ations, are nineteen out of twenty. The now makes part of the public road, and sum necessary to purchase a seat may is actually covered with pavement. vary from 2000l. to 80001.

PLYMPTON,

The right of voting in this borough being in freemen, having an hereditary right to the same, agreeably to the decision in 1703, it is presumed that all those who have been made free by the mayor and eight aldermen have no right to vote. About forty of that description, chosen from all parts of England, at present exercise the privilege, to the total exclusion of such sons of freemen as are duly entitled to it, and have a right to admission.

TIVERTON.

If the right of election in Tiverton

Many other pieces of land, which are entirely waste, and covered with rubbish and weeds, have the right of suffrage annexed to them, and are considered as the most valuable voting property, because they admit of no inhabitant to give his suffrage for his personal effects.

LYME REGIS.

This may be deemed one of those many dependent boroughs which are wholly under the control of an individual; the Earl of Westmoreland and his ancestors having had the entire influence in the corporation for the last century.

BRIDPORT.

This borough, like all others, has a was in the householders, the number of stated price, which the voters call their voters would be twelve hundred: at birth right; several candidates left them present that right is possessed only by at the last election, in consequence of twenty-four individuals, and this select their demanding payment beforehand. body are all under the influence of the It is not completely under the control of Earl of Harrowby, who nominates both a patron, even as to one member, but the borough has for many years manifested such a partiality to the family of Mr. Sturt, that they generally return one of his nomination.

members.

DARTMOUTH.

CORFE CASTLE.

This place, like Plymouth and Tiverton in this county, furnishes another instance of a populous town having its elective rights assumed and exclusively This borough, which now consists of exercised by a corporation composed of a few thatched cottages, is the joint prothe select body, and a few freemen of perty of the Right Honourable Nathantheir own making. iel Bond, of the Grange, who was made

This select number are again circum- a lord of the Treasury in 1801, and afscribed by the operation of Mr. Crew's terwards judge-advocate, from which bill. The governor, the collector,comp- place he soon retired on a pension; and troller, and all the officers of the Custom- Henry Bankes, esq. of Kingston Hall, house of Dartmouth, are taken from this both in this county. Mr. Calcraft, the immaculate body; and the remainder proprietor of Wareham, had some of the are mostly under the employment of gov- freehold voting houses in this borough, ernment, as gunners, and other officers. which he exchanged with Mr. Henry Dartmouth is termed a government Bankes for an equal number of parchborough. The treasury and admiralty ment votes in his own borough of Warehaving the nomination of the members, ham: these two close boroughs being and the farce of electing might as well be only four miles asunder. performed by the clerks in those offices, as at such a distance from London.

DORCHESTER.

WAREHAM.

Here the modern system of sham conveyances was practised in its fullest exHouses were divided into many

Almost one half of the houses and rate- tent. able property, which give the right of tenements, and the whole market-place voting in this borough, belong to the parcelled out in different allotments, so Earl of Shaftesbury, who conveys them that the votes were multiplied without by freehold leases to his friends and de- number. On one occasion the contest pendants. One of these trust-holders was so very violent, that all the stamps claimed, and actually exercised, the right in the county were consumed in the of voting for a piece of land on which a mock transfer of property, of which a little shop anciently stood, but which space of ground, scarcely affording room

for a grave was frequently the subject, The celebrated John Robinson, seaand a further supply was necessary to be retary to the Treasury, represented the sent for from the metropolis. The ex- thirty-two electors of this immaculate pense of contention increased with the corporation in seven parliaments. Chas. votes, so that the fortunes of both par- Jenkinson, Thomas Bradshaw, the Right ties appeared in danger. At length, for Honourable Thomas Orde, John Hiley the purpose of putting an end to such Adington, William Henry Freemantle, ruinous litigation, the two contending William Huskisson, esquires, and the parties, either by express agreement, or Right Honourable Nicholas Vansittart, from an accidental concurrence of cir- all treasury secretaries, have represented cumstances, parted with the whole of this borough. their voting property to one person.

DURHAM.

This city had been independent for many years, and was considered to be so from 1762, when the corporation had so basely endeavoured to subvert the freedom of election, by making 215 freemen at one time, to out-number the independent electors in the choice of a representative.

The great number of non-resident freemen here causes an enormous expense in bringing them from all parts of the kingdom to vote at an election, and is one of those radical evils in the present system, which nothing short of an effectual reform can cure, by giving them the right of voting in the district where they reside.

COLCHESTER.

The borough of Seaford, which was a treasury borough till 1782, cost the country nine thousand pounds a year in places and pensions, while it continued to return treasury members; but the right of voting at that place being extended, in 1786, to all the inhabitants paying scot and lot, and the corporation, which consisted mostly of non-resident freemen, having been determined, 1792, to have no right of voting in that borough, the treasury interest became annihilated there, and the public was eased of great part of that burthen.

The boroughs of Rye, in Sussex; Queenborough and Sandwich, in Kent t; Dartmouth, in Devonshire, and several others, demonstrate the importance of a vote in a treasury borough.

The influence under which this town has the misery to labour, in common with most others, although in different The right of election for this city havdegrees, is that of the corporation, who ing been confined to the corporation, and possess the absurd power of making such freemen as this select body pleases foreigners, by which it is understood, to make, ever since the year 1690, its non-residents, and others, who have no elective franchise fell under the influence natural or legal claim to such a right, free- of the then Dukes of Bolton and Chanmen of the said borough. This will al- dos, who sent each a member, and ways enable them to manufacture a ma- sometimes each patron attempted to jority in favour of a candidate whose in- return both. terest they may choose to espouse. A great majority of this corporation, Such numbers of the freemen are dis- who choose the virtual representatives persed all over the kingdom, that the ex- for a population of near six thousand pense of conveying them to the place of souls, are non-residents, and, as such, can election is ruinous to all the candidates. have no interest or concern for the peoWe have known one hundred and twen- ple, of whose rights they have the excluty-five pounds charged for conveying two sive exercise. voters from a remote part of England in a chaise and four to vote at a Colchester election.

HARWICH.

Harwich having always been a treasury borough, the corporation have come in for their share of the loaves and fishes, most of them and their families being amply saddled upon the public.

This borough cuts as distinguished a figure in the annals of bribery as any in England; not that it has been more venal than others, but less discreet in the practice of it. It has several times escaped disfranchisement by some of those side-wind accidents which have saved other boroughs in the same pre

many

dicament; such as previous questions, their establishments all existing in fiction.

delays till the session was ended, want of time to examine further evidence, when the fact, according to the declaration of a noble lord in the House of Commons, was as clear as the sun at noon-day! and it therefore continues the practice with impunity to the present day. The price, we understand, is still sixty pounds a man; and though all the houses in the borough are purchased up by the present members, who employ a London attorney to manage them, they must either forego the receipt of rents, or submit to this exaction.

WHITCHURCH.

The borough itself, like Old Sarum, being a fiction, there existing no such place but by name. The electors in all these boroughs are fictions named upon parchment for the day. The returning officer is also a fictitious character, called a baliff, steward, portreve, or titular mayor, having no office, function or power, but that of setting his name to the instrument which concludes these fictitious proceedings.

ISLE OF WIGHT.

Newport, the capital of the island, including that part of the town which is out of the parish, contains a population of 4000 persons, has two members chosen by a self-elected corporation of twentyfour individuals, many of whom are nonresidents.

This is a burgage-tenure borough, the freeholds of which belong to the two noble proprietors, except thirteen that have not been purchased from individuals. Whitchurch is generally represented by Yarmouth, which has only a populathe brothers of the two proprietors; who tion of three hundred and forty-three have only to make out seven temporary inhabitants, has two members chosen by conveyances, each for the election-day, a corporation of twelve individuals, only and as many voters are created for the one of whom is resident in the borough. occasion, as will go through the ceremony, in half an hour, of returning two nominal representatives for the people of Great Britain and Ireland.

PETERSFIELD.

In the last borough, the dean and chapter of Winchester appointed the returning officer, and two lords returned the two members: but here, one person appoints the returning officer, and names both the members.

The dwelling-houses and shambles give the right of voting, not to the occupiers or proprietors, but to the individual who has purchased the freeholds of those places, and conveys a few of them on the day of election to his servants or dependents, who thereby become voters for the day, and return the persons they are directed. The members are never seen in this borough, nor known to any person connected with it, except the proprietor. There are thirty-six of these close or nominal boroughs in England, which send seventy-two members to the imperial parliament, some of them destitute of a single house or inhabitant:

Newtown, a hamlet in the parish of Shalfleet in this island, composed of only half a dozen fishermen's huts, without a church, town-hall, or officer of any description, and having scarcely the appear. ance of habitation, sends two members, chosen by the owners of thirty-six burgage tenures, paying a land-tax of no more than 3s. 8d. the major part of which belong to three individuals, who choose the members for this nominal borough.

The corporations of Newport and Yarmouth are entirely under the influence, and submit to the nomination of Sir L. T. W. Holmes, bart, and the majority of the burgageholds at Newtown, being the property of three individuals, the Hon. Charles Anderson Pelham, Sir John Barrington, and his nephew Barrington Pope Blachford, esq. it is plain that the four members for Newport and Yarmouth are returned by only one person. The members for Newtown are chosen at present by three persons; in all, six members by four individuals.

646

HALF-YEARLY

RETROSPECT OF FRENCH LITERATURE.

The re-opening of the intercourse with the Continent has enabled us to recommence, by means of a Correspondent at Paris, an Article which some years since formed a feature of our Supplement, and interested many of our Readers.]

GEOGRAPHY.

tanical garden; and the latter perceived only the traces of the blood of martyrs. So it has fared with the descriptions of most countries, from the fabulous relations of Mandeville, to the foolish narrative of Lord Blaney. The province of System of Universal Geography; or, a M. Malte-Brun has been to separate the Description of every Part of the World, chaff from the wheat, to reconcile jarring on a new Plan, according to the grand opinions, and elicit truth from a multifanatural Divisions of the Globe: pre- rious mass of contradictory evidence. ceded by the History of Geography The plan of the work, if not entirely amongst the Ancients and Moderns, new, may be truly considered so in the and a general Theory of Mathemati- liberal acceptation of the word.

Precis de la Géographie Universelle; ou
Description de toutes les Parties du
Monde, sur un nouveau Plan, d'apres
les grandes Divisions naturelles du
Globe, &c. &c.

cal, Physical, and Political Geography, "We propose to ourselves," says he, accompanied with an Allas, elementa- "to include, in a series of historical esry, synoptical, and analytical Tables, says, a comprehensive view of ancient and an alphabetical Table of the and modern geography, which shall leave Names of Places. In 5 vols. Svo. and in the mind of the attentive reader a disthe Atlas in 4to. By M. Malte-Brun. tinct and lively image of the earth and its UNDER the modest title of a Precis, diversified surface, with whatever is

(a Summary,) M. Malte-Brun, memorable or worthy of record in every whose pre-eminent talents as a geogra- climate, of the people who have inhabitpher are known throughout the civilised ed them, or who still inhabit them. The world, has given to the public a work task will appear immense, if we consider embracing various desiderata in the cir- what various details must be united in a cle of general knowledge. Books of picture of such limited extent. The degeography have been generally written sigu even may appear too bold, if we by contract, as a builder would contract reflect on the nature of the matters we to build a house, at so much per yard have to treat of; matters which, having square of letter-press. The immensity been abandoned by the moderns to perand variety of his researches prove that sons more learned than elegant, are genpecuniary recompense is a consideration erally considered as equally precluding which has not all entered into his calcu- the elegance of literary composition and lations. The study of geography has the depth of philosophical meditation. been the grand object of his life, and by "The timidity which the consideration exertions which would frighten most of so many difficulties naturally inspires, authors to contemplate, he has succeeded has yielded to a conviction which led us in forming a Geography truly universal. to regard, in the science of geography, That spirit of system, and those limited less what it has been, than what it might views, which disfigure the work of Pin- and ought to become. We said to ourkerton himself, is discarded for a general selves, is not Geography the sister and survey, in which philosophical truth is rival of History? If the one holds its the primary consideration. Impartiality empire over every age, the other reigns is a rare virtue; for our passions and over every place. If the one can recal our interests too frequently enter into our past generations, cannot the other fix the descriptions as our author observes of permanent image of the moving pictures Japan, that it has been too highly varnished by Thunberg, and too much abused by the missionaries. The former discovered in it only a magnificent bo

* His lordship has been roughly handled by the English critics. The French journalists have wielded the lighter arm of ridicule, and their countrymen. exposed his lordship as a laughing-stock for

of History, in retracing to the mind the in safety. On every side fell the barriers eternal theatre of our short-lived mise- that Providence had raised to limit the ries that vast scene strewed with the horizon of Geography. Columbus gave ruins of so many empires-and that im- us a new world. By land and sea, every mutable Nature, always occupied in re- nation now pursued with ardour the capairing, by her bounties, the ravages of reer of discovery; and, by their united our discords? And this description of efforts, the vast total of the globe, notthe globe, is it not intimately connected withstanding a few partial shadows, was with the study of man, and that of our at length presented to the eye of Scimanners and institutions? Does it not ence.' offer to all the political sciences the most precious information, and to all the branches of natural history a necessary complement'; and to literature itself a vast treasure of images and sensations.

*

**

*

Such is our author's outline of his plan, which he has filled up with a success scarcely to be anticipated. The first volume is devoted to the history of geography down to the present time. In the commencement, geography was nothing "The following is the arrangement we more than the knowledge of the mounhave pursued in this work.-We com- tains and forests which bounded the mence with a historical picture of the steps of man in a savage state, and the progress of geography. We take the river which arrested his progress.- "His science from its cradle. Moses and Ho- neighbours were only known to him by mer, in the first place present us with their quarrels and combats with him, and the charts of two nations of antiquity. all the rest of the world was to him as if Soon after, by the science of the stars, it did not exist. Fortunate hunters subthe Phenician navigator traverses jected their weaker and more pacific the Mediterranean, and discovers the brethren; from whence the first little ocean. Herodotus relates to the Greeks sovereignties arose, which, doubtless what he has seen and what he has heard. changed their name with every new The vast colonial system of the Cartha- master. Those who subsisted on their ginians, and the adventurous courses of flocks and fisheries were the first to enPythéas of Marseilles, discover the west, deavour to fix limits to the pretensions and throw rays of intelligence on the of neighbouring tribes; from whence north. The glory of Alexander sheds a the first countries, or cantons.-Agricul flood of light on the countries of the east. ture gave a certain duration to the deThe Romans inherit, in a great measure, nomination of the country, and policy the discoveries of the polished nations of became the preserver of first conquests, antiquity. The Eratosthenes, the Stra- permitted, at length, some kingdoms to bos, the Plinys, the Ptolemys, seek to aggrandise themselves sufficiently to obgive order to these inform masses of tain a place in history, and become lumaterials. The great migration of na- minous points in the immense night of tions next overturned the whole edifice ages." of ancient geography. It was in perishing that Greece and Rome learnt how much more extensive the world was than their systems had made it appear. By degrees this chaos settled into form, and a new Europe arose from the element of a new Geography The Spirit of enterprize, and making voyages, awoke: already it had led, without profit, the Arabians and Scandinavians to the Molluccas and to America. Science was not there to enable them to reap the fruits of their adventurous courses. More learned, and not less courageous, the Italians and Portuguese, aided by the mariner's compass, traversed the ocean

It was then that commerce and navigation, taking a bolder range, traversed mountains and seas. An adventurous merchant, to shew his daring and increase the value of his objects of exchange, terrified his credulous countrymen with relations of the monsters and giants he had fought with, the gulphs and burning zones which alone had arrested his course. Thus geography necessarily became, like history, the common depository of all fables and popular traditions, until the spirit of science, which is no other than the spirit of doubt, submitted to a severe analysis the gross materials amassed by credulous ages.