cipated the difficulties of the measure before it was publicly explained, and that they were prepared vigilantly to observe that explanation, and carefully, but candidly, to examine the developement of the design. To the Committee it has appeared to originate in imperfect information, and to be one of the most needless and objectionable measures that has been recently submitted to Parliament. Its final adoption the Committee would greatly deplore, and will be impelled by public duty strenuously to oppose. Nor will they be daunted in that opposition by their knowledge that the measure may have eloquent, powerful and hierarchical support; since numerous com munications already indicate that their opposition will be assisted by Dissenters and Methodists of every Denomination, by Quakers, Catholies and Jews, and by pious and liberal members of the Established Church who disapprove of sacramental tests, of the further union of the Church and the State, and of the additional intermingling of clerical functions with civil duties and secular affairs. But as the measure is postponed for six months-as no further proceedings can occur until another Session of Parliament as any Bill then introduced must be deliberately discussed-and as the plan may then be greatly modified and improved, the Committee deem it respectful to the benevolent proposer of the measure, as well as obviously expedient, to abstain from any immediate and public opposition to the plan. Yet they assure their friends, that their vigilance will not abate, and that they will invite their assistance when danger is imminent, and whenever combined and general efforts may be required and can avail. At that season they have been taught by experience to believe that all the numerous congregations connected with their Society, and all the friends of liberal education and religious freedom, though habitually lovers of peace, roused by their call, and impelled by principle and duty, will instantly awake; and they hope that their prompt, universal, temperate, but firm and zealous cooperation will induce the Parliament, the Administration, and even the most determined advocates of the measure, to treat their disapprobation with the respect which their numbers, their property, their intelligence, and especially their moral and religious character will well deserve. Great, however, will be the satisfaction of the Committee, if intermediate representations and private labours shall prevent the necessity of such public exertions, and of that pleasure we shall cordially and joyfully partake. THOMAS PELLATT, JOHN WILKS. SIR, AM a constant reader of your Pub lication, and never fail to feel a considerable degree of interest in its contents. The spirit of investigation and inquiry into theological questions which it is calculated to inspire and promote, meets my entire and warm approbation. I am persuaded that, from the vast importance of these inquiries and this investigation to the well-being and improvement of the human race, it has a right to stand prominently foremost on your pages. But there are auxiliary subjects, highly promotive of the cause of truth and righteousness, which I wish to see more attended to in your Miscellany. The one now uppermost in my mind, is the question of the "Lawfulness of War amongst Christians”—a question allowed by all to be of great moment, and one that is daily coming more and more under public discussion. That Unitarians as a body are decidedly the friends of peace, I cannot doubt. But I wish to see many more of them come ardently and actively forward, to promote a cause which calls forth the best feelings of the heart, and embraces the best interests of the human race, both here and hereafter; and I know of no means more likely to draw their attention towards it, than a discussion of the subject by some of your intelligent Correspondents. A preparation for, and the practice of what is termed strictly defensive war, is defended, and judged not only expedient but necessary for Christian nations in the present time, by many members even of our Peace Societies, and it is not my intention now to debate this point.-I am anxious to turn their attention to a branch of the war system, which, as it appears to me, we may immediately lop away. No man will plead that privateering is essential to the safety of any country, and though it has been hitherto alowed by all, it can be no more defended upon any principle of humanity, morality, or of common honesty, than the sending of a band of housebreakers and highway-robbers, armed with daggers and pistols, into what we are pleased to call an enemy's country, to plunder, and, if they venture to resist, to destroy its peaceable inhabitants. Yet some of our ministers might, perhaps, scruple to plan, and some of our soldiers refuse to execute a commission for that purpose, pleading that they were neither thieves nor assassins. But in the eye of reason, humanity and common sense, where is the dif ference? And what is it which renders = housebreaking a more atrocious and =despicable crime, than entering a trading or a travelling vessel forcibly, to seize upon the property which it carries, and prepared, if any opposition is made, to kill or maim the defenders of it? If there is a difference between robbery and murder upon the water, and the same detestable deeds upon dry land, I will thank any one of your Correspondents who will clearly point it out. Till this has been done to my satisfaction, I must deem privateering one of the most disgraceful and least necessary attendants upon that fruitful source of human crime and misery, War. I remain, Sir, in common, I trust, with the great majority of your readers, a sincere friend to PEACE. GLEANINGS; OR, SELECTIONS AND No. CCCLXVIII. Lord Chesterfield's Description of Courts. Satires upon Courts are common but little heeded. They often proceed from envy, from disappointment or from sourness of nature. Sometimes they are only exercises of wit or of declamation. The following map of Courts," as it is termed by the author, was however drawn up from very different motives. It is contained in Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, (Letters CLVIII. and CLIX.,) which were not designed for the public eye, but solely for the regulation of the conduct of Mr. Stanhope, who was educated for the diplomatic profession. His Lordship, it will be remembered, had passed a long life in Courts, and was now delivering his own experience. "The ways" (of Courts)" are generally crooked and full of turnings, sometimes strewed with flowers, sometimes choked up with briars; rotten ground and deep pits frequently lie concealed under a smooth and pleasing surface: all the paths are slippery, and every slip is dangerous." "Nothing in Courts is exactly as it sometimes directly contrary. appears to be; often very different; which is the real spring of every thing Interest, there, equally creates and dissolves friendships, produces and reconciles enmities; or rather, allows of neither real friendships nor enmities; for, as Dryden very justly observes, Politicians neither love nor hate. This is so true, that you may friends to-day, and be obliged to-morrow think you connect yourself with two enemies." to make your option between them as "Courts are, unquestionably, the seats they not so, they would be the seats of of politeness and good-breeding; were slaughter and desolation. Those who now smile upon and embrace, would affront and stab each other, if manners did not interpose; but ambition and avarice, the two prevailing passions at Courts, found dissimulation more effectual than violence; and dissimulation introduced that habit of politeness, which distinguishes the courtier from the country gentleman." "Homer supposes a chain let down from Jupiter to the earth to connect him with mortals. There is, at all Courts, a chain which connects the prince or the minister, with the page of the back-stairs or the chambermaid. The King's wife or mistress has an influence over him; a lover has an influence over her; the chambermaid or the valet de chambre has an influence over both, and so ad infinilink of that chain, by which you hope to tum. You must, therefore, not break a climb up to the prince." "You must renounce Courts, if you will not connive at knaves and tolerate fools. Their number makes them considerable. You should as little quarrel, as connect yourself, with either." REVIEW. "Still pleased to praise, yet not afraid to blame."-POPE. ART. I.-A Letter to the Magistrates of Warwickshire, on the Increase of Crime in general, but more particularly in the County of Warwick; with a few Observations on the Causes and Remedies of this increasing Evil. By John Eardley EardleyWilmot, Esq., one of his Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the County of Warwick. London: printed for H. T. Hodgson. 1820. 8vo. pp. 39. THE HE subject of this pamphlet, is particularly momentous; and many of the statements and observations of the author demand the serious regard not only of the magistrates of Warwickshire, but of all persons who are in habits of thought and in stations of influence. Every wise and good man will lament the prevalence of crime he will be grieved that, notwithstanding the unexampled efforts which are made for the moral and religious instruction of the people, the number of youthful delinquents has, of late years, considerably increased. He who can trace the causes and suggest the remedies of this gigantic evil, is a public benefactor. Although the existence and progress of crimes denote the imperfection of our nature, and must primarily be attributed to this source, yet we must not content ourselves with so generally accounting for the fact. Since man is always acted upon by the objects, events and circumstances in the midst of which we perceive him to be placed, the inquiry in which we have engaged may admit of a more specific and practical answer. In the vast and rapid advance of the population of the country we see one of the causes of which we are in search. Common observers are quite inattentive to this state of things, and to the influence of it; while it is contemplated by reflecting men in all its various and extensive bearings. Notwithstanding we discern every where around us innumerable proofs of the supreme goodness of the Creator, yet the world in which we live was not de signed to be a scene of unmixed bliss ; those appointments of Providence respecting mankind which are directly instrumental to their preservation and their welfare, being also productive of their misery, when human ignorance, vice and folly overpower the controul of reason and religion. It is thus with all the appetites and passions of our frame: if we indulge them to excess, they are the parents of guilt and wretchedness; if we gratify them with wisdom and in moderation, they subserve in a very high degree individual comfort and public happiness. Those civil societies which are most numerous, will evidently be in the greatest danger of abounding with transgressors of divine and human laws. Mr. Eardley-Wilmot is aware, (p. 5,) that such must be the necessary consequence of "an increased population; and if that population," he says, "by any natural or accidental causes, should exceed the means of the country to support it, partial distress, at least, must be the result; and temptation to crime will be more strong and irresistible." Yet, after all, it may fairly be doubted whether the progress of crime among us has not fallen short of the quickly-multiplying number of the people, instead of equalling it: if our calendars are heavy, let us not forget that the results of our census have far surpassed general anticipation. Our sensibility may sometimes mislead our judgment. There is a strong propensity in men to be more affected by present scenes and passing events than by those of former years. The transactions of the day, impress us in a much more lively manner than any which memory records or imagination pictures: and the prevalence of crimes has been a familiar topic in every age and country. In large towns and cities, and especially in the metropolis, the evil is most visible it is, therefore, connected not only with the advances of population, but further with the temp tations to fraud and outrage which crowded scenes almost invariably pre sent. Offences of all kinds, are there easily perpetrated, and as easily elude detection: in such neighbourhoods opportunities of combination and conspiracy are furnished in abundance. Thither the bold and the secret violaters of the laws resort, from every quarter, as to the spot most favourable to their base designs, and to their shelter from the grasp of justice. There bad example operates with a force corresponding to the wide and diversified field in which it ranges and as in the human body the vital fluid issues from the heart and comes back to it again, so the capital of a nation, or the chief town of a manufacturing district, is usually both the fountain and the receptacle of crime. : Mr. Eardley-Wilmot justly observes, (pp. 5, 6,) that "the arts, sciences and commerce extend into such unlookedfor and distant regions, and require such complicated safeguards from their commencement to the last stage of their career, that offences are created and multiplied almost without number." The temptations to crime supplied by great cities and populous and manufacturing towns, must not be dismissed before we have noticed the inability of the public to distinguish the marks of the most aggravated of the frauds by which it suffers. Hence we can explain the prevalence of one species of offences. The fabrication of a spurious paper-currency, occasions a waste and sacrifice of life by which the feelings of the enlightened patriot cannot fail to be harrowed: the crime abounds in proportion to the ease with which it can be perpetrated; and a remedy of the evil has long been needed, and of late zealously attempted. To diminish and, if possible, to remove the facility of executing such forgeries, is among the first of national obligations; while the neglect of it is a national reproach and vice of no common magnitude. Our situation, for some years past, has been peculiar. When peace visited us, after an unusually long and eventful war, our commerce soon ceased to flow in its accustomed channels. The pressure of want was severely felt, and became in some instances the cause, but far more frequently the plea and pretext of rapine. There are few nations whose internal state is not sometimes deranged by such vicissitudes. However, we cannot in justice reason from new and extraordinary circumstances to a more regular train of things; although it should be observed, that the effect will in some degree survive the cause, and that the crimes of which we especially bewail the progress are in their nature public, and obtrude themselves upon our eyes while the happy influence of national calamity on good minds is, for the most part, limited to scenes which shun the notice of mankind. War, be it never forgotten, has no favourable aspect on the morals of a people. If a man has for years been familiarized to intelligence of the loss of life and the seizure of property in fields of battle, he must have been well disciplined and instructed by Religion should he be not more indifferent than he once was to the lives and property of his neighbours. In this view, war, it may be feared, does greater mischief to the multitudes who know its horrors only from report, and who forget them in its triumphs, than to those who witness, or spread, or experience, its devastations. At least it must be granted, that times of public calamity have always added to the number of transgressors of the laws, by rendering not a few persons desperate and hardened. With some reluctance we touch on another cause of the increase of crime: this is the want of definite, well-proportioned, summary and corrective punishments. Punishment defeats its legitimate ends if it be indiscriminate and excessively severe on the contrary, it will terrify, it will restrain, if it be certain and impartial. What can we think of the penalty of death, annexed as it is to a very long catalogue of specific crimes, and in many, many hundreds of individual cases actually awarded, yet in the vast majority of them never executed, because even the general infliction of it would be rigorous beyond endurance, would shock every public as well as private feeling of humanity and justice? Capital punishments, we admit, do not recur so often in this country as they did a quarter of a century ago: yet sound policy, like benevolence, must weep over their frequency, and ardently wish that the land of our birth were relieved henceforth from the disgrace and guilt. Punishment loses its proper nature if it be not calculated both to reform the offender and to reduce the number of offences: it loses its just effect if it be inflicted so long after the commission of the crime that the connexion between them is forgotten. These and many other considerations surely call for a new and more accurate scale of punishments, in which that of death shall either not exist, or be assigned to as few crimes as possible. Among ourselves the experiment of punishment nominally capital but really indefinite, has long been made: with what ill success, we canot be ignorant. We know that among us the hope of mitigated or remitted punishment has even cherished guilt; while in countries where death is never or very rarely the penalty exacted by public justice, in countries where the malefactor is compelled to make some retribution by his labour to the civil society which he has injured, and where there are fewer checks upon population than in our own, crime is diminished, instead of advancing. In the opinion of Mr. Eardley-Wilmot, the uncertainty of punishments and the blind severity of our laws "have tended more to swell the catalogue of offenders than any one circumstance resulting from the artificial fabrication of society, the offender knowing that if ever the rigid enactment of the statute is enforced, it will not be above once in a hundred instances * gambles with his life on any adventure which his wickedness or his necessities may offer to him.”— Pp. 7, 8. One of the most fruitful sources of those outrages against the laws that we deplore, is the association of young with old offenders in our prisons. Seldom is it that these two classes of transgressors are separated, or, indeed, that provision is made for the purpose: and the consequences have been ascertained to be beyond imagination dreadful. Thus transgression tends to multiply itself almost indefinitely. Most of our gaols are schools of vice: for the number of exceptions is deplorably small. See a valuable Essay on Crimes and Punishments, by the Rev. William Turner, in the second volume of Memoirs of the 1. and P. Soc. of Manchester. To the examination and correction of this enormous evil public attention has recently been directed. It is a topic of the first practical importance, a topic in which patriotism, national safety, morals and religion, are deeply interested: it stands perfectly distinct from party views and feelings, and calls for the unanimous exertions of all who have the means of information and improvement in their power. By Mr. Eardley-Wilmot "our prisons" are styled "receptacles of vice and depravity:" he is convinced too that by the intercourse of “juvenile offenders" with " 'hardened villains," and " by the want of separation of prisoners," incalculable mischiefs are produced.-Pp. 11, 12. We are apprehensive that an additional cause of the increase of crime will be discovered in that relaxation of parental discipline which characte rizes our age and country. Youthful insubordination is, in the view of many candid and intelligent observers, one among the vices of the times: the ties of the authority of fathers and mothers, and of those who occupy their place, are in several instances loosened; and the independence of the man is affected, claimed and even exercised by those who have scarcely passed the term of childhood. Thus, by a natural, an easy and a rapid process, the number of young offenders against the laws is considerably augmented. Endeavours to stem the torrent of crime, may however be made with great advantage. Not, perhaps, to the extent which pure benevolence desires and hopes, but still to no small extent, and in a degree which is not a little animating. There are remedies which may be adapted to the respective symptoms of the diseases, and to most, if not to all, of its proximate causes. Associated and persevering exer tions, wise and dutiful representations, with the view of interesting the Legislature and the Public in measures for the correction of juvenile delinquency, the construction and discipline of prisons and the revision of our penal code, will surely awaken some zeal and produce some benefit! Nor can it be supposed that a nation so characterized as ours is by deeds of humanity and mercy, will be regardless of obligations which cannot be slighted without danger to all her dearest interests. |