"To give an unnatural fpur to exportation, by granting a bounty of five fhillings per quarter on wheat, when at or below forty-eight fhillings, and in proportion for the other fpecies of grain, is impolitic, as it has a tendency to opprefs the labouring poor, whom we ought to cherish. It is a fpecious, but falfe ar gument, that the price of labour is in moft cafes proportioned to that of provifions; for, in fome diftricts, the price of labour is fcarcely fufficient for the maintenance of a family; while in fome manufacturing towns they are [it is] too high to be confiftent with the profperity of our trade. A certain portion of the wages of the industrious labourer goes regularly to the exchequer, in the duties on leather, foap, candles, falt, malt liquors, and malt fpirits but thefe lucrative branches of the revenue, in the prefent ftate of our public debt, are indifpenfable. As these taxes, however, operate decifively in raifing the price of labour, and have all the bad confequences of fuch an effect on our manufactures ; fo the heightening the price of provifions by a bounty on the exportation of grain, is certainly an overfight in the legislature. This forced exportation, by means of a bounty, operates feveral ways, in increafing the price of grain in the home market; it prevents the plenty of one year from compenfating the fcarcity. of another; and this fcarcity the legislature inadvertently feems anxious to preferve, by impofing a duty on importation; which must difcourage the induftry of the country, and, confequently, population. For to prohibit, by a perpetual law, the the importation of foreign grain and cattle, is, in reality, to enact, that the population and industry of the country shall at no time exceed what the produce of its own foil can maintain, Befides, the bounty on exportation loads the whole realm, when wheat is near to forty-eight fhillings a quarter, with two different taxes, moft feverely felt by the industrious labourer: the one is, what is contributed for payment of the bounty; and the other is, the tax which arifes from the advanced price of the commodity in the home market." P. 447.

Whether, while in one or more districts or towns the price of labour is too high, it can, in others of the fame nation, be infufficient for the maintenance of a family, feems to be at best doubtful; but these reflexions, fo far as they relate to our foforeign commerce, are certainly judicious. If the price of labour continue to increase, from whatever caufe, as it has increased during the laft twenty years, it is impoffible that we can long obtain a foreign market for our manufactures. The French and Germans are ingenious and fcientific people; and though at prefent their manufactures do not rival our's, they will in time do fo; while the lower price of labour in France and Germany will enable them to underfel us in every market. That the high price of provifions is

one caufe of the high price of labour among us is incontrovertible; and that the bounty on the exportation of corn contributes to keep up the price, this author feems to have fufficiently proved; but we do not perceive, how the quantity of corn could be increased merely by taking the tithe from the clergy, while the modus or compenfation propofed by Dr. Gardiner would indifputably be inadequate. The following obfervations betray fhameful ignorance in a man who prefumes to write for the information of the public.

"The tithe is frequently a very unequal tax upon the rent, and is always a great difcouragement, both to improvements by the landlord, and cultivation by the farmer. It is a real land-tax, making part of the revenue of the clergy; is a heavy bur den on the proprietors of land, but is felt more feverely by the tenants; and is higher than even the land-tax formerly paid into the treasury, for the exigencies of the ftate. The proprietor cannot venture to make the most important, which are commonly the most extenfive improvements, nor the tenant to raife the most valuable, which are likewise, in general, the most expenfive crops, when the church, which lays out no part of the expence, is to fhare fo largely in the produce." P. 483.

Our opinion of Dr. Gardiner's perfpicacity we must ac. knowledge to be not very high; but it is difficult for us to fuppofe it to be so small that he does not perceive the falfhood of almoft every one of these affertions, The tithe can be no tax on the rent, because the tithe never was the property of either the landlord or the tenant. Long before the oldest family now in England got poffeffion of its eftate, the tithe was the property of the Church; and when the estate was purchased by the original ancestor, it was purchased for fo much the lefs price. There is not a tenant in England liable to the payment of tithe, who was not aware of that circumstance before he entered on his leafe, and who, in confequence, did not agree to pay to the landlord fo much lefs rent, than he would certainly have been obliged to pay, had not the tithe been due to the Church. Why the proprietor of an eftate fhould not venture on fuch improvements as to make it produce nine or ninety quarters of wheat more than it does at present, only because he cannot do fo without letting the Church have likewife an additional quarter or ten quarters, for which, if the clergy do their duty, fhe certainly renders him a full return, it is not very easy to conceive. If it be a fufficient reason for the tenant not to raise the most valuable crops, because the Church, which fhares in them, lays out no part of the expence : : it must likewife be a fufficient reafon

fon for the tenant, who pays his rent in kind, not to raise the most valuable crops, because the landlord, who shares in them, lays out no part of the expence. Nay, the landlord, he may think, does nothing for him at all, while a moment's reflection muft convince him, that his fervants can be preferved honest and faithful only by a fenfe of religion, which they would very foon lofe, were it not for the inftitution of the Lord's day, and their frequenting the church. But the author proposes the following modus.

"I wish, fays he, an equitable estimation of the tithe of the produce of the land, over England and Wales, in its present fate of agriculture, to be taken as the principal ground for the eftablishment of an equivalent. This, I imagine, might be easily done, by fixing the average amount of the tithe in money, for ten or twenty years paft, to be paid by the proprietor to the bene ficiary of the church, at one or two terms in the year, in lieu of the tithe in kind. To infure the punctual payment of this ftipend, a compulfatory claufe, as in fimilar cafes, fhould be enacted in favour of the clergy, with double the legal intereft in cafe of non-payment, till the debt is discharged. On the other hand, the proprietor, or farmer, ought to be infured, that this compenfation for the tithe fhould remain fixed and unalterably the fame, unlefs when, by fome encroachment of the fea, the bursting of a bog, the overflowing of a river, or other natural caufe, part of the land is loft, or rendered ufelefs, when a proportionable deduc. tion of the stipend should be made." P, 498.

If fuch a commutation as this would be equitable now, it would have been no lefs equitable two hundred years ago; but in what state would the prefent clergy of the church of England have been, had fuch a ftipend in money been fixed unalterably on each beneficiary, in the reign of Elizabeth or James the Firft? As the author's partiality to the clerical character, (which he candidly acknowledges in page 491,) may render him incompetent to decide on this queition, we fhall ftate another, to which he can be under no partial influence to give an unfair anfwer. Suppofe the phyficians of Great Britain had, about a hundred years ago, been what, to their credit, they have never been, a body of men fo mercenary, as to neglect fuch patients as were not able to give them an exorbitant fee for each vifit; and fuppofe an act of parlia ment to have paffed, fixing unalterably, as the fee of a British phyfician, what was given to the celebrated Boerhaave; does Dr. Gardiner think that his talents would have been difgraced by being rated as equal to thofe of fuch a man? He certainly does not; and yet, we more than fufpect, that

he would think it hard to be restrained by law, in the 19th century, from taking, in either of the British capitals, a higher fee than one filling and ten-pence for a vifit in his character of phyfician!

The hiftorical remarks and obfervations on government, and on the caufes which have at all times obftructed its advancement to a free conftitution, difplay the author's good principles, but contain nothing that is ftriking or new. Dr. Gardiner, agreeing with Hume, admits that the English government could not be called free before the revolution in 1688 because, by the ancient conftitution, the dispensing power was, in the opinion of the ableft lawyers, a prerogative infeparable from the monarchy. In confequence of granting this position, he renders to the character of Charles the Firit, that juftice, which the majority of his countrymen (it is difficult to conceive for what reason) are so earnest to withhold from it; while he rejoices as we do in that claufe of the bill of rights, by which, at the revolution, the difpenfing power was taken from the crown, and the regal authority rendered fubordinate to the law. He has many juft reflections on the different forms of government, which he compares together, for the purpose of proving, and he proves completely, that not one of them is fo favourable to the freedom of the fubject, as that combination of monarchy, ariftocracy, and democracy, which has fo long rendered the Britifh conftitution the envy of Europe; and through the whole of the difcuffion, he endeavours, with the fpirit of genuine patriotifm, to diffuade the people from lif tening to proposals for any other reform of the conftitution than that which is filently and gradually effected by time and circumftance.

These fentiments are enforced by exhibiting the miseries which have been brought upon France by the revolution, as well as upon all the countries on the continent where more deference has been paid to the theories of conftitutionmongers, than to the experimental wifdom of ages. We are forry, however, to be under the neceffity of adding that doctrines, of which every good man must approve, are deprived of much of their effect, by the manner in which they are ftated. Of the author's ftyle we fhall fay fomething af terwards; but we must here advert to a want of arrangement which naturally produces the moft aukward repetitions. Thus, the very fame account, and nearly in the fame words, is given of the restoration, of the fascinating manners of Charles the Second, and of his attempts to become abfolute, in the third fection, that was formerly given in the first; and there

are

are other inftances of repetition, which we forbear to meris tion, left the author fhould accufe us of ignorance and conceit.

"Criticifm, fays he, is the favourite employment of the ignorant conceited man; by it he indulges his vanity, in a difplay of his knowledge, which too often affords the ftrongeft proof of his ignorance on the fubject with which he prefumes he is fo well acquainted." Vol. II. P. 115.

This obfervation, we fufpect, to be no lefs applicable to authors than to critics; but whether it may be applied to that author, who, while comparing the different forms of government with each other, can talk of republics governed by ariftocracies (p. 139) and reprefent Carthage as one of the democratical ftates of ancient Greece (p. 184) the reader will judge for himself.

The effay, which concludes this work, is entitled Obfervations on the principal Caufes, which promote or retard the Advancement of Literature, Commerce, and the Arts. It is divided into five fections, in which are thrown out many use. ful, though common-place remarks, on the tendency of a free conftitution to promote literature and commerce, &c.; on the fatal effects of defpotifm on the human faculties; on the flow advance of science, from the time of Roger Bacon to the 17th century; and on the different capacities, genius, education, and habits of man; but the whole is fo deftitute of arrangement, and fo replete with repetitions, that we arose from its perufal, with à lefs diftinct recollection of what we had read than we remember to have at any other time experienced. Among the few difcoveries which Dr. Gardiner appeared to us to have made, we recollect his affuring us that cordial food leffens the mufcular strength, but improves the external fenfes of men addicted to study (p. 311.); that, "at ali times, and in all nations, the great body of the people, from a meanness of capacity, are incapable of any high degree of information, and remain unfit for any thing, but the labours of the field, or the mechanical exercife of their weapons in war," (p. 382.); and that Ariftotle was a Carthaginian! (324).

Lofing fight of his ufual patriotifm, and even contradicting his own theory, he attributes (p. 339.) to the French chemifts who flourished under the monarchy, difcoveries which were indifputably made by philofophers who lived under the free government of Britain. The compofition of water was discovered neither by Lavoifier nor by his affociates, but by Mr. Cavendish; and the part acted in combustion by pure air, was long ago difcovered by Dr, Hooke. In page