sides, not a purchase of an estate takes place, not a lease of a farm is granted, in which a proportionate abatement is not made for tithes, where tithes are due of right. They do no wrong, therefore -they impose no unjust burden either on purchaser or tenant-but they are held for a particular purpose, which these people would be glad to vote useless. They are tenures by Divine service, and that service is performed. The doors of our Churches stand open every Sunday; there we are in constant attendance to do our duty-and if the People will not do theirs by listening to our instructions, this is no reason, but with Jacobins, for robbing us of our support.

With the payment of tithes, however, these poor Remonstrants have little concern-but Church dues and offerings are oppressive.-Let us see now how this matter stands :-Wages, we suppose even they will admit, are due for work done-but perhaps these are inordinate and excessive-now, for the sum of tenpence, one of the "idle men in black" has not unfrequently to wait for an hour or more in a damp church, and afterwards to inter a corpse bare-headed, in cold wind and rain, at the peril of life-yet, for the same office, the same fee was paid in the reign of James the First, when that sum would have purchased six times the quantity of the necessaries of life that it will at present.

Again, not for the sum of ten-pence, but for nothing, the idle man in black" plunges without scruple into the midst of pestilent and infectious air, to comfort the sick and dying; sometimes, too, where the dying and the dead are mingled in the same apartment. For the sum, not of ten-pence, but of nothing, the idle man in black" is called, no matter in what weather, or at what hour, by day or night, the distance of miles in order to administer private baptism to children whom he finds in perfect health. Such is the treatment which we receive at these coarse and merciless hands, not because we do not teach and warn the people, but because we do teach and warn them to shun their wiched seducers.

As another instance of the monstrous misrepresentation by which the hatred of the people is excited against their superiors, I must once more refer to the wretched composition already mentioned, in which the Magistrates are required to give up their augmented salaries; a species of disinterestedness not very practicable, since it is well known that the Magistrates serve their country, not only without fee or reward, but at a co nsiderable expence to themselves.

Another popular topic of calumny and murmurs is the Corn Bill, of which the people are taught that it is a conspiracy between Administration and the landed interest in Parliament, to enrich the Farmer by starving the Poor.

With their utter inability to compre hend any complicated question of policy or political economy, the painful feelings which they endure in consequence of this misconception, would be pitiable, were not their claim to compassion mitigated by the presumption of forming a judgment on the subject-yet they feel, alas! the pressure of want, they seek for a cause, and are directed to their greatest benefactors. For such assuredly are those who, in the face of popular clamour, dare to provide against famine by an unpopular and even perilous enactment. Yet what the prejudices of the vulgar will not permit them to comprehend, has long been understood by political economists, namely, that an indiscriminate permission to import grain, must necessarily diminish the production of that great support of life in our own country, and that, unless the Farmer were to receive a guarantee for the sale of his produce at a certain price, husbandry would be converted into pasturage, and the wholesome check upon prodigality in the consumption, which is a moderate price, would be removed in the earlier part of the year, the consequence of which must be, not dearth but famine before the next harvest.

Of the beneficial effects of this decried system of policy, we have at this moment the happiest experience; since after the last disastrous barvest a surplus of sound and wholesome grain, adequate to the national consumption for five months was remaining over and above the consumption of the former year (a certain effect of the Corn Bill), so that we are but just beginning to eat musty bread, at the time when the first symptoms of a genial spring are beginning to exhibit the promise of another harvest. 'It is truly astonishing, that the obvious cause of so large a portion of our calamities should be so little attended to.

Among those whose clamours are loud and unceasing on other accounts, no murmur is heard against Providence. I speak not this to their credit; their acquiescence is not that of submission, but of neglect; they have almost ceased, I fear, to acknowledge a superintending Providence. Yet, as a matter of fact, every morsel of bread which they eat might convince them that the last sea son had been most disastrous, and the

difficulty

difficulty with which they procure a scanty pittance of grain, that the har7 vest had been very defective. Artificial scarcity can never be extreme, or of long duration. Now bad this calamity befallen the country at the most flourish ing period of our manufactures, it would have been severely felt. Money cannot multiply the produce of the earth, nor alter its physical properties. But the tremendous difficulty which we have to encounter, is the concurrence of this great visitation of Providence with a general stagnation of commerce, a necessary cessation of labour, and an unemployed and half-starved population. Pitiable, indeed, is their case at present; yet it is still more so, that in attempting to account for this unexpected phænomenon, they should lend their under standings to men at once shallow, plausible, and wicked, who teach them to ascribe it to causes scarcely more connected with the effect than planetary influence. Could the extinction of pensions and sinecures, for instance, afford every sufferer a meal in a month? Or would Annual Parliaments and Universal Suffrage have any effect upon the Atmosphere? nay, even on the flux and reflux of Commerce? Would they not rather consume the time of the poor in cabals and intrigues, in idleness and

waste?

The great combination of causes to which our present evils are to be traced, bas in some degree perplexed the deepest thinkers: to those who suffer most severely from them, they are certainly not wholly intelligible-yet these plain considerations may be of some use. The astonishing energies put forth by the Nation in the last long protracted struggle, were not like the temperate exertious of a man in health, but the violent efforts of a patient in a fever they must in consequence be succeeded by relaxation and debility.-The very waste of war itself brought out so much raw material of every kind, modified in such a variety of ways, and employing such a multitude of hands, that while the Nation, as such, was on the point of being exhausted by the expence, all the gradations of society employed in ́ manufactures were individually prosperous. -It followed, that for all the necessaries of life they were able and willing to pay advanced prices: this occasioned the racking of rents, and that in many instances for terms yet unexpired.-Still, with all these advantages experienced by the landed interest, taxation was severely felt; so that while one half of the people was living in plenty by the War, GENT. MAG. Murch, 1817.

the other half was embarrassing the Government by clamours for Peace.

Peace at length arrived-the vast machine of Commerce suspended its mo tions at once; and an effect unhappily followed which the wisest of men had not distinctly foreseen-namely, general, but, we trust, temporary distress. There is in poverty a tendency to propagate and perpetuate itself. Its first effect is diminished consumption, extending itself to every rank in society, and every necessary of life.

A few familiar instances may suffice to illustrate this observation:-The first necessary of life is food, and the first object of economy is cloathing. Now when the labourer or mechanic is on the point of being reduced from a proportion of nutritious animal food to preparations of grain, his first struggle will be to procure even a diminished supply of the first; his second, to obtain food at all. In proportion as the first is abandoned, want recoils upon the butcher, and from the butcher upon the grazier. Hence the rent is unpaid, or paid by means of a ruinous distress.

Again, poverty and rags are two ideas more frequently associated than poverty and emptiness; and the reason is obvious that the former appearance is produced in order to remove the latter. Hence it follows that articles of cloathing lie unpurchased on the shelf-the mereer wants not his usual supply from the manufacturer the manufacturer discards his workmen-the farmer's wool lies u purchased in his storehouse, and the landlord, as before, is the ultimate sfferer. Still, however, the evil can be but temporary; human wants will sooner or later force a supply-this will stimulate the reviving spirit of industry, and the rewards of industry will once more increase the circulation and consumption.

But there is another cause of the present stagnation, which cannot be remembered without thankfulness- our houses and villages have not been destroyed by the flames of war; our fields laid waste, or our fences leveled, by its ravages. All these mischiefs have befallen the unhappy countries which have been the seats of war--countries toe, which, from the mildness of their climate, are more independent upon importation than ourselves.-These mischiefs must first be repaired; and where is the wonder, it, during the period at which this great and universal process is going on, foreign commerce should be suspended? The work, however, will in no long time be accomplished; the inbabitants

bitants of those countries will once more discover that they want cloathing as well as shelter, and a large proportion of that cloathing must come from Great Britain. These views of the subject are at least as rational as the theories of demagogues and political quacks.

First

It would be a waste of time to say any thing on the more rational and feasible schemes of Parliamentary Reform, because the persons with whom we have to contend, are no less hostile to them than ourselves; but with respect to the great topic of annual parlia ments, and universal suffrage, a few remarks may not be thrown away. then (for nothing is too extravagant for modern effrontery to assert, or modern credulity to swallow) it may seem to be the persuasion of some men, that, at a period of perfeet wisdom and justice, no one can tell when, the British Constitution was hit off at a stroke, with all the equipoises and adjustments of a new and finished machine; but that, time having corroded some of the parts, and human folly and interest having disarranged others, it has at length reached the period of corruption and deeay, in which it now totters and vacilJates towards its last movement. Now it may, or it may not, benefit the ingenious persons who have made this discovery, to be assured that there never was such a time or transaction; and that, whereas the two higher branches of the Legislature, by which, according to the best Legal Antiquaries, are to be understood the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, may be traced through the long period of the Saxon annals, the demoeratical branch arose at a much later ara. But this branch of the Legislature was for a considerable time almost wholly under the controul of the Nobles. Before their vast estates were subdivided, whole Counties were nearly shared between them, the Bishops, and the Religious Houses-the Boroughs for the most part, rose under the walls of their castles, and were dependent upon them. In direct contradiction, therefore, to the crude ideas of modern theorists, every thing has been gradually tending to augment the power and independence of the House of Commons.

The great estates of the old Nobility have been gradually frittered away, while the dissolution of the Religious Houses created Freeholders almost without number. Then again, the vast depreciation of money has encreased the number of persons entitled to the elective suffrage in the ratio of more than ten to one: and from all these causes it is demonstrable that the Electors

of Representatives in Parliament were never so numerous as at present. Inequalities, undoubtedly, and great ine. qualities, in representation there are. A Nobleman, for example, of their own party, by the help of a few posts numbered and ticketed in his park, makes no scruple of returning as many members as the County of York; but, on the whole, the principle of inequality is evidently weakening; whether for the better or the worse, I shall not presume to determine.

To Universal Suffrage there are these objections. First, that a set of men returned by the mob must necessarily be bold and illiterate demagogues, incapable of sober deliberation. Secondly, that the class of voters excluded by the present system are of all others the most accessible to bribes, and the most unfit to judge as to the qualifications of a candidate. Thirdly, that this scheme is of all others the worst for the purpose of independence; poverty and low selfinterest being the characteristics of such an assembly. Fourthly, supposing them, as the votaries of this system fondly conceive. to preserve their independence inviolate, this circumstance alone would destroy (as it has once happened already) the balance of the Constitution; for those who hold without controul the purse of the Nation can at any time reduce the other branches of the Legislature to insignificance, or to nothing. Remember the Long Parliament, and the influence of the absolute independence bestowed on them by the King, on him

self and the Lords.

Next, as to Annual Elections, there are sober persons who presume to think that a recurrence of epidemical riot and phrenzy throughout the Nation once in seven years is quite enough; and with respect to the risque of bribery, the shorter the term of enriching themselves, the more shameless and the more rapacious they will grow. The history of Provincial Governors appointed for very short terms affords an example of this.

But Annual Parliaments and Univer sal Suffrage are contemptible objects to the radical and fundamental Reformers, the equalizers of property and of man. kind. This monstrous scheme, after having slept in quiet about twenty years, has lately been revived by some despe rate men, who, having nothing to lose by the dissolution of the whole frame of human society, promise to themselves much more than equality in a future distribution. Neither in that event are their expectations unreasonable; for equality, even equality in ruin, is a

state