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they are fast hastening, we think we can predict with as much certainty, as that a young girl will become an old woman if she lives to become an octogenarian.

When we say this much of the Political principles of the Review, we need not mince the matter regarding what may properly be called its Ecclesiastical principles. That it should defend the abominably oppressive exaction of tithes on the gross produce of the soil, is not in the slightest degree surprising, when we are made aware that its pages are as open to the sophistries of selfish and interested priests as the fields of England are to their merciless and oppressive intrusions. Priests, or the hired advocates of priests, seem to rest upon this Review like a perfect incubus. It may happen, however, as accounting partly for this circumstance, that as the hierarchy of England are the chief payers for the wide-spread copies of this Review, they suppose themselves to have the best right to fill its pages with their pestilent, self-seeking diatribes. Let us not, however, be too severe upon the poor parsons. It is natural for them to plead that they are entitled, jure divino, to draw the substantial fruits of this world from those who possess them, in return for the promises which they hold out to sinful mortals of a benignant share of the good things of the next. We do not quarrel with them for drawing upon the ready-currency of this world for these purposes, provided those drawn upon are willing to honour the drafts; but we object, and must ever object to the doc trine, as debasing to religion as it is to its ministers, that they must be supported by a compulsory provision, drawn from the industry of their fellow-countrymen.

In a word, we object to the slavish doctrines, both in respect to politics and religion, which it is the uniform purpose of this Review to support. And if we object to it in point of politics and religion, we have a far deeper antipathy to it in point of political economy. The redoubtable Southey no longer, it is true, tells us, with an unblushing effrontery, that the more heavily taxed a nation is, the more happy it must be, or,

that whatever is wrung from the resources of a people, to pay unneces→ sary and extravagant establishments at home and abroad, returns to these same people in refreshing streams of happiness and profit. The poor, but laborious doctor, has been silenced, and most properly silenced, as a writer on Political Economy, in the pages of the Quarterly Review ; but instead of the puerile absurdities which this poetical economist contrived to void in the course of his "outpourings," we have now nothing but the deplorable niaiseries with which the pages of a notorious contemporary of our own has chosen of late to harrass its too indulgent readers. Indeed, we discover plainly, in the three articles of the Review which refer to subjects within the domain of Political Economy, the same degree of profound ignorance of facts and principles, the same contempt for all the lessons of experience, and the same disregard for truth and sound reasoning, which we observe as characterizing all the pitiful opponents of the present Administration,-an Administration which, in spite of the contemptuous taunts with which it has been assailed, has carried the torch of philosophy into the dark intricacies of a delusive system in the affairs of agriculture, of manufactures, and espe cially of commerce.

But we are perhaps indulging too far in these general observations. Let us look somewhat more narrowly into the stuff of which this Number of the Review is composed. With the few exceptions to which we have already alluded, we shall find it vapid satis superque. Why, in the name of common sense, has the editor plagued his readers with more than thirty mortal pages on the memoirs of the silly and faithful Samuel Pepys, Esq. F. R. S., and Secretary to the Admiralty in the reigns of Charles II. and James 11.? Every body, who has had access to read even a tenth-day-old torn and dirty newspaper for the last six months, has read, till he has been almost sickened, about this weak man, the insignificant fawner on royalty and nobility, the fancier of silk coats and pretty actresses, and the profound admirer of his own

wife, as well as of black patches and fine music. If this had occurred to the editor, we should have conceived that, notwithstanding the bamboozle ment in which he must have found himself entangled, in a first attempt to arrange the articles of a set of hungry contributors, he would either have rejected this altogether, or curtailed it, without a pang of mercy reaching his heart. If either John Murray, or the new editor of the Review, expect it to live beyond the next six months, let them assume the obstinacy of mules whenever an attempt is made to thrust upon them stuff of so stale, and now unprofitable a kind, as that contained in the first article of this Number. It is an infliction which only a fifty-Jobpower of patience can endure.

Of the second article, which is a sort of quiz on the wanderings of a worthy, good-humoured Yorkshire 'squire, we have only to say, that it is an agreeable-enough sort of a fill up for a few empty pages. And in reference to what has been written in the following article on Greek Courts of Justice, it may be properly called a learned and elegantly-written paper; but one which, at the same time, betrays the most virulent hostility to every species of democratic institution. Through the sides of the toooften capricious Dicasts of Athens, it is the evident wish of the writer to wound all establishments connected with the system of republics. The argument is, that because some of the jurors in Ancient Athens were corrupt, and disgraced their office by manifest acts of injustice, therefore no jurors are to be trusted, whether in England or America. Besides, it is rather a singular thing, that, in a grave treatise on the judicial establishments of Greece, the writer should have recourse almost exclusively for his facts to the writers of farces and comedies. Would it ever enter into the head of any mortal, that Justice Shallow is the true archetype of the high-minded, independent, and enlightened country magistracy of England? The London Magazine, for the present month, has exposed this poor artifice so thoroughly, that we deem it unnecessary to dwell longer upon it. If the right of the people to govern

themselves must be denied and vilified, let other more insinuating methods than the present be put into practice for that purpose. We may assure the writer of this article, that, scholar as he is, and wise as he thinks himself to be, it will be long ere he, or Mr Mitford either, will succeed in persuading the people of England, that the House of Commons is no better for the purposes of an efficient government, than a rabble of the Athenian populace sitting as a deliberative assembly; or that an English jury is as unfit for assisting in the administration of justice, as some of the worst and lowest inhabitants of Athens, who had acquired by birth a right to act the part of jurors in that republic. But enough of this.

The next compartment of the Review is occupied by the productions of two champions of the Churchmilitant of England. The first is taken up in shewing the respective provinces of Reason and Revelation, a subject which we had thought exhausted several centuries ago, except as a topic of clerical declamation in the pulpit: and the second fills thirty-five long pages, in an apparently triumphant exposure of the puerile nonsense and mummery contained in a late work, sent out to the world by some silly old woman of a French priest, and entitled the Apocalypse of the Sister Nativité. Why were not the old fool and the entranced sister allowed to go quietly down to the grave of oblivion, with out being supplied by the Quarterly Reviewers with an extra windingsheet, to save them a little longer than was proper from utter rottenness? Neither one nor other of them deserved to be remembered even with contempt, notwithstanding all the commendation bestowed upon them by canting Jesuits, and all the vituperation thrown upon them by hot-headed High Church zealots. Perhaps, however, we are wrong in speaking thus of this precious Apo calypse of Sister Nativité. The detestable absurdities and impostures of the Catholic superstition require, for the sake of Catholics themselves, to be exposed most unmercifully: not exactly, however, in the spirit which we think lurks in many cor.

ners of this Review; for, if we do not greatly mistake its drift, the author intends to throw odium on the Catholic body in general, and thus, by a side-wind, to support the tyrannical system existing in this country towards Catholics, in depriving them of their common rights, as inhabitants of a free country, and subjects of civil government. This disgrace, we trust, will ere long be wiped from the face of British legis lation, and we shall then find, that the belief in the harmless doctrine of transubstantiation can have no effect in making any man a cowardly soldier, a backward tax-payer, a corrupt magistrate, or a bad legislator.

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We now proceed to make a few observations on the three following articles which fill the compartment that the editor has chosen to devote to the all-engrossing subject of Political Economy. It was in this department of the work that we expected to find the most marked im provement. But, O cæca mortalium corda! we have been wretchedly disappointed. Random, disjointed assertion, seems to occupy the place of fact, and unredeemed rant to fill the place of reasoning and candid deduction. Above all, we have been surprised to find the lowest scurrility poured forth, in way of personal attacks, on a gentleman who confess edly stands at the head of the writers on Political Economy in our country at the present day. The Reviewer also seems to think he has made an immense hit, when, times without number, he has in scorn called political economy "that most exact of moral sciences." Does the pitiful scribbler mean to convey to his read ers the lowest possible conception of the powers of his understanding, or the highest possible detestation of the feelings of his heart, when he thus makes game, as he thinks, of a science, on the right application of whose rules so much of human happiness depends? It were difficult to say which of these purposes he has more effectually accomplished, His success in blundering is as great as that of any thorough-bred Irishman from the very heart of Connaught; and his sensibility, in regard to the state of his fellow-country

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The first of the three articles on subjects of Political Economy is entitled "Political Importance of our American Colonies." It has been the purpose of the writer in this paper, not so much to review the works placed at the head of the article, which appear to be poor enough productions, as to throw ridicule on certain doctrines proposed by Mr MacCulloch, in his Lectures at the Ricardo Institution, and which appear, with certain modifications, in a late Number of the Edinburgh Review. All that Mr MacCulloch has done, is to inculcate the doctrine, that unless a colony pay the expenses of its own Government, or, by its natural position, be essential to the preservation of the mother country, or of other colonies and establishments yielding an equivalent for the joint expenditure, it is better to abandon it altogether. This doctrine the Quarterly Reviewer has chosen to misrepresent, and to state thus,-"One of the main positions laid down by these theorists, (meaning Mr MacCulloch,) is, that no colony is worth retaining, unless the mother country derives from it a revenue equal to the expenditure upon it." Now we venture to say, that if detached individual settle ments, which form, as it were, the mere outposts of important and profitable colonies, are referred to, the Edinburgh Reviewer never had the slightest intention to include these in the list of colonies which he proscribes. We will farther venture to say, that he would be the last man to advise giving up the Cape of Good Hope or St. Helena, merely because they did not pay their own expenses, provided it can be shown that the more distant colonies or possessions, which these places of strength pro tect, yield to England advantages which counterbalance the expendi ture on these places individually. It is in reference to the interests of the whole nation, and of its extended system of colonies, that this or the other colony is to be judged profitable, or the reverse. The fortresses of Gibraltar and Malta are a source of great annual expense to this

country. In a limited sense, they are colonies; but then they are es sential to the protection of our commerce in the Mediterranean, and to the maintenance of our superiority there, in case of hostilities with a naval power. The expenditure on these garrisons is therefore justifiable, on the plain principle, that they do afford an equivalent, nay, far more than an equivalent, to the mother country, for that expense, in the duties and profits drawn from the trade of the Levant, which by their means is rendered secure, and in the advantage which their possession gives in case of a naval war.

idea is monstrous; and yet this Reviewer will insist on the vital importance to the revenue and naval power of this country, of keeping these colonies, drenched as they are with so much human gore, and daily witnesses of so much human suffering, in the enjoyment of all the privileges which their owners have so long continued to abuse.

But the chief part of the article is devoted to a consideration of the importance of our North-American colonies. The writer has most egregiously mistaken the views of Mr MacCulloch, when he states that this gentleman advises the giving up Among other perverse and igno- all trade and connection with Canada, rant attempts made by this Review and our other provinces in that quar to support every established abuse, ter. We cannot conceive any more we may refer particularly to the bias violent perversion of all the prinit has always had to the maintenance ciples that it has been the object of of slavery in the West Indies, and the modern school of Political Econoconsequently of all those iniquitous my to inculcate, than that any one legislative proceedings by which branch of profitable commerce should slavery is upheld, and almost ren- be abandoned. All that is said comes dered necessary. In speaking of our to this, if England can obtain better colonial system, therefore, the Re- and cheaper timber from the Baltic viewer must attack the doctrines of than from Canada, and if by the those who, reasoning on the princi- commerce with the Baltic she obples of common sense, in opposition tains a more profitable and extensive to those of sordid monopoly, argue market for her manufactures than that the ports of England should be the Canadas ever afforded, or ever open to the importation of tropical will afford, let not England sacrifice productions, and especially of sugar, this advantageous and comparatively from every quarter of the world, at home-market, for the sake of paman equal duty. They state the fact, pering a colony, which, in a short that a single district of Bengal could time, must either become an inde raise, by free labour, as much sugar pendent state, or be merged in the as could supply the wants of all federal republic of North America. Europe, if an equality of duty were The glaring iniquity of the present established on the productions of the scale of duties on foreign and coloEast and West Indies. The Quar-nial timber has been pointed out in terly Reviewer, however, thinks fit to meet these reasonings and statements by an argument ad terrorem. "If you do any thing to render less tight the monopolizing grasp of the West-India Planters, you immediately destroy a revenue of five millions a-year, derived from the importations from these colonies." Is it possible to suppose, that a revenue would fall off, when the same ability remained to purchase tropical productions, after the ports of the kingdom were thrown open to the world, and when, from the greater field of competition, these commodities became much cheaper than they can be obtained now? The

VOL. XVIII.

so satisfactory and convincing a manner in the last Number of the Edinburgh Review, which, we presume, most of our readers have seen, that we judge it unnecessary to advert farther to the subject than to state, that, independently altogether of the great additional charge for freight from Canada, compared with that from the Baltic, a duty is laid on Baltic timber, varying from six to nearly ten times the amount of that applicable to Canadian timber; while, at the same time, it was completely proved before the committees of Parliament on the timber trade, that more than a half of all the timber called Canadian is actually proᏎ Ᏼ

duced in the Western territory of the State of New York! Far be it from us to undervalue the commerce of any quarter of the world, much less of colonies so much attached to this country as those of the Canadas are; but let that commerce be found ed on a mutual interchange of benefits. As matters stand at present, the benefit is entirely on the side of the colony, without the possibility of obtaining in any one shape, on the part of England, any corresponding advantage. England suffers in two ways by the unnatural fostering of this settlement: in the first place, she pays a high price for an inferior article; and, in the second place, she loses that beneficial market for the sale of her produce along the shores of the Baltic and North Sea, which she enjoyed to a vastly greater extent previous to the laying on of the ill-judged and most impolitic duties at present levied on foreign, not colonial, timber. But it is really needless to waste words on a subject which is palpable to the capacities of every one, who is not, like the writer of this article, blinded by prejudices, most of which have been exploded more than half a century ago. The paragraph of outrageous vituperation with which the writer closes this article is worthy of the spirit which presides over the whole movements of this Review: he attacks, with incomparable vehemence, the modern opinion upheld by the Edinburgh Review, and by all men of sense, that the diffusion of education and intelligence among all orders of the people has been attended with most beneficial effects. The Quarterly Reviewer sees, in the promulgation of this, and some other doc trines of its contemporary, the overthrow of all social institutions, and the most dreadful consequences to human society. The horror expressed at the attempts made in the Edinburgh Review to destroy the wretch ed quackeries in politics and political economy, which are supported by the Quarterly Review, reminds us very forcibly of the never-varying perorations of the speeches of a late Scottish Judge. This worthy person had been so terror-struck with the French Revolution, that he could never avoid lugging into the end of his speeches

on the Bench some allusion to that frightful event. Some John Doe and Richard Roe came with a cause before his Lordship. John sought that Richard should be ordained to remove a dunghill as a nuisance, and more especially as it was a nur sery of rats. His Lordship, however, gave his opinion in favour of Richard, confirming the rights of Richard and the rats. "Thankful may Richard be," said the antirevolutionary Judge," that he lives under the protection of the free and happy constitution of this country, where men and rats enjoy equal laws; and doubly thankful, that he and the tenants of his dunghill know nothing of the dreadful convulsions which have desolated revolutionary France; and long, very long may this country be preserved from the horrid atrocities of the Robespieres and Marats of that unhappy and infatuated country." In such strains does the Quarterly Review sum up a pleading in favour of colonial jobs and abuses. It calls to witness heaven and earth, that the Edinburgh Review is co-operating with the enemies of social order, in their nefarious attempts to overthrow all that is most hoary, and venerable, and villanous, in the institutions of England; and hence that, when this Review has demonstrated the folly of maintaining distant and unprofitable colonial settlements, it has nothing else in view than to overturn the throne and the altar,-to proclaim the doctrines of liberty and equality, to destroy the sacred right of property, and to elevate an ignorant and furious mob to the chief pinnacle of power in our land. Oh, sapient, and second-sighted Quarterly! Oh, seditious and short-sighted Edinburgh Review!

The next article refers to the everlasting subject of the Poor Laws. We observe nothing very particular in it, except a recommendation, apparently backing the hint of Lord Liverpool thrown out during last year, with the view to introduce the English Poor Laws into Ireland. We should ask no other proof of the utter incompetency of a writer to open his mouth upon any subject connected with Political Economy, than the bare whispering of a pro

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