posal to introduce the Poor Laws of had died off to make room for him. or additional shillings, are made up to the labourer out of the general contributions of the parish. Now we rejoice to observe the reprobation with which this wicked system is branded by the Reviewer. He says, <in truth this is an iniquitous scheme, devised by the owners and occupiers of land, with the view of shifting from their own shoulders a considerable part of the wages of agricultural labourers, to be borne by others who do not employ them. The allowance made out of the poor rates to labourers in agriculture is levied upon the property of manufacturers, mechanics, and tradesmen ; and the proportion of the rates thus raised, which is expended in the payment of labourers wages, is unjustly taken from these classes, and transferred into the pockets of the cultivators and owners of land. That a class of men, who in general appear vigilant enough where their interests are concerned, should thus stand tamely by and suffer themselves to be plundered, is a circumstance for which we cannot account.' Certainly it does seem rather unaccountable that such things should happen; but we may perhaps help the Reviewer to a sort of solution of the difficulty, when we direct his attention to the fact, that parish overseers, a set of men sometimes little interested, at other times not at all interested in the economical distribution of the poor funds,—are by law appointed to make this distribution. The evil would be cor rected, if not entirely remedied, if, as in Scotland, the payers of this tax were made the judges, both of the sums to be raised, and of the manner and quantities in which the produce of the tax was to be distributed. There is scarcely an iota of difference between the Poor Laws of England and Scotland; and yet, till very lately, we have never heard of one fraction being raised by assessment for the support of the rural population. The fact may be accounted for, by the mode in which our Poor Laws are administered. The third politico-economical article is entitled "Irish Absentees;" and in it the chief object of the writer seems to be, to hold up to ridicule the name of Mr MacCulloch who maintained some doctrines on this subject before the committee of the House of Commons last summer, which doctrines displease the Quarterly Reviewer, first, because they are embodied in anarticle in the Edinburgh Review; secondly, because they contradict several antiquated notions of the Quarterly Reviewer, touching the infallible integrity, and intelligence, and undeviatingly good moral conduct, of country squires, when kept a-fox-hunting upon their own estates, instead of dancing quadrilles and waltzes at Almack's, or running a muck upon hosts of valets and postilions in Paris and Rome; and, thirdly, because the Quarterly Reviewer knows nothing at all about the subject. Some seven or eight months ago we took occasion to lay before our readers the whole of the evidence which was given by Mr MacCulloch before the select committee of the House of Commons on this eternal subject of Irish Absenteeism. We subjoined various additional documents with our own observations on this much contested question, and we think that sufficient was there brought for ward to satisfy any one who would trouble himself so far as to study the subject in its most prominent bear ings, that, as things now stand with regard to Ireland, she is rather benefited than injured by the non-residence of a great portion of her landowners. Were these proprietors to be gods, knowing good and evil, and doing only good, we will grant that their residence on their estates, though it should not add to the wealth, might, in some degree, increase the happiness of poor Ireland; but as by far the majority of these persons happen at present to be only men, who know rather more, and do rather more of evil than of good, we can have no hesitation in saying, that their continuing abroad is rather a blessing than a curse to Ireland. As to the blind and absurd assertion, that the country is drained of its wealth to support these absentees, we need only remark, that, as long as the capital of Ireland remains, and revenue only is sent abroad, no harm whatever is done by the foreign expenditure of her land-owners. If the capital of Ireland is carried abroad, we admit, at once, that Ireland will be impoverished by such a transfer: and the proposal at which the Reviewer hints, of imposing a discriminating tax on the property of absentees, is just such a measure as would have the undoubted effect of making them sell their land, and carry both capital and the revenue derivable from it out of the country. It is on this ground that fortunately no such insane proposition has ever received any countenance in Parliament. The obtuse brain of Old Nicholas himself could understand this notion of the matter; and yet here is a Reviewer, who, after a flood of light has been from day to day poured on questions of this nature, still continues to broach such blundering ideas, which any child that had read Mrs Marcet's Conversations on Political Economy would be ashamed of entertaining. The best, and indeed the only unexceptionable part of this article, has been stolen from one which appeared lately in the Edinburgh Review. It relates to the mischiefs and misery which have arisen from the minute subdivision of land in Ireland. The Reviewer's opinions entirely coincide with our own upon this subject, and we rejoice to think that the matter has been taken up by Parliament, a Bill having been passed for rendering all sub-letting of land, without the consent of the proprietor, illegal and void. In course of time this measure will, we doubt not, operate a most beneficial change on the population of that country. It is at the same time consolatory to be informed, that the population which may hereafter be ejected, or prevented from settling in the country, will be employed in various manufactures, which have lately been established in some of the principal towns in Ireland. Reference is made to the salutary change which, in the course of the last twenty years, has taken place on the vast estate of the Marquis and Marchioness of Stafford, in Sutherlandshire; and the humane conduct of these personages towards their ejected tenantry, is pointed out as an excellent example to the Irish landlords, who now appear to be applying themselves with vigour to thin the beggarly population on their estates. It may, however, be remarked, that the Sutherland estate is not quite the fairy land, or Goshen, which the Reviewer would wish us to believe it to be. We apprehend that some gentleman, whose imagination rather overcame his senses, must have informed the Re viewer of the magnificent fields of Sutherlandshire, waving with drillsown wheat equal to any in Norfolk. We will take upon us to say, that of the 750,000 acres of which this great estate consists, there is not half a thousand, nor a quarter of a thousand, nor even fifty, on which the drill sowing of wheat has been introduced. A great, a most important benefit, however, has been done by the measures pursued by the enlightened and humane proprietors, accompanied, no doubt, as every change, even from the most execrably bad system to the very best, must always necessarily be, with a considerable proportion of temporary distress and misery. We shall say very little more of this Review. There is a sort of a namby-pamby article on Tremaine, Matilda, and Granby; three novels which have lately made some noise among the frequenters of Circulating Libraries. An Essay on West-India affairs follows this. It is an apology for the planters, and for all the monstrous wickedness which accompanies a state of slavery. It deserves not to have any thing more said of it. Next in succession follows a ram bling, ill-concocted article, giving an account of Denham and Clapperton's African Discoveries, of which so much has been heard of late. The writer concludes his summary of the work, with a most absurd attempt to maintain an hypothesis, which has been repeatedly brought before the public in this Review, namely, that the river Niger falls into the Nile. No support whatever is given to this vague and most improbable conjecture in the work of Denham and Clapperton, and it therefore stands by itself as a specimen of miserable tomfoolery, engendered in the brain of the Reviewer himself. We wonder that he did not try to digest somewhat better the statements within his reach, connected with the visible and tangible objects which these interesting travels communicate to us, instead of puzzling his brain, and exposing his ignorance, to the scientific world at home and abroad. We do not entertain a doubt, that this river will be found to fall into the sea towards the south instead of the east; but this matter, so long hid in darkness, will soon, we trust, be brought to light, by our enterprising countrymen, who have landed at the Bight of Benin, with a fairer prospect of penetrating thence into the interior of Africa, than ever could reasonably be entertained by any former travellers. The last article refers to the Life of Sheridan, as written by Dr Watkins and by Mr Moore; sed jam satis. The Prodigal. O FAR, far away, on the limitless sea, I remember'd the hearts that were breaking for me! For they told me of youth that had dwindled away, Like the hours that had brought them-ah! ne'er to return! For the voice of the tempter my heart had assail'd, Oh, dread were the visions that haunted my sight, For one form to my eye still appear'd through the gloom- I saw him as once he appear'd to my youth, There too was my mother, her wail and her cry, Oh, full was her heart, as in tears it ran o'er Yet was there another remembrance that came But where was the lov'd one, whose memory had shone When through sin's gloomy regions my footsteps were borne? Oh, yes! there are spirits so tender and pure, That when love strives with virtue they cannot endure; Alas! that my footsteps so early had rov'd Then sound and untroubled my slumbers had been, C. E. J. SCOTCH ENTAILS, and the Ascog Case, For determining the point, whether an Entail, though defective in certain respects, may yet be effectual for obliging the Heir in Possession, who has sold the Estate, to vest the Price thereof in Lands or Heritable Security, taken to the same series of Heirs, and under the same conditions as those in the Broken Entail, SIR, TO THE EDITOR. THIS your Journal being a continuation of the Old Scots Magazine, which has now subsisted for very many years, and which forms, in truth, one of the most valuable records which there are of the affairs and progress of any country, it is right to insert in it those great cases which occur in our Scotch Courts, particularly when they relate to questions which are in some degree peculiar to our own jurispru dence. The Law of Entail, as we have it, is in a great measure our own; and for that reason, in one of your Numbers of last year, you gave your readers (as I understood, much to the satisfaction of those of them who took the trouble to read it carefully,) an account of the noted Agnew Case, decided both here and in the House of Lords. This season the attention of both lawyers and country gentle men in Scotland has been much attracted by another case in Entail Law, having most important consequences; and I shall now employ a few pages in laying it before your readers. It has already been tried by the Court of Session, and, I had almost said, decided; but with us a trial, as is well known, does not always import a decision; and all that I mean to say is, that, after a full pleading, technically called a hearing in presence, and long printed arguments on each side, styled informations, to the First Division of the Court, and with the aid of printed opinions from the Judges of the Second Chamber, their Lordships of the First Division pronounced a judgment or interlocutor. It is understood that the losing party are petitioning against it: their petition will be answered, and thus the battle will be fought over again on Scottish ground; but the war will be transferred to England, and the contest will ulti mately be ended on the arena of the House of Peers. As it is amusing to read of a warfare during its progress, where we have the charte de pays, and know the subject of quarrel, these I shall endeavour to furhish here; and, like all other newsmongers and politicians, I shall have no hesitation in saying which of the contending parties I conceive to be in the right, and in giving my reasons for thinking so. in the early stages of society, the pride of ancestry, and a respect for the avos atque proavos, is particularly strong. It is naturally then connected with property in land; and the term "gentleman" of old meant, in England, none else than a 'squire, and in Scotland, a laird. In Sir Anthony Fitzherbert's curious Agricultural Treatise, written in England in the days of Henry VIII., where he allots a chapter for instructing young" gentlemen" how "to thrive," he means young owners of landestates. In Scotland, the same meaning is affixed to the term, in Lord Kames's Gentleman Farmer. Rob Roy, a small landed-proprietor, despised the Glasgow manufacturers as mere weavers; and old Miss Nicky Murray, who ruled the Edinburgh assemblies in the days of yore, with as imperious a sway as Beau Nash did those of Bath, generally, it is said, contrived to refuse dancing-tickets to every young lady ap pearing on the boards, who had "vulgar bluid in her veins," and who was not distinctly understood to be Miss, or one of the Misses Sucha-Thing of Such-a-Place; it being thereby directed, that if she had not such titles as showed that she had sprung from a race of landholders, she should not figure there among people of good family. In Scotland, the idea of entailing was at a particular time fostered by |