child, who happens to have gained a legal settlement within its limits: and this, without the least regard to its size in proportion to population, to the ability of its rate-payers, or to the pressure of any crushing emergency. Let the fund for employment of labour in a parish cease to be adequate, this might occur through repeal of the Corn Laws in more than one agricultural district, this has occurred through existence of those laws in many a manufacturing township,-immediately the incomes of the rate-payers [whether employers of labour or no] must be taxed to supply the deficit, and maintain those who (the Law has said) shall live upon the labour of others, whenever their own happens to fail them within the narrow bounds of their parish, and shall not only be dispensed but discouraged from seeking in any other parish fresh sources of employment, which may be running waste for want of hands.* The question for the rate-payers, under this law-begotten necessity of maintaining a labouring population, whose labour has ceased to maintain itself, will often resolve itself into a choice between ruin instant or ultimate ; and the only means of avoiding the former alternative (by embracing the latter) may be by aid of this same system of allowance. Even the choice supposes a parish where ruin is only as yet in progress—where the law which says no man shall starve, has not as yet diffused starvation over the whole body of parishioners-where the final goal of abandonment of property, and cessation of tillage, has not as yet been happily arrived at-a result outstripping, in many places, the warmest aspirations of the wise admirers of compulsory charity, and its consequences.† One example is worth a dozen arguments. "The township of Winlaton, near Newcastle, (See Mr. Wilson's Report from Durham,) affords a striking instance of the intolerable burthens often thrown on narrow localities by casualties impossible to foresee or to provide against. The failure of the iron-works of Crowley, Millington, & Co., in 1815, raised the rates in that township at once to sixteen shillings in the pound on the rack-rent, while the adjacent township remained at 2s. or 3s. It also, in a manner, compelled the adoption of the Allowance System, which Winlaton township has never since been able to throw off." The process was concisely as follows:-On the failure of the abovementioned establishment, involving the loss of a benefit-fund to which the men subscribed, and which was intrusted to the care of their employers, The Rev. R. R. Bailey, who has had extensive opportunities of observing the operation of the Poor Laws in the rural districts, states," Very frequent instances have occurred to me of one parish being full of labourers, and suffering greatly from want of employment, whilst in another adjacent parish, there is a demand for labour. I have no doubt that if the labourers were freed from their present trammels, there would be such a circulation of labour as would relieve the agricultural districts." p. 271. The following is extracted from a communication made by the Rev. H. P. Jeston, Rector of Cholesbury, Bucks, to the Poor-Law Commissioners : "I am informed, by the very oldest of my parishioners, that, sixty years ago, there was but one person who received parish relief; but it should seem that the parish, for many years past, has been an overburdened one; though within the last year the burdens have been much increased by the land going out of cultivation, and the whole population of the parish being thrown upon the rates. In fact, for some years, I understand the land was let only by means of the proprietors consenting to become guarantee to the tenant against more than a certain amount of parochial burdens, all above that amount to be considered in lieu of rent. At the present moment some of the proprietors, in answer to communications from me upon parish affairs, have confessed an intention to abandon altogether their property in the parish, rather than give themselves further trouble about it, from their actually having lost money by it—the rates having more than swallowed up the rents." the discharged hands were all at once entirely thrown on the parish. The practical problem now left for solution by the rate-payers was, how the consequence to themselves might be stopped short of complete ruin. This could only be done by finding work for the new applicants, and enabling them at least to contribute, in part, to their own maintenance. The course adopted was to apportion them out amongst the neighbouring farmers, at such a pittance of wages as the latter could be induced to give for the services of mechanics wholly unused to farm labour. The men's wages were then made up by the parish to the rate considered requisite for subsistence. Even thus, the rates rose to 16s. on the rackrent, and a practice thus commenced on the mere natural impulse of selfpreservation, has remained an obstinate incubus on the township, up to the present hour. Such of our observations as have seemed to import disparagement to an active fellow-labourer in the same field, Mr. Poulett Scrope, have proceeded from no other source than a natural antagonism to the twist which that respectable gentleman's mental muscles always contract, when he rushes into collision with those whom he brands as theorists and economists, and amongst whom we presume he includes Mr. Senior, and one or two other gentlemen, to whom the public is primarily indebted for an inquiry which has elicited more practical knowledge (teste the volume now before us) than had been gathered from all previous researches put together. We disclaim, however, any wish to depreciate Mr. Poulett Scrope's own services in the treatment of this subject; and may probably revert to them, in considering the remedies proposed for existing evils, at some future opportunity. ON THE REVIEW OF MISS MARTINEAU'S ILLUSTRATIONS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE LAST EDINBURGH REVIEW. THERE are many passages of truth and beauty in the article on Miss Martineau's Illustrations of Political Economy in the last Edinburgh Review: but it is painful to add, that there is, throughout the whole article, a false and a poor tone of scepticism which mars much of its truth and beauty. So it has always been with the Edinburgh Review. If the Quarterly has confessedly been the bigot's review, always standing up for established principles and practices, however false and mischievous; the Edinburgh has been no less surely the sceptic's Review, always sneering at man's highest hope, with just so much management as might flatter a sect, whilst it advanced the interests of a party. It is this defect of the highest principle which will account for a change very likely to be more and more conspicuous in the two Reviews. The professions of the Quarterly will gradually be sharpened and embittered into sneers, as it becomes the instrument of a low party, and begins to be ashamed of representing a suffering sect. Already the sneers of the Edinburgh Review have been dulcified and mollified into professions, in becoming the organ of the high party, in order to connect itself more strongly with what hopes to be the dominant sect. But in this transition-state of litterateurs, it will be seen that whilst the poet laureat, if not prevented by habit and character, may regain a position of mind quite as natural to his faculties, and nearly as suitable to his attainments, as that he has so long assumed; the Lord Chancellor, urged on by situation and circumstances, will find his power of supporting errors unnatural, and ineffective, and painful, compared with his power of shaking them. The Quarterly Editor will, we venture to predict, when he is once convinced that his vocation is in that direction, have no difficulty in becoming a most finished and powerful sceptic; to the confusion, if not to the amazement of his quondam friends of the High Church. But Edinburgh Reviewers, though they have for some time past seen plainly that their present cue is profession, are not able to quit that sceptic tone which, though false in itself, is the true tone of the Review. Let the Quarterly officials be long out, and we shall see its editor matching the Encyclopedists in keen sarcasm, supported by no little learning. Let the Edinburgh be long in, and we shall see its Reviewers sinking to a level with "my Grandmother's Review, the British," in weakness of asseverated dogmatisms, though perhaps they may be more speciously expressed in formulas of science. In a word, days of power will dawn on the Quarterly in proportion as its ex officio writers feel their places to be irrecoverably gone; and a twilight of weakness will creep over the Edinburgh, as its placemen politicians waste their strength in clinging to the errors they are pledging themselves to support. The above reflections are not flattering to the principles of the Whig and Tory Reviews. That is not our fault; though it long has been, and we fear will continue for some little time longer, to be not our misfortune only, but indeed a great national calamity; the calamity of having a school of bigotry in the one Review, and a school of scepticism in the other. What critical acumen or what rhetorical power can compensate a na-tion for the diffusion of such sceptic principles, or rather such sceptic unprincipledness, as is half concealed, half revealed in the following Whig VOL. III.-NO. XV. 2 B dictum, in which the intolerance of scepticism is thinly veiled in the commonplace of moderation,-that juste milieu system which ends in being unjust to man, as it begins by being false to God. "If Miss Martineau can be mistaken respecting the facts of Political Economy, we fear that she is much more likely to be in error about those facts in human nature, and in society, which appear to be the groundwork of her political expectations. There may be facts with which we are unacquainted, which justify the supposition that some day or other society will not require capital punishments."-Edinburgh Review, p. 37. The remainder of the passage affords an example of that witty blending of truth and falsehood, that confusion of a pernicious principle with an acknowledged fact, in which so much of the sophistical art and sophistical mischief of the Edinburgh Review has always consisted. But we beg to recall the attention of our readers to this Whig dictum, insinuated under a Whig doubt,-" There may be facts with which we are unacquainted, which justify the supposition that some day or other society will not require capital punishment." This statement of Sceptic Principle may be what is called, wittily expressed; but we insist that its plain meaning is an insult to the Divine power, or to the Divine goodness-namely, by ascribing to God's eternal system defects whose date will be contemporary with that wickedness and folly of man, from which a sufficient means of escape is supplied, if it be honestly, and, therefore, effectively employed by those who have the power, be they priests, princes, or people. We know no commoner impiety than that of charging on the system of Divine Providence those imperfections in human institutions for which God has supplied a remedy, if man, or rather if those in authority, will but employ it. Will the sceptic tell us that he is unacquainted with any facts in human nature and in society, which justify the supposition, that if the priest would labour in truth and sincerity to give the people, from infancy to old age, sound food for the mind; and if the prince would labour honestly and resolutely to ensure the people, from the monarch to the peasant, sufficient food for the body; that the solitary prison of America, so fearful to the criminal, might not be gradually substituted for that dog-like hanging which, whether we look to the few opportunities, or numerous temptations of the culprit, is unjust,—or whether we look to the Chief Justice who dooms, or the chief agent who executes the sentence, is shocking? In that style of language which the Edinburgh Review affects, and which a keen advocate once employed, we might say, "the very worst use to which a man can be put, is to hang him." But there is a higher principle than utility outraged by this misuse; that diviner principle which, by facts with which we are acquainted, justifies the supposition to our reason that some day or other society will not require capital punishment. To charge the dog-like hanging of our fellow men in perpetuum on the Divine system, and not on the temporary folly and wickedness of those who are in authority, with whatever sneers at High Church, and with whatever professions of Low Church it may be coupled, is the scepticism of principle which chills the hopes of piety, and loosens the bonds of religion. If the common report had been warranted that the Lord Chancellor was editing Paley's Natural Theology,-under which of the Divine attributes, Power, Wisdom, or Goodness, would he have stated this disbelief, namely, of any such law-reform being possible, as may, at some day or other, bring about the repeal of capital punishments? It is to be lamented that such unsound principles, too often professed by writers in order to vindicate a wrong practice, should come to be quoted by readers as warranting that practice; and thus from sceptic principles which were unjust Godward, or in one word impious, a sceptic practice is derived which is unjust manward, or, in one word, irreligious. The following is a fair instance of this Sceptic Practice of the Edinburgh Review :— "When the great object in search of which, under existing circumstances, our men of business and philosophers ought to be looking round them anxiously in all direc tions, is the means of creating a new demand; and whilst quite as much of passion as of reason is turned out against the Corn Laws; the least that we can do is to use our utmost heed in the measures of relaxation which the legislature may be called upon to adopt, that we do not tamper with and injure the old actual demand, without securing a greater corresponding benefit in return. With all who can see more sides of a case than one, and who take the future into their calculations, the recent change in the proportion which our agriculturist and manufacturing population bear to each other, is no subject of unmixed congratulation. It may be doubted whether the supposed restraint upon this tendency, arising out of the Corn Laws-in spite of which, nevertheless, (and within these few years,) the proportion of labourers in husbandry to artisans has been absolutely reversed-is more than prudent legislation might have interposed, with the single view of moderating the transition."-Edinburgh Review, p. 29. Moderating the transition! doubtless a very statesmanlike phrase, "a word of exceeding good command." Yet does this diplomatic phraseology somewhat remind us of the medical and legal "good set terms" which would explain to the patients in law or physic, why a "prudent legislator" will continue to keep them in hand long after nature, spite of that "restraint upon this tendency," has, by “recent changes,” indicated pretty plainly that the patient's constitution is "absolutely reversed." We acknowledge ourselves sceptical about that "singleness of view" which the Reviewer vouches. But we are not sceptical, though the Reviewer is, about the piety or justice of this great principle, viz., that the hungry in this country should be allowed to clothe the naked in another country, in order that the naked in that other country may feed the hungry in this country. If, indeed, there are no facts justifying the supposition that there is a higher authority than that which is clothed "in purple and fine linen," it may be both pious and just to continue that "prudent legislation," which would keep one nation hungry and another nation cold, in order that the prudent legislator may keep up the principle of faring sumptuously every day. Again we ask, if the Lord Chancellor had edited Paley's Natural Theology, under which attribute of the Deity, Power, Wisdom, or Goodness, would he have placed that "prudent legislation" which denies bread to the hungry, and clothing to the naked? This practical scepticism is, we repeat, the real parent of that theoretical scepticism on which it is more commonly affiliated. It is defectiveness in human institutions which finds it convenient to suppose a defect in the divine system. And then this supposed defect in the divine system is quoted whenever it is found convenient as warranting that defectiveness in human institutions which first suggested it. This injustice manward, or, in one word, irreligion, gives rise to injustice Godward, or, in one word, impiety; and then, so complicated is the generation of falsehood, this injustice Godward, or impiety, adduces its suppositions as warranting the realities of injustice manward, or, irreligion. The gradual development of some perfections in the possibilities of God's system is first denied by the sceptic, and then the perpetual continuance of some manifest imperfection is pronounced necessary to |