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I hope this digression may be excused in favour of the cataract par excellence; and the Welsh cannot take it amiss that one of their falls should have brought Niagara to my recollection. To finish the description, I have only to notice a remarkable appearance. The water seems to fall with a retarded motion, to stop, and, near the bottom, to ascend visibly. This is owing to the resistance of the air on the surface, which reduces it into foam, and at last into light vapour. The water, at the moment of rounding over the edge of the fall, is of the most lively green, or sometimes bright blue. A sort of silver gauze soon covers its surface in graceful folds, growing whiter and thicker as it descends lower; the real fall, and its accelerated motion, are ultimately hid by this kind of veil of vapour.

We passed to-day the foot of Snowdon, and intended another p oney expedition; but it rained,the ponies were forestalled,-and the fatigue and bruises of Cader Idris were not altogether over; therefore we had only a sight of Snowdon,-and a good-looking mountain it is, with all its cluster of inferior mountains about it, all bare rocks. Snowdon is 3500 feet.

This moderate climate is certainly much fitter for bodily exercise than that of America. We think nothing of five or six miles a-day on foot. The flies, however, begin to be almost as numerous and inconvenient out of doors as there, but not in the house. Musketoes are by no means unknown. We see snakes, but the viper is the only one deemed dangerous. America is usually thought to be full of these reptiles, and that you are exposed every moment to tread upon a rattle-snake; the fact is, that the sight of a snake is not much more common there than here, and most of them

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are as harmless. A child armed with a stick will attack and kill the rattle-snake, which is very sluggish it is met only in dry stony places. The snakes of moist places are not venomous.

We are now arrived at St Asaphs, in the beautiful valley of Clwydd, (pronounced Cluid) only 28 miles to-day, through the finest country imaginable-glorious views of the sea,-ruined castles, with the usual stories about Cromwell's cannon. He was a great master of the picturesque, and his ruins are always in the best taste. The Castle of Aberconway, 600 years old, is still nearly entire.

July 27.-On our way from St Asaphs to Denbigh, we stopped at the house of a gentleman we had seen in Norfolk; he was not at home, but one of the ladies of the family accompanied us to Denbigh. From this house the view takes in the whole valley of Clwydd, 20 or 30 miles long, and about six broad, with hills of moderate and irregular height on each side. A great number of gentlemen's houses were in sight, with their usual accompaniments of wood and lawn, but no cottages, I mean real dwellings of the poor. If there ever was here a revolution à la Françoise, declaring guerre aux châteaux, paix aux chaumières, the castles would certainly carry it, being a hundred to one. This general appearance of the country brings to my mind a bon mot of Carlin, the famous harlequin. Quel dommage que le pere Adam ne se soit pas avisé d'acheter une charge de Secretaire du Roi,-nous serions tous nobles!" I do not know what office the Father Adam of England bought, but every body in it seems rich. Whenever I have asked proprietors of land, or farmers, why they did not build houses for their labourers, the answer has generally been, that such houses

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are nests of vermin, pilferers, and poachers; and that, far from building, they would rather pull down such houses. The labourers reside in some small town or village in the neighbourhood. Denbigh, for instance, has doubled in extent within a few years by this accession of inhabitants. Labourers have often several miles to walk to and from their work, which is so much out of their labour, or out of their rest. This, I own, has lowered a little my ideas of universal felicity, which the appearance of this country encourages one to form. There are then, it seems, obscure corners, where the poor are swept out of the way, as the dust of the walks of the rich, in a heap out of their sight; and, to judge properly of this general prosperity, it would be necessary to see what passes in these abodes of the labouring class.

The poor of England are under certain regulations, called poor-laws, forming one of the distinctive features of this government. Their object is half police, and half charity; but their utility very questionable. They were principally established under the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and furnish a strong instance of the danger of governing too much. It was enacted, that the overseers of the poor" shall take order from time to time, by and with the consent of two or more justices, for setting to work the children of all such whose parents shall not, by the said persons, be thought able to keep and maintain their children; and all such persons, married or unmarried, as having no means to maintain them, use no ordinary and daily trade of life to get their living by. And also to raise, weekly or otherwise, by taxation of every inhabitant, and every occupier of lands in the said parish, (in such competent sums as they shall think

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fit) a convenient stock of flax, hemp, wool, thread, iron, and other necessary ware and stuff, to set the poor to work."*

The legislators of that period imagined that labour of any sort was sure to command subsistence at any time, but woollen and iron ware are not bread. Let us suppose a greater number of weavers, or other workmen, than manufacturers can employ; some of them becoming destitute, overseers are to set them to work according to law ;that is to say, are to employ them in making, for the account of the public, the very articles for which the trade had already proved unable to furnish them employment. The market being thus overstocked, every shuttle set in motion at the public work-house will necessarily stop another elsewhere; for private manufacturers cannot afford to lose on their goods, although the overseers may. The workmen thus dismissed by individuals will, of course, pass over to the overseers, till at last the public, becoming the only manufacturer, would have the same surplus of workmen as the trade had originally, to be ultimately supported without working, as the goods will not sell beyond the consumption,-which might as well have been done at first. Work-houses have, therefore, in a great degree, become out of use, and weekly assistance in money substituted to such labourers as can find no work, or whose work cannot support them. Money, however, is not bread, any more than woollen or iron-ware; for when the baker has only ten loaves to offer to ten purchasers, if an eleventh purchaser comes forward, his money may

Essay on Population by Mr Malthus, quarto, p. 413.

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raise the price by competition, but cannot create a corresponding eleventh loaf,-therefore unless money can draw supplies of corn from foreign countries, it produces no national relief; for every loaf of bread you enable any individual to purchase, by supplying him with money, you deprive another individual of that very loaf.

This assistance in money afforded to individuals by the public, has, by degrees, increased to a prodigious amount. Foreign readers will hear, with surprise, that the tax raised for that purpose, on the rental of the kingdom, exceeds seven millions sterling, annually; * and in some parishes is imposed at the rate of 4s. or 5s. in the pound. The income tax itself, raised on all sorts of property, and which is thought so exorbitant, produces only from ten to twelve millions. The necessary con. sequences of this system are, 1st, An encouragement to idleness and improvidence, and to marriage without the means of supporting a family. 2d, A multiplicity of vexatious laws respecting settlements, by which the right of removing, at pleasure, from one part of the country to another, is so abridged, as to attach, in a great degree, the labouring class to the glebe, as the Russian pea

* Id 1776, the poor-rates amounted to L. 1,529,780 sterling, and the average of the years 1783-4-5, was L. 2,167,749 sterling. The price of wheat in 1776 was L. 2, 2s. 8d. sterling; in 1783-4-5, L. 2, 3s. 7d. sterling, per quarter; at the same · period, the workhouses cost L. 15,892 sterling a-year; and what is most wonderful, L.11,713 sterling for entertainments; L.24,493 sterling expenses of removals of individuals, &c.; and finally, L.55,891 sterling law charges! In 1803, the poor-rates were L. 5,318,000 sterling, of which L. 4,267,000 sterling only expended on the poor. The rack rental was then 40 millions, now nearly 55 millions, therefore the poor-rates may be estimated 7 millions and a half now.Quarterly Review, No. XVI.