sequence of this harsher and more niggardly treatment, the population of Rugen has rather declined during the last twenty years of the 18th century; in Pomerania it somewhat increased. The scarcity of labourers is, therefore, greater in the former than in the latter, and their wages proportionally high, amounting to 21 rix-dollars per annum, besides certain other perquisites, while the villein-labourer receives only 9 or 10. In Pomerania the villein-labourer receives about 11 or 12 rix-dollars, while the wages of the free-labourer do not amount to above 15 or 16.

It is both curious and important to ascertain, if possible, what has occasioned the gradual increase of rigour and oppression towards this unhappy people, during a period when the peasantry of other European nations has been, if any thing, acquiring relief and importance in the scale of society. Speculations upon this subject present unusual difficulties; and when we have obtained a principle which appears to solve the problem in one country, we are disappointed to find, on applying it to another, that although the very same principle appears to have operated, the results are nevertheless totally opposite. Millar, for instance, in his remarks on the English Government, (book 1. cap. 5. p. 136. 8vo.) explains the gradual extinction of villenage from the extensive landed estates acquired by the German settlers in the Roman provinces, who were thus prevented from maintaining a vigilant inspection over their slaves, and consequently obliged to abandon the idea of forcibly compelling them to work. It was necessary, he says, to allure them to labour by the possession of a fixed portion of what they produced, and thus the slaves gradually acquired property, and became more independent of their masters. Now, if we turn our attention from England to the eastern parts of Europe, the fact manifests that a thin population, scattered over an immense territory, is in circumstances the most favourable to a perpetual and unmitigated villenage. Such is the state of Poland and Russia, where the estates of great proprietors are of an extent unknown to the more bounded territories of western Europe. Millar's theory, therefore, even if it were more unexceptionable in point of argument than it really is, would be wholly overthrown by an enlarged survey and comparison of different countries.

A few general considerations, drawn from an analysis of human nature, will tend to elucidate the changes which affect the happiness of the poorer classes.

The motive which impels one man to injure another is the love of enjoyment; and the love of dominion, for the purpose of attaining this enjoyment as easily and quickly as possible. The great mass of injury inflicted, therefore, consists in privation, and in that coercive system which is necessary, in order to enforce the production and surrender of the desirable objects. And if this mass of injury is greater in one state of society than in another, the reason must be, that motives have arisen determining the oppressors to push their system of engrossment and coercion to a greater extremity, while, on the other hand, the capacity of resistance, on the part of the oppressed, has been diminished.

Now the progress of society uniformly imparts additional strength to all these motives for exaction. In a rude age the stimulus arising from them is feeble and inefficient. When the chief enjoys neither a more luxurious fare nor a more sumptuous clothing than the dependant, and when both are abundantly supplied with that coarse comfort beyond which their ideas do not extend, the former has little to gain by forcibly pushing the services of the latter to their most productive result. A numerous and warlike retinue is usually the pride of the chief, and plentiful subsistence may be obtained for them without much oppression. Under these circumstances he may occasionally maltreat, or even destroy, his dependants, in a fit of passion, but he will practise no habitual extortion or cruelty towards them. "Occidere solent," says Tacitus of the ancient Germans, "servos, non disciplinâ ac severitate, sed impetu et irâ, ut inimicum, nisi quod impunè."-(De Mor. Germ.)

Nor does the love of dominion stimulate the rude chieftain to oppress his dependants, any more than the love of enjoyment. His power rests upon a basis so secure and irresistible, that he has but little temptation to extend it by depressing still lower those who are subject to it. In that universal simplicity of fare and habits which prevails, he has no other mode of distinguishing himself, except by personal superiority: and the circumstances of mankind during such a period, distributed into small tribes continually at war with each other, conspire to render his acquisition of these qualities, in some degree of perfection, imperiously necessary. Accordingly, we find that in rude times, the men of the highest birth and opulence are uniformly the first men of their day. They shine pre-eminently in all the qualities which are then in esteem. They are the most courageous and skilful combatants, the most capable of supporting fatigue, the most distinguished in wrestling, boxing, and all other exercises of strength. A tribe never dream of opposing the mandates of one who excels in every accomplishment which their circumstances teach them to appreciate and admire. The constant necessity of employing them in military services would, besides, render the chief indisposed to oppressive and extortionate acts, even if he had more motive to such conduct than he really has.

But in process of time these simple habits gradually give place to ease and luxury. Personal enjoyments are discovered or invented, which it requires long and assiduous labour to procure. They are of course expensive, and can become the property only of a few. The possession of them, therefore, at once creates a visible mark which distinguishes the chief from the rest of his tribe, or from other less powerful chiefs; and he is consequently relieved from the necessity of that fatiguing personal pre-eminence which he had before been obliged to maintain. The military habits are usually laid aside, and the superiority of great proprietors is displayed, not in the field, but in exhibitions of comparative opulence and splendour. Thus the thirst for personal enjoyment, the desire of distinction, and the love of case, all unite in inspiring an ardent demand for expensive luxuries. And this taste can only be gratified by obtaining from the peasants as

large a produce as their labour can possibly be made to furnish. The strongest motive would be created for the acquisition of a larger money-revenue.*

In consequence of this alteration of taste, those arrangements for production, which had been established during the previous era of rudeness and simplicity, would at once be perceived to be clumsy and incompetent. The lord's farm, cultivated by the partial and intermittent exertions of peasants who were engaged in tillage elsewhere upon their own account, would meet with careless and unskilful treatment. Under these circumstances, there would be two modes of augmenting the money-revenue of the lord. It might be augmented either by placing the peasant upon a fixed and independent tenure, by exacting from him a definite portion of produce, and bribing him to a stricter effort and attention by the prospect of securely appropriating the remainder. Or it might be augmented if the lord could seize and employ solely for his own purposes the farming capital, the services of which had before partially belonged to him; and if, by the use of skilful and methodized compulsion, like that exercised over a negro slave, he could oblige the peasant to work in the most efficient manner which terror can secure, reserving to himself the whole of the produce, except what might be barely sufficient to maintain the life and strength of the labourer. Either of these two modes of proceeding would supply the lord with a larger revenue than he could obtain by a medium between them. In the former case, the stimulus to exertion springs up spontaneously within the bosom of the peasant; in the latter case, it is provided from without. But if by vexatious and indefinite exactions, his native energies are crippled and repressed, while this deficiency of motive is not supplied by external compulsion, it seems evident that the whole produce of his labour, as well as the share which the lord received of it, would decline to the lowest possible point.

Though, however, the revenue of the lord might be augmented in either of these two ways, it appears undeniable that the latter would be the more lucrative of the two. The lord was before a partner in the proprietorship of the farming capital. To engross the whole of it,

We are apt to overrate the degree of evil inflicted by one individual upon another during a rude age, because, in perusing the history of such a period, occasional acts of excessive cruelty and brutality are presented to us, which a civilized society would not have tolerated. The banquet of Thyestes would never have occurred even in the slave plantations of Carolina. But deeds which originate entirely in disinterested revenge or fury can never be very frequent, because the motive to perpetrate them must of necessity be confined to a few. The whole mass of injury brought about in this manner is always trifling, when compared with that which arises from applying only just as much of the painful stimulus as is necessary to ensure complete privation. Self-interest, the motive to the latter acts, is universal in its operation, and therefore the frequency and continuity of such a system of force more than compensates for the slighter injury which each individual application of it may cause. Compare the present situation of negro-slaves with that which it would be, if their masters only demanded of them as much as could be produced by the labour of two days in the week, and if they had only to dread the effects of casual fury and intemperance.

and to make himself the sole possessor, would be the most profitable path which he could pursue.

But we need not enquire whether this method of compulsory appropriation would really be more lucrative than that of settling the peasant upon a certain and undisturbed tenure, in order to determine which of the two the lords would probably adopt, supposing both to be equally easy and practicable. Were the former method attended with only equal gain, or perhaps with somewhat less, it would infallibly be preferred, from the extension of power and supremacy which accompanies it. To barter away dominion is at all times highly odious and humiliating; and experience attests, that wherever a choice is offered, mankind invariably employ the compulsory process, from the flattering sense of superiority which it involves.

The same motive, therefore, which under one set of circumstances would lead a proprietor to lay down his peasant-villages, would under another set induce him to place them on fixed and independent tenures. Both steps would be dictated by his desire of raising a larger revenue; but as the former process is both more attractive and effectual, it may be assumed, that nothing but want of power to realise its conditions could have brought proprietors to adopt the latter. Instead, therefore, of enquiring what occasioned proprietors to adopt it in the North of Europe, we ought rather to ask what prevented them from adopting it in the South; in other words, what imparted to the peasants in the South an additional capacity of resistance.

(To be concluded in our next.)

YOUTH AND LOVE.

WHILE Youth o'er Fancy's gay domain
Roved heedless of approaching pain,

Young Cupid, with his wonted art,

Slily stole his easy heart,

And bore it, joying in his guile,
On Zephyrs to the Cyprian isle:
There to a rose-bud's silken shrine
Did he his throbbing prize consign;
With witchery and magic spell,
For heart to feel, not tongue to tell,
He folded it from mortal view,
And seal'd it up with morning dew.
There steep'd in bliss full long it slept,
While o'er it Love his vigil kept-
In vain, for when, with ardent ray,
The radiant planet of the day
In fulness of meridian power

Shone on the faithless guardian flower,
The opening petals of the rose
Their trembling captive soon disclose,

And Youth, who long had sought in vain,
Found, ne'er to lose, his heart again.

Y.

EARL BRISTOL'S FAREWELL.

GREEVE not, deare love, although we often parte,
But know, that Nature gently doth us sever,
Thereby to traine us up with tender arte

To brooke that day when we must part for ever.
For Nature, doubting we should be surprized
By that sad day, whose dread doth chiefly feare us,
Doth keepe us dayly schooled and exercised,

Lest that the fright thereof should overbeare us,

POSTERITY.

I DINED the other day with a friend who lives at Hampstead, and returned to town in the evening (for my friend has the good sense to dine at four o'clock) by the pathway that leads across the fields to the Regent's Park. As I walked along, congratulating myself upon residing in a quarter of London to which so rural a scene is contiguous, I observed a board announcing that the adjoining ground was to be let on a building lease. This notice reminded me of what I had lately heard with much regret, that there was some intention of converting the whole of the beautiful prospect between the New Road and the hills into a mass of brickwork. The slightest impulse will send the mind on a long journey. From reflections thus casually suggested upon a change that I might yet live to witness, I soon passed on to speculate upon the many stranger revolutions that may be expected to occur, as well in the surface of the soil, as in the moral and political condition of the inhabitants, when I, and all that belongs to me, shall be "among forgotten things." Without stopping to inquire what forms the surrounding scene may assume to my children and their children, I at once pushed on to a remoter point, and asked, What will London be three or four centuries hence? What will England be?—what her power, and virtues, and opinions? Will the men of that day look back upon us their ancestors with pride, or with contempt? or will they disgrace us by their degeneracy? Will they still be for ever waging war upon the French, and taxes upon themselves? Will such things as Holy Alliances be known or tolerated? America too, what will she have become? Are there yet in store a couple of dozen protracted wars, and some hundred sea-fights, to settle the rival claims of her and England? Will the predictions of the philanthropist be realized in Africa? Will New South Wales, after passing through successive generations of pickpockets, colonists, rebels, and republicans-will she at last, starting up in the spirit of ambitious insubordination, and girding her loins with her federal compact, become the seat of empire and renown, the seeds of which now lie ready for exportation in our gaols and