and few which are so widely applicable, as that which is contained in the old Ascræan's exclamation,

Νήπιοι, εδ ̓ ἴσασιν ὅσῳ πλέον ἥμισυ παντος

It may seem, perhaps, paradoxical at first to assert that a Beason of pressure, like the present, is a fit season for undertaking national works; yet nothing can be more certain than that the public must, in some form or other, support those who are deprived of their usual employments; and that it is better to administer this relief in the form of wages, than of poor-rates. The mouths cannot be idle, and as the great object is to prevent the hands. from being so, a time when there are many hands out of employ is, of all others, the time for such labours. One way or other, be it remembered, the men must be maintained: it is, therefore, more wholesome for the community to have the advantage of their labour, and for themselves to feel that they earn their own maintenance, than that they should be fed gratuitously, and that we should have a race in England half Luddite, half Lazzaroni. No time, therefore, can be so proper for national works, for making new naval stations, and improving the old, for cutting roads, draining fens, and recovering tracts of country by embankments from the sea. Better is it to engage in works of ostentatious convenience-better would it be for the state to build pyramids in honour of our Nelsons and Wellingtons, than that men who have hands, and are willing to work, should hunger for want of employ

ment.

Things of this kind (and many such might be devised) are palliatives, which, in this case, are all that are required; this part of the evil being but for a season. The radical evil can only be cured by a course of alteratives. Discussions and speculations upon first principles of government and abstract rights, with a view to the formation of some New Atlantis, or Utopia, have an effect upon men analogous to that which novel-reading produces upon girls as long as the inebriation lasts, it unfits them to bear their parts in the realities of life, which appear "stale, flat and unprofitable" to their heated and high-fed fancies. They become dissatisfied with the society in which they are placed, and because they cannot remodel its institutions according to their own notions of perfection, instead of endeavouring to lessen the quantum of evil in the world, they increase it by their factious, or querulous discontent. The good which may be done in this country is immeasurably great, the disposition to it in our rulers cannot be doubted; the means are in our own hands; the invention of printing did not come more opportunely for the restoration of letters, and the blessed work of reformation, than Dr. Bell's discovery to vaccinate the next generation against the pestilence

which has infected this. The greatest boon which could be conferred upon Britain (and this is of such paramount importance that we cannot enforce it too earnestly, or repeat it too often) is a system of national education, established by the legislature in every parish, as an outwork and bulwark of the national church; so that instruction should be given to all who cannot pay for it: that as none can die for want of food in England, (the poor-rates not having been commuted for wedding sermons against procreation,) so none should be suffered to perish for lack of knowledge. Reverting to immediate relief, as well as permanent good, why should not government extend its military and naval seminaries, so that every body who needed an asylum should know where to find one? Would it not be better that the workhouses should empty themselves into our fleets and armies, than that they should pack off children by wagon-loads to grow up in the stench and moral contagion of cotton mills while the trade flourishes, and to be thrown out of employ, and turned upon the public, when it meets with any sudden revulsion? Seminaries of this kind may be so conducted as to cost little more than well-regulated workhouses. Boys become useful at sea at a very early age. There is no danger of overstocking ourselves with seamen; in peace the merchant service will require all that the navy can dismiss, and in war we know what is suffered from the difficulty of procuring hands. Train up children for the land and sea service, instruct them, too, in their moral and religious duties, encourage them by honorary rewards, pension them off after they have served as many years as their country ought to require: they will love the service; and the arts of our enemies will be as unavailing as their arms. For the surplus of an army, when war shall be at an end, there is, indeed, no such immediate employment as would be offered for our seamen; but the same means which would, above all others, tend to promote the power and security of Great Britain, would provide an outlet for this redundance also.

National education is the first thing necessary. Lay but this foundation, and the superstructure of prosperity and happiness which may be erected will rest upon a rock; the rains may descend, and the floods come, and the winds blow and beat upon it, and it will not fall. Lay but this foundation, poverty will be diminished, and want will disappear in proportion as the lower classes are instructed in their duties, for then only will they understand their true interests; they will become provident, and the wages of labour may be greatly advanced to the unequivocal benefit of all persons; thus will the poor-rates be diminished, and thus only may they be ultimately abolished. Thus also should we render ourselves less dependent upon the foreign consumer; the labourer, being better taught and better paid, would acquire a Vot. II. New Series.

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taste for the new comforts which would then be placed within his reach, and by raising this class of the community a step in civilization, we create a new and numerous class of customers at home.

Is it not easy, then, to conceive ourselves in that state when the wishes of Henry IV. and of our own king should be fulfilled; when every family should have its wholesome and abundant meal, and every child be able to read its bible? To that state we are advancing; and if the anarchists and their infatuated coadjutors do not succeed in exploding the mine which they are preparing under our feet, at that state we may arrive. Neither Mr. Malthus's checks of war, famine, pestilence and vice, nor his comfortable wedding sermons, would be required to render it permanent. Unquestionably we should increase and multiply. There would be more Englishmen in the world, more of the countrymen of the Blakes and the Nelsons, the Wolfes and the Wellingtons, the Drakes and the Dampiers, and the Cookes, the Harveys and the Hunters, the Bacons and the Newtons and the Davys, the Hookers and the Burkes, the Shakspeares and the Miltons; more of that flesh and blood which has carried our name to every part of the habitable globe; more of that intellect which has dived into the depths of nature; more of that spirit which has com passed earth and heaven!

The labouring classes have a natural tendency to increase faster than the higher ranks. Celibacy is much less frequent among them; they are more prolific, and, except among the miserably poor in cities, a larger proportion of their children is reared. This natural and necessary increase of the working part of the community is in its effects just what we make it. If the duty of providing for this increase, and of instructing the people, be neglected, it is danger and ultimate destruction; but if these duties be performed, population then becomes security, power, glory and dominion. All that is required to render it so is, that we should go to the ant and the bee, consider their ways and be wise: that we should learn from wise antiquity, on this point indeed truly deserving to be styled so; that we should do our part in obedience to the first great commandment, which bids us" Replenish the earth and subdue it."

Let the reader cast a thought over the map, and see what elbowroom there is for England. We have Canada with all its territory, we have Surinam, the Cape Colony, Austral-Asia, countries which are collectively more than fifty-fold the area of the British isles, and which a thousand years of uninterrupted prosperity would scarcely suffice to people. It is time that Britain should become

See this subject treated in Dr. Jarrold's Dissertations on Man, a book where the question of population is discussed with real originality, and where true philosophy and true piety enlighten and support cach other.

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the hive of nations, and cast her swarms; and here are lands to receive them. What is required of government is to encourage emigration by founding settlements, and facilitating the means of transport. Imagine these countries as they would be a few centuries hence, and must be, if some strange mispolicy does not avert this proper and natural course of things; the people enjoying that happiness and those domestic morals, which seem to proceed from no other root than the laws and institutions with which Providence has favoured us above all others: imagine these wide regions in the yet uncultivated parts of the earth flourishing like our own, and possessed by people enjoying our institutions and speaking our language. Whether they should be held in colonial dependence, or become separate states, or when they may have ceased to depend upon the parent country, connected with her by the union of reverential attachment on one side, and common interests on both, is of little import upon this wide view of things. In America, at this day, hostile America, unhappily alienated from her dependence upon England by our misconduct and the artifices of our com mon enemy, and now the wanton aggressor in a war undertaken in obsequiousness to that enemy; still in America, whatever is civilized, whatever is intellectual, whatever is ennobling, whatever is good or great, is, and must ever be, of English origin.

"Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it." This was the first great commandment given for collective society, and what country has ever been so richly empowered to act in obedience to it as England at this day? The seas are ours, and to every part of the uninhabited or uncivilized world our laws, our language, our institutions, and our Bible, may be communicated. Fear not if these seeds be sown, but that God will give the increase! Earthquakes may shake this island from its foundation, or volcanic eruptions lay it waste, or it may sink into the abyss, and leave only rocks and shoals to mark its place; (this earth bears upon it the monuments of wider physical ruins ;) but earth itself must be destroyed before thatfrom which Britain derives her eminence can perish, if she do but enlarge herself, and send forth preher blessings to the remotest parts of the globe.

ORIGINAL REVIEW.

The Emerald Isle, a Poem., By Charles Phillips, Esq.

THE beneficial influence of criticism has been acknowledged at all times, and by all enlightened persons, except certain authors whose writings have occasionally been made an example of, for the benefit of the public taste, in like manner as offenders against the laws are executed for the benefit of the public morals. Among the many causes which have operated to produce that admirable perfection in literature, which is unquestionably the distinguishing characteristic of the present age, the establishment of courts of criticism has undoubtedly been one of the most efficient. To their salutary influence it is principally owing that there are so many excellent writers now living, who, without the aid of either genius or learning, but merely by the precepts of the sublime critical art, have attained such astonishing excellence, and bore away the palm from those who arrogantly presumed to depend on their own resources for support.

It cannot be denied, we think, that it is in a great measure owing to the wholesome control exercised by these courts of criticism, that the authors of the present age have attained such wonderful proficiency in the art of being dull with the most scrupulous regard to critical rules. The early writers were a set of illustrious outlaws, who, like the Border chiefs, did not scruple, if they became enamoured of a certain grace or beauty, to seize it without any regard to the laws, and appropriate it to their own use. Thus did they indeed enrich their productions with a variety of brilliant ornaments, but it was at the expense of violating those established regulations, by the observance of which Miss Joanna Baillie has so far exceeded Shakspeare, and Mr. Scott's modern Epics are so superior to Homer and Virgil. In fact, to what but to the establishment of these high tribunals, to which the honest public repair to see justice done upon offending authors, as the mob go to see the execution of a malefactor, can we ascribe the wonderful supe