance of the Judges complained of, 
 in high treason, in misdemeanour, or in civil cases ? This appears to us 
 really to shut up the debate, and to preclude reply. Why is the practice 
 so good in all other cases, and so pernicious in felony alone ? This question 
 has never received even the shadow of an answer. There is no one objec- 
 tion against the allowance of counsel to prisoners in felony, which does not 
 apply to them in all cases. If the vigilance of Judges depend upon this 
 injustice to the prisoner, then, the greater injustice to the prisoner, the 
 more vigilance ; and so the true method of perfecting the Bench would be, 
 to deny the prisoner the power of calling witnesses, and to increase as much 
 as possible the disparity between the accuser and accused. We hope men 
 are selected for the Judges of Israel whose vigilance depends upon better 
 and higher principles. 
 
 There are three methods of arranging a trial, as to the mode of employing 
 counsel that both parties should have counsel, or neither or only one. 
 The first method is the best ; the second is preferable to the last ; and the 
 last, which is our present system, is the worst possible. If counsel were 
 denied to either of the parties, if it be necessary that any system of juris- 
 prudence should be disgraced by such an act of injustice, they should 
 rather be denied to the prosecutor than to the prisoner. 
 
 But the most singular caprice of the law is, that counsel are permitted in 
 very high crimes, and in very small crimes, and denied in crimes of a sort 
 of medium description. In high treason, where you mean to murder Lord 
 Liverpool, and to levy war against the people, and to blow up the two 
 Houses of Parliament, all the lawyers of Westminster Hall may talk them- 
 selves dry, and the Jury deaf. Lord Eldon, when at the bar, has been 
 heard for nine hours on such subjects.' If, instead of producing the destruc- 
 tion of five thousand people, you are indicted for the murder of one person, 
 here human faculties, from the diminution of guilt, are supposed to be so 
 clear and so unclouded, that the prisoner is quite adequate to make his own 
 defence, and no counsel are allowed. Take it then upon that principle,
 
 550 COUNSEL FOR PRISONERS. 
 
 and let the rule, and the reason of it, pass as sufficient. But if, instead of 
 murdering the man, you have only libelled him, then for some reason or 
 another, though utterly unknown to us, the original imbecility of faculties 
 in accused persons is respected, and counsel are allowed. ^Yas ever such 
 nonsense defended by public men in grave assemblies ? The prosecutor, 
 too (as Mr Horace Twiss justly observes), can either allow or disallow 
 counsel, by selecting his form of prosecution ; as where a mob had 
 assembled to repeal, by riot and force, some unpopular statute, and certain 
 persons had continued in that assembly for more than an hour after pro- 
 clamation to disperse. That might be treated as levying war against the 
 King, and then the prisoner would be entitled to receive (as Lord George 
 Gordon did receive) the benefit of counsel. It might also be treated as a 
 seditious riot ; then it would be a misdemeanour, and counsel woidd still 
 be allowed. But if government had a mind to destroy the prisoner effec- 
 tually, they have only to abstain from the charge of treason, and to intro- 
 duce into the indictment the aggravation, that the prisoner had continued 
 with the mob for an hour after proclamation to disperse ; this is a felony, 
 the prisoner's life is in jeopardy, and counsel are effectually excluded. It 
 produces, in many other cases disconnected with treason, the most scan- 
 dalous injustice. A receiver of stolen goods, who employs a young girl to 
 rob her master, may be tried for the misdemeanour ; the young girl taken 
 afterwards would be tried for the felony. The receiver would be punish- 
 able only with fine, imprisonment, or whipping, and he could have counsel 
 to defend him. The girl indicted for felony, and liable to death, would 
 enjoy no such advantage. 
 
 In the comparison between felony and treason there are certainly some 
 arguments why counsel should be allowed in felony rather than in treason. 
 Persons accused of treason are generally persons of education and rank, 
 accustomed to assemblies, and to public speaking, while men accused of 
 felony are commonly of the lowest of the people. If it be true, that Judges 
 in cases of high treason are more liable to be influenced by the Crown, and 
 to lean against the prisoner, this cannot apply to cases or misdemeanour, 
 or to the defendants in civil cases ; but if it be necessary, that Judges should 
 be watched in political cases, how often are cases of felony connected with 
 political disaffection ! Every Judge, too, has his idiosyncrasies, which 
 require to be watched. Some hate Dissenters some mobs ; some have 
 one weakness, some another ; and the ultimate truth is, that no court of 
 justice is safe, unless there is some one present whose occupation and 
 interest it is to watch the safety of the prisoner. Till then, no man of 
 right feeling can be easy at the admininistration of justice, and the punish- 
 ment of death. 
 
 Two men are accused of one offence ; tlie one dexterous, bold, subtle, 
 gifted with speech, and remarkable for presence of mind ; the other timid, 
 hesitating, and confused is there any reason why the chances of these two 
 men for acquittal should be, as they are, so very different? Inequalities 
 there will be in the means of defence under the best system, but there is no 
 occasion the law should make these greater than they ait left by chance or 
 nature. 
 
 But (it is asked) what practical injustice is done what practical evil is 
 there in the present system ? The great object of all law is, that the 
 guilty should be punished, and that (he innocent should be acquitted. A 
 very great majority of prisoners, we admit, are guilty and so clearly 
 guilty, that we believe they would be found guilty under any system ; but 
 among the number of those who are tried, some are innocent, and the chance 
 of establishing their innocence is very much diminished by the privation
 
 COUNSEL FOR PRISONERS. 551 
 
 of counsel. Tn the course of twenty or thirty years, among the whole mass 
 of English prisoners, we believe many are found guilty who are innocent, 
 and who would not have been found guilty, if an able and intelligent man 
 had watched over their interest, and represented their case. If this happen 
 only to two or three every year, it is quite a sufficient reason why the law 
 should be altered. That such cases exist we firmly believe ; and this is the 
 practical evil perceptible to men of sense and reflection ; but not likely to 
 become the subject of general petition. To ask why there are not petitions 
 why the evil is not more noticed, is mere parliamentary froth and 
 ministerial juggling. Gentlemen are rarely hung. If they were so, there 
 would be petitions without end for counsel. The creatures exposed to the 
 cruelties and injustice of the law are dumb creatures, who feel the evil 
 without being able to express their feeling. Besides, the question is not, 
 whether the evil is found out, but whether the evil exist. Whoever thinks 
 it is an evil, should vote against it, whether the sufferer from the injustice 
 discover it to be an injustice, or whether he suffer in ignorant silence. 
 When the bill was enacted which allowed counsel for treason, there was 
 not a petition from one end of England to the other. Can there be a more 
 shocking answer from the Ministerial Bench, than to say, For real evil we 
 care nothing only for detected evil ? We will set about curing any 
 wrong which affects our popularity and power : but as to any other evil, we 
 wait till the people find it out ; and, in the mean time, commit such evils 
 to the care of Mr George Lamb, and of Sir James Mackintosh. We are 
 sure so good a man as Mr Peel can never feel in this manner. 
 
 Howard devoted himself to his country. It was a noble example. Let 
 two gentlemen on the Ministerial side of the House (we only ask for two) 
 commit some crimes, which will render their execution a matter of painful 
 necessity. Let them feel, and report to the House, all the injustice and 
 inconvenience of having neither a copy of the indictment, nor a list of 
 witnesses, nor counsel to defend them. We will venture to say, that the 
 evidence of two such persons would do more for the improvement of the 
 criminal law, than all the orations of Mr Lamb, or the lucubrations of 
 Beccaria. Such evidence would save time, and bring the question to an 
 issue. It is a great duty, and ought to be fulfilled and in ancient Rome, 
 would have been fulfilled. 
 
 The opponents always forget that Mr Lamb's plan is not to compel 
 prisoners to have counsel, but to allffiu them to have counsel, if they choose 
 to do so. Depend upon it, as Dr Johnson says, when a man is going to be 
 hanged, his faculties are wonderfully concentrated. If it be really true, as 
 the defenders of Afumpsimus observe, that the Judge is the best counsel for 
 the prisoner, the prisoner will soon learn to employ him, especially as his 
 Lordship works without fees. All that we want is an option given to the 
 prisoner that a man, left to adopt his own means of defence in every 
 trifling civil right, may have the same power of selecting his own auxiliaries 
 for higher interests. 
 
 But nothing can be more tmjrtst than to speak of Judges, as if they were 
 of one standard, and one heart and head pattern. The great majority of 
 Judges, we have no doubt, are upright and pure ; but some have been 
 selected for flexible politics some are passionate some are in a hurry 
 some are violent churchmen some resemble ancient females some have 
 the gout some are eighty years old some are blind, deaf, and have lost 
 the power of smelling. All one to the unhappy prisoner he has no 
 choice. 
 
 It is impossible to put so gross an insult upon Judges, Jurymen, Grand 
 Jurymen, or any person connected with the administration of justice, as to
 
 553 COUNSEL FOR PRISONERS. 
 
 suppose thnt the longer time to be taken up by the speeches of counsel con- 
 stitutes the grand bar to the proposed alteration. If three hours would 
 acquit a man, and he is hanged because he is only allowed two hours for his 
 defence, the poor man is as much murdered as if his throat had been cut 
 before he came into Court. If twelve Judges cannot do the most perfect 
 iustice, other twelve must be appointed. Strange administration of criminal 
 law, to adhere obstinately to an inadequate number of Judges, and to refuse 
 any improvement which is incompatible with this arbitrary and capricious 
 enactment. Neither is it quite certain that the proposed alteration would 
 create a greater demand upon the time of the Court. At present the 
 counsel makes a defence by long cross-examinations, and examinations in 
 chief of the witnesses, and the Judge allows a greater latitude than he 
 would do, if the counsel of the prisoner were permitted to speak. The 
 counsel by these oblique methods, and by stating false points of law for the 
 express purpose of introducing facts, endeavours to obviate the injustice of 
 the law, and takes up more time by this oblique, than he would do by a 
 direct defence. But the best answer to this objection of time (which, if 
 true, is no objection at all) is, that as many misdemeanours as felonies are 
 tried in a given time, though counsel are allowed in the former, and not in 
 the latter case. 
 
 One excuse for the absence of counsel is that the evidence upon which 
 the prisoner is convicted is always so clear, that the counsel cannot gainsay 
 it. This is mere absurdity. There is not, and cannot be, any such rule. 
 Many a man has been hung upon a string of circumstantial evidence, which 
 not only very ingenious men, but very candid and judicious men, might 
 criticise and call in question. If no one were found guilty but upon such 
 evidence as would not admit of a doubt, half the crimes in the world would 
 be unpunished. This dictum, by which the present practice has often 
 been defended, was adopted by Lord Chancellor Nottingham. To the lot 
 of this Chancellor, however, it fell to pass sentence of death upon Lord 
 Stafford, whom (as Mr Denman justly observes) no court of justice, not 
 even the House of Lords (constituted as it was in those days), could have 
 put to death, if he had had counsel to defend him. 
 
 To improve the criminal law of England, and to make it really deserv- 
 ing of the incessant eulogium which is lavished upon it, we would assimi- 
 late trials for felony to trials for high treason. The prisoner should not 
 only have counsel, but a copy of the indictment and a list of the witnesses, 
 many days antecedent to the trial. It is in the highest degree unjust that I 
 should not see and study the description of the crime with which I am 
 charged, if the most scrupulous exactness be required in that instrument 
 which charges me with crime. If the place ivhcre, the time when, and the 
 manner how, and the persons by whom, must all be specified with the most 
 perfect accuracy, if any deviation from this accuracy is fatal, the prisoner, 
 or his legal advisers, should have a full opportunity of judging whether the 
 scruples of the law have been attended to in the formation of the indict- 
 ment ; and they ought not to be confined to the hasty and imperfect con- 
 sideration which can be given to an indictment exhibited for the first time in 
 Court. Neither is it possible for the prisoner to repel accusation till he 
 knows who is to be brought against him. He may see suddenly, stuck up 
 in the witness's box, a man who has been writing him letters, to extort 
 money from the threat of evidence he could produce. The character of 
 such a witness would be destroyed in a moment, if the letters were pro- 
 duced ; and the letters would have been produced, of course, if the prisoner 
 had imagined such a person would have been brought forward by the pro- 
 secutor. It is utterly impossible for a prisoner to know in what way he
 
 CATHOLIC QUESTION. 553 
 
 may be assailed, and against what species of attacks he is to guard. Con- 
 versations may be brought against him which he has forgotten, and to 
 which he could (upon notice) have given another colour and complexion. 
 Actions are made to bear upon his case, which (if he had known they 
 would have been referred to) might have been explained in the most satis- 
 factory manner. All these modes of attack are pointed out by the list of 
 witnesses transmitted to the prisoner, and he has time to prepare his 
 answer, as it is perfectly just he should have. This is justice, when a 
 prisoner has ample means of compelling the attendance of his witnesses ; 
 when his written accusation is put into his hand, and he has time to study 
 it when he knows in what manner his guilt is to be proved, and when he 
 has a man of practised understanding to state his facts, and prefer his 
 arguments. Then criminal justice may march on boldly. The Judge has 
 no stain of blood on his ermine ; and the phrases which English people are 
 so fond of lavishing upon the humanity of their laws will have a real foun- 
 dation. At present this part of the law is a mere relic of the barbarous 
 injustice by which accusation in the early part of our jurisprudence was 
 always confounded with guilt. The greater part of these abuses have been 
 brushed away, as this cannot fail soon to be. In the mean time it is 
 defended (as every other abuse has been defended) by men who think it 
 their duty to defend every thing which is, and to dread every thing which 
 is not. We are told that the Judge does what he does not do, and ought 
 not to do. The most pernicious effects are anticipated in trials of felony, 
 from that which is found to produce the most perfect justice in civil causes, 
 and in cases of treason and misdemeanour : we are called upon to continue 
 a practice without example in any other country, and are required by law- 
 yers to consider that custom as humane, which every one who is not a 
 lawyer pronounces to be most cruel and unjust and which has not been 
 brought forward to general notice, only because its bad effects are confined 
 to the last and lowest of mankind.* 
 
 CATHOLICS. (E. REVIEW, 1827.) 
 
 I. A Plain Statement in support of the Political Claims of the Roman Catholics : in a 
 Letter to the Rev. Sir George Lee, Bart. By LORD NUGENT, Member of Parlia- 
 ment for Aylesbury. London : Hookham. 1826. 
 
 3. A Letter to Viscount Milton, M.P. By one of his Constituents. London : Ridgway. 
 1827. 
 
 3. Charge by the Archbishop of Cashel. Dublin: Milliken. 
 
 IF a poor man were to accept a guinea upon the condition that he spoke all 
 the evil he could of another whom he believed to be innocent, and whose 
 imprisonment he knew he should prolong, and whose privations he knew 
 he should increase by his false testimony, would not the person so hired be 
 one of the worst and basest of human beings? And would not his guilt be 
 aggravated, if, up to the moment of receiving his aceldama, he had spoken 
 in terms of high praise of the person whom he subsequently accused? 
 Would not the latter feature of the case prove him to be as much without 
 sham: as the former evinced him to 'be without principle? Would the 
 guilt be less, if the person so hired were a man of education ? Would it be 
 less, if he were above want ? Would it be less, if the profession and 
 
 * All this nonsense is now put an end to. Counsel are allowed to the prisoner, a;iJ 
 they are permitted to speak in his defence.
 
 554 CATHOLIC QUESTION. 
 
 occupation of his life were to decide men's rights, or to teach them morals 
 and religion ? Would it be less by the splendour of the bribe ? Does a 
 bribe of .3000 leave a man innocent, whom a bribe of .30 would cover 
 with infamy ? You are of a mature period of life, when the opinions of an 
 honest man ought to be, and are fixed. On Monday you were a barrister 
 or a country clergyman, a serious and temperate friend to religious liberty 
 and Catholic emancipation. In a few weeks from this time you are a bishop, 
 or a dean, or a judge publishing and speaking charges and sermons against 
 the poor Catholics, and explaining away this sale of your soul by every 
 species of falsehood, shabbiness, and equivocation. You may carry a bit of 
 ermine on your shoulder, or hide the lower moiety of the body in a silken 
 petticoat and men may call you Mr Dean or My Lord ; but you have sold 
 your honour and your conscience for money ; and, though better paid, you 
 are as base as the witness who stands at the door of the judgment-hall, to 
 swear whatever the suborner will put into his mouth, and to receive what- 
 ever he will put in his pocket.* 
 
 When soldiers exercise, there stands a goodly portly person out of the 
 ranks, upon whom all eyes are directed, and whose signs and motions in the 
 performance of the manual exercise, all the soldiers follow. The Germans, 
 we believe, call him a Flitgelman. We propose Lord Nugent as a political 
 flugelman ; he is always consistent, plain, and honest, steadily and 
 straightly pursuing his object without hope or fear, under the influence of 
 good feelings and high principle. The House of Commons does not con- 
 tain within its walls a more honest, upright man. 
 
 We seize upon the opportunity which this able pamphlet of his Lord- 
 ship's affords us, to renew our attention to the Catholic question. There is 
 little new to be said ; but we must not be silent, or, in these days of base- 
 ness and tergiversation, we shall be supposed to have deserted our friend the 
 Pope, and they will say of us, Prostant venales apttd Lambeth et Whitehall. 
 God forbid it should ever be said of us with justice it is pleasant to loll and 
 roll and to accumulate to be a purple and fine linen man, and to be called 
 by some of those nicknames which frail and ephemeral beings are so fond 
 of accumulating upon each other ; but the best thing of all is to live like 
 honest men, and to add something to the cause of liberality, justice, and truth. 
 
 The Letter to Lord Milton is very well and very pleasantly written. We 
 are delighted with the liberality and candour of the Archbishop of Cashel. 
 The charge is in the highest degree creditable to him. He must lay his 
 account for the furious hatred of bigots, and the incessant gnawing of rats. 
 
 There are many men who (thoroughly aware that the Catholic question 
 must be ultimately carried) delay their acquiescence till the last moment, 
 and wait till the moment of peril and civil war before they yield. That 
 this moment is not quite so remote as was supposed a twelvemonth since, 
 the events now passing in the world seem to afford the strongest proof. 
 The truth is, that the disaffected state of Ireland is a standing premium for 
 war with every cabinet in Europe which has the most distant intention of 
 quarrelling with this country for any other cause. " Ifiue are to go to war, 
 let us do so when the discontents of Ireland are at their greatest heigJit, before 
 any spirit of concession Jias been shown by the British Calinct." Does any 
 man imagine that so plain and obvious a principle has not been repeatedly 
 urged on the French Cabinet? that the eyes of the Americans are shut 
 npon the state of Ireland and that that great and ambitious Republic will 
 
 * It is very far from our intention to say that all who were for the Catholics, and are 
 now against them, have made this change from base motives ; it is equally far from our 
 intention not to say that many men of both professions have subjected themselves to this 
 shocking imputation.
 
 CATHOLIC QUESTION. 555 
 
 not, in case of war, aim a deadly blow at this most sensitive part of the 
 British empire ? We should really say, that England has fully as much to 
 fear from Irish fraternisation with America as with France. The language 
 is the same ; the Americans have preceded them in the straggle ; the num- 
 ber of emigrant and rebel Irish is very great in America ; and all parties 
 are sure of perfect toleration under the protection of America. "We are 
 astonished at the madness and folly of Englishmen, who do not perceive 
 that both France and America are only waiting for a convenient opportunity 
 to go to war with this country ; and that one of the first blows aimed at our 
 independence would be the invasion of Ireland. 
 
 We should like to argue this matter with a regular Tory Lord, whose 
 members vote steadily against the Catholic question. " I wonder that 
 mere fear does not make you give up the Catholic question ! Do you mean 
 to put this fine place in danger the venison the pictures the pheasants 
 the cellars the hot-house and the grapery? Should you like to see six 
 or seven thousand French or Americans landed in Ireland, and aided by a 
 universal insurrection of the Catholics ? Is it worth your while to run the 
 risk of their success ? What evil from the possible encroachment of Catho- 
 lics, by civil exertions, can equal the danger of such a position as this? 
 How can a man of your carriages, and horses, and hounds, think of putting 
 your high fortune in such a predicament, and crying out, like a schoolboy 
 or a chaplain, ' Oh, we shall beat them ! we shall put the rascals down 1 ' 
 No Popery, I admit to your Lordship, is a very convenient cry at an elec- 
 tion, and lias answered your end ; but do not push the matter too far : to 
 bring on a civil war. for Xo Popery, is a very foolish proceeding in a man 
 who has two courses and a remove ! As you value your side-board of 
 plate, your broad riband, your pier glasses if obsequious domestics and 
 large rooms are dear to you if you love ease and flattery, titles and coats 
 of arms if the labour of the French cook, the dedication of the expecting 
 poet, can move you if you hope for a long life of side-dishes if you are 
 not insensible to the periodical arrival of the turtle fleets emancipate the 
 Catholics ! Do it for your ease, do it for your indolence, do it for your 
 safety emancipate and eat, emancipate and drink emancipate, and pre- 
 serve the rent-roll and the family estate ! " 
 
 The most common excuse of the Great Shabby is, that the Catholics are 
 their own enemies that the violence of Mr O'Connell and Mr Shiel have 
 ruined their cause that, but for these boisterous courses, the question 
 would have been carried before this time. The answer to this nonsense and 
 baseness is, that the very reverse is the fact. The mild and the long-suffer- 
 ing may suffer for ever in this world. If the Catholics had stood with their 
 hands before them simpering at the Earls of Liverpool and the Lords 
 Bathurst of the moment, they would not have been emancipated till the 
 year of our Lord four thousand. As long as the patient will suffer, the 
 cruel will kick. No treason no rebellion but as much stubbornness and 
 stoutness as the law permits a thorough intimation that you know what is 
 your due, and that you are determined to have it if you can lawfully get it. 
 This is the conduct we recommend to the Irish. If they go on withhold- 
 ing, and forbearing, and hesitating whether this is the time for the discus- 
 sion or that is the time, they will be laughed at for another century as fools 
 and kicked for another century as slaves. "I must have my bill paid 
 (says the sturdy and irritated tradesman) ; your master has put me off 
 twenty times under different pretences. I know he is at home, and I will 
 not quit the premises till I get the money." Many a tradesman gets paid 
 in this manner, who would soon smirk and smile himself into the Gazette, 
 if he trusted to the promises of the great.
 
 55 CATHOLIC QUESTION. 
 
 Can any thing be so utterly childish and foolish as to talk of the bad 
 taste of the Catholic leaders ? as if, in a question of conferring on, or with- 
 holding important civil rights from seven millions of human beings, any 
 thing could arrest the attention of a wise man but the good or evil con- 
 sequences of so great a measure. Suppose Mr S. does smell slightly of 
 tobacco admit Mr L. to be occasionally stimulated by rum and water 
 allow that Mr F. was unfeeling in speaking of the Duke of York what has 
 all this nonsense to do with the extinction of religious hatred and the pacifica- 
 tion of Ireland ? Give it if it is right, refuse it if it is wrong. How it is 
 asked, or how it is given or refused, are less than the dust of the balance. 
 
 What is the real reason why a good honest Tory, living at ease on his 
 possessions, is an enemy to Catholic Emancipation ? He admits the 
 Catholic of his own rank to be a gentleman, and not a bad subject and 
 about theological disputes an excellent Tory never troubles his head. Of 
 what importance is it to him whether an Irish Catholic or an Irish Pro- 
 testant is a Judge in the King's Bench at Dublin ? None ; but lam afraid 
 fen- the Church of Ireland, says our alarmist. Why do you care so much 
 for the Church of Ireland, a country you never live in ? Answer I do not 
 care so much for the Church of Ireland, if I was sure the Church of Eng- 
 land would not be destroyed. And is it for the Church of England alone that 
 you fear ? Answer Not quite to that, but I am afraid we should all be lost, 
 that every thing would be overturned, and that I should lose my rank and 
 my estate. Here then, we say, is a long series of dangers, which (if there 
 were any chance of their ever taking place) would require half a century for 
 their development ; and the danger of losing Ireland by insurrection and 
 invasion, which may happen in six months, is utterly overlooked, and for- 
 gotten. And if a foreign influence should ever be fairly established in 
 Ireland, how many hours would the Irish Church, how many months would 
 the English Church, live after such an event ? How much is any English 
 title worth after such an event any English family any English estate ? 
 We are astonished that the brains of rich Englishmen do not fall down into 
 their bellies in talking of the Catholic question that they do not reason 
 through the cardia and the pylorus that all the organs of digestion do not 
 become intellectual. The descendants of the proudest nobleman in England 
 may become beggars in a foreign land from this disgraceful nonsense of the 
 Catholic question fit only for the ancient females of a market town. 
 
 What alarms us in the state of England is the uncertain basis on which 
 its prosperity is placed and the prodigious mass of hatred which the 
 English government continues, by its obstinate bigotry, to accumulate 
 eight hundred and forty millions sterling of debt. The revenue depending 
 upon the demand for the shoes, stockings, and breeches of Europe and 
 seven millions of Catholics in a state of the greatest fury and exasperation. 
 We persecute as if we did not owe a shilling we spend as if we had no 
 disaffection. This, by possibility, may go on ; but it is dangerous walking 
 the chance is, there will be a fall. No wise man should take such a 
 course. All probabilities are against it. We are astonished that Lord 
 Hertford and Lord Lowther, shrewd and calculating Tories, do not see that 
 it is nine to one against such a game. 
 
 It is not only the event of war we fear in the military struggle with 
 Ireland ; but the expense of war, and the expenses of the English govern- 
 ment, are paving the way for future revolutions. The world never yet saw 
 so extravagant a government as the Government of England. Not only is 
 economy not practised but it is despised ; and the idea of it connected 
 with disaffection, Jacobinism, and Joseph Hume. Every rock in the ocean 
 where a cormorant can perch is occupied by our troops, has a governor,
 
 CA THOLIC QUESTION. 557 
 
 deputy-governor, storekeeper, and deputy-storekeeper and will soon have 
 an archdeacon and a bishop. Military colleges, with thirty-four professors, 
 educating seventeen ensigns per annum, being half an ensign for each pro- 
 fessor, with every species of nonsense, athletic, sartorial, and plumigerous. 
 A just and necessary war costs this country about one hundred pounds a 
 minute ; whipcord fifteen thousand pounds ; red tape seven thousand 
 pounds ; lace for drummers and fifers, nineteen thousand pounds ; a pension 
 to one man who has broken his head at the Pole ; to another who has 
 shattered his leg at the Equator ; subsidies to Persia ; secret service-money 
 to Thibet ; an annuity to Lady Henry Somebody and her seven daughters 
 the husband being shot at some place where we never ought to have had 
 any soldiers at all ; and the elder brother returning four members to Par- 
 liament. Such a scene of extravagance, corruption, and expense as must 
 paralyse the industry, and mar the fortunes, of the most industrious, spirited 
 people that ever existed. 
 
 Few men consider the historical view which will be taken of present 
 events. The bubbles of last year ; the fishing for half-crowns in Vigo Bay ; 
 the Milk Muffin and Crumpet Companies ; the Apple, Pear, and Plum 
 Associations ; the National Goosebery and Currant Company ; will all be 
 remembered as instances of that partial madness to which society is occa- 
 sionally exposed. What will be said of all the intolerable trash which is 
 issued forth at public meetings of No Popery ? The follies of one century 
 are scarcely credible in that which succeeds it. A grandmamma of 1827 
 is as wise as a very wise man of 1727. If the world lasts till 1927, 
 the grandmammas of that period will be far wiser than the tiptop No 
 Popery men of this day. That this childish nonsense will have got out of 
 the drawing-room, there can be no doubt. It will most probably have 
 passed through the steward's room, and butler's pantry, into the kitchen. 
 This is the case with ghosts. They no longer loll on couches and sip tea ; 
 but are down on their knees scrubbing with the scullion or stand sweating, 
 and basting with the cook. Mrs Abigail turns up her nose at them, and 
 the housekeeper declares for flesh and blood, and will have none of their 
 company. 
 
 It is delicious to the persecution-fanciers to reflect that no general bill has 
 passed in favour of the Protestant Dissenters. They are still disqualified 
 from holding any office and are only protected from prosecution by an 
 annual indemnity act. So that the sword of Damocles still hangs over 
 them not suspended indeed by a thread, but by a cart-rope still it hangs 
 there an insult, if not an injury, and prevents the painful idea from present- 
 ing itself to the mind of perfect toleration, and pure justice. There is the 
 larva of tyranny, and the skeleton of malice. Now this is all we presume 
 to ask for the Catholics admission to Parliament, exclusion from every 
 possible office by law, and annual indemnity for the breach of law. This 
 is surely much more agreeable to feebleness, to littleness, and to narrow- 
 ness, than to say, the Catholics are as free, and as eligible, as ourselves. 
 
 The most intolerable circumstance of the Catholic dispute is, the conduct 
 of the Dissenters. Any man may dissent from the Church of England, and 
 preach against it, by paying sixpence. Almost every tradesman in a market 
 town is a preacher. It must absolutely be ride-and-tie with them ; the 
 butcher must hear the baker in the morning, and the baker listen to the 
 butcher in the afternoon, or there would be no congregation. We have 
 often speculated upon the peculiar trade of the preacher from his style of 
 action. Some have a tying-up or parcel-packing action ; some strike 
 strongly against the anvil of the pulpit ; some screw, some bore, some act 
 as if they were managing a needle. The occupation of the preceding week
 
 558 CATHOLIC QUESTION. 
 
 con seldom be mistaken. In the country, three or four thousand Ranters 
 are sometimes encamped, supplicating in religious platoons, or roaring 
 psalms out of waggons. Now, all this freedom is very proper ; because, 
 though it is abused, yet in truth there is no other principle in religious 
 matters, than to let men alone as long as they keep the peace. Yet \ve 
 should imagine this unbounded licence of Dissenters should teach them a 
 little charity towards the Catholics, and a little respect for their religious 
 freedom. But the picture of sects is this there are twenty fettered men in 
 a gaol, and every one is employed in loosening his own fetters with one 
 hand, and riveting those of his neighbour with the other. 
 
 " ' If, then,' says a minister of our own Church, the Reverend John 
 Fisher, rector of Wavenden, in this county, in a sermon published some 
 years ago, and entitled 'The Utility of the Church Establishment, and its 
 Safety consistent with Religious Freedom ' ' If, then, the Protestant religion 
 could have originally worked its way in this country against numbers, pre- 
 judices, bigotry, and interest ; if, in times of its infancy, the power of the 
 prince could not prevail against it ; surely, when confirmed by age, and 
 rooted in the affections of the people when invested with authority, and in 
 full enjoyment of wealth and power when cherished by a Sovereign who 
 holds his very throne by this sacred tenure, and whose conscientious attach- 
 ment to it well warrants the title of Defender of the Faith surely any attack 
 upon it must be contemptible, any alarm of danger must be imaginary.' " 
 LordNugtiifs Letter, p. 18. 
 
 To go into a committee upon the state of the Catholic Laws is to recon- 
 sider, as Lord Nugent justly observes, passages in our domestic history, 
 which bear date about 270 years ago. Now, what human plan, device, or 
 invention, 270 years old, does not require reconsideration? If a man dressed 
 as he dressed 270 years ago, the pug-dogs in the streets would tear him to 
 pieces. If he lived in the houses of 270 years ago, unrevised and uncor- 
 rected, he would die of rheumatism in a week. If he listened to the ser- 
 mons of 270 years ago, he would perish with sadness and fatigue ; and when 
 a man cannot make a coat or a cheese, for 50 years together, without making 
 them better, can it be said that laws made in those days of ignorance, and 
 framed in the fury of religious hatred, need no revision, and are capable of 
 no amendment ? 
 
 We have not the smallest partiality for the Catholic religion ; quite the 
 contrary. That it should exist at all that all Catholics are not converted 
 to the Protestant religion we consider to be a serious evil ; but there they 
 are, with their spirit as strong, and their opinions as decided, as your own ; 
 the Protestant part of the Cabinet have quite given up all idea of putting 
 them to death ; what remains to be done ? \Ve all admit the evil ; the 
 object is to make it as little as possible. One method commonly resorted 
 to, we are sure, does not lessen, but increase the evil ; and that is, to falsify 
 history, and deny plain and obvious facts, to the injury of the Catholics. 
 No true friend to the Protestant religion, and to the Church of England, 
 will ever have recourse to such disingenuous arts as these. 
 
 " Our histories have not, I beliere, stated what is untrue of Queen Mary, 
 nor, perhaps, have they very much exaggerated what is true of her ; but 
 our argucrs, whose, only talk is of Smithfield, are generally very uncandid 
 in what they conceal. It would appear to be little known, that the statutes 
 which enabled Mary to bum those who had conformed to the Church of 
 her father and brother, were Protestant statutes, declaring the common law
 
 CA THOLJC QUESTION. 559 
 
 against heresy, and framed by her father Henry the Eighth, and confirmed 
 and acted upon by Order of Council of her brother Edward the SL\th, 
 enabling that mild and temperate young sovereign to burn divers mis- 
 believers, by sentence of commissioners (little better, says Neale, than a 
 Protestant Inquisition) appointed to 'examine and search after all Anabap- 
 tists, Heretics, or contemners of the Book of Common Prayer.' It would 
 appear to be seldom considered, that her zeal might very possibly have 
 been warmed by the circumstance of both her chaplains having been im- 
 prisoned for their religion, and herself arburarily detained, and her safety 
 threatened, during the short but persecuting reign of her brother. The sad 
 evidences of the violence of those days are by no means confined to her acts. 
 The fagots of persecution were not kindled by Papists only, nor did they 
 cease to blaze when the power of using them as instalments of conversion 
 ceased to be in Popish hands. Cranmer himself, in his dreadful death, met 
 with but equal measure for the flames to which he had doomed several who 
 had denied the spiritual supremacy of Henry the Eighth : to which he had 
 doomed also a Dutch Arian, in Edward the Sixth's reign ; aud to which, 
 with great pairs and difficulty, he had persuaded that prince to doom 
 another miserable enthusiast, Joan Bocher, for some metaphysical notions 
 of her own on the divine incarnation. ' So that on both sides ' (says Lord 
 Herbert of Cherbury) ' it grew a bloody time.' Calvin burned Servetus at 
 Geneva, for ' discoursing concerning the Trinity, contrary to the sense of 
 the whole church ; and thereupon set forth a book wherein he giveth an 
 account of his doctrine, and of whatever else had passed in this affair, and 
 teacheth that the sword may be lawfully employed against heretics. ' Yet 
 Calvin was no Papist. John Knox extolled in his writings, as ' the godly 
 fact of James Melvil,' the savage murder by which Cardinal Beaton was 
 made to expiate his many and cruel persecutions ; a murder to which, by 
 the great popular eloquence of Knox, his fellow-labourers in the vineyard of 
 reformation, Lesly, and Melvil, had been excited ; and yet John Knox, and 
 Lesly, and Melvil, were no Papists. Henry the Eighth, whose one virtue 
 was impartiality in these matters (if an impartial and evenly-balanced per- 
 secution of all sects be a virtue), beheaded a chancellor and a bishop, be- 
 cause, having admitted his civil supremacy, they doubted his spiritual. Of 
 the latter of them Lord Herbert says, ' The pope, who suspected not, per- 
 chance, that the bishop's end was so near, had, for more testimony of his 
 favour to him as disaffection to our king, sent him a cardinal's hat ; but 
 unseasonably, his head being off.' He beheaded the Countess of Salisbury, 
 because at upwards of eighty years old she wrote a letter to Cardinal Pole, 
 her own son ; and he burned Barton, the ' Holy Maid of Kent,' for a pro- 
 phecy of his death. He burned four Anabaptists in one day for opposing 
 the doctrine of infant baptism ; and he burned Lambert, and Anne Ascue, 
 and Belerican, and Lassells, and Adams, on another day, for opposing that 
 of transubstantiation ; with many others of lesser note, who refused to sub- 
 scribe to his Six Bloody Articles, as they were called, or whose opinions 
 fell short of his, or exceeded them, or who abided by opinions after he had 
 abandoned them ; and all this after the Reformation. And yet Henry the 
 Eighth was the sovereign who first delivered us from the yoke of Rome. 
 
 " In later times, thousands of Protestant Dissenters of the four great 
 sects were made to languish in loathsome prisons, and hundreds to perish 
 miserably, during the reign of Charles the Second, under a Protestant High 
 Church Government who then first applied, in the prayer for the Parlia- 
 ment, the epithets of ' most religious and gracious ' to a sovereign whom 
 they knew to be profligate and unprincipled beyond example, and had reason 
 to suspect to be a concealed Papist.
 
 5</o CATHOLIC QUESTION. 
 
 " Later still Archbishop Sharp was sacrificed by the murderous enthu- 
 siasm of certain Scotch Covenanters, who yet appear to have sincerely 
 believed themselves inspired by Heaven to this act of cold-blooded bar- 
 barous assassination. 
 
 "On subjects like these, silence on all sides, and a mutual interchange of 
 repentance, forgiveness, and oblivion, is wisdom. But to quote grievances 
 on one side only, is not honesty." Lord Nugent'* Letlcr, pp. 24 27. 
 
 Sir Richard Birnie could only attend to the complaints of individuals ; 
 but no cases of swindling are brought before him so atrocious as the violation 
 of the Treaty of Limerick, and the disappointment of those hopes, and the 
 frustration of that arrangement ; which hopes and which arrangements were 
 held out as one of the great arguments for the Union. The chapter of 
 English Fraud comes next to the chapter of English Cruelty, in the history 
 of Ireland and both are equally disgraceful. 
 
 Nothing can be more striking than the conduct of the parent Legislature 
 to the Legislature of the West Indian Islands. " We cannot leave you to 
 yourselves upon these points" .( sa )' s the English Government); "the 
 wealth of the planter, and the commercial prosperity of the islands, are not 
 the only points to be looked to. We must look to the general rights of 
 humanity, and see that they are not outraged in the case of the poor slave. 
 It is impossible we can be satisfied, till we know that he is placed in a 
 state of progress and amelioration. " How beautiful is all this ! and how 
 wise, and how humane and affecting are our efforts throughout Europe to 
 put an end to the Slave Trade 1 Wherever three or four negotiators are 
 gathered together, a British diplomate appears among them, with some 
 article of kindness and pity for the poor negro. All is mercy and compas- 
 sion, except when wretched Ireland is concerned. The saint who swoons 
 at the lashes of the Indian slave is the encourager of No Popery Meetings, 
 and the hard, bigotted, domineering tyrant of Ireland. 
 
 See the folly of delaying to settle a question, which, in the end, must be 
 settled, and, ere long, to the advantage of the Catholics. How the price 
 rises by delay ! This argument is extremely well put by Lord Nugent. 
 
 "I should observe that two occasions have already been lost of granting 
 these claims, coupled with what were called securities, such as never can 
 return. In 1 808, the late Duke of Norfolk and Lord Grenville, in the one 
 House, and Mr Ponsonby and Mr Grattan in the other, were authorised by 
 the Irish Catholic body to propose a negative to be vested in the Crown 
 upon the appointment of their bishops. Mr Perceval, the Chancellor, and 
 the Spiritual Bench, did not see the importance of this opportunity. It 
 was rejected ; the Irish were driven to despair ; and in the same tomb with 
 the question of 1808 lies for ever buried the Veto. The same was the fate 
 with what were called the "wings" attached to Sir Francis Burdett's bill 
 of last year. I voted for them, not for the sake certainly of extending the 
 patronage of the Crown over a new body of clergy, nor yet for the sake of 
 diminishing the popular character of elections in Ireland, but because Mr 
 O'Connell, and because some of the Protestant friends of the measure who 
 knew Ireland the best, recommended them ; and because I believed, 
 from the language of some who supported it only on these conditions, that 
 they offered the fairest chance for the measure being carried. I voted for 
 them as the price of Catholic emancipation, for which I can scarcely con- 
 template any Irish price that I would not pay. With the same object, I 
 would vote for them again ; but I shall never again have the opportunity 
 For these also, if they were thought of any value as securities, the events
 
 CATHOLIC QUESTION. 561 
 
 of this year in Ireland have shown you that you have lost for ever. And 
 the necessity of the great measure becomes every day more urgent and 
 unavoidable." Lord Nugenfs Letter, pp. 71, 72. 
 
 Can any man living say that Ireland is not in a much more dangerous 
 state than it was before the Catholic Convention began to exist ? that the 
 inflammatoiy state of that country is not becoming worse and worse ? that 
 those men whom we call demagogues and incendiaries have not produced a 
 very considerable and alarming effect upon the Irish population ? Where 
 is this to end? But the fool lifteth up his voice in the coffee-house, and 
 sayeth, " We shall give them a hearty thrashing : let them rise the sooner 
 the better we will soon put them down again." The fool sayeth this in 
 the coffee-house, and the greater fool praiseth him. But does Lord Stowel 
 say this ? does Mr Peel say this ? does the Marquis of Hertford say this ? 
 do sensible, calm, and reflecting men like these, not admit the extreme 
 danger of combating against invasion and disaffection, and this with our 
 forces spread in active hostility over the whole face of the globe ? Can they 
 feel this vulgar hectoring certainty of success, and stupidly imagine that a 
 thing cannot be, because it has never yet been ? because we have hitherto 
 maintained our tyranny in Ireland against all Europe, that we are always 
 to maintain it ? And then, what if the straggle does at last end in our 
 favour? Is the loss of English lives and of English money not to be taken 
 into account ? Is this the way in which a nation overwhelmed with debt, 
 and trembling whether its looms and ploughs will not be overmatched by 
 the looms and ploughs of the rest of Europe is this the way in which 
 such a country is to husband its resources ? Is the best blood of the land 
 to be flung away in a war of hassocks and surplices? Are cities to be 
 summoned for the Thirty-nine Articles, and men to be led on to the charge 
 by professors of divinity ? The expense of keeping such a country must be 
 added to all other enormous expenses. What is really possessed of a coun- 
 try so subdued ? four or five yards round a sentry-box, and no more. And 
 in twenty years' time it is all to do over again another war another re- 
 bellion, and another enormous and ruinously expensive contest, with the 
 same dreadful uncertainty of the issue ! It is forgotten, too, that a new 
 feature has arisen in the history of this country. In all former insurrections 
 in Ireland no democratic party existed in England. The efforts of Govern- 
 ment were left free and unimpeded. But suppose a stoppage in your 
 manufactures coincident with a rising of the Irish Catholics, when every 
 soldier is employed in the sacred duty of Papist-hunting. Can any man 
 contemplate such a state of things without horror ? Can any man say that 
 he is taken by surprise for such a combination ? Can any man say that any 
 danger to Church or State is comparable to this? But for the prompt 
 interference of the military in the early part of 1826, three or four hundred 
 thousand starving manufacturers would have carried ruin and destruction 
 over the north of England, and over Scotland. These dangers are insepar- 
 able from an advanced state of manufactures but they need not the addition 
 of other and greater perils, which need not exist in any country, too wise 
 and too enlightened for persecution. 
 
 Where is the weak point in these plain arguments ? Is it the remoteness 
 of the chance of foreign war? Alas ! we have been at war 35 minutes out 
 of every hour since the peace of Utrecht. The state of war seems more 
 natural to man than the state of peace ; and if we turn from general proba- 
 bilities to the state of Europe Greece to be liberated Turkey to be de- 
 stroyed Portugal and Spam to be made free the wounded vanity of the 
 French, the increasing arrogance of the Americans and our own philopo- 
 
 2N
 
 562 CATHOLIC QUESTION. 
 
 lemical folly, are endless scenes of war. We believe it is at all times a 
 better speculation to make ploughshares into swords than s\vords into 
 ploughshares. If war is certain, we believe insurrection to be quite as cer- 
 tain. We cannot believe but that the French or the Americans would, in 
 case of war, make a serious attempt upon Ireland, and that all Ireland 
 would rush, tail foremost, into insurrection. 
 
 A new source of disquietude and war has lately risen in Ireland. Our 
 saints or evangelical people, or serious people, or by whatever other name 
 they are to be designated, have taken the field in Ireland against the Pope, 
 and are converting in the large way. Three or four Irish Catholic prelates 
 take a post-chaise, and curse the converters and the converted. A battle 
 royal ensues with shillelas : the policeman comes in, and, reckless of Lam- 
 beth or the Vatican, makes no distinction between what is perpendicular 
 and what is hostile, but knocks down every body and every thing which is 
 upright ; and so the feud ends for the day. We have no doubt but that 
 these efforts will tend to bring things to a crisis much sooner between the 
 parties, than the disgraceful conduct of the Cabinet alone would do. 
 
 "It is a charge not imputed by the laws of England nor by the oaths 
 which exclude the Catholics : for those oaths impute only spiritual errors. 
 But it is imputed, which is more to the purpose, by those persons who 
 approve of excluding oaths and wish them retained. But, to the whole of 
 this imputation, even if no other instance could be adduced, as far as a 
 strong and remarkable example can prove the negative of an assumption 
 which there is not a single example to support the full, and sufficient, and 
 incontestable answer is Canada. Canada, which, until you can destroy the 
 memory of all that now remains to you of your sovereignty on the North 
 American Continent, is an answer practical, memorable, difficult to be 
 accounted for, but blazing as the sun itself in sight of the whole world, 
 to the whole charge of divided allegiance. At your conquest of Canada, 
 you found it Roman Catholic ; you had to choose for her a constitution in 
 Church and State. You were wise enough not to thwart public opinion. 
 Your own conduct towards Presbyterianism in Scotland was an example for 
 imitation ; your own conduct towards Catholicism in Ireland was a beacon 
 for avoidance ; and in Canada you established and endowed the religion of 
 the people. Canada was your only Roman Catholic colony. Your other 
 colonies revolted ; they called on a Catholic power to support them, and 
 they achieved their independence. Catholic Canada, with what Lord 
 Liverpool would call her half-allegiance, alone stood by you. She fought 
 by your side against the interference of Catholic France. To reward and 
 encourage her loyalty, you endowed in Canada bishops to say mass, and to 
 ordain others to say mass, whom, at that very time, your laws would have 
 hanged for saying mass in England ; and Canada is still yours in spite of 
 Catholic France, in spite of her spiritual obedience to the Pope, in spite of 
 Lord Liverpool's argument, and in spite of the independence of all the 
 states that surround her. This is the only trial you have made. While 
 you allow to the Roman Catholics their religion undisturbed, it has proved 
 itself to be compatible with the most faithful allegiance. It is only where 
 you have placed allegiance and religion before them as a dilemma, that 
 they have preferred (as who will say they ought not?) their religion to their 
 allegiance. How then stands the imputation? Disproved by history, dis- 
 proved in all states where both religions co-exist, and in both hemispheres, 
 and asserted in an exposition by Lord Liverpool, solemnly and repeatedly 
 abjured by all Catholics, of the discipline of their church. Lord Nugent' f 
 Letter, pp. 35, 36.
 
 CATHOLIC QUESTION. 563 
 
 Can any man who has gained permission to take off his strait-waist- 
 coat, and been out of Bedlam three weeks, believe that the Catholic ques- 
 tion will be set to rest by the conversion of the Irish Catholics to the Pro 
 testant religion ? The best chance of conversion will be gained by taking 
 care that the point of honour is not against conversion. 
 
 "We may, I think, collect from what we know of the ordinary feelings 
 of men, that by admitting all to a community of political benefits, we should 
 remove a material impediment that now presents itself to the advances of 
 proselytism to our established mode of worship ; particularly assuming, as 
 we do, that it is the purest, and that the disfranchised mode is supported 
 only by superstition and priestcraft. By external pressure and restraint, 
 things are compacted as well in the moral as in the physical world. Where 
 a sect is at spiritual variance with the Established Church, it only requires 
 an abridgment of civil privileges to render it at once a political faction. Its 
 members become instantly pledged, some from enthusiasm, some from re- 
 sentment, and many from honourable shame, to cleave with desperate fond- 
 ness to the suffering fortunes of an hereditary religion. Is this human 
 nature, or is it not ? Is it a natural or an unnatural feeling for the repre- 
 sentative of an ancient Roman Catholic family, even if in his heart he 
 rejected the controverted tenets of his early faith, to scorn an open confor- 
 mity to ours, so long as such conformity brings with it the irremovable 
 suspicion that faith and conscience may have bowed to the base hope of 
 temporal advantage ? Every man must feel and act for himself : but, in 
 my opinion, a good man might be put to difficulty to determine whether 
 more harm is not done by the example of one changing his religion to his 
 worldly advantage, than good, by his openly professing conformity from 
 what we think error to what we think truth. " Lord Ntigenfs Letter, pp. 
 54, 55- 
 
 ' ' We will not be bullied out of the Catholic question. " This is a very 
 common text, and requires some comment. If you mean that the sense of 
 personal danger shall never prevent you from doing what you think right 
 this is a worthy and proper feeling, but no such motive is suspected, and no 
 such question is at issue. Nobody doubts but that any English gentleman 
 would be ready to join his No Popery corps, and to do his duty to the 
 community, if the Government required it ; but the question is, Is it worth 
 while in the Government to require it ? Is it for the general advantage 
 that such a war should be carried on for such an object ? It is a question 
 not of personal valour, but of political expediency. Decide seriously if it 
 be worth the price of civil war to exclude the Catholics, and act accord- 
 ingly ; taking it for granted that you possess, and that every body supposes 
 you to possess, the vulgar attribute of personal courage ; but do not draw 
 your sword like a fool, from the unfounded apprehension of being called a 
 coward. 
 
 We have great hopes of the Duke of Clarence. Whatever else he may 
 be, he is not a bigot not a person who thinks it necessary to show respect 
 to his royal father, by prolonging the miseries and incapacities of six 
 millions of people. If he ascend the throne of these realms, he must stand 
 the fire of a few weeks' clamour and unpopularity. If the measure be 
 passed by the end of May, we can promise his Royal Highness it will 
 utterly be forgotten before the end of June. Of all human nonsense, it is 
 surely the greatest to talk of respect to the late king respect to the memory 
 of the Duke of York by not voting for the Catholic question. Bad enough 
 to burn widows when the husband dies bad enough to burn horses, dogs,
 
 564 CATHOLIC QUESTION. 
 
 butlers, footmen, and coachmen, on the funeral pile of a Scythian warrior 
 but to offer up the happiness of seven millions of people to the memory of 
 the dead, is certainly tne most insane sepulchral oblation of which history 
 makes mention. The best compliment to these deceased princes, is to 
 remember their real good qualities, and to forget (as soon as we can forget 
 it) that these good qualities were tarnished by limited and mistaken views 
 of religious liberty. 
 
 Persecuting gentlemen forget the expense of persecution ; whereas, of all 
 luxuries, it is the most expensive. The Ranters do not cost us a farthing, 
 because they are not disqualified by ranting. The Methodists and Unitarians 
 are gratis. The Irish Catholics, supposing every alternate year to be war, 
 as it has been for the last century, will cost us, within these next twenty 
 years, forty millions of money. There are 20,000 soldiers there in time of 
 peace ; in war, including the militia, their numbers will be doubled and 
 there must be a very formidable fleet in addition. Now, when the tax 
 paper comes round, and we are to make a return of the greatest number of 
 horses, buggies, ponies, dogs, cats, bullfinches, and canary birds, &c., ami 
 to be taxed accordingly, let us remember how well and wisely our money 
 has been spent, and not repine that we have purchased, by severe taxation, 
 the high and exalted pleasures of intolerance and persecution. 
 
 It is mere unsupported, and unsupportable nonsense, to talk of the exclu- 
 sive disposition of the Catholics to persecute. The Protestants have mur- 
 dered, and tortured, and laid waste as much as the Catholics. Each part}-, 
 as it gained the upper hand, tried death as the remedy for heresy both 
 parties have tried it in vain. 
 
 A distinction is set up between civil rights and political power, and 
 applied against the Catholics : the real difference between these two words is, 
 that civil comes from a Latin word, and political from a Greek one ; but if 
 there be any difference in their meaning, the Catholics do not ask for poli- 
 tical power, but for eligibility to political power. The Catholics have never 
 prayed or dreamt of praying, that so many of the Judges and King's Coun- 
 sel should necessarily be Catholics ; but that no law should exist which pre 
 vented them from becoming so, if a Protestant King chose to make them so. 
 Eligibility to political power is a civil privilege, of which we haveno more right 
 to deprive any man than of any other civil privilege. The good of the State 
 may require that all civil rights may be taken from Catholics ; but to say that 
 eligibility to political power is not a civil right, and that to take it away with- 
 out grave cause would not be a gross act of injustice, is mere declamation. 
 Besides, what is called political power, and what are called civil rights, are 
 given or withholden, without the least reference to any principle, but by mere 
 caprice. A right of voting is given this is political power ; eligibility to the 
 office of Alderman or Bank Director is refused this is a civil right : the dis- 
 tinction is perpetually violated, just as it has suited the state of parties for the 
 moment. And here a word or two on the manner of handling the question. 
 Because some offices might be filled with Catholics, all would be : this is one 
 topic. A second is, because there might be inconvenience from a Catholic 
 King or Chancellor, that, therefore, there would be inconvenience from Catholic 
 Judges or Serjeants. In talking of establishments, they always take care to 
 blend the Irish and English establishments, and never t say which is meant, 
 though the circumstances of both are as different as possible. It is always 
 presumed, that sects holding opinions contrary to the Establishment, are 
 hostile to the Establishment ; meaning by the word hostile, that they are 
 combined, or ready to combine, for its destruction. It is contended that 
 the Catholics would not be satisfied by these concessions ; meaning, thereby, 
 that many would not be so but forgetting to add, that many -would be
 
 CATHOLIC QUESTION. 565 
 
 quite satisfied all more satisfied, and less likely to run into rebellion. It 
 is urged that the mass of Catholics are indifferent to the question ; whereas 
 (never mind the cause) there is not a Catholic plough-boy, at this moment, 
 who is not ready to risk his life for it, nor a Protestant stable-boy, who 
 does not give himself airs of superiority over any papistical cleaner of horses, 
 who is scrubbing with him under the same roof. 
 
 The Irish were quiet under the severe code of Queen Anne so the half- 
 murdered man left on the ground bleeding by thieves is quiet ; and he only 
 moans, and cries for help as he recovers. There was a method which 
 would have made the Irish still more quiet, and effectually have put an 
 end to all further solicitation respecting the Catholic question. It was 
 adopted in the case of the wolves. 
 
 They are forming societies in Ireland for the encouragement of emigration, 
 and striving, and successfully striving, to push their redundant population 
 into Great Britain. Our business is to pacify Ireland to give confidence 
 to capitalists and to keep their people where they are. On the day the 
 Catholic question was passed, all property in Ireland would rise 20 per 
 cent. 
 
 Protestants admit that there are sectaries sitting in Parliament, who 
 differ from the Church of England as much as the Catholics ; but it is 
 forgotten that, according to the doctrine of the Church of England, the 
 Unitarians are considered as condemned to eternal punishment in another 
 world and that many such have seats in Parliament. And can any thing 
 be more preposterous (as far as doctrine has any influence in these matters) 
 than that men, whom we believe to be singled out as objects of God's 
 eternal vengeance, should have a seat in our national councils ; and that 
 Catholics, whom we believe may be saved, should not ? 
 
 The only argument which has any appearance ofiueight t is the question of 
 divided allegiance ; and, generally speaking, we should say it is the argument 
 which produces the greatest effect in the country at large. England, in this 
 respect, is in the same state, at least, as the whole of Catholic Europe. 
 Is not the allegiance of every French, every Spanish, and every Italian 
 Catholic (who is not a Roman), divided ? His king is in Paris, or Madrid, 
 or Naples, while his high-priest is at Rome. We speak of it as an anomaly 
 in politics ; whereas, it is the state, and condition of almost the whole of 
 Europe. The danger of this divided allegiance, they admit, is nothing as 
 long as it is confined to purely spiritual concerns ; but it may extend itself 
 to temporal matters, and so endanger the safety of the State. This danger, 
 however, is greater in a Catholic than in a Protestant country ; not only on 
 account of the greater majority upon whom it might act; but because there 
 are objects in a Catholic country much more desirable, and attainable, than 
 in a country like England, where Popery does not exist, or Ireland, where 
 it is humbled, and impoverished. 1'ake, for instance, the freedom of the 
 C-allican Church. What eternal disputes did this object give birth to ! 
 What a temptation to the Pope to infringe in rich Catholic countries ! 
 How is it possible his Holiness can keep his hands from picking and stealing? 
 It must not be imagined that Catholicism has been any defence against the 
 hostility and aggression of the Pope : he has cursed and excommunicated 
 every Catholic State in Europe, in their turns. Let that eminent Protestant, 
 Lord Bathurst, state any one instance where, for the last century, the Pope 
 lias interfered with the temporal concerns of Great Britain. We can men- 
 tion, and his Lordship will remember, innumerable instances where he might 
 have done so, if such were the modern habit and policy of the Court of 
 Rome. But the fact is, there is no Court of Rome, and no Pope. There is 
 a wax-work Pope and a wax-work Court of Rome. But Popes of flesh and
 
 566 CATHOLIC QUESTION 
 
 blood have long since disappeared ; and in the same way, those great 
 giants of the city exist no more, but their truculent images are at Guildhall. 
 We doubt if there is in the treasury of the Pope, change for a guinea we 
 are sure there is not in his armoury one gun which will go off. We believe, 
 if he attempted to bless any body whom Dr Doyle cursed, or to curse any 
 body whom Dr Doyle blessed, that his blessings and curses would be as 
 powerless as his artillery. Dr Doyle* is the Pope of Ireland ; and the 
 ablest ecclesiastic of that country will always be its Pope and that Lord 
 liathurst ought to know most likely does know. But what a waste of life 
 and time, to combat such arguments ! Can my Lord Bathurst be ignorant? 
 can any man, who has the slightest knowledge of Ireland, be ignorant, 
 that the portmanteau which sets out every quarter for Rome, and returns 
 from it, is a heap of ecclesiastical matters, which have no more to do with 
 the safety of the country, than they have to do with the safety of the moon 
 and which, but for the respect to individual feelings, might all be pub- 
 lished at Charing Cross? Mrs Flanagan, intimidated by stomach com- 
 plaints, wants a dispensation for eating flesh. Cornelius Oh B<noel has 
 intermarried by accident with his grandmother ; and, finding that she is 
 really his grandmother, his conscience is uneasy. Mr Mac Toolty, the 
 priest, is discovered to be married, and to have two sons, Castor and Pollux 
 Mac Tooley. Three or four schools-full of little boys have been cursed for 
 going to hear a methodist preacher. Bargains for shirts and toe-nails of 
 deceased saints surplices and trencher-caps blessed by the Pope. These 
 are the fruits of double allegiance the objects of our incredible fear, and 
 the cause of our incredible folly. There is not a syllable which goes to or 
 comes from the Court of Rome, which, by a judicious expenditure of six- 
 pence by the year, would not be open to the examination of even- Member 
 of the Cabinet. Those who use such arguments know the answer to them 
 as well as we do. The real evil they dread is the destruction of the Church 
 of Ireland, and through that, of the Church of England. To which we 
 reply, that such danger must proceed from the regular proceedings of Par- 
 liament, or be effected by insurrection and rebellion. The Catholics, 
 restored to civil functions, would, we believe, be more likely to cling to the 
 Church than to Dissenters. If not, both Catholics and Dissenters must be 
 utterly powerless against the overwhelming English interest and feelings in 
 the House. Men are less inclined to run into rebellion, in proportion as 
 they have less to complain of ; and, of all other dangers, the greatest to 
 the Irish and English Church establishments, and to the Protestant faith 
 throughout Europe, is to leave Ireland in its present state of discontent. 
 
 If the intention is to wait to the last, before concession is made, till the 
 French or Americans have landed, and the Holy standard has been unfurled, 
 we ought to be sure of the terms which can be obtained at such a crisis. 
 This game was played in America. Commissioners were sent in one year 
 to offer and to press what would have been most thankfully received the year 
 before ; but they were always too late. The rapid concessions of England 
 were outstripped by the more rapid exactions of the colonies ; and the com- 
 missioners returned with the melancholy history, that they had humbled 
 themselves before the rebels in vain. If you ever mean to concede at all, 
 do it when every concession will be received as a favour. To wait till you 
 are forced to treat, is as mean in principle as it is dangerous in effect. 
 
 1 " Of this I can with great truth assure you ; and my testimony, if not entitled to 
 respect, should not be utterly disregarded, that Papal influence will never induce the 
 Catholics of this country either to continue tranquil, or to be disturbed, either to aid or 
 to oppose the Government ; and that your Lordship can contribute much mere than the 
 Pope to secure their allegiance, or to render them disaffected." Dr Dojle't Letter t 
 Lord Liverpool, 115.
 
 CATHOLIC QUESTION. 567 
 
 Then, how many thousand Protestant Dissenters are there who pay a 
 double allegiance to the King, and to the head of their Church, who is not 
 the King? Is not Mr William Smith, member for Norwich, the head of 
 the Unitarian Church? Is not Mr Wilberforce the head of the Clapham 
 Church ? Are there not twenty preachers at Leeds, who regulate all the 
 proceedings of the Methodists? The gentlemen we have mentioned are 
 eminent, and most excellent men ; but if any thing at all is to be apprehended 
 from this divided allegiance, we should be infinitely more afraid of some 
 Jacobinical fanatic at the head of Protestant votaries some man of such 
 character as Lord George Gordon than we should of all the efforts of 
 'ope. 
 
 As so much evil is supposed to proceed from not obeying the King as 
 f the Church, it might be supposed to be a very active office that 
 t'ie King was perpetually interfering with the affairs of the Church and 
 that orders were in a course of emanation from the Throne which regulated 
 the fervour, and arranged the devotion of all the members of the Church of 
 England. But we really do not know what orders are ever given by the 
 King to the Church, except the appointment of a fast-day once in three or 
 four years ; nor can we conceive (for appointment to Bishoprics is out of 
 the question) what duties there would be to perform, if this allegiance were 
 l~aid, instead of being withholden. Supremacy appears to us to be a mere 
 name, without exercise of power and allegiance to be a duty, without any 
 performance annexed. If any one will say what ought to be done which 
 is not done, on account of this divided allegiance, we shall better under- 
 stand the magnitude of the evil. Till then, we shall consider it as a lucky 
 Protestant phrase, good to look at, like the mottoes and ornaments on cake, 
 but not fit to be eaten. 
 
 Nothing can be more unfair than to expect, in an ancient church like that 
 of the Catholics, the same uniformity as in churches which have not existed 
 for more than two or three centuries. The coats and waistcoats of the 
 reign of Henry VIII. bear some resemblance to the same garments of the 
 present day ; but, as you recede, you get to the skins of wild beasts, or the 
 fleeces of sheep, for the garments of savages. In the same way it is ex- 
 tremely difficult for a church, which has to do with the counsels of barbarous 
 ot to be detected in some discrepancy of opinion ; while in younger 
 churches, every thing is fair and fresh, and of modem date and figure ; and 
 it is not the custom among Theologians to own their church in the wrong. 
 "No religion can stand, if men, without regard to their God, and with 
 regard only to controversy, shall rake out of the rubbish of antiquity the 
 obsolete and quaint follies of the sectarians, and affront the majesty of the 
 Almighty with the impudent catalogue of their devices ; and it is a strong 
 argument against the prescriptive system, that it helps to continue this 
 shocking contest. Theologian against theologian, polemic against polemic, 
 until the two madmen defame their common parent, and expose their com- 
 mon religion." Grattan's Speech on the Catholic Question, 1805. 
 
 A good-natured and well-conditioned person has pleasure in keeping and 
 distributing any thing that is good. If he detects any thing with superior 
 flavour, he presses and invites, and is not easy till others participate ; and 
 so it is with political and religious freedom. It is a pleasure to possess it, 
 and a pleasure to communicate it to others. There is something shocking 
 in the greedy, growling, guzzling monopoly of such a blessing. 
 
 France is no longer a nation of atheists ; and therefore, a great cause of 
 offence to the Irish Roman Catholic clergy is removed. Navigation by 
 steam renders all shores more accessible. The union among Catholics is 
 consolidated ; all the dangers of Ireland are redoubled ; every thing seems
 
 568 CATHOLIC QUESTION. 
 
 lending to an event fatal to England. fatal (whatever Catholics may foo 
 ishiy imagine) to Ireland and wnich will subject them both to the dominioa 
 of France. 
 
 Formerly a poor man might be removed from a parish if there was the 
 slightest danger of his becoming chargeable ; a hole in his coat or breeches 
 excited suspicion. The churchwardens said, " He has cost us nothing, but 
 niay cost us something ; and we must not live even in the apprehension of 
 eviL " All this is changed ; and the law now says, ' ' Wait till you are 
 hurt ; tune enough to meet the evil when it comes ; you have no right to 
 do a certain evil to others, to prevent an uncertain evil to yourselves." The 
 Catholics, however, are told that what they do ask is objected to, from the 
 fear of what they may ask ; that they must do without that which is reason- 
 able, for fear they should ask what is unreasonable. " I would give you a 
 penny (says the miser to the beggar) if I was quite sure you would not ask 
 me for half a crown. " 
 
 "Nothing, I am told, is now so common on the Continent as to hear 
 onr Irish policy discussed. Till of late the extent of the disabilities was but 
 little understood, and less regarded, partly because, having less liberty 
 themselves, foreigners could not appreciate the deprivations, and partly 
 because the pre-eminence of England was not so decided as to draw the 
 eyes of the world on all parts of our system. It was scarcely credited that 
 England, that knight-errant abroad, should play the exclusionist at home ; 
 that every where else she should declaim against oppression, but contem- 
 plate it without emotion at her doors. That her armies should march, and 
 her orators philippise, and her poets sing against continental tyranny, and 
 yet that laws should remain extant, and principles be operative within our 
 gates, which are a bitter satire on our philanthropy, and a melancholy 
 negation of our professions. Our sentiments have been so lofty, our deport- 
 ment to foreigners so haughty, we have set up such liberty and such morals, 
 that no one could suppose that we were hypocrites. Still less could it be 
 foreseen that as great a moralist, called Joseph Surface, kept a "Little 
 Milliner" behind the screen, we too should be found out at length in tak- 
 ing the diversion of private tyranny after the most approved models for that 
 amusement." Letter to Lord Milton, pp. 50, 51. 
 
 We sincerely hope we firmly believe it never will happen ; but if it 
 were to happen, why cannot England be just as happy with Ireland being 
 Catholic, as it is with Scotland being Presbyterian? Has not the 
 Church of England lived side by side with tbe Kirk, without crossing or 
 jostling, for these last hundred years? Have the Presbyterian members 
 entered into any conspiracy for mincing Bishoprics and Deaneries into 
 Synods and Presbyteries ? And is not the Church of England tenfold more 
 rich and more strong than when the separation took place ? But however 
 this may be, the real danger, even to the Church of Ireland, as we have 
 before often remarked, is the refusal of Catholic Emancipation. 
 
 It would seem, from the frenzy of many worthy Protestants, whenever 
 the name of Catholic is mentioned, that the greatest possible diversity of 
 religious opinions existed between the Catholic and the Protestant that 
 they were as different as fish and flesh as alkali and acid as cow and 
 cart-horse ; whereas it is quite clear, that there are many Protestant sect* 
 whose difference from each other is much more marked, both in church 
 discipline and in tenets of faith, than that of Protestants and Catholics. 
 "We maintain that Lambeth, in these two points, is quite as near to the 
 Vatican as it is to the Kirk if not much nearer.
 
 CATHOLIC QUESTION. 569 
 
 Instead of lamenting the power of the priests over the lower orders of 
 the Irish, we ought to congratulate ourselves that any influence can affect 
 or control them. Is the tiger less formidable in the forest than what be 
 has been canght and taught to obey a voice, and tremble at a hand ? Bat 
 we over-rate the power of the priest, if we suppose that the upper orders 
 are to encounter all the dangers of treason and rebellion, to confer the 
 revenues of the Protestant Church upon their Catholic clergy. If the 
 influence of the Catholic clergy upon men of rank and education is so un- 
 bounded, why cannot the French and Italian clergy recover their posses- 
 sions, or acquire an equivalent for them? They are starving in the full en- 
 joyment of an influence which places (as we think) all the wealth and 
 power of the country at their feet an influence which, in our opinion, 
 overpowers avarice; fear, ambition, and is the master of every passion 
 which brings on change and movement in the Protestant world. 
 
 \Ve conclude with a few words of advice to the different opponents of 
 the Catholic question. 
 
 To tlie fro-Papery Fool. 
 
 You are made use of by men who laugh at you, and despise you for your 
 folly and ignorance ; and who, the moment it suits their purpose, will con- 
 sent to emancipation of the Catholics, and leave you to roar and bellow Xo 
 Popery ! to Vacancy and the Moon, 
 
 To the No-Popery R: : 
 
 A shameful and scandalous game, to sport with the serious interests of 
 the country, in order to gain some increase of public power ! 
 
 To tJie Honest No-Popery People. 
 We respect you very sincerely but are astonished at your existence. 
 
 To tke Base. 
 
 Sweet children of turpitude, beware ! the old antipopery people are fast 
 perishing away. Take heed that you are not surprised by an emancipating 
 king, or an emancipating administration. Leave a locus pccnitentuz ! pre- 
 pare a place for retreat get ready your equivocations and denials. The 
 dreadful day may yet come, when liberality may lead to place and power. 
 We understand these matters here. It is safest to be moderately base to 
 be flexible in shame, and to be always ready for what is generous, good, 
 and just, when any thing is to be gained by virtue. 
 
 To tke Catholics. 
 
 Wait. Do not add to your miseries by a mad and desperate rebellion. 
 Persevere hi civil exertions, and concede all you can concede. All great 
 alterations in human aSairs are produced by compromise.
 
 57 CATHOLIC QUESTION. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 MR SYDNEY SMITH selected from the Edinburgh Review those articles he 
 had written, with the exception of twelve. 
 
 These were probably omitted, because their subjects are already treated of 
 in the extracted Articles, or, because they applied only to the period in 
 which they were written. 
 
 As Mr Sydney Smith made the selection, it is therefore respected and 
 continued ; but lest any intention of disowning these omissions should be 
 inferred, their numbers are subjoined.* 
 
 After the year 1827, the Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst, disregarding poli- 
 tical differences between himself and his friend, presented Mr Sydney 
 Smith to the Canonry of Bristol Cathedral. As a Dignitary of the Church 
 he then ceased to write anonymously. 
 
 * Vol. L No. 3 : Vol. ii. No. 4 ; Vol. iii. Nos. 12 and ^ ; Vol. xii. No. 5 ; Vol. xvi. 
 No. 7 ; Vol. xvii. No. t ; Vol. xxxii. No. 6 ; VoL xxxiv. Nos. 5 and 8 ; Vol. xxxvii. No, 
 a ; and VoL xl. No a.
 
 I X D E X. 
 
 ABBOT, 
 
 of "^"g spring-guns, 367 
 Absenteeism in Ireland. 349; its consequences, 356 
 
 AdTerttsiag. system of. 523 
 
 Africa, agncohure in, 70 ; refinement amour bar- 
 barous tribes in. So; trial by ordeal in. 81; Purra 
 Society in. 82 ; natives of. in the neighbourhood 
 of Sierra Leone, 78-* ; best mode of becoming 
 acquainted with the interior of, 324 
 
 A . . : . 
 
 Alfonso. Lewis's Tragedy of, reviewed. 17 19 
 America. United States of; review of Travels in. 
 s&t j82 ; of Seybert s work oa. 324529 * 
 Duncan's Travels in, 464 473. Their stat-Stics, 
 
 from Tairs, 472 ; then navy, 473 
 
 ^ . :...:: _- . t : ..-. .. ...... 
 
 474 ; their system of slavery drnonivifd. 474 
 
 Amusements, objections to them by the Metho- 
 dists, xxo ; evangelical objections to ***^"_ x66 ; 
 r '. "~- '.'. '".. i-i . : *. ... . .: t:.i \ .: , ... in- 
 ference with, 155 158 
 
 Anabaptists, thnr mmioos in Tnnia. 120150 
 
 Anastasius. Hope's, review of. 357 363 
 
 Angling, description of, 133 
 
 :...%-:- .:!-. .;. .':. r.-v.o. i. 
 
 -.' fewJkwawnc. ; : : 
 
 Ant-bears, their habits. 507. 508 
 
 - Cith::..s. U.;.r kdAongntt :h; 3;v-: 
 
 A .;-ity, super::: *-.,'._-. ;f =;: :cr^ u_.es 
 
 484 
 
 Arcadian cant described. 52 
 A nans, burnt as heretics in 1612. 240. 
 
 .'." -t :>;r^ry, tr.e;r r.ii .1: i:. r.Tjr" c: hi *--~-* 
 laws, 383 1 their a"""^*^tf* i ** x 284487. 293 
 
 Irin^s. ne_tril-:y of Ch'^-h cf 
 .England between, 424 
 
 Army, Turkish, its want of discipline, 93; Ameri- 
 can. 327, 326 
 Artidts of the Church, relaxation of, m 
 
 A-i 1= 1 i^.-^.^i, :^-_>...-. :..- Bfief 
 
 coveriesin. 304 
 Ashantee, review of Bowdich's work on. 317324 
 Australia, review of CoQins's Account of. 29 38 
 
 - . ''.-. \ -. 
 
 Barbarians, their tendency toiorm secret soacnefc 
 
 Barinon. his testimony as to the Evm* 
 bong in the pay of the ~ 
 to Louis XlvVreferred j 
 
 --. . :- -. 
 Barrow, his eloquence. 6 
 
 -:: . . 
 
 by '^""j 271 
 
 B 
 
 BAIL, justification of UK law of. 6* 
 
 Bailey. Mr Justice, his opinion on the hgafity < 
 
 Batei^fr.lffi 36 !!^ ^ T,, I.,,. 
 
 . - '. = . C4- 
 
 . :>wers. brief picture of their forces. 63 
 
 fathom. New South Wales, 
 
 . 
 
 ryoC 37 
 Wales, j 
 
 les, jog, oj 
 cs spnBBt toe practice 
 
 >4 
 
 ****! 'wrowjipiil bjr the Poor-laws, 355 
 Bell, Dr. character and saving of, 510 
 
 3: Mr 
 
 irwgil. 
 
 iJirinniri ptnrf (itnei in. 119137 
 
 Hon. 11. fl. his pamphlet upon New Hol- 
 
 of laws. 
 
 ith power to enforce eccte 
 
 54 : subjection of the clergy I 
 
 them, gy* ; objections to increasing their \ 
 
 : . : . "..:.-: . - 
 
 142 ; persecuting. 4nr 
 Blair, Dr. his merits. 6 
 Bu<< Governor, his apoomtment to NewS. Wales, 
 
 Books, improvement in their publication, sjs 
 Bore, description of the. 518 
 Botany Bay, ulijt ctiB to fc as 
 ' of works upon. 903- 
 
 31; reviewof works upon. 293 308. 428443 
 
 IT aatfc*, Lnligiwai on. 336 
 ^^Mr. reviewrhis work on Ashantee. 
 
 Bow^esfjoto. review of his Refections at the Con- 
 ctasion of the War. 1114 
 dfanrr. Mr. review of ifc Travels fa Americm, 
 --.'. 
 
 hnMiis. their op|Monw>lheiiliitnrirl'i.i30, 
 (i 
 ivery ofmewkal men. 73 
 
 BrehoblawofpropeTty in Ireland, 91 
 
 teow^r^Tho.aoS'wtrk on Female Edno, 
 
 tion reviewed. j96-OT 
 Broo^lxtm's Lctm> wNi
 
 572 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Bulls, Irish, review of Edgeworth's Essay on, 75 
 78 ; pleasure arising from, compared with that 
 arising from wit, 76 ; one source of the pleasure 
 experienced from them, 77 
 
 Buonaparte, apprehensions entertained of, 12, 29 ; 
 his conduct to Madame de Stael, 49 ; his massacre 
 and poisoning at Jaffa, 7072 
 
 Bury jail. 378 
 
 Hussy, notice of, 41 
 
 Buxton. Mr, his efforts for the improvements of 
 prisons, 374 ; his book on prisons, 382 
 
 CALVINISM, supported by the early reformers, 
 421 ; and by the articles of the Irish Church, 421 ; 
 does not disqualify for preferment in the Church 
 of England, 422 ; neutrality of the Church on the 
 doctrines of, 424 
 
 Calvinists in Denmark, 68 
 
 Campanero, account of the, 505 
 
 Canada, its injudicious treatment by England, 466 
 
 Canal, Holstem, advantages of, 66 
 
 Candia, situation of the king of, 42, 45 
 
 Canning. George, 337 
 
 Cant, Arcadian, described, 52 
 
 Cape Coast Castle, description of, 317 
 
 Capital punishment, necessity of, 172 
 
 Capital punishments in Denmark, 62 
 
 Cashel, Archbishop of, notice of his charge in fa- 
 vour of the Catholics, 554 
 
 Caste in India, system of, 135; consequences of 
 
 loss Of, 121 
 
 Castes, institution of, the curb of ambition, i6r, 162 
 Castlereagh, Lord, 356, 357 
 
 Catholics, their emancipation, 10 ; review of Par- 
 of the Penal Laws against them, 
 145148 ; Dissenters' opposition to their emanci- 
 
 , 
 Hell's History of t 
 
 pation, 230, 231, 558 ; persecution how exercised 
 against them, 245 ; unreasonable apprehensions 
 entertained from their emancipation, 246 ; state- 
 ment of their disabilities, 343, 346 ; their propor- 
 tion to Protestants, 346, 347 ; their early marriages, 
 347 ; their rooted antipathy to England, 349 ; their 
 superstition, 356; meritorious patronage of, by 
 the Whigs, 356 ; question of their emancipation 
 will perhaps be settled by the navies of France 
 and America, 473; never be settled but from 
 fear, 482 ; notice of Archbishop of Cashel's charge 
 in favour of their claims, 554 ; their earnestness 
 in the cause of emancipation, 565; their alliance 
 with the democratic party, 561 ; review of Lord 
 Nugent's statement in their support, 555 563 ; 
 their divided allegiance, 565 ; discrepancies of 
 opinion in their church, 567 ; small diversity from 
 in many Protestant sects, 568 ; advice to, 569 
 
 Catteau, review of his Tableau des Etats Danoib, 
 557 
 
 Caucus in Amenca, 271 
 
 Cayenne, the forests of, 505 
 
 Census in Denmark, 64 
 
 Ceylon, review of Percival's account of, 41 49 ; 
 snakes of, 49 ; leeches of, 49 ; cocoa-nut tree of, 
 49 ; talipot tree of, 49 ; success of the mission- 
 aries in, 134 
 
 Chancery, one of the great unconnected evils of the 
 country, 274; Court of, compared to a boa con- 
 strictor, 500 
 
 Character of Dr Bell, 530; General Monk, 233, 
 236 ; Dr Parr, 5 
 
 Character of the English in matters of charity, 40: 
 
 Charitable institutions, M. Turgot's objections to, 
 combated, 3 
 
 Charles I., conduct of Cromwell to, 233; remarks 
 on his execution, 170 
 
 Chartism, formed by the Poor-Laws, 334 
 
 Children, natural, in Denmark, 62 
 
 Chimney-sweepers, 308317; their miseries, 308, 
 309; their peculiar diseases, 311; their peculiar 
 dangers, 312; their inhuman treatment, 313, 
 3*4 
 
 Christian Observer, reprobation of the, 137, 138 
 
 Christianity, the greatest ornament and greatesl 
 blessing, 8s ; difficulty attending its progress i: 
 the East, 122 ; its introduction into India, 160 
 
 Chronology among the Greenlanders dated from 
 their conversion to Christianity, 68 
 
 Church of England (the), state of endowment in, 
 S3; how affected by Lancaster's system of educa- 
 tion, 83 ; relaxation of its articles, 114 ; privileges 
 of Dissenters over its members, nj : its income, 
 139 ; its disadvantages as compared with dissent, 
 227, 23 l; hardship and injustice caused by in 
 Ireland, 347, 348, 356 ; a gregarious profession, 
 4'7; charity and wisdom of 'its policy. 42r ; itt 
 neutrality between Arminians and Calvinists, 
 424; its pacific spirit, 425, 4^6 
 
 Church estabiisliinents, their fatal disease, 229 
 
 Cingalese, notice of the, 45 
 
 a wood, remarks on, 48 
 
 Civilisation, on what it depends, 464, 465 
 
 Clarence, Duke of, expectations from him, 563 
 
 Classical learning, its abuse in England, 187196 
 
 Classification of patients in lunatic asylums, 258, 
 259 ; of prisoners, 375, 376 
 
 Clergy, English, their want of eloquence. 6 ; paro- 
 chial, unrepresented in Parliament, 26 ; evangeli- 
 cal, notice of, 97; their education, 114; tiieir 
 subjection to the bishops, 140 ; residence of, may 
 be too hardly exacted, 144 ; Orthodox, Metho- 
 dists' war against, 158 ; in Ireland allowed to have 
 private prisons, 478 ; their difficult position. 480 
 Thmate of New South Wales, 293 
 
 Climbing-boys, Society for superseding the Neces- 
 sity for, its proceedings, 308317 
 ;iive, his genius, 42 
 ;oal, want of, in Ireland, 355 
 ^ocoa-nut tree of Ceylon, 49 
 
 Ccelebs in Search of a Wife, review of, 164168 
 
 Collins, Lieut.-Col., review of his Account of New 
 
 South Wales, 2938 
 ;61onial secretaries, excuse fortheir misconduct.sgj 
 
 Colonies, English, folly of keeping up some of 
 them, 328 ; Danish, 66 
 
 Colony of New Holland, 32, 33, 305; New South 
 Wales, 2938, 293308, 428443 ; Norfolk Island, 
 
 ~olqunoun, Mr, his Police of tlie Metropolis, 53 
 Combination, danger of the practice of, 150, 151 
 Commerce of America, 325; Denmark, 66 
 Commission, Ecclesiastical. See Ecclesiastical 
 
 Commission 
 
 Common informer likened to the honeybird, 49 
 Concessions, forced, their danger, 566 
 Conciliation, tribunal of, in Denmark, 61 
 Congress, payment to members of, 329 
 Conquerors, benefits derived from them, 324 
 Conquest, its advantages to science, 43 
 Consolation, political, fallacy of, 494 
 Constitution in France, 20 ; in England, 24, 25 
 Continent (the), improvement in the prisons of, 439 
 Conversation, the pleasures of, 205 
 Conversion, duty of, in India questionable, 135 
 Convicts, their morals and condition at Botany 
 Bay. 307, 308; Rev. Mr Marsdeu's bearing to- 
 wards them, 433 
 Coomassie, description of, 318 
 Corn, combinations to raise the price of, 16 
 Coronation oath, its binding nature, 488 
 Corporal punishments in prisons, 409 
 Corporation and Test Acts, their spirit contrasted 
 
 with religious toleration in Denmark, 67, 68 
 Costume, unimportance of, in administering jus- 
 tice, 273 
 Counsel, Lord Lovafs appeal to be allowed, 543 ; 
 
 Lord Stafford's conviction from want of, 552 
 Counsel for prisoners, review of Stockton's work 
 on allowing, 539533 ; cruelty of denying, 409-7 
 412; judges not to be trusted as, 411, 412; peti- 
 tion of jurymen for allowing, 539 ; authorities in 
 favour of the practice, ^42, 543 ; probable effect 
 of allowing, 549 ; absurdity of allowing judges as. 
 543. 544, 547 
 
 Credit, despotism opposed to, 29 
 Crocodile, Waterton s adventure with a, Sri 
 Cromwell, his conduct towards Charles I., 233 ; his 
 
 conduct in Ireland, 479 
 Cruelty to animals, 133 
 
 Curates, their hard position, 423. 415, 427 ; Salary 
 Bill, review of, 138144; lay curates, 144
 
 INDEX. 
 
 573 
 
 Curwen's Observations on Ireland, 345 
 Customs, greater expense of collecting in England 
 than in America, 377; dues exacted on Water- 
 ton's collection, 512 
 
 D 
 
 DANES, their character, 69 ; no literati among 
 them, 69 
 
 Darwin, Dr, on the law of nature, 47 
 
 Davison, Mr, his considerations on the Poor-Laws, 
 340 ; his style, 342 
 
 Death, punishment of, 463 
 
 Debt, Danish, 64 ; American, 130 
 
 Delphine, De Stael's review of, 49 53 
 
 Demerara, animals of, 501 ; Indian tribes in, 502 ; 
 poisons used in, 503 
 
 Denmark, review of Catte.vj's Tableau of, 5570 : 
 Founder of its monarchy, 56 ; Bernstoff, its great 
 minister, 57 ; revolution of, 5962 ; mildness of 
 its government, 59 ; Protestant nunneries in, 60 ; 
 its tribunals of conciliation, 61 ; its cheap justice, 
 61 ; slavery in, 62 ; its general statistics, 62 66 ; 
 its religious toleration, 67, 68 ; its colonies, 66, 67 ; 
 its universities, 68 
 
 D'Epinay, Madame, review of her Memoires ct 
 Correspondance, 262269 
 
 Derwent, description of its port, 293 
 
 Despotism opposed to credit, 29 
 
 De Stael, Madame. Set Stael, Madame de 
 
 Diderot, his dislike of Rousseau, 266, 277 
 
 Diet of prisoners, 376, 408 
 
 Dinner, a triumph of civilised life, 308 
 
 Discipline of prisons may be over-estimated, 461 
 
 Discourses on various subjects, by Dr Kennel, re- 
 view of, 6 ii 
 
 Discovery, who entitled to the merit of, 523 
 
 I>iscretionary power in the administration of laws, 
 arguments against, 54 
 
 Dissent, disadvantages of the .Church compared 
 with, 113, 114, 226230 
 
 Dissent and Methodism, review of Mr Ingram's 
 book on the Causes of their Increase, 97 114. 
 
 Dissenters, their privileges over members of the 
 Church, 113 ; charges of Jacobinism against, 97 ; 
 exploded clamours against, 97 ; Lord Siduiouth's 
 intentions towards, 2:4231 ; their treatment, 
 464 ; their conduct in reference to the Catholic 
 claims, 557 ; style of preaching among, 559 ; their 
 inexpensiveness to the state, 564 ; wide difference 
 of their opinions, 565. 567 
 
 Dissenters' -Marriage Bifl, opposition to, 464 
 
 Distilleries in America, 327 ; prohibited in New 
 South Wales, 303; their value in New South 
 Wales, 439 
 
 Distrust, political fallacy of, 402 
 
 Disturbances at Madras, 213224 
 
 Dotation of women in New South Wales, 297 
 
 Doyle, Dr, the Pope of Ireland, 566 
 
 Dress, common error about female, 167 
 
 Dublin, Whitelaw's History of, 344 
 
 Duelling, a civilised institution among barbarous 
 people, 33 
 
 Duncan, Mr John, review of his Travels in the 
 United States, 464473 
 
 Dupleix, notice of, 42 
 
 Dutchman, Ceylonese, his character, 43 
 
 Duties levied in New South Wales, 302 
 
 ECONOMY, American, an object for our imitation, 
 
 Edpeworth on Bulls, review of, 75 78 ; on Profes- 
 sional Education, review of, 187 196 
 
 Edinburgh Review, contributions to, I 570 
 
 Education, review of Mrs Trimmer's book on Lan- 
 caster's Plan of, 83 88 
 
 Education, Professional, review of Edgeworth's 
 work on, 187 196 ; Female, review of Broad- 
 hurst's work on, 196 207 ; system of, in public 
 schools, 207 2t3 ; use of ridicule in, 86 ; of the 
 clergy 114; of the poor, 114; too much Latin 
 and Creek in, 188 196; defective system of, at 
 the English universities, 194 196; Hamiltonian 
 
 system of, 514, 525, combined with that of Lan- 
 caster, 527 ; unnecessary difficulties created in, 
 528. S^. 53' : foolish saying of Dr Bell upon, 53-3 ; 
 defccis in, 7 ; attention to, in America, 467. 
 
 Egede, John, a Norwegian priest, converts the 
 Greenlanders to Christianity, 68 
 
 Elections, political modes of, 2023 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, her conduct towards Ireland, 
 02 ; statute of, relating to the poor, 344 
 
 Eloquence, neglect of, in British education, 7 
 
 Emancipation, Catholic, once deemed hopeless, 
 145 ; relaxation in seeking it not justifiable, 146; 
 madness of opposing it, 88, 92, 93. 148, 555, 560 
 564 : bigotry of the English in reference to it, 92 ; 
 review of the question, 553, 570; must be ulti- 
 mately carried, 554 ; view history will take of ths 
 question, 557. See also Catholics 
 
 Emigration to Botany Bay, advantages offered for, 
 308 ; to America, 281 
 
 Emulation, absurdity of banishing it from schools, 
 528 
 
 Emu, description of, 294 
 
 Encomium on Charles lames Fox, 167; Hope's 
 Anastasius, 358, 365; Sir James Scarlett, 400 ; the 
 Society for Improving Prison Discipline, 400, 409, 
 439 ; George Lamb, 539 ; Sir Robert Peel, 539 
 
 Encyclopedists, M. Fievee's charge of Anglomania 
 against them, 41 
 
 Endowment, state of, in the English Church, 55 
 
 England, the condition of Ireland, a reproach to 
 her, 345, 475 ; likened to Turkey, 358 ; uncertain 
 basis of her prosperity, 556 ; extravagance of her 
 government, 556, 557 ; her inconsistent humanity, 
 560 ; democratic party in, 561 ; her danger from 
 Irish discontent, 568 
 
 English, their prejudices, 7 ; their reserve, 39 ; M. 
 I levee's charges against them, 41 ; their charac- 
 ter in matters of charity, 402 ; their charactei , 
 469 ; their love of labour, 529 
 
 English Church. See Church of England 
 
 Epmay, Madame d', review of her Memoires et 
 Correspondance, 262 269 
 
 Episcopacy, exclusion of, from the Upper House, 26 
 
 Establishments, 2-j8 
 
 Eulogomania of Dr Parr, 4 
 
 Evangelical clergy, notice of, 97 
 
 Evangelicals, their proceedings in the East, 130 
 
 Execution of Stratford, 179; Charles I., 179; 
 Louis XVI., 180 
 
 Exercise, athletic, in public schools, its unimport- 
 ance, 209 
 
 Expenditure in the United States, 329 ; evil effects 
 of a large, 330 
 
 FAGGING, system of, 208, 209 
 
 Fairs, their effect in filling prisons, 414 
 
 Fallacies, review of Bentham's book of, 483 500 
 
 Fallacy of self-trumpeting, 490 ; imputations as an 
 answer to expedient measures, 491 ; political dis- 
 trust, 493 ; the cry against innovation, 492 ; poli- 
 tical consolation, 494 ; the argument of Procrasti- 
 nator, 495 ; the quietest, 494 ; generalities in poli- 
 tical argument, 495 ; the imputation of theory, 47; 
 
 False quantities, 51 
 
 Fanaticism, its cause in an ages, 112 
 
 Farmers, unjust charges upon them, 16; how 
 affected by the game laws, 285. 
 
 Fearon, Mr, review of his Journey In America, 
 269283 
 
 Female dress, common error about, 167 
 
 Female Education, review of Broadhurst's work 
 on, 196207 
 
 Ferocity, the natural weapon of the common 
 people, 372 
 
 Fiction, danger of varnishing characters in works 
 of, 52 
 
 Fievee, ]., review of his Lettres sur 1'Angleterre, 
 38 41 ; his approach to pessimism, 40 ; his 
 charges against the English, 41 ; his charge of 
 Anglomania against the Encyclopedists, 41 
 
 Finance, Necker's Observations on, reviewed, a 
 See also Taxes. 
 
 Fishery, pearl, account of, 46, 47
 
 574 
 
 -*-s among, 81 
 
 Fops, clerical, illustration of, 10 
 
 Forests of Cayenne, 505 
 
 Fox, Charles "James, review of Dr Pan's "Charac- 
 ters" of, 168173; review of his historical work, 
 173187 ; review of Hejrwood's Vindication ot 
 his History, 231 244 
 
 France, versatile ry of public opinion in, 26 ; its power, 
 19 ; price of revolutionary lands in, - - 
 culties, 28 
 
 French aristocracy, its probable restoration, 26, 27 
 
 French revolution emulates the English revolu- 
 tion, ido 
 
 Fry, Mrs, and her friends, exaggeration of their 
 efforts, 402, 415. 439 
 
 F urmture, tax on, in America, 327 
 
 (GAMBLE'S Travels in Ireland, 344 
 
 Game, Mr Bankes's Act against baying, 
 of, 284, 287 292; advantages of ley ... 
 sale of, 450452 
 
 Game laws, 282 292 ; review of the Hon. and Rev. 
 W. Herbert's Letter on, 443 ; their scandal and 
 disgrace, 401, 432, 452 ; their amendment recom- 
 mended, 3)65 ; futility of severe laws against them, 
 36. 372. 385394 ; review of report of the House 
 of Commons on, 443 452 ; one fourth of commit- 
 ments for offences against them, 449 ; absence of, 
 in America, 465 ; reform of, 506 
 
 Gaming, extract from Dr Kennel's Sermon on, 7 
 
 v ;azi Hassan, notice of, 75 
 
 Genealogy of nations, embarrassing circumstances 
 in the speculations concerning it, 33 
 
 Generalities, fallacy of dealing in, in political argu- 
 ment, 495 
 
 George 111. protects Joseph Lancaster against the 
 Church, 83 
 
 Chosts, belief in, has left the drawing-room for the 
 kitchen, 557 
 
 Gibraltar, a useless and extravagant possession, 
 
 Glory, consequences of the national lov" 
 
 Government, rights of, a ; no other ultimatum in, 
 than perfect justice, 145 : what the first object 
 should be, 450, 451 ; constitutional. 490; absolute, 
 492. 493; kingly, origin of, 507; English, its ex- 
 treme timidity and consequent violei; 
 extravagance, 556, 557 ; its cheapness in America, 
 271 j its mildness in Denmark, 59 
 
 Governments, effects of the moral sense on, 12 
 
 Godly and ungodly, dangerous division of mankind 
 into, 113 
 
 Godwin, Mr, his principle of universal benevolence, 
 4 ; refuted by Si al thus, 9 
 
 Grammar, should be taught after some knowledge 
 of a language is obtained, 537 
 
 Granby, review of, 513 522 
 
 Grand Vizier, instances of his ignorance, 73 
 
 Grattan, his character, 357 
 
 Greatness of mind, common notion of, 3 
 ' Englis 
 
 h educa- 
 
 Greek, importance attached to, in 
 lion, 191. Stt also Latin 
 
 Greenland, its inhabitants converted to Chris- 
 tianity by John Egede, a Norwegian priest, 63 ; 
 its chronology dated from its conversion to 
 Christianity, 68 
 
 Guiana, trees of, 501 
 
 Guldberg Ove, notice oC 57 
 
 Curacy, Mr, on Prisons, 380 
 
 H 
 
 HABEAS Corpus Act, its suspension, rp 
 
 Habits of the honeybird. 49 ; musk-rat, 48; kan- 
 garoo, 394 ; ornithorhynchus, 294 ; the snake, 504, 
 509 ; the carapanero, 505 ; the toucan, 505 ; the 
 sloth, 507 ; the ant-bear. 507, 508 ; the vampire, 
 508 : the tortoise, 508, 509 ; the vulture, 507 510 
 
 Hall, Lieut., review of his Travels in America, 369 
 282 
 
 Hamilton's method of teaching languages, 523 
 538 ; its errors, 528, 532 ; testimony to its effi- 
 ciency, 534 
 
 curious circumstance relating to tha 
 punishment of, 62, 63 
 
 Harmonites in America, 4-5. 4-4 
 
 Hatchard, Mr, persons meeting at his shop, 207 
 
 Hayti, boast cf ihe Emperor of regarding punish- 
 ment, 422 
 
 Headlam, John, review of his letter on Prison 
 Labour, 434463. 466 
 
 Heathen, societies lor converting the, 116 
 
 Heligoland, notice of, 63 
 
 Helots, the Irish Catholics treated as, 345 
 
 Herbert, Hon. and Rev. William, review of his Let- 
 ter on the Game laws, 443 
 -Mtment of, 125 
 
 Heretics, Anans burnt as, in 1612, 240 
 
 Herrnhuters. or Northern Quakers, 63 
 
 Heroism of Dr Wittman, 73 
 
 Hey wood, Samuel, review of his Vindication ot 
 Fox's History, 231 241 
 
 Hindoo faiih, the Mussulmans of India not converts 
 from i: 
 
 Hindoos, anecdote of their feelings relative to caste. 
 133 ; their religion, 134, 135 ; tlieir persecution by 
 Tippoo, 163 
 
 Historical Apology for the Irish Catholics, Par- 
 nell's review of, 8893 
 
 Hodgson, Adam, review of his letters from North 
 America, 469 475 
 
 Holford, George, review of his work on prisons, 
 381, 382 
 
 Holstem, exportation of horses from, 56; its soil, 
 58 ; canal, advantages of its, 66 
 
 Homer, morality of, 10 
 
 Honeybird, its habits, 49; common informer 
 likened to, 49 
 
 Hope, Mr, eulogium on his Anastasius, 358, 363 
 
 Horses, exportation of, from Holstein, 56 
 
 House of Lords, suggestions regarding it, 26 
 
 Human nature, experiment upon it in New South 
 Wales, 31 
 
 Humane Society, review of Dr Langford's Anni- 
 versary Sermon for it, 14 
 
 , on the ridicule cast upon, 316 ; its Ope- 
 ration, under the Poor-; . 
 
 Hume, David, anecdote of, at Paris, 267 
 
 Hume, Sir P., review of L.iuy Murray's Narrative 
 of the Adventures of, 173 187 
 
 Hunting, description of, 153 
 
 INDIA, our empire in, 42 ; missions in, 1141^ ; 
 consequences of the loss of caste in, 121 ; diffi- 
 culty attending the progress of Christianity in, 
 122 ; proceedings of the evangelical party in, 130 ; 
 Mahometans of, not converts from Hindooism. 
 134 ; duty of conversion in. questionable, 135, 136 -. 
 introduction of Christianity into, 160 ; difference 
 of officers serving in, from those on European 
 service, 215 
 
 Impropriators, lay, 142 
 
 Imputations, fallacy of, as an answer to expedient 
 measures, 491 
 
 Informers, odious nature of their trade, 149; de- 
 terred by public indignation, 449 
 
 Ingram, Mr, review of his Causes of the Increase 
 of Methodism and Dissent, 97 114 
 
 Innovation, source of the dislike of, 374 : fallacy of 
 the cry against, 492 
 
 Insanity, caused by Methodism, in ; Quaker treat- 
 ment of it, 255 ^62 ; no dependence on medicine 
 for its cure, 260 ; curious case of, 261 
 
 Insects, the curse of tropical climates, 509 
 
 Inspectors of prisons, 383 
 
 Institutions, good, arelndispensable, 490 
 
 Instruction, religious, in early life should be con- 
 fined to general principles, 87 
 
 Interference of Providence, instances of, cited by 
 Methodists, 98113 
 
 Intolerance, its lasting spirit, 227 ; Methodists' com- 
 plaint of, r6r 
 
 Inundation in Denmark, 58 
 
 Ireland, review of PamcH's Survey of the History 
 of, 8992 ; never subdued till the reign of Eliza- 
 beth, 91; conduct of Elizabeth towards, 92;
 
 INDEX. 
 
 575 
 
 BrcUon law of property in, 96 ; review of the 
 state of, 344 357 ; remedies Lr, vf> ; operation 
 of tithes in, 347, 348 ; tithes must De relaxed in, 
 589, 618 ; Gamble's Travels in, 344 ; folly and ra- 
 pacity of the landlords of, 352 : bigotry and party 
 spirit of the Protestants of, 345 ; absenteeism in, 
 349 ; middlemen the standing grievance of, 349, 
 350, 356 ; injustice of the English Church in, -547, 
 348, '356 ; potatoes one cause of her wretched 
 condition, 332 354 ; misgovernment of, 343, 334 ; 
 difficulty of executing the lairs in, 334 ; want of 
 coal in, 355 ; picture of ploughing in, 355 ; her 
 demoralised peasantry, 372; baseness of her 
 treatment by England, 475 ; expenses of the 
 wars in, 478; Catholic disabilities in, 
 testant Church in, 483; CromwelTs conduct in, 
 479 ; natives of, in America, 565 ; quiet of, under 
 Queen Anne, 512 ; Dr Doyle the Pope of, 566 ; 
 power of the priests in, 568 
 
 Insh in America, 512 
 
 Irreiigion, stigma of the charge of, 85 
 
 JACOBINISM condemned, 13 ; charged against 
 Dissenters, 97 
 
 Jaffa, massacre and poisoning at, 71 
 
 James 1L, Fox's view of his conduct in regard to 
 the Catholic religion, 238 241 ; controversy be- 
 tween Mr Fox and Mr Rose respecting his con- 
 duct, 183 
 
 lanissaries, their original constitution, 74, 75 
 
 lephson, Mr and Mrs, mention of, 262 
 
 Jews prohibited from entering Norway, 68 j equality 
 of tneir treatment in America, 464 
 
 Johnson's Shooter's Guide, 365 
 
 Judges, their removability underCharles I. and II., 
 182 ; idiosyncrasies of, 530 ; differences among, 
 551 ; inadequate number of, 552; jealousy with 
 which juries should watch them, 272 ; not to be 
 trusted as counsel for prisoners, 412 ; absurdity 
 of considering them as counsel for prisoners, 
 543, 544, 547 
 
 Juries, jealousy with which they should watch 
 judges, 272 
 
 Jurisprudence of a country not to be learned 
 merely by perusing its statutes, 98 
 
 Tustice.its cheapness m Denmark, 61 j in America ,470 
 
 Justices. See Magistrates 
 
 Jutland, description of, 57, 58 
 
 KANGAROO, described, 294 
 " Kimes," Mr Styles's blunder about, 150, 160 
 King, his supremacy merely nominal, 567 
 Knowledge, importance communicated to old age 
 
 by, 206; its alleged disadvantages in women, 
 
 197207 
 Knox, Robert, his account of Ceylon, 43 
 
 LABOUR, objections to a fixed rate of, 36 ; compul- 
 sory, of prisoners before trial, 452, 467 ; rates of, 
 in New South Wales, 301 
 
 Lamb, George, encomium on, 530 
 
 Lancaster, Joseph, review of Mrs Trimmer's book 
 on his New Plan of Education, 8388 ; his system 
 may be combined with that of Hamilton, 527 ; 
 protected by Georee III. against the Church, 83 ; 
 rewards and punishments in his institution, 86; 
 order displayed in his school astonishing, 87 
 
 Land, property of every man in the game upon 
 his. 284 
 
 Landlords, Irish, their folly and rapac/ 
 
 Langford, Dr, review of his Anniversary Sermon 
 for the Humane Society, 14 
 
 Laplanders, remark on their condition, 69 
 
 Latin and Greek, too much of them in English 
 education, 188 196 ; Hamilton's method of teach- 
 in?, 526-539 
 
 Law, want of reform in its processes, 273 
 
 Lawrence, General, notice of, 43 
 
 Laws, on the promulgation of, 172 ; obsoleteness 
 
 of many, 538 ; their proper execution must de- 
 pend upon public opinion, 540 ; difficulties of o'j 
 taining any improvement in them, 542 j boasted 
 lenity of the English, 409412, 5^6 ; their opera- 
 tion in civil cases, 548 ; their caprice in disallowing 
 counsel to prisoners, 549, 551 ; fallacy of declar- 
 ing them irrevocable, 486 ; their continuity by 
 oath, 488 ; requisites for making those of : 
 deserving the eulogium they obtain, 552 ; difficult 
 execution of, inlreland.354; fortheprescrvationof 
 game, not favourable to the morals of the poor, 284 
 :lais:ca:, its abuse in England, 188 196 
 
 ince the passing of the 
 Keform i 
 
 Lettres sur 1'Augleterre, review of M. Fievee's, 
 3841 
 
 ihew, review of his tragedy of Alfonso, 
 1719 
 
 Liberty and licentiousness of the press, 496 
 Licences for watches in America, 327 ; number that 
 
 would be required in England, 327 
 Limerick, treaty of, 146, 147; violated, 560 
 Lincoln, Bishop of, review of the charge delivered 
 
 by (1812). 244, 251 
 Lmiueus, his secret of infecting oysters, 47 
 
 -, review of his novel of Granby, 513521 
 Literature, advantages to women of cultivating, 
 
 196 207 ; among the Americans, 279 
 Longevity of the Norwegians, 65 
 Lords, House of. See House of Lords 
 
 :ious, in America, 379 
 Lotteries in pearl oysters, 47 
 Louis XIV., anecdote of, 76 
 
 I , on the execution of, 180 ; Fox's decla- 
 < :i the execution of, 233. 234 
 
 Lovat, Lord, his appeal to bj auowed counsel, 545 
 Lunatic asylums, unproved method in their man- 
 agement, 255 ; classification of their patients, 
 258 ; how managed by the Society of Friends, 
 961 
 Lynch-law, excuse for it, 470 
 
 M 
 
 MACDOWALL, General, his treatment and charac- 
 ter, 215224 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, his panegyric on Charles 
 James Fox, 168 
 
 itacquarrie. Governor, charges against, 428, 430 
 
 Mad Quakers, 255 262 
 
 Madras, review of Narrative of the Disturbances 
 at, 213224 
 
 Magistrates, large powers entrusted to them under 
 the Poor- Laws, ^39; their power to order relief 
 under the Poor- Laws should be abolished, 340 
 
 Mahometans in India not converts from Hindoo- 
 ism, 134 
 
 Mahratta Camp, letters from a, 251 155 
 
 Mahrattas, devastation caused by, 252 ; then- bar- 
 barous justice, 353 ; anecdote of a female soldier 
 of, 254 
 
 Malays, their character. 44 
 
 Maithus, M r, tribute to his memory, 9, note 
 
 Manners, French, sketch of, 262 
 
 Manufactures of America, 270; Ashantee, 333; 
 Australia, 34 ; Denmark, 66 
 
 Map of England, ecclesiastical, 417 
 
 Margaret, founder of the monarchy of Denmark, 
 
 56 
 
 Marriage in Denmark, 62 
 
 Hill, opposition to the Dissenters', 464 
 Rev. Mr, 431 ; his bearing towards con- 
 victs, 453 
 
 Marsh, Bishop. -S Peterborough, Bishop of 
 
 Martineau, Miss, allusion to, 201 
 
 Massacre at Jaffa, evidence of, examined, 71 
 
 Maximum of poor-rate, 394, 397399 
 
 Medical ruen, their courage, 73 
 
 Metayers in Denmark, 62 
 
 Methodism, drives many to insanity, in ; review of 
 Mr Ingrain's book on the Causes of the Increase 
 of, 97114; review of Mr Styles's defence of, 
 156163
 
 576 INDEX. 
 
 Methodistical reasoning on the interference of I Nobility of Denmark, classes of, 60 ; of Norway, 
 
 Providence, 98114 
 Methodists, terms by which they designate them- 
 selves, 104 ; their influence and activity, jo6 ; 
 magnitude of their collections, 108; their mis- 
 sionaries, 108 ; party for them in the House of 
 Commons and the India House, 109 ; proselytism 
 their great object, 109 ; their objections to amuse- 
 ments, no ; their difference from the Established 
 Church, in ; their religious language, in ; their 
 doctrine of theocracy, 109; proofs of miracles 
 claimed by them, 59 113 
 
 109; prpol 
 113; their 
 
 miracles, 162 ; thei 
 
 clergy, 'S8i '59 : their complaint of intolerance, 
 
 161 ; their pillage of the earnings of the poor, 114 
 Metropolis, Police of the, reference to, S3 
 Middlemen, the standing grievance of Ireland, 
 
 .349. 350. 356. 
 
 349, 35. 35 
 
 Milbank Penitentiary, 383 
 
 Minorities, almost always in the right, 408 
 
 Miracles, improper reasoning upon them, 15 ; proofs 
 
 of, claimed by the Methodists, 98 113; Metho- 
 dists' perversion of them, 163 
 
 Misgovernment of Ireland, 244, 333 
 
 Mission to the Ashantees, 317, 318 
 
 Missionaries, opposed by the Brahmans, 130; in 
 Ceylon, their success, 134 
 
 Missionary proceedings in Bengal, 120137 
 
 Missionary Society, its missions, 116 130 
 
 Missions among the Methodists, 108 ; in India, 114 
 138 
 
 Modern sermons, their character, 6 
 
 Monk, General, his conduct at the Restoration, 
 181 ; his character, 235, 236 
 
 Moore, Thomas, review of his Memoirs of Captain 
 Rock, 475-483 
 
 Moral sense, its effects on governments, 12 
 
 More, Mrs Hannah, review of her work of Ccelebs 
 in Search of a Wife, 164168 
 
 Motives of men, how influenced, 249 
 
 Munro, Colonel, his conduct at Madras, 214 224 
 
 Murray, Lady, review of her Narrative of the Ad- 
 ventures of Sir P. Hume, 185187 
 
 Musk-rat, account of the, 48 
 
 Mussulmans ot India not converts from the Hindoo 
 faith, 134 
 
 Mutiny at Veflore, 114 ; at Nundydroog, 114, 115 
 
 NAPOLEON. 5 Buonaparte. 
 
 Nares, Archdeacon, review of his Sermon of 
 Thanksgiving for Plenty, and Warning against 
 Avarice, 15, 16 
 
 National funds, project for supporting the poor 
 from, 332 
 
 Natural children in Denmark, 63 
 
 Nature, Darwin's law of, 47 
 
 Necker, M., review of his Dernieres Vues de Poli- 
 tique et de Finance, 1929 ; his plan of a Re- 
 public, 24 
 
 Nelson, Lord, notice of Dr Rennel'S Sermon on 
 his victory, 9 
 
 New Holland, pamphlet by the Hon. Gr 
 upon, 305, 306 ; anticipations of, as a a 
 paucity of numbers in, 32 
 
 New South Wales, review of Collins's Account of, 
 8 ; experiment upon human nature in, 31 ; its 
 ate, 293 ; its progress, 294 ; its schools and 
 public lands, 297 ; courtly appellations given to 
 new discoveries in, 299; diminution of its re- 
 sources by subordinate settlements, 300, 301 ; 
 ignorance and tyranny of its governors, 301 ; sale 
 of spirits in, 302 ; its import and export duties, 
 302 ; its restrictions on navigation, 303, 304 : its 
 cost as a school for criminals, 305 ; no dread in- 
 spired by it, 305 ; profligacy of its morals, 306 ; 
 advantages oif emigrating thither, 308; Went- 
 worth's description of, reviewed, 293308 ; Ben- 
 net's account of the colonies in, 305 308; 
 O'Hara's history of, 307 ; Mr Bigge's report on 
 the colony of, 428, 443 ; value of distilleries in, 
 439 ; trial by jury unfitted for, 443 
 
 New York, its increase, 270 
 
 Nicol, Mr, on the Poor-laws, review of, 333 
 
 ey Bcnnet 
 olony, 31 ; 
 
 60 ; of Holstein. 60 
 Non-residence of clergy, 54 
 Noodle's Oration, 498 
 Norfolk Island, its condition, 34, 37 
 North America, review of Hodgson's letters from, 
 
 469474 
 Norway, description of, 5869 ; its nobility, 60 ; 
 
 Jews prohibited from entering it, 68 
 Norwegians, their longevity, 65 
 Nugent, Lord, review of his statement in support 
 
 of the Catholic claims, 554 563 
 Nundydroog, mutiny at, 114, 115 
 Nunneries, Protestant, in Denmark, 60 
 
 OATH, continuity of laws by, 488 ; coronation, its 
 binding nature, 487 ; scruples to Catholic emanci- 
 pation on account of it, 487 
 
 Ofd age, not a good plea for Poor-law relief, 340 ; 
 importance communicated to it by knowledge, 206 
 
 Opinion, public, its powers, 59 ; its versatility in 
 France, 26 ; execution of laws must in great mea- 
 sure depend upon it, 540 
 
 Ordeal, trial by, among native Africans, 81, Si 
 
 Order displayed in Lancaster schools, 87 
 
 Ordination, Bishop Marsh's questions to candi- 
 dates, 416 ; recommendations of Archbishop 
 Wake regarding, 421 ; Lambeth, Articles of 
 Archbishop Laud upon, 421 
 
 Ornithorhynchus, description of, 294 
 
 Orthodoxy, sacrifices to the genius of, 418 ; incon- 
 veniences of different standards of, 417 
 
 Overseers, office of, 339, 340 
 
 Owen, Rev. Mr, quotation from, on reducing Pro- 
 vidence to an alternative, n? 
 
 Oxford University, Dr Parr's defence of, 5 
 
 Oysters, Linnaeus's secret of infecting, 47 ; pearl, 
 account of, 46 ; lotteries in, 47 
 
 PALESTINE, Travels from, review of, 93 96 
 
 Palmer, Mr, review of the Travels of in America, 
 269 282 
 
 Panegyrics, review of, on C. J. Fox, 173 187 
 
 Paper money in Denmark, 64 
 
 Papists, their treatment in Ireland, 345, 481 j their 
 disabilities, 345 
 
 Parliament, clergy unrepresented in, 26 ; a colonial, 
 304 
 
 Parnell, Henry, review of his History of the Penal 
 Laws against the Irish Catholics, 145 147 
 
 Parnell, William, review of his Historical Apology 
 for the Irish Catholics, 8893 
 
 Parr, Dr, review of his Spital Sermon, i 4 ; his 
 learning and character, 4, 5 j reason of the ne- 
 glect of, 5 j his eulogomama, 4 ; his panegyric 
 on Fox, 168 ; review of his " Characters " of Fox, 
 
 Paul, St, his answer to Felix, 145 
 
 Peace Societies deserving every encouragement,255 
 
 Pearl fishery, account of it, 46 
 
 Peasantry of Ireland, demoralised, 373 
 
 Peel, Sir R., encomium on, 539 
 
 Peers, House of, suggestions regarding it, 25 
 
 Penal laws against the Catholics, 147, 148 
 
 Perceval, Rt. Hon. Spencer, review of a letter to, 
 on the Curates' Salary Bill, 138 r44 
 
 Percival, Robert, review of his Account of Ceylon, 
 4149 
 
 Persecuting Bishops, 416428 
 
 Persecution, how exercised against the Catholics, 
 245 
 
 Pessimism, Ficvce's approach to, 40 
 
 Peterborough, Bishop of, his Ordination Questions, 
 416 428; his good intentions, 416; inconveniences 
 of his adopting a different standard from other 
 bishops, 417 ; danger to the Church of his pro- 
 ceedings, 418; Mr TlmrteH's letter to him, 410. 
 420 ; his unequal bearing upon curates and upon 
 rectors, 422 ; his boast of the paucity of the 
 curates he had excluded. 432 ; his style, 423 ; his 
 complaints, 427 ; his indiscretion, 4:8
 
 INDEX, 
 
 577 
 
 Petion, M. , his knowledge of our law, 39 
 Petrie, Wm., review of his Statement of Facts de- 
 livered to Lord Minto, 214 224 
 Philadelphia, its progress, 270 
 Phillips. Richard, review of his Public Characters, 
 
 (1801. 1802), 14 
 Philopatris Varvicensis, review of his work on C. 
 
 ;. Fox, 168-173 
 
 Piety, what kind of, the world hates, 159 
 Pilgrims, conduct of the Saracens to them, 94 
 Pitt, Mr, defect in his administration, 29 
 Plague, description of the, 361 ; its symptoms and 
 
 cure, 73 ; curious fact regarding it, 73 
 Plays, defence of, 166 
 Ploughing, picture of, in Ireland, 355 
 Ploughman, description of a, 343, 355 
 Poaching, 287 292 ; remarks on the punishment of, 
 
 3*0. 372. 373 
 Poets, the greatest not educated at public schools, 
 
 210 ; bounty of nature in the supply of, 351 
 Poisoning at Jaffa, evidence of, examined, 72 
 Police ofthe Metropolis, Mr Colquhoun's, 53 
 Poor (the), education of, 114 ; interference with 
 their amusements, 154. 158 ; what respect due 
 to, 157 ; their unequal treatment for damages to 
 property, 37t, 372 ; project of supporting them 
 from the national funds, 333 ; overseers of, 332 ; 
 merit as a test of relief to, 332 ; project for sepa- 
 rating their children, 332 ; their resort to ale- 
 houses, 332 ; their treatment in removals under 
 the law of settlement , 339 ; relief of, 340 ; de- 
 scription of the agricultural. 342 ; stupid cha- 
 racter of writings intended for them, 407 
 Poor-law Bill of Sir J. Scarlett reviewed. 394400 
 Poor-law relief, old age not a good plea for, 340 
 Poor-laws (the), 332334 ; the nucleus of Chartism, 
 334 ; Mr Davidson's Considerations on them, 340 ; 
 freedom from in America, 474 ; increase of popu- 
 lation under the old, 332, 334 ; review of Mr 
 Nicol on, 333 ; encourage beggary. 395 ; absurd 
 projects for amending them, 332 ; their extension 
 to personal property, 332 : Mr Nicol's objections 
 to them, 332 ; their ultimate but very gradual 
 abolition, 334 ; law expenses of. 338 ; true reason 
 for abolishing, 344; amendment of, 394; maxi- 
 mum rate of, 394 ; cannot be abolished in less than 
 two centuries, 399 ; their great evils, 400 
 Poor-rate, Mr Davison's plan for its limitation, 340 ; 
 the fixing of a maximum of. 304 ; litigation arising 
 out of. 397 ; its gradual extinction, 399 
 Pope (the), his power to dethrone kings denied, 250 
 Pope of Ireland, Dr Doyle, the, 566 
 Population, its increase under erroneous adminis- 
 tration of Poor- Laws, 332, 334 ; excess of. 342 ; 
 of Australia, 34; of America, 270, 335; of Ash- 
 antee, 322 ; of Denmark. 64 
 Population tumours. 337 
 Port Jackson described. 293 
 Portuguese in India, their character, 43 
 Post-office of the United states. 326 ; of England, 329 
 Potatoes, one cause of the wretched condition of 
 
 Ireland, 352. 353 
 
 Power, tendency of those entrusted with, 331 
 Prejudices ofthe English, 7 
 Preserving of game, 285 
 Press (the), its liberty and licentiousness, 496 
 Priests, Catholic, in Ireland, their dependence on 
 
 their flocks, 346 
 
 Prison Discipline, Society for its Improvement, 400. 
 401, 409, 439 ; may be over-estimated, 461 ; note 
 on Mr Rome's opinions on, 463 
 Prison labour, review of Mr Hcadlam's work on, 
 
 434 4^3 
 
 Prisons, Bunion's efforts for their imp 
 374 ; his book on this subject, 382 ; rev 
 Halfor 
 
 four times a year, 413 ; private, 478 . their state 
 in England, 373384 
 
 Prisoners, treatment of before and after trial, 375 : 
 their classification. 375 ; their solitary confine- 
 ment, 376 ; gradations of their punishment. 377 ; 
 their reformation. 378 ; their earnings. 378 ; com- 
 forts allowed to them, 380. 381 ; fem.ile, 383 ; in- 
 justice of preventing their defence by counsel, 
 383 ; charitable aid to them for expenses of pro- 
 curing their witnesses, 383 ; their cruel treatment 
 before trial, 452 ; cruelty and tyranny involved in 
 their labour, 459, 467 ; cruelty and absurdity of 
 denying them counsel. 409 412 ; should be liber- 
 ated immediately after acquittal, 413 ; not to be 
 treated before trial as paupers. 4*1 , 462 ; prevalent 
 feeling concerning them. 462 : petition from jury- 
 men for allowing counsel to them. 539 ; obstacles 
 to their obtaining evidence in defence, 540 ; often 
 convicted when innocent. 541, 550; authorities 
 for allowing counsel to them when accused of 
 felony, 542 ; plan for giving them an option of 
 having counsel. 551 
 
 Proclamation relative to the mutiny at Vellore, 114 
 Procrastinator, fallacy of his argument, 495 
 Property, personal, broposed to be subjected to 
 poor-rates, 333 ; of every man in the game upon 
 his land, 284 
 
 Proselytism. the great object of the Methodists. 109 
 Protestant Church, upon what security founded, 248 
 Protestant nunneries in Denmark. Co 
 Protestants in Ireland, their bigotry and party 
 spirit, 345 ; their proportion to the Catholics, 346, 
 347. 
 
 Providence, Archdeacon Nares's erroneous reason- 
 ing on, 16 ; the notion of its immediate interfer- 
 ence natural, 81 ; Methodistical reasoning on its 
 interference, 98114; charged by the Rev. Mr 
 Owen with being reduced to an alternative, tyr : 
 on the special interference of, 158 
 Public Characters of 1801, 1802, review of Phffllps'i 
 
 book on the, 14 
 Public opinion. See Opinion 
 Public schools. See Schools 
 Pulpit eloquence, remarks on, 6 
 Punishment, the philosophy of, 368, 373 ; its grada- 
 tions, 377 ; its first object, 378, 430 ; its duration 
 should be lessened and severity increased, 383 ; 
 its proper maximum, 449 ; capital, 462 ; boast of 
 the Emperor of Hayti on, 422 
 Punishments tyrannical, for infringement, of th 
 
 game laws, 292 
 Purra Society in Africa, 82 
 
 Q 
 
 QUAKERS, review of Tuke's Description of aa 
 Institution for Insane, 255269; In Denmark, 
 68 
 
 Qualifications for shooting game, their 
 recommended, 284 286 
 
 Quantities, false, 51 
 
 Quietist, his fallacy, 494 
 
 RAPP, founder ofthe Hsrmonites, 473 
 
 Kate, labour. Srr Labour-rates 
 
 Rate, poor. See Poor-rate 
 
 Rectors, incomes of, 141 
 
 Refinement among barbarous tribes, 80 
 
 Reform in the processes of law, 373 
 
 Reform of the game laws, 508 
 
 Reform Bill, rapid and incautious legislation sine* 
 
 d's work on, 381, 382 ; Mr Gurney on, 380 ; 
 review of Mr Western's work on, 403 414 ; the 
 small number of recommitments to, no test of 
 amelioration, 400 ; principal objects of, 400; soli- 
 tary confinement in them, 403 ; too great indul- 
 gence in them, 403 ; what life m them should be, 
 4o6;diet 
 409 ; imp 
 
 theni,376,4o8;corporalpunishmcnUin, 
 ovement in, on the Continent, 409 ; per- 
 sons detained in, after acquittal, 413 ; the greatest 
 Improvement in them would be a jail delivery 
 
 and English contrasted, 181 
 
 the passing of it, 340 
 
 Regicides, French and 
 
 " Regulators," described, 471 
 
 Religion, the first scaffolding of, 84; sentiment of. 
 has always a tendency to moderation, 89 ; fami- 
 liarity on the subjects of, 167 ; In America. 279 ; 
 
 ofthe Hindoos, 135, 136 
 Religious toleration in Den 
 
 mark, 67 
 
 Removals, hardship of, under the Settlement Laws. 
 
 Rennet, Dr, review of his Discourses on Various 
 Subjects, 69 ; faults of, 911 ; allusion to, 15 
 
 2 O
 
 578 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Rent, when too high the ruin of the land and the 
 
 tenant, 350, 351 
 Republic, review of M. Necker's plan of a, 24 ; un- 
 
 suited for France, 27 
 Residence of the aristocracy on their estates, 448 ; 
 
 of the clergy, review of Dr Sturge's Thoughts 
 
 on, 53-755 ; may be too hardly exacted, 144 
 Restoration, conduct of Monk at the, 181 
 Retribution, arguments for a future state of, no 
 Revenue of Denmark, 63 ; of the United States, 
 
 3*7 
 
 Reviews, one great use of, 484 
 
 Revolution, Danish, 59, 62 ; French, reference to, 
 9 ; emulates the English, 181 
 
 Rewards and punishments in Lancaster's institu- 
 tion, 86, 87 
 
 Rich, their amusements, 284 287, 294 
 
 Ridicule, use of the fear of, in education, 86 ; use 
 of, as a weapon, excusable, 157 
 
 Rock, Captain, Memoirs of, reviewed, 475 488 
 
 Roman Catholics. See Catholics 
 
 Roscoe, Mr, note on his opinions on prison dis- 
 cipline, 463 
 
 Rose, Rt Hon. George, review of his observations 
 on the historical work of C. J. Fox, 173 187 ; his 
 animadversions on it, 231 244 
 
 Roundsman, description of a, 343 
 
 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, anecdotes of, 265 267 
 
 Russia, Emperor of, Madame de Stael's compli- 
 ment to, 490 
 
 SACRIFICES to the Genius of Orthodoxy, 418; 
 human, in Ashantee, 320, 321 
 
 Sale of game, =84, 287 291 
 
 Salic Law, note on, 25 
 
 Sand, plants which grow in, 58 
 
 Saracens, their conduct to pilgrims, 94 
 
 Savage Life, evils of, 29, 30 
 
 Scarlett, Sir James, review of his Poor-Law Bill, 
 394 400 ; encomium on, 400 
 
 Schoolmasters, being ministers, should be exempt 
 from residence, 55 
 
 Schools, public, system of education in, 207 213 ; 
 no cure for the insolence of the youthful aristo- 
 cracy, 208 ; unimportance of athletic exercises in. 
 209 ; the most eminent men in science, the arts, 
 literature, or belles lettres, have not been edu- 
 cated at, 210 ; not favourable to the cultivation 01 
 knowledge, 212 ; morality at, 212 ; in New South 
 Wales, 297 
 
 Scindia, character of, 251 
 
 Scott, Sir William, his speech on the non-residence 
 of clergy ,55 
 
 Secretary, Colonial, excuse for his misconduct, 293 
 
 Sect, impossible to arrive at a knowledge of a, 
 through merely their articles of belief, 98 
 
 Self-trumpeting, fallacy of, 490 
 
 Sermons, modem, characteristics of, 6 
 
 Serpent, anecdote of a, 49 
 
 Settlement, law of, 394 ; its evils, 336 ; an inex- 
 haustible source of litigation, 336 ; hardship of 
 removals under it. 339 
 
 Sidmouth, Lord, his proceedings in regard to the 
 Toleration Act, 224 231 
 
 Seybert's work on America, review of, 324 329 
 
 Shooter's Guide, by Johnson, 365 
 
 Sierra Leone, review of Dr Winterbottom's Ac- 
 count of, 7882 
 
 Slavery in America, 279281, 475 ; in Ashantee, 
 320 ; in Denmark, 6a 
 
 Slaves, their increase in the United States, 325 
 their proportion to the free, 331 
 
 Slave trade (the), the foulest blot in the morality of 
 Europe, 67 ; in Ashantee, 323 ; the Danes the 
 first to abolish it, 67 
 
 Sleswick, nature of its soil, 58 ; its nobility, 60 
 
 Sloth, habits of the, 507 
 
 Smuggling, 291 
 
 Snakes, habits of, 504, 509 ; of Ceylon, 49 
 Society for the Improvement of Prison Disci; 
 
 ipline 
 
 encomium on, 400, 409, 439 ; for superseding the 
 necessity of Climbing Boys, its proceedings, 308 
 317 ; its proceedings, 149156 
 
 ocieties for Converting the Heathen, 117; Peace, 
 
 deserving encouragement, 255 
 Solitary confinement, 376, 403 
 jomerville, Mrs, allusion to. 201 
 South America, review of Waterton's Wanderings 
 
 in, 500513 
 Sovereigns, power of the Pope to detlirone, denied, 
 
 250 
 Spirits, sale of, in New South Wales, 302. 303; 
 
 duty on in America, 327 
 Spital Sermon, review of Dr Parr's, 15 
 Spring-guns, illegality of their use argued, 365 
 
 373, 385394 
 Stael, Madame de, review of her Delphine, 49 53; 
 
 her compliment to the Emperor of Russia, 490 ; 
 
 Napoleon's treatment of her, 49 ; her description 
 
 of Talleyrand, 51 
 Stafford, Lord, his conviction. 5*2 
 Statistical annals of the United States, by Seybert, 
 
 324329 
 Stockton, review of his work on allowing Counsel 
 
 for Prisoners, 539 
 
 Strafford, Lord, on the execution of, 179 
 Struensee, notice of, 57 
 Sturges, Dr, review of his work on the Residence 
 
 of the Clergy, 53 55 
 
 Styles, Mr, review of his work in defence of Me- 
 thodism, 156 163 
 Suffering not a merit of itself, i6r 
 Suffrage, universal. See Universal Suffrage 
 Sunday, its observance not to be effected by main 
 
 force, 152 
 
 Supremacy of the king, a mere name, 567 
 Surprise, the essence of wit, 77 
 Surveys, elaborate, their importance, 70 
 Sweden, notice of, 56 
 Sydney, New South Wales, 296; oversight in the 
 
 building of, 300 ; folly of ornamental architecture 
 
 in, 428 
 
 TABERNACLE (the), its relation to the Church. 113 
 
 Tableau des Etats Danois, by Catteau, review of, 
 5570 
 
 Talipot tree of Ceylon, 49 
 
 Talleyrand, Madame de Stael's description of, 51 
 
 Taxation in New South Wales, 303 
 
 Taxes, freedom from, in America, 472 ; on furni- 
 ture in America, 327 ; enumeration of, in Eng- 
 land, 330 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, his eloquence, 6 
 
 Thanksgiving Sermon of Archdeacon Nares, re- 
 view of. 15, 16 
 
 Theocracy, doctrine of. among the Methodists, 109 
 
 Theory, fallacy of the imputation of, 497 
 
 Thurtell, Mr, his letter to the Bishop of Peterbo- 
 rough, 419, 420 
 
 Tithes, their operation in Ireland, 347, 348 
 
 Titles, love of the Americans for, 275 
 
 Tippoo, his religious persecution of the Hindoos, 
 l6 3 
 
 Toleration, religious, 224231 j in America, 464, 
 465 ; in Denmark, 67 
 
 Tonilin, Bishop. See Lincoln, Bishop of 
 
 Tortoise, habits of the, 508 
 
 Torture, the application of, 242 
 
 Tory Lords, appeal to them, 556; their excuses. 
 556 
 
 Toucan, account of the, 505 
 
 Transportation, objections to, 30, 31 ; cruelty and 
 neglect in the first conduct of, 305 ; injustice to- 
 wards persons sentenced to, for limited periods, 
 306 ; difference of offences under, 431,432; scanty 
 limits allowed to convicts during, 439 ; its enor- 
 mous expense when efficiently conducted, 443 
 
 Travel, value of books of, 39 
 
 Travellers, faults of, 39 
 
 Travels in Turkey, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, 
 by Dr Wittman, review of, 70 75 ; of Bertrandon 
 de la Brocquiere, review of, 9396 ; of Waterton 
 in South America, review of, 500 513 
 
 Tread-mill, irksome and disgusting labour of it, 
 456 ; its consequences as a punishment, 458 ; Its 
 expensiveness, 461
 
 INDEX. 
 
 579 
 
 Treaty of Limerick, 146 ; violation of it, 560 
 
 Trial by jury in New South Wales. 304; unfitted 
 for that colony, 442 
 
 Tribunals of conciliation in Denmark, 61 
 
 Trimmer, Mrs, review of her book on Lancaster's 
 new Plan of Education, 8388 
 
 Tropical climates, insects the great curse in, 509 
 
 Trust, all government, is a, 493 
 
 Tuke, Samuel, review of his work on the Treat- 
 ment of the Insane, 255 263 
 
 Turgot, M., his objections to all charitable institu- 
 tions, combated, 3 
 
 Turkey, Dr Wittman's Travels in, 7075 ; Janissa- 
 ries of, 74 ; indiscipline of its army, 73, 74 ; reforms 
 in. 75; its Grand Vizier, 75; condition of. 358; 
 custom in, towards fraudulent bakers, 547 
 
 Turkish camp, horrors of, 73 ; contrast of, in xSco 
 and in the i6th century, 73, 74 
 
 Turks (the) represented by Bcrtrandon as a gay. 
 
 laughing people, 96 
 
 U 
 
 ULTIMATUM, no other in government than perfect 
 
 justice, 145 
 Unitarians, no expense to the State, 564 ; their 
 
 opinions, 565, 567 
 
 Universal benevolence, a principle of ethics, 3 
 Universities of Copenliagen, 68 ; their reputation 
 
 always shortlived, 68 ; English, defective system 
 
 of education at. 107 106 
 U; 
 
 of education at. 193 196 
 
 ersity of Oxford, Dr Parr's defence of, 5 
 
 Vampires, habits of, 508 
 
 Van Dieman's Land, its settlement, 301 
 
 Vellore, insurrection at, 114 
 
 Veterinary Schools, established in Denmark earlier 
 
 than in Great Britain, 65 
 Vice, true way of attacking it, 205 ; Society for the 
 
 Suppression of, 149156, 581 
 Vindication of Fox's History, review of Serj. Hey- 
 
 wood's, 231 244 
 Voltaire, account of, 368 
 Voting. See Ballot 
 
 Wallace. Mr, 482 
 
 Wanderings in South America, &c., by Waterton, 
 
 f, 500513 
 War, picture of its horrors, 755 ; Englishmen 
 
 ho 
 
 modem times have evinced a genius for it, 
 
 aio ; almost as natural to mankind as peace, 561 ; 
 
 its effects on American commerce, 325 330 
 Watches, licences for using, in America, 327 ; num- 
 
 ber that would be required in England. 337 
 Waterton, Chas., review of his Wanderings in 
 
 South America, 500, 513 : his style, 501 ; his 
 
 frontispiece picture. 507 ; his feats. 509, 510 ; ha 
 
 adventures with a crocodile, 511 ; customs dues 
 
 exacted on his collection, 513 
 Wesley. John, his conduct, in 
 Western, Mr. review of his work on Prisons, 403 414 
 Whigs, merit due to them for the patronage be- 
 
 stowed on Catholics, 356 
 Whitelaw's History of Dublin, 344 
 Whitfield. notice of. 112 
 Wentworth's description of New South Wales, re- 
 
 view of, 393308 
 Winterbottom, Dr, review of his account of Sierra 
 
 Leone, 7882 
 " Wisdom of our ancestors," mischievousness of 
 
 the cry, 484 ; much of it mere jealousy and envy, 
 
 539 ; the usual topic in defending the folly of 
 
 their descendants. 93 
 Wit, the pleasure arising from, compared with that 
 
 arising from bulls, 76 ; surprise the essence of. 
 
 77 ; impaired or destroyed when mingled with 
 
 much thought or passion, 77 
 Witchcraft in Ashantce, 320 
 of his 
 
 Wittman, Dr, 
 
 his travels, 7075 ; his 
 
 heroism, 73 
 
 omen, alleged disadvantages of knowledge to, 
 
 , 
 
 07 ; may be trained to reason and imagine 
 as well as men, 205 ; their education very defec- 
 tive, 196307; dotation of. in New South Wales, 
 297 ; French, their love of intrigue, 963 
 Workhouses. English, allusion to, 94 
 World, proper method of preparing the young fot 
 
 it, no 
 Wourali poison, 503 
 
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 INDEX. 
 
 ACTON'S Modern Cookery 
 
 Amu's Blackstone Economised 13 
 
 Alpine Club Map of Switzerland 14 
 
 Alpine Guide (The) 
 
 AI.THACS' Medical Electricity 17 
 
 Auos's Jurisprudence 6 
 
 Primer of the Const tutiou 6 
 
 ANUEUSOX'S Strength of Materials 11 
 
 A n MSI HONG'S Organic Chemitry 13 
 
 ARNOLD'S Manual of Kii/li.-li Literature ... 8 
 
 AIIXOTLU'S Life of Deuman 4 
 
 Atherstone Priory K 
 
 Authority and Conscience tt 
 
 Autumn Holidays of a Country Parson 9 
 
 Av UK'S Treasury of Bible Knowledge M 
 
 BACON'S Essays, by WHATKLT 6 
 
 Life and Letters, by SPSDUIXO 6 
 
 Works, edited by SPEDDIXO 6 
 
 DAIS'S Logic, Deductive and Inductive 10 
 
 Mental and Moral Science 10 
 
 on the Senses and Intellect 10 
 
 BALL'S Alpine Guide 14 
 
 BAYLDOX'S Rents and Tillages JO 
 
 BRCKKR'S Charicles and Gallus 15 
 
 BEXKSY'S Sanskrit Dictionary 8 
 
 BLACK'S Treatise on Brewing 
 
 Br.ACKLKY's German-English Dictionary... 9 
 
 BI.AIXB'S Rural Sport* 17 
 
 BLOXAMS Metals 13 
 
 BOASK & COURTNEY'S Bibliotheea Cornu- 
 
 biensis 4 
 
 Boui.TUKKon39 Articles 11 
 
 COURSE'S Catechism of the Steam Engine . to 
 
 Handbook of Steam Engine JO 
 
 ImprovemenU in the Steam 
 
 Engine 10 
 
 Treatise on the Steam Engine ... SO 
 
 BOWDLKR'S Family SHAKSPEARB J6 
 
 BuAMLEY-MooUE's Six Sisters of the 
 
 Valleys to 
 
 BIIAXUE'S Dictionary of Science, Litera- 
 ture, and Art 16 
 
 BRAY'S Manual of Anthropology 11 
 
 Philosophy of Necessity 10 
 
 on Force 10 
 
 BRHNCHLKY'S Cruise of H.M.S. Curacoa ... 14 
 
 BUIXKI.KY'S ASTRONOMY 11 
 
 BROWNE'S Exposition of the 39 Articles II 
 
 BuuxKL'sLifeof BRUHEL 5 
 
 BUCKLE'S History of Civilization 3 
 
 Miscellaneous Writings 9 
 
 BULL'S Hints to Mothers J8 
 
 Maternal Management of Children 18 
 
 BUXSKN'S Prayers 11 
 
 Burgomaster's Family (The) 15 
 
 BCRKJC'S Kiseof Great Familiei 4 
 
 Vicissitudes of Familiei 4 
 
 BnRTOS's Christian Church 3 
 
 BUSK'S Folk-Lore of Rome _ 
 
 Valleys of Tirol 13 
 
 Cabinet Lawyer 
 
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