After the assumption of the land in large parcels, and the inequality of other property, which was the consequence of it, took place; it is probable that the power which followed, in those that possessed that property, over the rest of the people, was the spontaneous and almost necessary cause of the present system in most civilized states: but we are not, on that account, to be less anxious for its amendment."

There would be injustice in not giving to the author's remedy the same circulation as to his suppositious disease; for as a printed grievance may turn out an epidemic, the specific should also be within call.

"Having now stated the unhappy situation of the mass of the people in most civilized nations, and also assigned what I apprehend to be the true cause of it, it now remains to propose a remedy for it: but

Hoc opus, hic labor.

"This, however, does not arise from any difficulty in finding an appropriate remedy; for when the true cause of a disease is discovered, we are seldom at a loss for a cure. The difficulty arises from the unwillingness of those who occasion the evil, and who imagine

that it is for their interest that it should continue, to permit the remedy to be applied.

"An ancient physician says, that all changes in the constitution, though even from worse to better, ought to be gradual. I believe the same caution will still be more necessary in regard to the political constitution: great disorder and even convulsions are apt to be raised in both constitutions, by a hasty and indiscreet use of powerful remedies. But it has been found by experience that the human constitution will bear, in large quantities, powerful medicines, if administered with skill and caution. The remedy I have to propose in the disease of civilized society is powerful, and a powerful one in this case seems to be required. It is not, however, a dangerous one, and may be safely committed to the hands of such persons as are disinterested and dispassionate. To obtain such persons, they should be taken not from the aggrieved party; for from that quarter they would not probably be cool and temperate; their feelings, from the pressure which they have undergone, would probably urge them on too violently. On the contrary, as neutral persons are hard to be found, they should be taken from the aggrievers, or the aggrieving party; for, though we may be inclined to do justice, we are seldom so hasty and violent in doing it to others, as we are to have it done to ourselves. Such persons might be safely entrusted with the management of the most powerful means. It would be better, therefore, that the redress of the grievances of the poor should originate from the rich themselves.

"The cause of the evil having been de monstrated to be the great inequality of

wealth, the remedy must necessarily be, either to remove this inequality, or to coun eract and to prevent its effects. As to te first, I would only propose the abolition of the law of primogeniture, which is to be found in most nations, and the annulling of which, in the course of no long time, would, as has been before shown, have greater effects than may be imagined. It is a practice whici, to consider it in a private view, does not seem conducive to the happiness of the people; a practice that makes beggars frequently of all the children but one; and, if the parent has an equal affection for all of them, is scarcely a less grievance to him than to the younger children. A possessor of a large estate has in this case but one, perhaps, of a large family provided for; and to provide for the other in a way in any degree suitable to the manner in which he has brought them up, or that would be expected from him, he is enbar has the conduct to effect it. A law attended rassed all his life-and not one father in twenty with these circumstances would not, as it should seem, have been continued so long, had there not been some reason, not avowed, for it. A family with a head raised so much above the rest gives a miniature of monarchy, and has from that resemblance, and from other reasons, been supposed inclinable to support prerogative. Alas! how few institetions in most states have the good of the pub lic in view, either in their origin or contre

ance!

"As to the other mode; namely, to prevent the effects of wealth. It has been shown that the chief effect of the unequal distribution of property is the drawing off the labour of the poor from producing the necessaries life, and employing it in producing the refined manufactures. The obvious remedy, therefore, is the prohibition, by law, of these refined manufactures, or the subjecting them to such heavy taxes as would much less a the production of them. The direct oper tion of this would be the prevention of the e fects of the alleged cause: this would be draw ing the venom from the jaws of the serpect and depriving him of the power of destry. tion: this would prove an effectual cure, and that in a manner safe, peaceable, and constitutional; liable to occasion no disorder in the constitution, no convulsion in the state: and requires nothing to be put in execution, but a real desire in the rich of redressing the grievances of the poor. Neither is it a novel, untried method; the enacting sumptuary laws having been the practice in many states and ages. Here, then, is the cure, not Utopian, but simple in its nature, easy in practice, and certain in effect.

"The advantages of this method are ob vious. In the first place, the change may be introduced by as slow degrees as shall be found requisite; so as not to throw artificers out of employ, till labour is found for them in agriculture, and the arts subservient to it; which will soon be the case, as the capitals

sent systein.

"It has been observed, that in every science, the more thoroughly it is understood, the fewer and more simple are its principles and precepts: hence the remedy proposed, being single, and in its nature simple, carries a presumption with it that the true cause of the evil in question has been assigned.”

The mischievous effect of the privileges of primogeniture, and of the practice of entails, are sufficiently obvious, without the vast scaffolding provided by this author to exhibit them in an unwelcome point of view. The laws which distinguish between real and personal property must first be revised and as the legacy-taxes on personal property approach nearer to the true value, than those on real property, it is for the interest of the revenue to make the change. The privilege of entail, and that of qualification to sit in parliament, may next be limited to capital vested in the public funds. Hereditary consequence should be confined to those who stake their property in the hands of their country; not to those who guard their acres with an armed peasantry against their due proportion of taxation; who pass corn-bills to indemnify themselves, at the expence of the poor, for pretended land-taxes; who profligately propose the plunder of a tenth of the funds without offering at the same time a tenth of their estates to the country; and who have attached great political and constitutional rights to a form of capital, which the financier only knows by its niggardli

Dess.

As to the second alterative prescribed by Mr. Hall, the enaction of sumptuary laws, we cannot conceive his motive for the proposal. Expence, luxury, extravagance, profusion, these are the virtues of opulence, the grand levelling causes, which restore the expedient balance of property,

and undo the folly of governments in patronizing and promoting inequality. Enact sumptuary laws, and the accumulations of avarice, of rapacity, of monopoly, of violent plunder, will never wander back to the reservoirs whence they were pumped, but endow a pampered greatness with incessant superiority. Rather enact laws to compel the payment of gaming debts, and the contracts of minors, to permit the breach of entails, and the violation of endescent of the children of prodigality into dowments, and to promote the voluntary the middle classes of society. Wealth should be the reward of industry and exertion; it should escape from idleness, from negligence, from rashness; and, with it, nobility should expire, which is a privilege too vast and too permanent for the interests of emulation and the proportion of recompense.

not to confidence. It is one thing to We recommend this book to perusal, remove the legal impediments to equality, it is another to enact artificial provisions for introducing it. The boldest inroad on huge possessions, which is likely to be executed, would be a legacy-tax on property descending directly, which should increase with the amount bequeathed, so as to levy on small properties one per cent; on larger, two; on great properties, four; on vast, eight per cent. this way every generation of the rich would be sensibly impoverished, if the arts of acquisition fall into neglect.

In

invented, which dismiss whole villages of the miserable, and maintain the proprietors and scatterers of their productions in comfortable affluence. Not only the intensity of human welfare is greatly increased on the whole by the social arts, but the numbers of those maintained in a given district. Where savagism will feed ten, civilization will feed a hundred. It is a preferable form of national existence, not only because nine-tenths of the community are better provided for, but because nine-tenths of the community are superadded to what would else exist.

Whether civilization is strictly the result, or the cause of the condensation of populousness, has been occasionally disputed. There seems to be a mixture of action and reaction. Multiply, from whatever cause, the people, and new divisions

THE last thirty years have produced a marked change in the condition and manners of all ranks of society in Great Britain. There has been a vast increase both of wealth and people; but there has also been a grosser and a growing inequality in the distribution of the wealth and in the comforts of the people. This is chiefly to be ascribed to the perverse legislation which has uniformly distinguished this period. Instead of breaking up, as Adam Smith proposed in 1776, the commercial monopolies and great corporations, which always favour the concentration of jobs, contracts, speculations, and profits in few hands, a corrupt preference has been shown, by our ministers and lawgivers, to the commercial aristocracy. Every thing has been done to sacrifice the numerous to the superior classes of trades

men.

The charter of the India company has been renewed: the bank has been privileged against legitimate demands: the interests of our manufactures, which maintain the poor, have been postponed to those of a colonial agriculture, where an equal circulation of capital maintains but a hundredth part of domestic industry. Taxes on popular consumption have been multiplied beyond example: imposts on the rents of houses, lands, and bonds, and on conveyances and legacies, which justice indicated as the first, were reserved for the last resources. Accordingly the higher orders of the commercial world have thriven; but the middle class has sunken

step by step, until at length it is reduced to recruit the numbers of the poor. Oneeighth of the population of the country is maintained by charitable contribution.

The poors rate is now more than treble that of 1776, and more than double that of 1786. Yet, as Mr. Rose too truly observes (p. 4) "I may venture to say, that those who look most narrowly into the present situation of the poor will not think it on the whole advanced in point of comfort beyond what it was thirty years ago."

Dr. Macfarlan's Enquiries concerning the Poor were first published in 1782; they still constitute the best book we possess on the subject. They recommend, with Price and Acland, the institution of benefit-societies: they reprobate the construction of houses of industry as less expedient than domestic relief. Mr. Rose has the high merit of having introduced to parliament that bill for the encouragement of benefit-societies, which repeals the law of settlement in favour of those paupers who are members of such socie ties. From this pamphlet it may sumed that he also aspires (p. 33) to accomplish the abolition of work-houses, The proper use of these edifices would be to convert them into hospitories for the aged poor: there must however be receptacles for orphans, and for abandoned per sons, who are suddenly thrown on their parishes for a maintenance.

be pre

One million and forty thousand persons

Scottish laws and practice relative to the support and employment of the poor, it will be seen that, contrary to the supposition, 100 hastily adopted, of our English writers on the subject, the general principles of the system very nearly resemble those of England; the difference seenis, as before observed, to be in the execution of the powers, which the legislature has provided for attaining its object."

It is rumoured that government was projecting to take the management of the poor into its own hands: we hope that this scheme is not to find warm patrons among the newly-constituted authorities. The rage for governing too much must surely by this time have spent itself, and must begin to look back with melancholy regret on its labour in vain and its toilsome injuries. Elective institutions alone retain their vigour unimpaired: unless the

THE restoration of absolute monarchy in France operaces, as might be expected, on the literature of the country. The cringelings of despotism are looking back to the ancient apologists of arbitrary power, and are republishing the obsolete sophisms of their jesuitic predecessors, in order to stabilitate the practical omnipotence of their emperor by a corresponding theory. Certainly these principles are never so plausible as when urged in behalf of a great sovereign; and never so contagious as when the natural schools of refutation are reduced to the fewest possible number. England and Sweden are the only fragments of the old world which retain a trace of limited government. "It is at no time easy to spread among the people a passion for liberty; that requires principle, self-denial, exertion, disinterest, instruction, humanity, patience, perseverance, justice. But in all evils of the opposite kind the natural inclinations are flattered: to obey accommodates the indolence; to corrupt and be corrupted, the avarice and ambition of

eloquence, and illustrated with felicity; and when they profess to borrow, as in the present instance, the aid of religions doctrines common to both nations, they are but too likely to find, even among respectable persons, a listening and a docile audience.

The first part of this work undertakes a refutation of the hypothesis (so this author calls it) of a state of nature anterior to society.

It is an historical fact, that savages pass many ages in anarchy before they unite under any form of government: while the means of maintenance are easy, while the hunters can find game, and the gra ziers pasture, this anarchy mostly conti nues peaceful: it degenerates into hostility when the scramble for food begins. The necessity of concert, for the conduct of efficient hostility, has every where founded the first, rude, occasional, transient government, the elective monarchy of military chiefs. Not theory, but observation, contemplates a state of nature as a state of war.

"Hobbes asserts (continues our author), that the condition of man, in a state of nature, supposes perpetual warfare, because all have a right to all things, since each man endea dual favour, and claims it as an indisputable vours to establish this right in his own indiviprivilege. Hobbes subjoins, that man, from the necessity of his nature, is inclined to re linquish this state of misery, in which he can not comply with the laws of nature; and he