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have bitterly complained,) country gentlemen must contrive to supply the market to a sufficient extent on reasonable terms.* In this case it will be so clearly the interest of the poulterer not to run the risk of detection for so trifling an advantage as may attend the purchasing from a poacher, that we think (with, of course, some few exceptions) his interest will be a security for his honesty. The London poulterers have seemed to us entitled to the greatest credit for their conduct on this question. Their evidence before the committees was direct and manly. Their late meeting and advertisement is a straightforward and necessary call on the preservers of game, and on the public, for assistance in executing the law. We hope that every county in England will follow the example set by Lord Jermyn and the gentlemen round Bury; by Mr B. Thomson, near York; by Lord Yarborough, &c. It never must be forgotten that the farmer and the poulterer are indispensable coadjutors in this measure. We have no doubt they will do their duty if a just confidence is placed in them. Without their help, the whole is vanity and vexation of spirit.

In the meantime, we have one request to make of the specta

* We have the authority of the first poulterer in Leadenhall market for the opinion, that poaching can be put down in no other way. Poachers will otherwise keep possession of the market, and the honest poulterer will retire from a line of business in which he is not properly supported by either the producer or the consumer. The demand in both years is said to be about the same: but the average prices of game were,

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The deficiency of the supply, in consequence of his ceasing to deal with poachers' agents, whilst gentlemen hold back, has raised the price to the fair trader. In the meantime, there have sprung up depôts for poached game, in various parts of the town, (especially at the west end,) and dealers who were unknown to trade in it before. In this way poached game is now selling at one-third less than game fairly obtained. This disproportion must be reduced. The consequence is, that Mr Stevens is at present losing a guinea a-day by the operation of the new bill; and unless some alteration takes place, intends, at the expiration of his present license, to cease to deal in it. If gentlemen had rather one by one be plundered by the poacher, than agree on principle systematically to outbid him, and drive him from the market, they must take the consequences of their choice.

tor part of the public,-especially of those who have most loudly lamented the aberrations of the law, and most vehemently insisted on its correction. Our request is, that they will not injure the ultimate success of the experiment by expecting too much at once, and by disheartening themselves and others by precipitate despair. It is not likely that poaching should immediately disappear. The legislator has no fairy wand at his command. The character and habits of a people are beyond his direct control as much as the quality of the soil. All that he can do is to aid and develope the resources of a country, whether physical or moral,-to restrain, by such discouragements as are within his reach, evil habits,-and to endeavour, by alteratives, gradually to superinduce feelings and principles of a higher order. The law can no more prevent stealing pheasants than stealing sheep. It is enough, if it is so framed as not to confound the just principles of right and wrong upon this subject any more than upon any other. Some pains must be taken to talk sense to the people upon it, and impress on their minds the true distinctions;-an example of obedience to this part of the law must be set by the other classes of the community; and time must be allowed for old habits and errors to die away. When this is done, there is no reason to apprehend but that a calm application of proportionate penalties by unsuspected tribunals will accomplish whatever the peace of society requires, and as much as on such a subject can be reasonably expected of acts of Parliament. At all events, whatever happens, it will then not be the law, but the selfish squire and as selfish consumer, the privateering poacher and his dishonest agent, who will be to blame; nor, in our opinion, in very different proportions. Under the former system, the salesman could purchase, early in the season, both in town and country, any number of partridges at a shilling a-piece, and make bis profit. Should this, under the amended system, still continue to be the case, it is plain, unless some efficient, but as yet unsuggested, improvement in the machinery of the regulations can be devised, that there is no help for it. We shall see clearly, however, where the evil lies. Many schoolboys are brought up in the faith that occupancy is the true doctrine in an orchard or a duckpond. If grown-up men will act on the same principle in so serious a question as the present, and proceed as though the subject of so much deliberation were, after all, only what is called fair game, instead of a substantial interest, ratione soli, we know of no means by which an unconscientious and unreasonable public can be made to execute an honest and reasonable law.

ART. IL-The Life of Archbishop Cranmer. By the Rev. HENRY JOHN TODD, M.A. Chaplain in Ordinary to his Majesty, Prebendary of York, and Rector of Settrington, County of York. 2 vols. 8vo: London, 1831.

THE present century, which has now passed its first eventful quarter, and of which the remaining three are probably destined to exhibit deep and essential changes in the general aspect of human affairs, has produced various biographies of English prelates, written with various degrees of talent and learning, but all bearing one conspicuous mark of resemblance, in the zeal and pertinacity with which they recommend to the admiration or acquiescence of mankind all that has been done, and taught, and established by, the CHURCH. The Church of Rome is infallible, and the Church of England never errs; which, if not in the abstract, at least in the concrete, amounts to nearly the same thing. According to the sentiments of some of those writers to whom we now allude, Laud was an excellent prelate. As admiration is apt to engender imitation, it might perhaps be proposed as a reasonable question, whether those who admire the character and conduct of Archbishop Laud might not, according to their opportunities, feel a secret inclination to imitate the vigour and decision with which he strove to check the deviations of unauthorized opinion. Without attempting to crop the ears or slit the noses of those who advanced any plea against prelacy,' they might devise other modes of persecution, less abhorrent to the spirit of the age in which they themselves seem to have been misplaced. The wide current of improvement, which bears so many along with the general stream, must always throw others aside, and leave them entangled among the rank weeds. If Dr Lingard were to undertake the lives of Bonner and Gardiner, there can be little or no doubt that he would cast a friendly shade over their worst actions, and represent them to the world as a couple of excellent prelates.

Of this disposition to praise, or at least to defend, whatever has touched the garment of his own church, Mr Todd has furnished us with many examples. But the subsequent passage, which relates to the first Service-Book of Edward the Sixth, may in some measure enable the reader to discern the spirit of his book: By others of their opinion, the service, as might be expected, was much censured; by multitudes, however, on the other hand, it was received with approbation, joy, and thank'fulness. But an especial cavil against the act for the unifor

mity of divine service, which now gave the book to the public, ' was raised, on account of the assertion in it, that the book was framed by the aid of the Holy Ghost. The expression was main6 tained as just. It was to be understood not as if the compilers had been inspired by extraordinary assistance, for then there had been no room for any correction of what was now done; 'but in the sense of every good motion and consultation being directed, or assisted, by the secret influences of divine grace, 'which, even in their imperfect actions, often help the virtuous. While Romanists, down to the present day, appear to 'censure this expression, they are silent as to the confident declaration of one whom they often exalt to undue respect, Bishop Stephen Gardiner, who, writing to the vice-chancellor of Cambridge a few days before the publication of the Necessary Erudition, said, "that the King's Majesty, by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, hath componed all matters of religion." -Vol. II. p. 65. Instead of condemning the gross indecency of this pretence to divine inspiration, he has mustered a very incompetent defence; and apparently distrusting the efficacy of his own arguments, he finally endeavours to justify one absurdity by another.

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Thomas Cranmer, the first Protestant archbishop of Canterbury, was a man of great merits and of great defects; and, in order to display his genuine character, it will be necessary to exhibit a general outline of his history. Descended of an ancient family, he was born on the second of July 1489, at Aslacton, in the county of Nottingham, being the second son of Thomas Cranmer and of his wife Agnes Hatfield. He received what was then considered as a suitable education for a gentleman; nor did he neglect the recreations of hunting and hawking, and the use of the bow. After his father's death, and when he himself was only fourteen years of age, he was sent to Jesus Colledge, Cambridge, and about the year 1510 he was elected to a fellowship. Erasmus, one of the great restorers of solid and elegant learning, had already contributed his powerful aid in rescuing this university from scholastic jargon and monkish barbarism. The rectitude of Cranmer's understanding enabled him to give a beneficial tendency to his academical studies: not satisfied with the antiquated course, he likewise devoted a portion of his time to the acquisition of the Greek and Hebrew languages; and if he never became celebrated for the purity or elegance of Latinity, it must be recollected that his chief attention was devoted to higher objects. Before he had reached the twenty-third year of his age, he vacated his fellowship by marriage. His wife, who in reality appears to have been the daughter of a gentle

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man, some Catholic writers of his own time have industriously represented as a woman of low condition; and were we even to admit the accuracy of their representations, it is not easy to perceive that he would thus be curtailed of any portion of his moral dignity. He was now employed as a reader or lecturer in Magdalen, or, as it was then called, Buckingham College; and, says John Fox, for that he would with more diligence apply that his office of reading, placed his said wife in an inn called the Dolphin, the wife of the house being of affinity to her. By 6 reason whereof, and of his open resort unto his wife at that inn, he was much marked of some Popish merchants; whereupon rose the slanderous noise and report against him after he 'was preferred to the archbishopric of Canterbury, raised up by "the malicious disdain of certain malignant adversaries to Christ and his truth, bruiting abroad everywhere, that he was but a 'hostler, and therefore without all good learning.' His wife died about twelve months after their marriage; and it is an obvious proof of the estimation in which he was held, that he was immediately restored to the fellowship which he had vacated. He pursued his studies with renewed ardour; and adhering to the plan of reading with a pen in his hand, he now prepared a stock of materials which he found of no small value in his future controversies; or, to adopt the sufficiently quaint phraseology of his biographer, the abundant references he was thus accustomed to 'make, readily served him, in the days of controversy, for excellent defence, or easily led him on to absolute conquest.'

In the year 1524 he declined the offer of a fellowship in the college which Wolsey had founded at Oxford. About the same period he took the degree of D.D., and was appointed to the lectureship in that faculty by his own college. In 1526 he was nominated one of the public examiners in divinity; and in this situation he appears to have been instrumental in scattering the seeds of reformation. 'His examinations of those who wished to proceed in divinity were therefore not in the sentences of the schoolmen, as was the custom of former days, but in the sacred pages. To none who were not well acquainted with these, would he allow the degree required; and by many, in after-days, he was ingenuously thanked for his conscientious 'determination, which bade them "aspire unto better knowledge" than the sophistry they had hitherto studied.' He had been intrusted with the education of the two sons of a gentleman named Cressy, who resided in the parish of Waltham-Abbey, and county of Essex, and whose wife was related to Cranmer. Being driven from Cambridge by an epidemic distemper, the preceptor and his pupils retired to Cressy's house; nor does it

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