people were happier than others, because there was scarcely a peasant who had not some little inheritance. The equal division of property existed from the remotest times in the provinces where the old Roman law prevailed; and it was previous to the sale of the national property, that the consequences of this system to France alarmed Arthur Young. Since that period the subdivision has increased, immense capitals have been swallowed up by the wars of the revolution, yet who can compare France now with the France of 1789, without being struck by the increase of the national wealth? I have no hesitation in believing, that every artificial direction given to capital by the legislature, every shackle imposed on the division or circulation of property, is detrimental on any hypothesis.' Our most celebrated writers have, as our author remarks, something vague and desultory on the question, and seem to experience a sort of interior struggle between prejudice and obvious conclusions. Mr. Malthus and Mr. M'Culloch have not escaped this defect; but M. de Stael informs us, that he heard Mr. Ricardo express a very different opinion; and, as he adds, his name alone is a host. The English,' says our author, who attack the equality of division, commonly figure to themselves the inheritance of the father shared between ten or twelve children; each of these marrying, and having in turn ten or twelve children more; so that the last would receive only a hundredth or a hundred and forty-fourth part of his grandfather's property. But this is not the course of things in the world. In fact, if the increase of population followed such a progression, a single family would overspread the whole of the habitable earth in less than ten generations. What then is the real state of France? Does the parcelling out of estates go on increasing in so alarming a manner? By no means. On the contrary, we see in the neighbourhood of rich towns, and in general in every part where capitals accumulate through trade and manufactures, that landed estates have a tendency to enlarge. It is true, in provinces destitute of these advantages, in Britanny for example, the division of inheritances is carried much too far; but even in such provinces the interests of agriculture will set limits to this cantling. Already it is not uncommon, in various parts of France, to see a family of peasants agree, that one of the brothers shall remain proprietor of the paternal farm. The rest receive from him either a sum of money, or a portion of the profits, and remain with him as farm servants, to avoid losing the advantages of farming on a large scale, or to preserve the respectability attached to the long possession of the same inheritance. For it is to be observed, in the present state of men's minds, this sort of aristocratical feeling is much more common in the lower than in the middle classes. Nothing too is more common, both in France and Switzerland, than to see the possessor of a small estate farming one more extensive. I would even say, that a great majority of the farmers are landholders also. The day labourer they em ploy, is often master of a cot that serves to shelter his family, a garden that feeds his children, and a little field that he can cultivate when he is unemployed, and which enables him to maintain with less ine quality the fearful struggle of laborious poverty against exacting wealth. From this general state of things arises a degree of happiness not to be disdained even if which becomes one of the happiest results attended with no other advantage; but that the social order is capable of producing, when, as we see in the Protestant parts of Switzerland, it is guaranteed by free institutions, and ennobled by a general diffusion of knowledge. It is universally an object of ambition with the French peasant, to become the proprietor of a little plot of ground, or to enlarge what he has received from his forefathers. This propensity is of ancien date, and the revolution merely strength. ened it, by furnishing him with opportunities of easily gratifying it. This desire, it must be confessed, is not always exercised judiciously in general he gives more for land than it is worth, because, labour being the necessary condition of his life, he reckons it as nothing when he calculates the produce of the soil; so that an estate, which, if sold in a lump, would fetch a price only proportionate to its rent, sells in detail after the rate of its gross produce. Our peasants therefore might derive more advantage from their savings, either by placing them in the funds, or in saving banks; or by farming the land of others, and employing their little capitals in the purchase of stock and agricultural implements; as thus they would obtain much greater interest for their money. But their superstitious predilection for landed property is easily explained. In a country where an uninterrupted succession of public bankruptcies had annihilated confidence, where trade and manufactures were fettered in a thousand ways, where justice was impotent, where the relations between the powerful and the weak, the rich and the poor, were in the hands of arbitrary power, men of the labouring class must have been habituated to trust only to solid and palpable wealth. In England, on the contrary, where every kind of right guaranteed by the law is inexpugnable; where the stability of all things is carried to excess; where public opinion, going hand in hand with financial science, has always caused the engagements of the state towards its creditors to be respected; the possessor of a small capital has justly thought, that the purchase of land was not the most profitable way in which he could employ it. Even they, whose habits and inclinations have rendered them attached to agriculture, have preferred renting farms to purchasing; and the length of leases has given farmers many of the advantages as well as enjoyments annexed to the possession of them. In fact, if we calculate the chances of human life, and the various circumstances that may abridge its duration, or change the condition of individuals, we shall find, that possession secured for a long term of years differs very little from absolute proprietorship, and that the difference between them is greater in the eyes of imagination than in those of reason.' That England has risen above almost every other country in Europe, by the progress of its agriculture, is incontestable ; but I have not here to inquire what are the different causes, that, under the omnipotent ægis of liberty, have produced this result; neither is it incumbent on me to prove, that it is in no degree owing to entails, or the law of primogeniture. In fact if we reflect, that in Italy, in Spain, and wherever else the system of irresponsible freehold succession has been introduced, it has occasioned the deterioration of land, and the impoverishment even of those for whose benefit it was invented, we shall be causes. convinced, that the agricultural prosperity of England must be ascribed to other If a tree abounding in sap be planted in a fertile soil, it may be subjected to a bad system of management perhaps with impunity, its natural vigour may triumph over the obstacles opposed to its growth; but we must not ascribe to the errors of the manager, what is owing to its strength of vegetation.' It is perfectly ridiculous to hear our economists talking about small farms as having a tendency to encourage early marriages. Employment in manufactures is by far a greater inducement; and facts demonstrate that the population increases faster in manufacturing than in agricultural districts. The English economists,' says M. de Stael, in general so able at observing facts, and drawing just inferences from them, have their minds for the most part so warped on the question of the division of property, that the most palpable truths escape them. The population of France in 1789, according to the reports of the Constituent Assembly, was 26,300,000: it is now about 30,000,000. This, certain English writers represent to us as an alarming fact; while they. forget, that the number of inhabitants of England and Wales has risen from 9,168,000 to 12,218,000. Thus the population of France has increased fourteen per cent. in thirty-five twenty years; and during the same years, amounting to eight per cent. in twenty years the increase of the pothree per cent. or four times as much. pulation in England has been thirtySuch a rapid increase sufficiently proves, that the concentration of landed property has not all the efficacy that is ascribed to it, in keeping up a due balance between the quantity of food and number of its consumers. I will even go farther: I will venture to assert, that entails and the law of primogeniture have a tendency to increase the number of children in the higher classes, nearly in the same way as the poor rates tend to the augmentation of indigent families; namely, by preventing the father from cautiously looking forward to the lot that awaits his children.' What will our Macculloch's say to this? When we come to consider the state of the English peasantry, we shall show the misery large farms have generated among a once honest, frugal, and hardy people. TIONS RORY O'ROURKE, ESQ. TO THE EDITOR. TERLY REVIEWS-POPE'S WORKs RAGUAY. TRAVELS IN IRELAND-BIBLICALS- town, ay, and 'village too, in my naEDUCATION-MECHANIC INSTITU- tive country. The last Edinburgh EDINBURGH AND QUAR Review' contains a useful article, though not well written by-the-by, on this subject; and the Quarterly' -the churchman's oracle-has a very extraordinary essay on Mechanics' Institutions. The article reminds one of Dr. Johnson's Life of Milton.' It blows hot and cold at the same time, and would condemn the education of the operatives altogether if it dared. Happily the sense of the community controls the writer, who, Goth as he is, partially yields to the streams of opinion which he is unable to stem. 6 We must refer,' says he, to the state of society as the cause of corruption, if the minds of the people are corrupted: a state which collects numbers together gives them the opportunity of wasting their leisure and their earnings at the haunts of vulgar dissipation, and facilitates the diffusion of periodical sedition from one corner of the kingdom to the other. "Hinc labor ille domûs, et inextricabilis MY DEAR EDITOR,-I herewith send you the MS. of my Travels in Ireland; which, I have no doubt, you will find quite as instructive as they are entertaining. You may print them in the Magazine if you wish; and indeed I think it would be your interest to give them the lead next month. You know how impartial and caudid I am. In all my accounts you will find truth-the whole truth-and nothing but the truth. I state this, lest you should doubt the veracity of certain passages, wherein it is written that I travelled across the Galties in a turf-kish, and spent two nights and part of two days with Captain Rock on Sleibh-na-maun. Such, 1 assure you, was really the case. The Biblicals are in a devil of a way in Ireland. Dr. M'Sweeny has gagged them; and Mr. Kensilla has detected a fellow of Trinity College, misquoting the holy fathers. Dr. Magee, where are you? For shame! Will you let Priests-mere professors in an Irish Catholic College-triumph over the learned teachers in old Trinity? Will you let it go forth to the world, that one of that race, whom you on your oath--calumniated, is inore learned than Mr. Singer, a man who subjoins F.T.C. and half a dozen other letters to his name? The tables are now completely turned. It appears after all that Protestants, and not Catholics, are opposed to education. The Archbishop of Dublin has sworn that he is an enemy to educating the people; and Dr. Miller, of Armagh, and a hundred other Protestant ecclesiastics, have personally opposed the establishment of mechanics' institutions. But the stimulus lately given to the progress of knowledge by the foundation of these institutions throughout the country cannot be controlled. Ireland is, happily, following the example of her more fortunate sister; and I expect, before six months elapse, to hear of one of these institutions being established in every error." Certainly, therefore, we are inclined rather to hope for good than to anticipate evil, from any new objects of interest which may tend to withdraw men out of the seminaries of depravity, and engage them in better things. These institutes are an' experiment of this kind; on the success of which we dare not be enthusiastic, and yet are not willing to speak the language of discouragement. We are told, indeed, and truly told, that the best place for a workman, whose daily labour has been discharged, is the bosom of his family, his own fireside. And if we believed that the practical effect of these lectures would be to detach men from their homes and break up their domestic comforts, we should deem the argument against them insuperable. But it is notorious that the habits of these workmen are not generally domestic. Their "sweet colloquial pleasures are but few." They have hitherto sought for relaxation abroad, and taken it mixed with moral poison. Whatever tends to elevate the man will be a boon to the family. We apprehend no petitions against whereas, in fact, these are but a part of education, and comparatively an unimportant part; i. e. a part that may be better spared than some other acquirements of which no mention is made. The man may have attained a knowledge of geometry or chemistry surprising in his station; but if he has attained nothing else, he is very far from being trained up to be a happy man, or a good citizen. These arts perish in the using; man returns to his dust, and then all his thoughts perish: we wish to see him possessed of thoughts which shall not so perish. * * * 'Here probably we shall be thought to show the cloven foot not so much of bigotry as of the policy which would make religion subservient to its own purposes. Why may we not as justly complain, it will be asked, of any of our great philosophical or literary societies, that they have no religious tendency? Why must religion be mixed up with every thing in which the lower classes are concerned any more than with the higher?' So far are we from grudging the people information on these points, that we regret the obstacles which exist in the way of their attaining it; from the want, at present, of familiar treatises to instruct them, and from their own inadequate leisure. It would be a real blessing if the working classes could be made acquainted with some of the fundamental principles of political economy; such as the laws of population; the causes of the inequality of mankind; the circumstances which regulate the market of corn, or the market of labour. They would then perceive that inequality does not originate in the encroachments of the rich or the enactments of the powerful, but has been necessarily coeval with society itself in all its stages; they would learn that the recompense of labour is governed by definitive principles, and must be determined, on the whole, by the number of candidates for employ. We sincerely wish them to understand these things fully, and are grateful for any measures which may tend to diffuse such knowledge. The perplexity, which the system of poor laws has introduced in England, makes a subject, never very simple, doubly intricate; and has practically tended to involve domestic economy establishments not unlike the Charwith public government, and to connect the idea of private distress with the administration of the laws. He would do the state good service, who would put these matters into a popular intelligible form; and the knowledge thus disseminated would be an excellent preliminary to a measure never to be lost sight of, the gradual abolition of some of those objectionable parts of the poor laws, which are equally condemned by reason and experience, and by which no one is ultimately more aggrieved than the operative workinan himself. After saying all this, shall we seem inconsistent in expressing less confidence of the effects of these institutions than the most sanguine of their supporters? At least we ought to give our reasons. And our reasons are, that we find these lectures on natural philosophy, and these books on science, treated by their advocates as the education of the people : I have always made it a rule to suspect the man who proclaims his own honesty; and I think the allusion to the cloven foot,' a proof of what was passing at the time in the writer's mind. The article concludes with an encomium on Infant Schools ter Schools in Ireland-founded for the purpose of recruiting followers for the church. The result, no doubt, will be similar to what has happened to the kidnapping institutions on the other side of the Channel. Have you seen the last Quarterly Review? All the articles are so mediocre that while you are restrained from praising, there is nothing in them worth censuring. The first article is a defence of Pope-which I would have done much better myself. But it is below the dignity of criticism to contend with such a creature as sonneteering Bowles; whose remarks on Pope reminds one of the fabled fly, who found fault with the dome of St. Paul's. The Tale of Paraguay,' by the Yours, in a hurry, Bedford Square. D DUBLIN AND LONDON MAGAZINE. DECEMBER, 1825. ROBERT EMMET AND HIS COTEMPORARIES.-NO. VIII. A Traitor.-The Fate of Emmet.-The Conclusion. NEXT morning we arose early, and dispatched Denis to town with money to purchase clothes for us, if he found any difficulty in procuring our own; for Emmet was still dressed in regimentals, and I retained the old shopkeepers of the Plunket Street broker. Denis soon equipped himself, threw a sack of new potatoes across the horse's back for an apology, and, with a significant shake of his head, bid us keep up our spirits, and remember that all is not lost that is in danger.' Having breakfasted on a cake of griddle bread and some milk, Dwyer conducted us to a mountain cavern, and left one of his men on a neighbouring eminence to render us assistance if necessary, promising to return in the evening with whatever information he could collect during the day, respecting the proceedings of the civil power. The reverses of fortune appeared to have made but little impression on the sanguine disposition of my friend. He conversed on different topics with his usual correctness and fluency, and now and then gently chided me, when an involuntary sigh declared that my mind was ill at ease; for, though I sometimes succeeded in banishing the recollection of my madness and folly, still the misery and danger in which I had involved my self were continually before me; and, in spite of resolution and hope, reminded me of my fearful situation. The day appeared unusually long, and we waited with anxiety for sunset; but, some hours before that period, Dwyer made his appearance, and begged to introduce a friend; at the same time showing into the cavern Mr. J. The Exile seized our hands; and, without reproaching us for our rashness and folly, lamented the event which had reduced us to the necessity of seeking concealment in the neighbourhood of our friends. VOL. I.-No. 10. But, ceremony apart,' he exclaimed, I why remain in the mouth of danger? Why not instantly quit the country, before government obtains information respecting your names, dress, and abode? The ports of Wexford, Waterford, Cork, and several other places, are yet open; why not instantly fly to them, and quit the kingdom? This morning Denis acquainted me of your being in the country, and Dwyer has been good enough to conduct me hither, where my business is to afford you all the assistance in my power, and persuade you both instantly to fly from the dangers which surround you. I can feel for that situation which was once my own.' Thank you, thank you, my good friend,' replied Emmet, with great emotion; your counsel is wise, and I shall follow it in a few days.' Why not now?' inquired the Exile; I am ready to accompany you to any place of embarkation, and shall instantly procure the means.' 'Not for a few days,' returned Emmet. I cannot yet quit Ireland, whatever the consequence may be ; but my friend, I believe, has no ties like mine, and can readily avail himself of your generous offer.' 'Mr. K,' said the Exile, 'being a stranger in the country, does not stand in the danger to which you are exposed. Your name-your connexions-and, above all, the part you have acted-will draw upon you the utmost vengeance of the government; and depend on it large rewards will soon be offered for your apprehension.' I have no doubt of that,' replied Emmet; but I cannot yet quit Ireland. Excuse my obstinacy; but there is one to whom I must bid an eternal farewell, before the terrors of government shall force me into exile. Why should I refuse to acknowledge the cause? for I am not ashamed of a weakness that compels me to do an 3 к |