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license of academical speculation which was becoming from year to year more audacious, as each new doctor strove to attract attention and emolument to his own chair by outsoaring the flights of his predecessors and rivals. Well may Heine say, as he does with triumph and exultation, that the boldness of German theology belongs wholly to the universities.' It had never, we rejoice to believe, much lasting influence on those drawn from the universities to the humbler duties of the practical priesthood. A good man, planted in a country parish, whatever nonsense he might have opened his ears to at Halle or Heidelberg, was not likely to move among his people long without discovering the absurdity of expounding the history of the Patriarchs as a series of mythi, and the Gospel of St. Luke as a mosaic-work of volk's-lieder, and reducing the Christian code of peasants to the dry abstraction of an utilitarian morality. The German Protestants remained as a people attached to the faith and worthy of the name of their fathers. But within the universities, infidelity, which Sir Walter Raleigh happily styled the wit of fools,' strode on more and more daringly; and the influence which they could diffuse around them was, year after year, more pernicious; and the efforts of the doctors to maintain and extend their own power took daily more and more the shape of a cunning zeal for that so-called scholarlike independence of all exterior (Philistine) authority, which it was so very easy to render popular with the raw hot-bloods congregated around their chairs.

To break down this system-to teach the young academicians that the citizen must at no period of life fancy himself alien to the general government of his country-to teach the professors that erudition is compatible with good manners-and, by raising the condition of the learned professions in general, but more especially of the theological profession, to offer fair objects of legitimate extra-academical ambition to both pupils and doctorswas the wise conception of the present enlightened and paternal sovereign of the chief state in Protestant Germany: it was begun to be put into operation along with that plan of universal parochial education which has already procured for him such honourable acknowledgment all over civilised Europe; and, however Heine and those of his school, obliged to admit the excellence of one branch of the great design, may wince and frown at the advancing progress of the other, we cannot doubt that both branches are alike to the credit of the government which has enforced their success. There is no doubt, however, that the plan as a whole is and was meant to be an attack on the monopoly of the old academical caste for a caste it had come to be--and as little that it was dictated by a sense of the alarming results of a long and hourly widening

VOL. LV. NO. CIX.

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widening disruption between the scholastic and the proper ecclesiastical authorities of these northern states.

The exposition now afforded, imperfect as it is, of the connexion between the (so called) Rationalism and the avowed Anti-Christianity of the German universities-and the few hints which we have offered as to the real origin and objects of the personal controversy in which Heine has taken so distinguished a part-may not, perhaps, be considered as wholly without bearing on some points of our own present condition in England. We have no design to enter now upon a full application of these foreign circumstances: it is sufficient to observe, that the intention of our reformers avowedly is not to strengthen, but to break down and abolish, the connexion hitherto maintained between our universities and our national church, in the first place-between our church and our national government in the other.

In conclusion, we must once more express our deep regret for the mad misapplication of Mr. Heine's varied and brilliant talents —and let us add the expression of our fervent hope, that, like so many of his predecessors in this insana sapientia,' this' initiator' also may live to be an apostate.'

A work, with the Cockneyish title of AU DELA DU RHIN,' in two portly octavos, has been lately published by a M. Erminier, who writes himself Professeur du droit au Collège de France;' and we turned to it in the expectation that it might furnish some amusement, at least, to compare this Frenchman's views of Germany, her manners, science, literature, and politics, with those of such a German as Heine. But we were utterly disappointed. A more inane specimen of imbecility was never ushered into the world with more impudent pomposity. The author is from top to toe a most ignorant, empty, conceited coxcomb and charlatan. The little that he does know about the subjects that he handles, he owes to the French editions of Heine's books-his own, indeed, overflows with evidence that he cannot construe the simplest page of any German author-for such is the effrontery of the man, that he usually appends the original to what he produces as his translation. But we suspect that, on this head, he has been throughout hoaxed and mystified-by Heine, or some other wicked German, whose aid he had invoked in the getting up of his flatulent chapters.

ART.

ART. II.-1. Statement of the Provision for the Poor, and of the Condition of the Labouring Classes, in a considerable Portion of America and Europe. By Nassau W. Senior, Esq. London. 8vo. 1835.

2. Report of the English Poor-Law Commission. Appendix (F), Foreign Communications. 1835.

3. First Report from His Majesty's Commissioners for Inquiring into the Condition of the Poorer Classes in Ireland. 8th July,

1835.

NATIONS, like individuals, wrapped in complacent self

importance, are slow to profit by the experience of others; and are often embarrassed for a length of time by difficulties from which a more extended observation of the history of the human race in similar circumstances would have enabled them to extricate

themselves with ease and quickness. Perhaps John Bull, too, of all people, is the least inclined to look abroad either for examples or warnings by which to regulate his conduct, being thoroughly imbued with the pleasing conviction of his superiority on every point to the rest of the world, and that, though they would do well to take pattern after him, he can by possibility learn nothing useful from them.

But for this general prejudice it could hardly have happened that, during the discussions which for years past have occupied so much of the attention both of the press and the legislature of this country upon the state of the poor and the legal provision for their relief, so little reference has at any time been made to the pauperism or poor-laws of foreign countries. The questions at issue have been debated solely with reference to our own experience, or by the light of first principles and abstract theories, Nay, even mathematical formulas and geometric ratios have been employed for their solution. As was to be expected, the progress thereby made towards a correct appreciation of the subject has been little enough; while the practical experience of other nations in dealing with the same class of circumstances, which might naturally have been expected to throw so much light upon doubtful points of our own policy, has been as utterly disregarded as if pauperism were supposed to be exclusively confined to Britain. Indeed, we believe that the general impression till very lately has been, that England stands alone among nations in the provision which her laws have made against destitution. Certainly, those who questioned the policy of this institution have continually inveighed against it as one of an extraordinary and unexampled nature; while its advocates have appeared to shrink from supporting their views (as they might have done) by any

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reference to the fact, that its principle has long since been generally adopted by all really civilised communities.

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For the truth is, that the establishment of a legal provision for the destitute poor, as the only means of securing society from the curse of unlimited mendicancy and vagrancy, so far from being, as many persons we believe are still erroneously persuaded, peculiar to British legislation, and an experiment introduced for the first time in the reign of Elizabeth, has existed in some shape or other from the very earliest period as a fundamental principle in the codes of nearly all European nations. We find it directly recognised in the Capitularies of Charlemagne- Mendici per regionem non permittantur. Suos quæque alito.' Here mendicancy civitas pauperes is distinctly forbidden; and a municipal or parochial relief to the poor, embodying the principle of settlement, substituted in lieu of At the same period our own Saxon kings directed, in their ordinances, that the poor be sustained by parsons, rectors, and their fellow-parishioners, so that none die for want of sustenance.' It is probable that, as the monastic establishments grew into opulence by multiplied endowments, the support of the poor fell almost wholly upon them, and relief from municipal or parochial funds came into desuetude, as well in other countries as in this ;for we find the Emperor Charles V., in the year 1531, renewing the edict of Charlemagne, prohibiting begging and vagrancy throughout the Netherlands, under pain of imprisonment and whipping; and directing collections to be made in all places for their settled poor-the idlers and rogues to be set to work, poor women and children provided for; the latter put to school, and at a proper age placed out in service or trade*. Our statute of the 27 Henry VIII. c. 25, was enacted but four years after this, and attempted to provide a similar but imperfect remedy for the same state of things. The experience of the next halfcentury proved that an adequate maintenance could only be afforded to the poor, and mendicancy be effectually extirpated, by a compulsory assessment, to which the legislature of England was obliged to resort in the 14 Eliz. c. 5; afterwards expanded and remodelled in the celebrated 43 Eliz.-the fundamental statute by which the relief of the poor has been regulated in England up to the present day. The Scottish act of 1579-the groundwork of the present poor-law of Scotland-proves that a similar necessity was felt about the same time, and a similar step taken, by the legislature of that country likewise.

It would be an object of interesting research to trace the con. temporaneous changes that during this long period marked the legislation of foreign countries upon this subject, but the materials

* Anderson's History of Commerce.

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are wanting to us. At least, however, the general ignorance on the state of foreign pauperism at the present time has been satisfactorily cleared up by the researches instituted, at the request of the late Commission of Inquiry into the state of our own poorlaws, by our diplomatic agents abroad. The answers to these form the contents of a bulky volume, which has been lately printed for the House of Commons, in the shape of a Supplemental Appendix to the Report of the Commission. And though the information has arrived too late for the use of that defunct body, or to influence the decision of the legislature in the matter of the late Poor-Law Amendment Act, it constitutes a very valuable statistical document, being the fullest collection of reports on the existing laws for the relief of the poor throughout Europe and America ever made, and cannot fail to be of great service as a guide in all future corrective legislation on the subject.

The Reports are headed by a Preface drawn up by Mr. Senior, perhaps the most able and active member of the late commission, and to whom the merit, we believe, belongs of having both originated and directed the details of the inquiry itself. This was carried on chiefly by the circulation of a series of questions as to the customs or institutions of the different states, among his Majesty's foreign ministers throughout Europe and America-the answers to which compose the bulk of the volume before us. It contains, likewise, several private communications on the subject from intelligent foreigners or English travellers. We shall avail ourselves as well of Mr. Senior's work, which has been since published separately, as of the contents of the Appendix itself, in our endeavour to give our readers a brief outline of the legal provision made for the poor on the continent of Europe and in America.

Mr. Senior, we must observe, divides the states of Europe into two classes-1. Those in which the principle of the English system exists, namely an acknowledgment of the right of every person to be rescued from destitution by the public; and-2. Those in which the applicant's legal right does not appear to be so distinctly acknowledged, but in which provision is nevertheless largely, and in general amply, made from public funds for their relief. We own, however, we hardly see in what the distinction consists, for the habitual relief of the poor from public funds must be considered a practical concession of their rightful claim to it. The former class, as enumerated by Mr. Senior, comprehends Norway, Sweden, Russia, Denmark, Mecklenburg, Prussia, Wurtemberg, Bavaria, the canton of Berne, and Saxony: the latter, Holland, the Hanseatic towns, Belgium, France, Portugal, the Sardinian

states,

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