"We remained a while in silence, looking upon the assemblage of dwellings below. Here, and in the adjoining hamlet of Milbeck, the effects of manufactures and of agriculture may be seen and compared. The old cottages are such as the poet and the painter equally delight in beholding. Substantially built of the native stone without mortar, dirtied with no white lime, and their long, low roofs covered with slate; if they had been raised by the magic of some indigenous Amphion's music, the materials could not have adjusted themselves more beautifully in accord with the surrounding scene; and time has still further harmonized them with weather-stains, lichens, and moss, short grasses, and short fern, and stone-plants of various kinds. The ornamented chimneys, round or square, less adorned than those which, like little turrets, crest the houses of the Portuguese peasantry: and yet not less happily suited to their place, the hedge of clipt box beneath the windows, the rose bushes beside the door, the little patch of

returns for the year ending in March, 1825, and in March, 1828, are now before us. In the former year, we find the poor-rates highest in Sussex-about 20s. to every inhabitant. Then come Buckinghamshire, Essex, Suffolk, Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Kent and Norfolk. In all these the rate is above 15s. a head. We will not go through the whole. Even in Westmoreland, and the North Riding of Yorkshire, the rate is at more than 8s. In Cumberland and Monmouthshire, the most fortunate of all the agricultural districts, it is at 68. But in the West Riding of Yorkshire, it is as low as 5s.; and when we come to Lancashire, we find it at 4s.-one-fifth of what it is in Sussex. The returns of the year ending in March, 1828, are a little, and but a little, more unfavourable to the manufacturing districts. Lancashire, even in that season of distress, required a smaller poor-rate than any other district, and little more than one-fourth of the poor-rate raised in Sussex. Cumberland alone, of the agricultural districts, was as well off as the West Riding of Yorkshire. These facts seem to in-flower ground, with its tall hollyhocks in dicate that the manufacturer is both in a more comfortable and in a less dependent situation than the agricultural labourer.

front; the garden beside, the bee-hives, and the orchard with its bank of daffodils and snow-drops, the earliest and the profusest in these parts, indicate in the owners some portion of ease and leisure, some regard to neatness and comfort, some sense of natural, and innocent, and healthful enjoyment. The new cottages of the manufacturers are upon the manufacturing pattern-naked, and in a row.

"How is it, said I, that every thing which is connected with manufactures presents such features of unqualified deformity? From the largest of Mammon's temples down to the poorest hovel in which his helotry are stalled, these edifices have all one character. Time will not mellow them; nature will never clothe nor conceal them; and they will remain always as offensive to the eye as to the mind."

As to the effect of the manufacturing system on the bodily health, we must beg leave to estimate it by a standard far too low and vulgar for a mind so imaginative as that of Mr. Southey, the proportion of births and deaths. We know that, during the growth of this atrocious system, this new misery, (we use the phrase of Mr. Southey,) this new enormity, this birth of an portentous age, this pest, which no man can approve whose heart is not seared, or whose understanding has not been darkened, there has been a great diminution of mortality, and that this diminution has been greater in the manufacturing towns than anywhere else. The mortality still is, as it always was, greater in towns than in the country. But the differ- Here is wisdom. Here are the principles ence has diminished in an extraordinary de- on which nations are to be governed. Rose gree. There is the best reason to believe, that bushes and poor-rates, rather than steam-enthe annual mortality of Manchester, about the gines and independence. Mortality and cotmiddle of the last century, was one in twenty-tages with weather-stains, rather than health eight. It is now reckoned at one in forty-five. and long life with edifices which time cannot In Glasgow and Leeds a similar improvement mellow. We are told, that our age has inhas taken place. Nay, the rate of mortality in those three great capitals of the manufacturing districts, is now considerably less than • it was fifty years ago over England and Wales taken together, open country and all. We might with some plausibility maintain, that the people live longer because they are better fed, better lodged, better clothed, and better attended in sickness; and that these improvements are owing to that increase of national wealth which the manufacturing system has produced. Much more might be said on this subject. But to what end? It is not from bills of mortality and statistical tables that Mr. Southey has learned his political creed. He cannot stoop to study the history of the system which he abuses, to strike the balance between the good and evil which it has produced, to compare district with district, or generation with generation. We will give his own reason for his opinion, the only reason which he gives for it, in his own words:

vented atrocities beyond the imagination of our fathers; that society has been brought into a state, compared with which extermination would be a blessing; and all because the dwellings of cotton-spinners are naked and rectangular. Mr. Southey has found out way, he tells us, in which the effects of manufactures and agriculture may be compared. And what is this way? To stand on a hill, to look at a cottage and a manufactory, and to see which is the prettier. Does Mr. Southey think that the body of the English peasantry live, or ever lived, in substantial and ornamented cottages, with box hedges, flower gar dens, bee-hives, and orchards? If not, what is his parallel worth? We despise those filoso fastri, who think that they serve the cause of science by depreciating literature and the fine arts. But if anything could excuse their narrowness of mind, it would be such a book as this. It is not strange that when one enthusi ast makes the picturesque the test of political

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good, another should feel inclined to proscribe altogether the pleasures of taste and imagination.

Thus it is that Mr. Southey reasons about matters with which he thinks himself perfectly conversant. We cannot, therefore, be surprised to find that he commits extraordinary blunders when he writes on points of which he acknowledges himself to be ignorant. He confesses that he is not versed in political economy, that he has neither liking nor aptitude for it; and he then proceeds to read the public a lecture concerning it, which fully bears out his confession.

"All wealth," says Sir Thomas More, "in former times was tangible. It consisted in land, money, or chattels, which were either of real or conventional value."

Montesinos, as Mr. Southey somewhat affectedly calls himself, answers:

"Jewels, for example, and pictures, as in Holland-where indeed at one time tulip bulbs answered the same purpose."

"That bubble," says Sir Thomas, "was one of those contagious insanities to which communities are subject. All wealth was real, till the extent of commerce rendered a paper currency necessary; which differed from precious stores and pictures in this important point, that there was no limit to its production."

"We regard it," says Montesinos, "as the representative of real wealth, and, therefore, limited always to the amount of what it repre

"Pursue that notion," answers the ghost, and you will be in the dark presently. Your provincial bank-notes, which constitute almost wholly the circulating medium of certain districts, pass current to-day. To-morrow, tidings may come that the house which issued them has stopped payment, and what do they represent then? You will find them the shadow of a shade."

creditor. Every man who sells goods for any thing but ready money, runs the risk of finding that what he considered as part of his wealth one day, is nothing at all the next day. Mr. Southey refers to the picture-galleries of Holland. The pictures were undoubtedly real and tangible possessions. But surely it might happen that a burgomaster might owe a picturedealer a thousand guilders for a Teniers. What in this case corresponds to our paper. money is not the picture, which is tangible, but the claim of the picture-dealer on his customer for the price of the picture, which is not tangible. Now, would not the picture-dealer consider this claim as part of his wealth? Would not a tradesman who knew of it give credit to the picture-dealer the more readily or account of it? The burgomaster might be ruined. If so, would not those consequences follow which, as Mr. Southey tells us, were never heard of till paper-money came into use? Yesterday this claim was worth a thousard guilders. To-day what is it? The shadow of a shade.

It is true, that the more readily claims of this sort are transferred from hand to hand, the more extensive will be the injury produced by a single failure. The laws of all nations sanction, in certain cases, the transfer of rights not yet reduced into possession. Mr. Southey would scarcely wish, we should think, that all endorsements of bills and notes should be declared invalid. Yet even if this were done, the transfer of claims would imperceptibly take place to a very great extent. When the baker trusts the butcher, for example, he is in fact, though not in form, trusting the butcher's customers. A man who owes large bills to tradesmen, and fails to pay them, almost always produces distress through a very wide circle of people whom he never dealt with.

In short, what Mr. Southey takes for a differ We scarcely know at which end to begin to ence in kind, is only a difference of form and disentangle this knot of absurdities. We might degree. In every society men have claims on ask why it should be a greater proof of insanity the property of others. In every society there in men to set a high value on rare tulips than on is a possibility that some debtors may not be rare stones, which are neither more useful nor able to fulfil their obligations. In every sociemore beautiful? We might ask how it can be ty, therefore, there is wealth which is not tansaid that there is no limit to the production ofgible, and which may become the shadow of a paper-money, when a man is hanged if he shade. issues any in the name of another, and is forced Mr. Southey then proceeds to a dissertation to cash what he issues in his own? But Mr. on the national debt, which he considers in a Southey's error lies deeper still. "All wealth," new and most consolatory light, as a clear adsays he, "was tangible and real, till paper cur-dition to the income of the country. rency was introduced." Now, was there ever, "You can understand," says Sir Thomas, since man emerged from a state of utter bar-"that it constitutes a great part of the national barism, an age in which there were no debts? Is not a debt, while the solvency of the debtor is undoubted, always reckoned as part of the wealth of the creditor? Yet is it tangible and real wealth? Does it cease to be wealth, because there is the security of a written acknowledgment for it? And what else is paper currency? Did Mr. Southey ever read a banknote? If he did, he would see that it is a written acknowledgment of a debt, and a promise to pay that debt. The promise may be violated, the debt may remain unpaid, those to whom it was due may suffer: but this is a risk not confined to cases of paper currency; it is a risk inseparable from the relation of debtor and

wealth."

"So large a part," answers Montesinos, "that the interest amounted, during the prosperous time of agriculture, to as much as the rental of all the land in Great Britain; and at present to the rental of all lands, all houses, and all other fixed property put together."

The ghost and the laureate agree that it is very desirable that there should be so secure and advantageous a deposit for wealth as the funds afford. Sir Thomas then proceeds:

"Another and far more momentous benefit must not be overlooked: the expenditure of an annual interest, equalling, as you have stated, the present rental of all fixed property."

"That expenditure," quoth Montesinos, "gives employment to half the industry in the kingdom, and feeds half the mouths. Take, indeed, the weight of the national debt from this great and complicated social machine, and the wheels must stop."

From this passage we should have been inclined to think that Mr. Southey supposes the dividends to be a free gift periodically sent down from heaven to the fundholders, as quails and manna were sent to the Israelites, were it not that he has vouchsafed, in the following question and answer, to give the public some information which, we believe, was very little needed.

"Whence comes the interest?" says Sir Thomas.

“It is raised,” answers Montesinos, "by taxation."

"Resaignare, repurgare, et rec/ysterizare." "A people," he tells us, "may be too lich but a government cannot be so.'

"A state," says he, "cannot have more wealth at its command than may be employed for the general good, a liberal expenditure in national works being one of the surest means for promoting national prosperity, and the br nefit being still more obvious of an expenditure directed to the purposes of national improve ment. But a people may be too rich.”

We fully admit that a state cannot have at its command more wealth than may be employ ed for the general good. But neither can indi viduals or bodies of individuals have at their command more wealth than may be employed for the general good. If there be no limit to the sum which may be usefully laid out in public works and national improvement, then wealth, whether in the hands of private men or of the government, may always, if the possessor choose to spend it usefully, be usefully spent. The only ground, therefore, cn which Mr. Southey can possibly maintain that a government cannot be too rich, but that a people may be too rich, must be this, that governments are more likely to spend their money on good objects than private individuals.

Now, has Mr. Southey ever considered what would be done with this sum, if it were not paid as interest to the national creditor? If he would think over this matter for a short time, we suspect that the "momentous benefit" of which he talks would appear to him to shrink strangely in amount. A fundholder, we will suppose, spends an income of five hundred pounds a year, and his ten nearest neighbours pay fifty pounds each to the tax-gatherer, for But what is useful expenditure? "A libethe purpose of discharging the interest of the ral expenditure in national works," says Mr. national debt. If the debt were wiped out, (a Southey, "is one of the surest means for promeasure, be it understood, which we by no moting national prosperity." What does he means recommend,) the fundholder would mean by national prosperity? Does he mean cease to spend his five hundred pounds a year. the wealth of the state? If so, his reasoning He would no longer give employment to indus-runs thus:-The more wealth a state has the try, or put food into the mouths of labourers. better; for the more wealth a state has the This Mr. Southey thinks a fearful evil. But is more wealth it will have. This is surely there no mitigating circumstance? Each of something like that fallacy which is ungal his ten neighbours has fifty pounds more than lantly termed a lady's reason. If by national formerly. Each of them will, as it seems to prosperity he means the wealth of the people, our feeble understandings, employ more indus- of how gross a contradiction is he guilty! A try and feed more mouths than formerly. The people, he tells us, may be too rich; a govern sum is exactly the same. It is in different ment cannot; for a government can employ hands. But on what grounds does Mr. Southey its riches in making the people richer. The call upon us to believe that it is in the hands wealth of the people is to be taken from them, of men who will spend less liberally or less because they have too much, and laid out in judiciously? He seems to think that nobody works which yield them more. but a fundholder can employ the poor; that if a tax is remitted, those who formerly used to pay it proceed immediately to dig holes in the earth, and bury the sum which the government had been accustomed to take; that no money can set industry in motion till it has been taken by the tax-gatherer out of one man's pocket and put into another man's. We really wish that Mr. Southey would try to prove this principle, which is, indeed, the foundation of his whole theory of finance; for we think it right to hint to him, that our hard-hearted and unimaginative generation will expect some more satisfactory reason than the only one with which he has yet favoured it-a similitude touching evaporation and dew.

We are really at a loss to determine whe ther Mr. Southey's reason for recommending large taxation is that it will make the people rich, or that it will make them poor. But we are sure that if his object is to make them rich, he takes the wrong course. There are two or three principles respecting public works, which, as an experience of vast extent proves, may be trusted in almost every case.

It scarcely ever happens that any privatc man, or body of men, will invest property ir canal, a tunnel, or a bridge, but from an expectation that the outlay will be profitable to them. No work of this sort can be profitable to private speculators, unless the public be willing to pay for the use of it. The public Both the theory and the illustration, indeed, will not pay of their own accord for what are old friends of ours. In every season of yields no profit or convenience to them. There distress which we can remember, Mr. Southey is thus a direct and obvious connection be has been proclaiming that it is not from eco-tween the motive which induces individuals nomy, but from increased taxation, that the to undertake such a work, and the utility of Country must expect relief; and he still, we the work. find, places the undoubting faith of a political Diafirus in his

Can we find any such connection in the case of a public work executed by a govern

ment. If it is useful, are the individuals who rule the country richer? If it is useless, are they poorer? A public man may be solicitous for his credit: but is not he likely to gain nore credit by a useless display of ostentaious architecture in a great town, than by the best road or the best canal in some remote province? The fame of public works is a much less certain test of their utility, than the amount of toll collected at them. In a corrupt age, there will be a direct embezzlement. În the purest age, there will be abundance of jobbing. Never were the statesmen of any country more sensitive to public opinion, and more spotless in pecuniary transactions, than those who have of late governed England. Yet we have only to look at the buildings recently erected in London for a proof of our rule. In a bad age, the fate of the public is to be robbed. In a good age, it is much milder -merely to have the dearest and the worst of every thing.

"There are many," says Montesince, "who know this, but believe that it is not in the power of human institutions to prevent this misery. They see the effect, but regard the causes as inseparable from the condition of human nature."

"As surely as God is good," replies Sir Thomas, "so surely there is no such thing as necessary evil. For, by the religious mind, sickness, and pain, and death are not to be ac counted evils."

Now, if sickness, pain, and death are not evils, we cannot understand why it should be an evil that thousands should rise without knowing how they are to subsist. The only evil of hunger is, that it produces first pain, then sickness, and finally death. If it did not produce these, it would be no calamity. If these are not evils, it is no calamity. We cannot conceive why it should be a greater impeachment of the Divine goodness, that some men should not be able to find food to Buildings for state purposes the state must eat, than that others should have stomachs erect. And here we think that, in general, the which derive no nourishment from food when state ought to stop. We firmly believe, that they have eaten it. Whatever physical effects five hundred thousand pounds subscribed by want produces, may also be produced by individuals for railroads or canals, would pro- disease. Whatever saiutary effects disease duce more advantage to the public than five may produce, may also be produced by want. millions voted by Parliament for the same If poverty makes men thieves, disease and purpose. There are certain old saws about pain often sour the temper and contract the the master's eye, and about everybody's busi-heart. ness, in which we place very great faith.

There is, we have said, no consistency in Mr. Southey's political system. But if there be in it any leading principle, if there be any one error which diverges more widely and variously than any other, it is that of which his theory about national works is a ramification. He conceives that the business of the magistrate is, not merely to see that the persons and property of the people are secure from attack, but that he ought to be a perfect jack of all trades, architect, engineer, schoolmaster, merchant, theologian, a Lady Bountiful in every parish, a Paul Pry in every house, spying, eaves-dropping, relieving, admonishing, spending our money for us, and choosing our opinions for us. His principle is, if we understand it rightly, that no man can do any thing so well for himself, as his rulers, be they who they may, can do it for him; that a government approaches nearer and nearer to perfection, in proportion as it interferes more and more with the habits and notions of individuals.

He seems to be fully convinced, that it is in the power of government to relieve the distresses under which the lower orders labour. Nay, he considers doubt on this subject as impious. We cannot refrain from quoting his argument on this subject. It is a perfect jewel of logic.

"Many thousands in your metropolis," says Sir Thomas More, "rise every morning without knowing how they are to subsist during the day; as many of them, where they are to lay their heads at night. All men, even the vicious themselves, know that wickedness 'eads to misery; but many, even among the good and the wise, have yet to learn that misery is almost as often the cause of wickedness."

We will propose a very plain dilemma: Either physical pain is an evil, or it is not an evil. If it is an evil, then there is necessary evil in the universe: if it is not, why should the poor be delivered from it?

Mr. Southey entertains as exaggerated a notion of the wisdom of governments as of their power. He speaks with the greatest disgust of the respect now paid to public opinion. That opinion is, according to him, to be distrusted and dreaded; its usurpation ought to be vigorously resisted; and the practice of yielding to it is likely to ruin the country. To maintain police is, according to him, only une of the ends of government. Its duties are patriarchal and paternal. It ought to consider the moral discipline of the people as its first object, to establish a religion, to train the whole community in that religion, and to consider all dissenters as its own enemies.

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Nothing," says Sir Thomas, "is more cer tain than that religion is the basis upon which civil government rests; that from religion power derives its authority, laws their efficacy, and both their zeal and sanction; and it is ne cessary that this religion be established for the security of the state and for the welfare of the people, who would otherwise be moved to and fro with every wind of doctrine. A state is secure in proportion as the people are at. tached to its institutions; it is, therefore, the first and plainest rule of sound policy, that the people be trained up in the way they should go. The state that neglects this prepares its own destruction; and they who train them up in any other way are undermining it. Nothing in abstract science can be more certain than these positions are."

"All of which," answers Montesinos, "are nevertheless denied by our professors of the

arts Babblative and Scribblative, some in the audacity of evil designs, and others in the glorious assurance of impenetrable ignorance."

train them in any other way, are undermining the state.

Now it does not appear to us to be the first object that people should always believe in the established religion, and be attached to the established government. A religion may be false. A government may be oppressive. And whatever support government gives to false religions, or religion to oppressive govern. ments, we consider as a clear evil.

The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way, than the people to fall into the right way of themselves? Have there not been governments which were blind leaders of the blind? Are there not still such governments? Can it be laid down as a

The greater part of the two volumes before us is merely an amplification of these absurd paragraphs. What does Mr. Southey mean by saying, that religion is demonstrably the basis of civil government? He cannot surely mean that men have no motives, except those derived from religion, for establishing and supporting civil government, that no temporal advantage is derived from civil government, that man would experience no temporal inconvenience from living in a state of anarchy. If he allows, as we think he must allow, that it is for the good of mankind in this world to have civil government, and that the great majority of mankind have always thought it for their good in this world to have civil go-general rule that the movement of political and vernment, we then have a basis for govern- religious truth is rather downwards from the ment quite distinct from religion. It is true, government to the people, than upwards from that the Christian religion sanctions govern- the people to the government! These are ment, as it sanctions every thing which pro- questions which it is of importance to have motes the happiness and virtue of our species. clearly resolved. Mr. Southey declaims against But we are at a loss to conceive in what sense public opinion, which is now, he tells us, religion can be said to be the basis of govern- usurping supreme power. Formerly, accordment, in which it is not also the basis of the ing to him, the laws governed; now public practices of eating, drinking, and lighting fires opinion governs. What are laws but expresin cold weather. Nothing in history is more sions of the opinion of some class which has certain than that government has existed, has power over the rest of the community? By received some obedience and given some pro- what was the world ever governed, but by the tection, in times in which it derived no sup- opinion of some person or persons? By what port from religion, in times in which there else can it ever be governed? What are all was no religion that influenced the hearts and systems, religious, political, or scientific, but lives of men. It was not from dread of Tarta-opinions resting on evidence more or less sarus, or belief in the Elysian fields, that an tisfactory? The question is not between huAthenian wished to have some institutions man opinion, and some higher and more cerwhich might keep Orestes from filching his tain mode of arriving at truth, but between cloak, or Midias from breaking his head. "It opinion and opinion, between the opinion of is from religion," says Mr. Southey, "that one man and another, or of one class and power derives its authority, and laws their another, or of one generation and another efficacy." From what religion does our power Public opinion is not infallible; but can Mr ‹ over the Hindoos derive its authority, or the Southey construct any institutions which shall law in virtue of which we hang Brahmins. its secure to us the guidance of an infallible opiefficacy? For thousands of years civil go- nion? Can Mr. Southey select any family, vernment has existed in almost every corner any profession, any class in short, distinguished of the world, in ages of priestcraft, in ages of by any plain badge from the rest of the comfanaticism, in ages of epicurean indifference, munity, whose opinion is more likely to be in ages of enlightened piety. However pure just than this much abused public opinion? or impure the faith of the people might be, Would he choose the peers, for example? Or whether they adored a beneficent or malignant the two hundred tallest men in the country? power, whether they thought the soul mortal Or the poor Knights of Windsor? Or children or immortal, they have, as soon as they ceased who are born with cauls, seventh sons of seto be absolute savages, found out their need of venth sons? We cannot suppose that he civil government, and instituted it according- would recommend popular election: for that ly. It is as universal as the practice of cook- is merely an appeal to public opinion. And ery. Yet, it is as certain, says Mr. Southey, to say that society ought to be governed by the as any thing in abstract science, that govern- opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is ment is founded on religion. We should like useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are to know what notion Mr. Southey has of the the wisest and best? demonstrations of abstract science. vague one, we suspect.

But a

The proof proceeds. As religion is the basis of government, and as the state is secure in proportion as the people are attached to its institutions, it is, therefore, says Mr. Southey, the first rule of policy, that the government should train the people in the way in which they should go; and it is plain, that those who

Mr. Southey and many other respectable people seem to think that when they have once proved the moral and religious training of the people to be a most important object, it follows, of course, that it is an object which the government ought to pursue. They forget that we have to consider, not merely the goodness of the end, but also the fitness of the means. Neither in the natural nor in the political bed