of the revenue derived from loans, 222 | schoolboy whips his taxed top-the parts out of 247 of the American re-beardless youth manages his taxed horse, venue have been derived from fo- with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road: reign commerce. In the mind of any sensible American, this consideration ought to prevail over the few splendid actions of their half dozen frigates, which must, in a continued war, have been, with all their bravery and ac tivity, swept from the face of the ocean by the superior force and equal bravery of the English. It would be the height of madness in America to run into another naval war with this country if it could be averted by any other means than a sacrifice of proper dignity and character. They have, comparatively, no land revenue; and, in spite of the Franklin and Guerrière, though lined with cedar and mounted with brass cannon, they must soon be reduced to the same state which has been described by Dr. Seybert, and from which they were so opportunely extricated by the treaty of Ghent. David Porter and Stephen Decatur are very brave men; but they will prove an unspeakable misfortune to their country, if they inflame Jonathan into a love of naval glory, and inspire him with any other love of war than that which is founded upon a determination not to submit to serious insult and injury.

We can inform Jonathan what are the inevitable consequences of being too fond of glory; ;- TAXES upon every article which enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot-taxes upon every thing which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste

taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotion taxes on every thing on earth, and the waters under the earth- on every thing that comes from abroad, or is grown at home taxes on the raw material-taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man -- - taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and the drug that restores him to health- - on the ermine which decorates the judge, and the rope which hangs the criminal on the poor man's salt, and the rich man's spiceon the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribands of the bride- at bed or board, couchant or levant, we must pay. - The

and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid 7 per cent., into a spoon that has paid 15 per cent. -flings himself back upon his chintz bed, which has paid 22 per cent.—and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a licence of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death. His whole property is then immediately taxed from 2 to 10 per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel; his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble; and he is then gathered to his fathers to be taxed no more. In addition to all this, the habit of dealing with large sums will make the Government avaricious and profuse; and the system itself will infallibly generate the base vermin of spies and informers, and a still more pestilent race of political tools and retainers of the meanest and most odious description; - - while the prodigious patronage which the collecting of this splendid revenue will throw into the hands of Government, will invest it with so vast an influence, and hold out such means and temptations to corruption, as all the virtue and public spirit, even of republicans, will be unable to resist.

Every wise Jonathan should remember this, when he sees the rabble huzzaing at the heels of the truly respectable Decatur, or inflaming the vanity of that still more popular leader, whose justification has lowered the character of his Government with all the civilised nations of the world.

Debt.-America owed 42 millions of dollars after the revolutionary war; in 1790, 79 millions; in 1803, 70 millions; and in the beginning of January, 1812, the public debt was diminished to 45 millions of dollars. After the last war with England, it had risen to 123 millions; and so it stood on the 1st of January, 1816. The total amount carried to the credit of the commissioners of the sinking fund, on the 31st of December, 1816, was about 34 millions of dollars.

Such is the land of Jonathan-and

During the thirty or forty years of their independence, they have done absolutely nothing for the Sciences, for the Arts, for Literature, or even for the statesman-like studies of Politics or Political Economy. Confining ourselves to our own country, and to the period that has elapsed since they had an independent existence, we would ask, Where are their Foxes, their Burkes, their Sheridans, their Windhams, their Horners, their Wilberforces?

thus has it been governed. In his of any civilised and educated people. honest endeavours to better his situation, and in his manly purpose of resisting injury and insult, we most cordially sympathise. We hope he will always continue to watch and suspect his Government as he now does -remembering, that it is the constant tendency of those entrusted with power, to conceive that they enjoy it by their own merits, and for their own use, and not by delegation, and for the benefit of others. Thus far we are the friends and admirers of Jonathan. But he must not grow vain and ambitious; or allow himself to be dazzled by that galaxy of epithets by which his orators and newspaper scribblers endeavour to persuade their supporters that they are the greatest, the most refined, the most enlightened, and the most moral people upon earth. The effect of this is unspeakably ludicrous on this side of the Atlantic-and, even on the other, we should imagine, must be rather humiliating to the reasonable part of the population. The Americans are a brave, industrious, and acute people; but they have hitherto given no indications of genius, and made no approaches to the heroic, either in their morality or character. They are but a recent offset indeed from England; and should make it their chief boast, for many generations to come, that they are sprung from the same race with Bacon and Shakspeare and Newton. Considering their numbers, indeed, and the favourable circumstances in which they have been placed, they have yet done marvellously little to assert the honour of such a descent, or to show that their English blood has been exalted or refined by their repub-eats from American plates? or wears lican training and institutions. Their Franklins and Washingtons, and all the other sages and heroes of their revolution, were born and bred subjects of the King of England-and not among the freest or most valued of his subjects. And, since the period of When these questions are fairly and their separation, a far greater propor-favourably answered, their laudatory tion of their statesmen and artists and epithets may be allowed: but till that political writers have been foreigners, can be done, we would seriously advise than ever occurred before in the history them to keep clear of superlatives.

where their Arkwrights, their Watts, their Davys? - - their Robertsons, Blairs, Smiths, Stewarts, Paleys, and Malthuses? - their Porsons, Parrs, Burneys, or Blomfields?— their Scotts, Rogers's, Campbells, Byrons, Moores, or Crabbes ?—their Siddons, Kembles, Keans, or O'Neils ?-their Wilkies, Lawrences, Chantrys ?-or their parallels to the hundred other names that have spread themselves over the world from our little island in the course of the last thirty years, and blest or delighted mankind by their works, inventions, or examples? In so far as we know, there is no such parallel to be produced from the whole annals of this selfadulating race. In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue? What does the world yet owe to American physicians or surgeons? What new substances have their chemists discovered? or what old ones have they analysed? What new constellations have been discovered by the telescopes of Americans? What have they done in the mathematics? Who drinks out of American glasses? or

American coats or gowns? or sleeps in American blankets? Finally, under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is every sixth man a slave, whom his fellow-creatures may buy and sell and torture?

1. Safe Method for rendering Income arising from Personal Property available to the Poor-Laws. Lorgman & Co. 1819. 2. Summary Review of the Report and Evidence relative to the Poor-Laws. By S. W. Nicol. York.

3. Essay on the Practicability of modifying
the Poor-Laws. Sherwood. 1819.

4. Considerations on the Poor-Laws. By
John Davison, A. M. Oxford.
OUR readers, we fear, will require some
apology for being asked to look at any
thing upon the Poor-Laws. No subject,
we admit, can be more disagreeable, or
more trite. But, unfortunately, it is the
most important of all the important
subjects which the distressed state of
the country is now crowding upon our
notice.

POOR-LAWS. (E. REVIEW, 1820.) | fathers and mothers they are commanded to obey and honour, and are to be brought up in virtue by the churchwardens. And this is gravely intended as a corrective of the PoorLaws; as if (to pass over the many other objections which might be made to it) it would not set mankind populating faster than carpenters and bricklayers could cover in their children, or separate twigs to be bound into rods for their flagellation. An extension of the Poor-Laws to personal property is also talked of. We should be very glad to see any species of property exempted from these laws, but have no wish that any which is now exempted should be subjected to their influence. The case would infallibly be like that of the Income-tax,—the more easily the tax was raised, the more profligate A pamphlet on the Poor-Laws gene- would be the expenditure. It is prorally contains some little piece of fa- posed also that alehouses should be vourite nonsense, by which we are diminished, and that the children of gravely told this enormous evil may be the poor should be catechised publicly perfectly cured. The first gentleman in the church,-both very respectable recommends little gardens; the second and proper suggestions, but of themCOWS; the third a village shop; the selves hardly strong enough for the fourth a spade; the fifth Dr. Bell, and evil. We have every wish that the so forth. Every man rushes to the poor should accustom themselves to press with his small morsel of imbe-habits of sobriety; but we cannot help cility; and is not easy till he sees his reflecting, sometimes, that an alehouse impertinence stitched in blue covers. is the only place where a poor tired In this list of absurdities, we must creature, haunted with every species of not forget the project of supporting wretchedness, can purchase three or the poor from national funds, or, in four times a year three pennyworth of other words, of immediately doubling ale, a liquor upon which wine-drinking the expenditure, and introducing every moralists are always extremely severe. possible abuse into the administration We must not forget, among other of it. Then there are worthy men, nostrums, the eulogy of small farmswho call upon gentlemen of fortune in other words, of small capital, and and education to become overseers profound ignorance in the arts of agrimeaning, we suppose, that the present culture; -and the evil is also thought overseers are to perform the higher to be curable by periodical contribuduties of men of fortune. Then Merit tions from men who have nothing, and is set up as the test of relief; and their can earn nothing without charity. To worships are to enter into a long ex- one of these plans, and perhaps the amination of the life and character of most plausible, Mr. Nicol has stated, each applicant, assisted, as they doubt-in the following passage, objections less would be, by candid overseers, and that are applicable to almost all the neighbours divested of every feeling of malice and partiality. The children are next to be taken from their parents, and lodged in immense pedagogueries of several acres each, where they are to be carefully secluded from those

rest.

"The district school would no doubt be

well superintended and well regulated; magistrates and country gentlemen would be its visitors. The more excellent the establishment, the greater the mischief;

because the greater the expense. We may | mother may sometimes chide a little too talk what we will of economy, but where sharply, yet here both maternal endearthe care of the poor is taken exclusively ments and social affection exist in perhaps into the hands of the rich, comparative their greatest vigour: the attachments extravagance is the necessary consequence: of lower life, where independent of atto say that the gentleman, or even the over-tachment there is so little to enjoy, far seer, would never permit the poor to live outstrip the divided if not exhausted senat the district school as they live at home, sibility of the rich and great; and in is saying far too little. English humanity depriving the poor of these attachments, will never see the poor in any thing like we may be said to rob them of their little want, when that want is palpably and all. visibly brought before it; first, it will give "But it is not to happiness only I here necessaries, next comforts; until its fos-refer: it is to morals. I listen with great tering care rather pampers, than merely relieves. The humanity itself is highly laudable; but if practised on an extensive scale, its consequences must entail an almost unlimited expenditure.

reserve to that system of moral instruction, which has not social affection for its basis, or the feelings of the heart for its ally. It is not to be concealed, that every thing may be taught, yet nothing learned, that systems planned with care and executed with attention, may evaporate into unmeaning forms, where the imagination is not roused, or the sensibility impressed.

"Let us suppose the children of the district school,' nurtured with that superabundant care which such institutions, when supposed to be well conducted, are wont to exhibit; they rise with the dawn;

"Mr. Locke computes that the labour of a child from 3 to 14, being set against its nourishment and teaching, the result will be exoneration of the parish from expense. Nothing could prove more decisively the incompetency of the Board of Trade to advise on this question. Of the productive labour of the workhouse, I shall have to speak hereafter; I will only observe in this place, that after the greatest care and at-after attending to the calls of cleanliness, tention bestowed on the subject, after expensive looms purchased, &c., the 50 boys of the Blue Coat School earned in the year 1816, 597. 10s. 3d.; the 40 girls earned, in the same time, 401. 7s. 9d. The ages of these children are from 8 to 16. They earn about one pound in the year and cost about twenty.

"The greater the call for labour in public institutions, be they prisons, workhouses, or schools, the more difficult to be procured that labour must be. There will thence be both much less of it for the comparative numbers, and it will afford a much less price; to get any labour at all, one school must underbid another.

prayers follow; then a lesson; then breakfast; then work, till noon liberates them, for perhaps an hour, from the walls of their prison to the walls of their prison court. Dinner follows; and then, in course, work, lessons, supper, prayers; at length, after a day dreary and dull, the counterpart of every day which has preceded, and of all that are to follow, the children are dismissed to bed.

This system may construct a machine, but it will not form a man. Of what does it consist? of prayers parroted without one sentiment in accord with the words uttered: of moral lectures which the understanding does not comprehend, or the heart feel; of endless bodily constraint, intole rable to youthful vivacity, and injurious to the perfection of the human frame.-The cottage day may not present so imposing a scene; no decent uniform; no well-trimmed

"It has just been observed, that the child of a poor cottager, half clothed, half fed, with the enjoyment of home and liberty, is not only happier but better than the little automaton of a parish work-locks; no glossy skin; no united response house:' and this I believe is accurately true. I scarcely know a more cheering sight, though certainly many more elegant ones, than the youthful gambols of a village green. They call to mind the description given by Paley of the shoals of the fry of fish: They are so happy that they know not what to do with themselves; their attitude, their vivacity, their leaps out of the water, their frolics in it, all conduce to show their excess of spirits, and are simply the effects of that excess.'

"Though politeness may be banished from the cottage, and though the anxious

of hundreds of conjoined voices; no lengthened procession, misnamed exercise; but if it has less to strike the eye, it has far more to engage the heart. A trifle in the way of cleanliness must suffice; the prayer is not forgot; it is perhaps imperfectly repeated, and confusedly understood; but it is not muttered as a vain sound; it is an earthly parent that tells of an heavenly one; duty, love, obedience, are not words without meaning, when repeated by a mother to her child: to God-the great unknown Being that made all things, all thanks, all praise, all adoration is due. The young

religionist may be in some measure bewildered by all this; his notions may be obscure, but his feelings will be roused, and the foundation at least of true piety will be laid.

main. It was madness to call them in this manner into existence; but it would be the height of cold-blooded cruelty to get rid of them by any other than "Of moral instruction, the child may be the most gentle and gradual means; taught less at home than at school, but he and not only would it be cruel, but exwill be taught better! that is, whatever he tremely dangerous, to make the attempt. is taught he will feel; he will not have Insurrections of the most sanguinary abstract propositions of duty coldly pre- and ferocious nature would be the imented to his mind; but precept and prac-mediate consequence of any very sudtice will be conjoined; what he is told it is den change in the system of the Poorright to do will be instantly done. Some-Laws; not partial, like those which times the operative principle on the child's mind will be love, sometimes fear, some-proceed from an impeded or decaying times habitual sense of obedience; it is state of manufactures, but as universal always something that will impress, always as the Poor-Laws themselves, and as something that will be remembered." ferocious as insurrections always are which are led on by hunger and despair.

There are two points which we consider as now admitted by all men of sense, 1st, That the Poor-Laws must be abolished; 2dly, That they must be very gradually abolished.* We hardly think it worth while to throw away pen and ink upon any one who is still in clined to dispute either of these propositions.

These observations may serve as an answer to those angry and impatient gentlemen who are always crying out, What has the Committee of the House of Commons done?-What have they to show for their labours? - Are the rates lessened? Are the evils removed? The Committee of the House With respect to the gradual aboli- of Commons would have shown themtion, it must be observed, that the pre-selves to be a set of the most contempsent redundant population of the coun- tible charlatans, if they had proceeded try has been entirely produced by the with any such indecent and perilous Poor-Laws: and nothing could be so haste, or paid the slightest regard to grossly unjust, as to encourage people the ignorant folly which required it at to such a vicious multiplication, and their hands. They have very properly then, when you happen to discover begun, by collecting all possible inyour folly, immediately to starve them formation upon the subject; by coninto annihilation. You have been call-sulting speculative and practical men; ing upon your population for two hundred years to beget more childrenfurnished them with clothes, food, and houses-taught them to lay up nothing for matrimony, nothing for children, nothing for age-but to depend upon Justices of the Peace for every human want. The folly is now detected; but the people, who are the fruit of it, re-session of Parliament; and accordingly

*I am not quite so wrong in this as I seem to be, nor after all our experience am I satisfied that there has not been a good deal of rashness and precipitation in the conduct of this admirable measure. You have not been able to carry the law into manufacturing counties. Parliament will compel you to soften some of the more severe clauses. It has been the nucleus of general insurrection and chartism. The Duke of Wellington wisely recommended

that the experiment should be first tried in a few counties round the metropolis.

by leaving time for the press to contribute whatever it could of thought or knowledge to the subject; and by introducing measures, the effects of which will be, and are intended to be, gradual. The Lords seemed at first to have been surprised that the Poor-Laws were not abolished before the end of the first

set up a little rival Committee of their own, which did little or nothing, and will not, we believe, be renewed. We are so much less sanguine than those noble legislators, that we shall think the improvement immense, and a subject of very general congratulation, if the Poor-rates are perceptibly diminished, and if the system of pauperism is clearly going down in twenty or thirty years hence.