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as a pure holiday-merely a day of relaxation and amusement: those that choose, observe it religiously; but the public opinion does not lean that way, and the law is silent on the subject. After this deplorable account you will not wonder when you hear of earthquakes and tornados amongst us. But the state of political feeling is, if possible, still more deplorable. Republican principles prevail universally. Those few zealous persons, who, like the ten faithful that were not found by Abraham, might have stood between their heathen neighbours and destruction, even these are among the most decided foes of all legitimacy, except that of a government appointed by the people. They are as fully armed with carnal weapons as with spiritual; and as determined in their animosity against royalty and its appurtenances, as they are against the kingdom of Anti-Christ; holding it as lawful to use the sword of the flesh for the destruction of the one, as that of the spirit for the other.

'Children are not baptized or subjected to any superstitious rite; the parents name them, and that is all: and the last act of the drama is as simple as the first. There is no consecrated burial place or funeral service. The body is enclosed in the plainest coffin; the family of the deceased convey the corpse into the woods; some of the party are provided with axes, and some with spades; a grave is prepared, and the body quietly placed in it; then trees are felled, and laid over the grave to protect it from wild beasts. If the party belong to a religious community, preaching sometimes follows; if not, a few natural tears are shed in silence, and the scene is closed. These simple monuments of mortality are not unfrequent in the woods. Marriages are as little concerned with superstitious observances as funerals; but they are observed as occasions of festivity. We are not quite out of hearing of the world and its bustle, but the sound is rather long in reaching us. We receive the Philadelphia daily papers once a week, about a month after they are published; in these we read extracts from the English journals of the month preceding: so we take up the news as you forget it; and what happened three months ago in Europe is just now on the carpet here.'-pp. 23-25.

The administration of justice in these back-woods, by the 'circuit court,' must needs be delightful. Morris Birkbeck, who has as little regard for law as for religion, thus introduces his honour' the judge, and the gentlemen of the jury, to his correspondent.

'Your military or fox-hunting experience has, I dare say, furnished adventures similar to those which are constantly occurring here to the gentlemen of the long robe, on their progress from court to court. The judge and the bar are now working their way to the next county seat, through almost trackless woods, over snow and ice, with the thermometer about zero. In last November circuit the judge swam his horse, I think, seven times in one day; how often in the whole circuit is not in the record. What would our English lawyers say to seven such ablutions in one November day? and then to dry their clothes on their back by turning round and round before a blazing fire, preparatory to a

night's

night's lodging on a cabin floor wrapped in their blankets; which, by the by, are the only robes used by the profession here.

'I have an anecdote of a judge with whom I am well acquainted, and therefore I believe it. I give it you as an instance of intrepidity, as well as of that ferocious violence which occurs but too frequently; by no means, however, as a specimen of the judicial character. A few years ago, before he was advanced to his present diguity, the foreman of a grand jury insulted him outrageously, out of court, of course. The man had a large knife in his hand, such as hunters always carry about them, and well know the use of; but the enraged barrister, with a handwhip, or cow-hide as they are called, laid on so keenly that he actually cut his jacket to ribbons in defiance of the knife; and when the beaten and bleeding juryman made his piteous case known to his brethren, they fined him a dozen of wine for his cowardice.

Another anecdote. A notorious offender had escaped from confinement, and, mounted on a capital horse, paraded the town where the judge resided, with a brace of loaded pistols, calling at the stores and grog-shops, and declaring he would shoot any man who should attempt to molest him. The judge hearing of it, loaded a pistol, walked deliberately up to the man to apprehend him, and on his making show of resistance shot him immediately. The ball entered the breast and came out behind, but did not prove mortal. He fell, was reconducted to gaol, escaped a second time, and was drowned in crossing the Ohio.'— pp. 60-62.

These are really the only amusing passages that we could find in the whole volume. Its chief characteristic is dullness-this we did not expect from Mr. Morris Birkbeck; but he appears already to have exhausted his common-place book, and we have therefore little more than the most wearisome and uninteresting repetitions of the price of building log huts, fencing, cropping, &c., and of anticipations', on a grand scale, of what his estate may be worth, fourteen years hence-interlarded with a copious sprinkling of vituperation against the rents, the taxes, and the villainous aristocracy' of England, whose downfall he gaily announces. The 'dreadful crisis,' he assures us, is at hand. p. 28. And, in generously giving some parliamentary news to a friend, only eighteen months after that friend must have learned it on the spot, he rises in his pretensions,

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' veluti fanaticus, œstro

Percussus, Bellona, tuo, divinat'!—

and exclaims-'I hear of a loan too, for the interest of which you must have new taxes!'

While the delighted prophet is thus viewing, in ecstatic vision, poor England involved in clouds, and abandoned to hopeless misery and despair, that elastic country is basking in the broad sunshine of peace and prosperity. Her soil, at this moment, is covered with the richest blessings of heaven; the busy hum of industry is

heard

heard in all her streets; every port is crowded; and ocean groans under the fleets that are posting towards her with every wind that blows. England, in short, wants nothing but thankfulness; nothing but a due sense of the mercies which are heaped upon her with an unsparing hand.

Sunk, however, and ruined as she is, in Mr. Birkbeck's opinion, he frankly acknowledges he would have been well satisfied to remain in her if he had owned the estate which he only rented―rented too from one of the villainous aristocrats.' It seems, however, by his own confession, that as long as he held it for about a third of its value, he imitated his landlord, and lived as if it had been actually his own; and when he at length discovered his mistake, he grew angry, railed against the government and its institutions, and quitted the country. In what manner this imitator of a gentleman farmer lived while things went on smoothly, is pretty broadly glanced at in one of his letters.

'Here,' (in the back-settlements,) 'I shall be employed in enlarging the circle of our enjoyments; there,' (in Sussex,) 'I was contracting it daily. My family had already made several downward movements; we had learnt to dispense with the comfort of a carriage; we mounted our horses instead: this was no bad exchange; but the cause of our making the exchange was irksome. From horseback my daughters cheerfully enough betook themselves to their feet: no great harm in that, only it was by compulsion. So we went down step by step.'-p. 28.

Had this man submitted, during his long course of prosperity, to a thousandth part of the privations which are now forced upon him, it is apparent, from his own statement, that he might have. realized a sufficient sum to purchase the estate which he cultivated; but vanity first indulged to excess, and then mortified, joined to a want of principle, destroyed all his advantages, drove him from society, and settled him down' in the pestilential swamps of the Wabash; whence he looks at England (like another great' anticipator') with jealous leer malign, and seeks some alleviation of his ulcerated feelings, in attempting to seduce her capitalists to follow his steps, and partake in his wretchedness.

Doctor Johnson, in his strong language, has somewhere said, that 'patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. The patriotism of Morris Birkbeck, we will do him the justice to believe, is not exactly that which is meant by the Doctor:-in fact, we know not well what it is; for he seems to disclaim the feeling, as well as the word in every sense of it with which we are acquainted.

'Our friend Cobbett,' he says, 'declaims about patriotism in sounding phrases, but I adhere to the maxim "ubi libertas ibi patria." What is country? the soil? Of this I was only an occupant. The government? I abhorred its deeds and its principles. The church? I did not believe

in its doctrines, and had no reverence for the clergy. The army ? No. The law? We have the same law here, with some omissions and some improvements. The people? Yes; but not the fund-holders, nor the soi-disant House of Commons; not the consumers, nor the creators of taxes.'-pp. 28, 29.

Mr. Birkbeck bears hard upon our friend Cobbett.' The object of both is the same, namely, money; the commodities only in which they deal are different. Friend Cobbett' has nothing but patriotism to sell, and he therefore sets it off, as Mr. Birkbeck truly says, 'in sounding phrases.' Friend Morris has land to dispose of, and he naturally does the same. But both are equally sincere, equally disinterested, and-to sum up all in a wordequally to be trusted. We feel an honest pleasure in rescuing Mr. Cobbett from the invidious attack of this reformed Quaker.

On the whole, detesting, as we most cordially do, all the principles avowed by Mr. Birkbeck, moral and political, (religious, as we have seen, he has none,) we are ready to give him the credit of having written an entertaining little volume of Notes,' in which we are presented with an interesting and in some measure a faithful picture of the country through which he travelled, and the people with whom he had any intercourse. His 'Letters from Illinois' are of a different character: there is nothing in them that can excite the least degree of interest, except, perhaps, in those unfortunate persons whom he may succeed in seducing from the land of their fathers, in order to dispose of that property, which, with all its cheapness, is evidently a dead weight upon his hands.

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One word more and we have done. Whatever New America' may have gained by the name of Birkbeck having ceased to be found in the list of the citizens of Old England, the latter has no reason to regret the loss. Many more of the same stamp may well be spared to wage war with the bears and red Indians of the 'back-woods' of America. For us-bad as England is represented, by such as, for reasons to which we have more than once alluded, may find it inconvenient to remain in it, we would rather possess a little cottage, with a few roods of land, perched on the skirts of a smiling common, mantled with the golden furze and the purple heath, than as many thousand acres of the pine barrens' and 'savannahs' of either New or Old America-well contented to exclaim with the poet,

'England, with all thy faults, we love thee still-
Our country! and, while yet a nook is left
Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrain'd to love thee.'-

ART.

ART. III.—1. A Treatise upon the Poor Laws. By T. P. Courtenay, Esq. Svo.

2. Remarks on a Course of Education designed to prepare the Youthful Mind for a Career of Honour, Patriotism, and Philanthropy. By Thomas Myers, A. M. of the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, &c.

3. A Summary View of the Report and Evidence relative to the Poor Laws, published by order of the House of Commons, with Observations and Suggestions. By S. W. Nicoll.

4. A Letter to the Common Council and Livery of the City of London on the Abuses existing in Newgate, &c. By the Hon. H. G. Bennet, M. P.

THE ruin of this kingdom has been predicted by shallow states

men and malcontents rather more frequently than the destruction of the world has been announced by crazy prophets. Yet, because such predictions have proved only the presumptuousness and folly, or the malevolence and madness of those by whom they were uttered, it would be wretchedly illogical to conclude that the world will hold on its regular course through all eternity, or that the fortune of the country will always bear it triumphantly through all difficulties. The doctrine of climacterical years is justly accounted among the obsolete errors of medicine, yet there are seasons of life wherein the probabilities of disease and death are greater than at others, and so it is in the constitution of society. It cannot, indeed, be foreknown, as in the human constitution, when such seasons are to be expected, but they may be well discovered by a judicious observer when they come; and he must have observed little, and reflected less, who does not perceive that this is one of those critical seasons-perhaps a more momentous one than that in which the restoration of letters and the invention of printing, the reformation in religion and the discovery of India and America, gave a new impulse to mankind, and affected them more or less throughout the globe. Whether the crisis shall be for evil or for good depends, under Providence, mainly upon ourselves. It must be for great good or for great evil. Let us inquire what may be done to assist the benignant indications, and counteract those of an opposite cha

racter.

In the progress of that great question, which is at this time before parliament, it may reasonably be hoped that some radical improvement will be effected in the poor laws, and in the condition of that class for whose benefit they were designed, but to whose deterioration they have unquestionably tended. The evil which these laws have produced increased slowly during the seventeenth and the greater part of the eighteenth century, because it had much to over

come

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