of a private letter any part of Mr. Fox's history? And would it not have been equally fair in Mr. Rose to have commented upon any private conversation of Mr. Fox and then to have called it his history? Or, if Mr. Fox had filled up the blanks in the body of his history, does it follow that he adopts Argyle's censure, because he shows against whom it is levelled? Mr. Rose has described the charge against Sir Patrick Hume to be, of faction, cowardice, and treachery. Mr. Rose has more than once altered the terms of a proposition before he has proceeded to answer it; and, in this instance, the charge of treachery against Sir Patrick Hume is not made either in Argyle's letter, Mr. Fox's text, or the editor's note, or anywhere but in the imagination of Mr. Rose. The sum of it all is, that Mr. Rose first supposes the relation of Argyle's opinion to be the expression of the relator's opinion, that Mr. Fox adopts Argyle's insinuations because he explains them ;then he looks upon a quotation from a private letter, made by the editor, to be the same as if included in a work intended for publication by the author; then he remembers that he is the sole executor of Sir Patrick's grandson, whose blank is so filled up; and goes on blundering and blubbering grateful and inaccurate teeming with false quotations and friendly recollections to the conclusion of his book.--Multa gemens ignominiam. Mr. Rose came into possession of the Earl of Marchmont's papers, containing among other things the narrative of Sir Patrick Hume. He is very severe upon Mr. Fox for not having been more diligent in searching for original papers; and observes that, if any application had been made to him (Mr. Rose), this narrative should have been at Mr. Fox's service. We should be glad to know, if Mr. Rose saw a person tumbled into a ditch, whether he would wait for a regular application till he pulled him out? Or, if he happened to espy the lost piece of silver for which the good woman was diligently sweeping the house, would he wait for formal interrogation before he imparted his discovery, and suffer the lady to sweep on till the question had been put to him in the most solemn forms of politeness? The established practice, we admit, is to apply, and to apply vigorously and incessantly, for sinecure places and pensions-or they cannot be had. This is true enough. But did any human being ever think of carrying this practice into literature, and compelling another to make interest for papers essential to the good conduct of his undertaking? We are perfectly astonished at Mr. Rose's conduct, in this particular; and should have thought that the ordinary exercise of his good nature would have led him to a very different way of acting. "On the whole and upon the most attentive consideration of everything which has been written upon the subject, there does not appear to have been any intention of applying torture in the case of the Earl of Argyle." Rose, p. 182. If this everything had included the following extract from Barillon, the above cited, and very disgraceful, inaccuracy of Mr. Rose would have been spared. "The Earl of Argyle has been executed at Edinburgh, and has left a full confession in writing, in which he discovers all those who have assisted him with money, and have aided his designs. This has saved him from the torture." And Argyle in his letter to Mrs. Smith, confesses he has made discoveries. In his very inaccurate history of torture in the southern part of this island, Mr. Rose says, that except in the case of Felton,—in the attempt to introduce the civil law in Henry VI.'s reign,-and in some cases of treason in Mary's reign, torture was never attempted in this country. The fact, however, is, that in the reign of Henry VIII. Anne Askew was tortured by the Chancellor himself. Simson was tortured in 1558; Francis Throgmorton in 1571; Charles Baillie, and Banastie, the Duke of Norfolk's servant, were tortured in 1581; Campier, the Jesuit, was put upon the rack; and Dr. Astlow is supposed to have been racked in 1558. So much for Mr. Rose as the historian of punishments. We have seen him, a few pages before, at the stake,-where he makes quite as bad a figure as he does now upon the rack. Precipitation and error are his foibles. If he were to write the history of sieges, he would forget the siege of Troy -if he were making a list of poets, he would leave out Virgil ;-Cæsar would not appear in his catalogue of generals ;-and Newton would be overlooked in his collection of eminent mathematicians. In some cases Mr. Rose is to be met only with flat denial. Mr. Fox does not call the soldiers who were defending James against Argyle authorised assassins; but he uses that expression against the soldiers who were murdering the peasants, and committing every sort of licentious cruelty in the twelve counties given up to military execution; and this Mr. Rose must have known, by using the most ordinary diligence in the perusal of the text—and would have known it in any other history than that of Mr. Fox. "Mr. Rose, in his concluding paragraph, boasts of his speaking 'impersonally,' and he hopes it will be allowed justly, when he makes a general observation respecting the proper province of history. But the last sentence evidently shows that, though he might be speaking justly, he was not speaking impersonally, if by that word is meant without reference to any person. His words are, 'But history cannot connect itself with party without forfeiting its name without departing from the truth, the dignity, and the usefulness of its functions. After the remarks he has made in some of his preceding pages, and the apology he has offered for Mr. Fox in his last preceding paragraph, for having been mistaken in his view of some leading points, there can be no difficulty in concluding that this general observation is meant to be applied to the Historical Work. The charge intended to be insinuated must be that, in Mr. Fox's hands, history has forfeited the name by being connected with party; and has departed from the truth, the dignity, and the usefulness of its functions. It were to be wished that Mr. Rose had explained himself more fully; for, after assuming that the application of this observation is too obvious to be mistaken, there still remains some difficulty with respect to its meaning. If it be confined to such publications as are written under the title of histories, but are intended to serve the purposes of a party; and truth is sacrificed, and facts perverted to defend and give currency to their tenets, we do not dispute its propriety; but if that be the character which Mr. Rose would give to Mr. Fox's labours, he has not treated him with candour, or even common justice. Mr. Rose has never, in any one instance, intimated that Mr. Fox has wilfully departed from truth, or strayed from the proper province of history for the purpose of indulging his private or party feelings. But, if Mr. Rose intends that the observation should be applied to all histories, the authors of which have felt strongly the influence of political connections and principles, what must become of most of the histories of England? Is the title of historian to be denied to Mr. Hume? and in what class are to be placed Echard, Kennet, Rapin, Dalrymple, or Macpherson? In this point of view the principle laid down is too broad. A person, though connected with party, may write an impartial history of events which occurred a century before; and, till this last sentence, Mr. Rose has not ventured to intimate that Mr. Fox has not done so. On the contrary, he has declared his approbation of a great portion of the work; and his attempts to discover material errors in the remainder have uniformly failed in every particular. If it might be assumed that there existed in the book no faults, besides those which the scrutinising eye of Mr. Rose had discovered, it might be justly deemed the most perfect work that ever came from the press; for not a single deviation from the strictest duty of an historian has been pointed out; while instances of candour and impartiality present themselves in almost every page; and Mr. Rose himself has acknowledged and applauded many of them."-(pp. 422-424.) These extracts from both books are sufficient to show the nature of Serjeant Heywood's examination of Mr. Rose, the boldness of this latter gentleman's assertions, and the extreme inaccuracy of the researches upon which these assertions are founded. If any credit could be gained from such a book as Mr. Rose has published it could be gained from accuracy alone. Whatever the execution of his book had been, the world would have remembered the infinite disparity of the two authors, and the long political opposition in which they lived-if that, indeed can be called opposition where the thunderbolt strikes and the clay yields. They would have remembered also that Hector was dead, and that every cowardly Grecian could now thrust his spear into the hero's body. But still, if Mr. Rose had really succeeded in exposing the inaccuracy of Mr. Fox-if he could have fairly shown that authorities were overlooked, or slightly examined, or wilfully perverted -the insipient feelings to which such a controversy had given birth must have yielded to the evidence of facts; and Mr. Fox, however qualified in other particulars, must have appeared totally defective in that laborious industry and scrupulous good faith so indespensible to every historian. But he absolutely comes out of the contest not worse even in a single tooth or nail-unvilified even by a wrong date-without one misnomer proved upon him-immaculate in his years and days of the month-blameless to the most musty and limited pedant that ever yellowed himself amidst rolls and records. But how fares it with his critic? He rests his credit with the world as a man of labour-and he turns out to be a careless inspector of proofs, and an historical sloven. The species of talent which he pretends to is humble-and he possesses it not. He has not done that which all men may do, and which every man ought to do, who rebukes his superiors for not doing it. His claims, too, it should be remembered, to these everyday qualities are by no means enforced with gentleness and humility. He is a braggadocio of minuteness-a swaggering chronologer; a man bristling up with small facts prurient with dateswantoning in obsolete evidence-loftily dull, and haughty in his drudgery; and yet all this is pretence. Drawing is no very unusual power in animals; but he cannot draw :-he is not even the ox which he is so fond of being. In attempting to villify Mr. Fox he has only shown us that there was no labour from which that great man shrunk, and that no object connected with his history was too minute for his investigation. He has thoroughly convinced us that Mr. Fox was as industrious and as accurate as if these were the only qualities upon which he had ever rested his hope of fortune or fame. Such, indeed, are the customary results when little people sit down to debase the characters of great men, and to exalt themselves upon the ruins of what they have pulled down. They only provoke a spirit of inquiry, which places everything in its true light and magnitude-shows those who appear little to be still less, and displays new and unexpected excellence in others who were before known to excel. These are the usual consequences of such attacks. The fame of Mr. Fox has stood this, and will stand much ruder shocks. Non hiemes illam, non flabra neque imbres Convellunt; immota manet, multosque per annos THE POOR-LAWS. 1. Safe Method for rendering Income arising from Personal Property available to the Poor-Laws. Longman & 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 UR readers, we fear, will require some apology for being asked to look at anything 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. A pamphlet on the Poor-Laws generally contains some little piece of favourite nonsense, by which we are gravely told this enormous evil may be perfectly cured. The first gentleman recommends little gardens; the second, cows; the third, a village shop; the fourth, a spade; the fifth, Dr. Bell; and so forth. Every man rushes to the press with his small morsel of imbecility, and is not easy till he sees his impertinence stitched in blue covers. In this list of absurdities we must not forget the project of supporting the poor from national funds, or, in other words, of immediately doubling the expenditure, and introducing every possible abuse into the administration of it. Then there are worthy men who call upon gentlemen of fortune and education to become overseers-meaning, we suppose, that the present overseers are to perform the higher duties of men of fortune. Then Merit is set up as the test of relief; and their worships are to enter into a long examination of the life and character of each applicant, assisted, as they doubtless would be, by candid overseers, and 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 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 Poor-Laws; 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 would be the expenditure. It is proposed also that alehouses should be diminished, and that the children of the poor should be catechised publicly in the church, both very respectable and proper suggestions, but of themselves hardly strong enough for the evil. We have every wish that the poor should accustom themselves to habits of sobriety; but we cannot help reflecting sometimes that an alehouse is the only place where a poor tired creature, haunted with every species of wretchedness, can purchase three or four times a year three pennyworth of ale-a liquor upon which wine-drinking moralists are always extremely severe. We must not forget, among other nostrums, the eulogy of small farms; in other words, of small capital, and profound ignorance in the arts of agriculture; and the evil is also thought to be curable by periodical contributions from men who have nothing, and can earn nothing without charity. To one of these plans, and perhaps the most plausible, Mr. Nicol has stated, in the following passage, objections that are applicable to almost all the 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 talk what we will of economy, but where the care of the poor is taken exclusively into the hands of the rich, comparative extravagance is the necessary consequence: to say that the gentleman, or even the overseer, would never permit the poor to live at the district school as they live at home, is saying far too little. English humanity will never see the poor in anything like want, when that want is palpably and visibly brought before it; first, it will give necessaries, next comforts; until its fostering care rather pampers than |