Colonization. May 4, 1833.-Colonization is not only a manifest experiment, but an imperative duty in Great Britain. God seems to hold out his finger to us over the sea. But it must be a national colonization, such as was that of the Scotch to America; a colonization of hope, and not such as we have alone encouraged and effected for the last fifty years, a colonization of despair.' Machinery. The wonderful powers of machinery can, by multiplied production, render the arte facta of life cheaper, but they cannot cheapen, except in a very slight degree, the immediate growths of nature, or the immediate necessaries of man. A coat and a pair of shoes are as dear now as ever they were, perhaps dearer, and no discoveries in machinery can materially alter the relative price of beef and mutton. Now the arte facta are sought by the higher classes of society in a proportion incalculably beyond that in which they are sought by the lower classes; and therefore it is that the vast increase of mechanical powers has not cheapened life and pleasure to the poor as it has done to the rich. In some respects, no doubt, it has done so,-as in giving cotton [qu. silk?] dresses to maid-servants, and penny gin to all. A pretty benefit truly!' National Debt. 'What evil results to this country taken at large from the national debt? I never could get a plain and practical answer to that question. As to taxation to pay the interest, how can the country suffer by a process under which the money is never one minute out of the pockets of the people? You may just as well say that a man is weakened by the circulation of his blood. There may, certainly, be particular local evils and grievances resulting from the mode of taxation or collection; but how can that debt be in any proper sense a burden to the nation, which the nation owes to itself, and to no one but itself? It is a juggle to talk of the nation owing the capital or the interest to the stockholders; it owes to itself only. It is really and truly nothing more. in effect than so much money or money's worth raised annually by the state for the purpose of quickening industry *.' *Here the editor quotes in his note, and we willingly follow in part his example, a splendid passage from one of the Table-talker's early essays in The Friend:'A great statesman, lately deceased, in one of his anti-ministerial harangues against some proposed impost, said: The nation has been already bled in every vein, and is faint with loss of blood. This blood, however, was circulating in the mean time through the whole body of the state, and what was received into one chamber of the heart was instantly sent out again at the other portal. Had he wanted a metaphor to convey the possible injuries of taxation, he might have found one less opposite to the fact in the known disease of aneurism, or relaxation of the coats of particular vessels, by a disproportionate accumulation of blood in them, which sometimes occurs when the circulation has been suddenly and violently changed, and causes helplessness, or even mortal stagnation, though the total quantity of blood remains the same in the system at large.' Landlords. Landlords. 'When shall we return to a sound conception of the right to pro perty-namely, as being official, implying and demanding the performance of commensurate duties? Nothing but the most horrible perversion of humanity and moral justice, under the specious name of political economy, could have blinded men to this truth as to the possession of land, the law of God having connected indissolubly the cultivation of every rood of earth with the maintenance and watchful labour of man. But money, stock, riches by credit, transferable and convertible at will, are under no such obligations; and, unhappily, it is from the selfish autocratic possession of such property, that our land-holders have learnt their present theory of trading with that which was never meant to be an object of commerce.' Coronation Oath. 'March 12, 1833.-Lord Grey has in Parliament said two things: first, that the coronation oaths only bind the king in his executive capacity; and secondly, that members of the House of Commons are bound to represent in their votes the wishes and opinions of their constituents, and not their own. Put these two together, and tell me what useful part of the constitutional monarchy of England remains. It is clear that the coronation oaths would be no better than Highgate oaths. For in his executive capacity the king cannot do anything, against the doing of which the oaths bind him; it is only in his legislative character that he possesses a free agency capable of being bound. The nation meant to bind that.' Principle and Expediency. 'March, 1834.-Oh, for a great man-but one really great man,— who could feel the weight and the power of a principle, and unflinchingly put it into act! See how triumphant in debate and in action. O'Connell is! Why? Because he asserts a broad principle and acts up to it, rests all his body on it, and has faith in it. Our ministerstrue Whigs in that have faith in nothing but expedients, de die in diem. Indeed, what principles of government can they have, who in the space of a month recanted a life of political opinions, and now dare to threaten this and that innovation at the huzza of a mob, or in pique at a parliamentary defeat?' Patronage of the Crown. 'Feb. 20, 1833.-I was just now reading Sir John Cam Hobhouse's answer to Mr. Hume or some other of that set, upon the point of transferring the patronage of the army and navy from the crown to the House of Commons. I think, if I had been in the House of Commons, I would have said, "that ten or fifteen years ago I should have considered Sir J. C. H.'s speech quite unanswerable, it being clear constitutional law that the House of Commons has not, nor ought to have, any share directly or indirectly in the appointment of the officers of the army or navy. But now that the king had been reduced by the means and procurement of the honourable baronet and his friends to a puppet, which, so far from having any independent will of its own, own, could not resist a measure which it hated and condemned, it became a matter of grave consideration whether it was not necessary to vest the appointment of such officers in a body like the House of Commons rather than in a junta of ministers, who were obliged to make common cause with the mob and democratic press for the sake of keeping their places."' Reformed House of Commons. April 9, 1833.-I have a deep though paradoxical conviction that most of the European nations are more or less on their way, unconsciously indeed, to pure monarchy, that is, to a government in which, under circumstances of complicated and subtle control, the reason of the people shall become efficient in the apparent will of the king. As it seems to me, the wise and good in every country will in all likelihood become every day more and more disgusted with the representative form of government, brutalized as it is and will be by the predominance of democracy in England, France, and Belgium. The statesmen of antiquity, we know, doubted the possibility of the effective and permanent combination of the three elementary forms of government, and perhaps they had more reason than we have been accustomed to think. 'You see how this House of Commons has begun to verify all the ill prophecies that were made of it,-low, vulgar, meddling with everything, assuming universal competency, flattering every base passion, and sneering at everything noble, refined, and truly national! The direct and personal despotism will come on by and by, after the multitude shall have been gratified with the spoil and the ruin of the old institutions of the land.' 1794 and 1834. Thirty years ago and more, Pitt availed himself, with great political dexterity, of the apprehension which Burke and the conduct of some of the clubs in London had excited, and endeavoured to inspire into the nation a panic of property. Fox, instead of exposing the absurdity of this, by showing the real numbers and contemptible weakness of the disaffected, fell into Pitt's trap, and was mad enough to exag. gerate even Pitt's surmises. The consequence was a very general apprehension throughout the country of an impending revolution, at a time when, I will venture to say, the people were more heart-whole than they had been for a hundred years previously. After I had travelled in Sicily and Italy, countries where there were real grounds for the fear, I became deeply impressed with the difference. Now, after a long continuance of high national glory and influence, when a revolution of a most searching and general character is actually at work, and the old institutions of the country are all awaiting their certain destruction or violent modification,-the people at large are perfectly secure, sleeping or gambolling on the very brink of a volcano.' Such were the sentiments expressed but a few months ago on some of the most important points of our national condition and prospects, prospects, by a wise, learned, and patriotic man, who looked earnestly at the busy world from his loophole of retreat,' and whose opinions may not perhaps be the less worthy of consideration because they were not influenced by the crowded and therefore, in too many cases, fanatical atmosphere of clubs and meetings. They agree very much with the general results of our own observation and reflection. Yet we cannot permit ourselves to give up for lost a cause in defence of which some of the best and greatest of our countrymen have once more undertaken to assume the responsibility of office. The symptoms of a re-action among that class of the community in whom the main and ultimate direction of public affairs is now de facto vested, may have been unconsciously exaggerated on this occasion-but that such a re-action has been for some time going on, and is still in progress, there can be no doubt in any sincere mind; and based, as it must necessarily have been in its origin, not on passion but reflection, that it should not continue more and more to develope itself we can hardly prevail on ourselves to think at all probable. Had Mr. Coleridge been alive now, we are inclined to believe he could not have failed to admit that there had opened upon us some glimpses at least of a better destiny than he ventured to anticipate in March and April last, When death was with him dealing.' We ourselves happened to have several long conversations with him on these momentous subjects, not many months before his illness confined him to his chamber; and then, in the open air, walking by the sea-side, his tone of prediction was undoubtedly more hopeful than the reader of his sick-bed Talk might be likely to conjecture. We think it right to record that he more than once expressed his belief that, under the circumstances in which the Reform Bill had placed the country, there was much more likelihood of good than of evil results from extending still further the electoral suffrage. The great mischief, he always said, had been placing too much power in one particular class of the population the class above and below which attachment to our old institutions in Church and State is most prevalent. ART. V.-1. Topography of Thebes and General View of Egypt. By I. G. Wilkinson, Esq. London. 1835. 2. I Monumenti dell' Egitto e della Nubia, disegnati dalla Spedizione Scientifico-Literaria Toscana in Egitto. Dal Dottore Ippolito Rosellini. Pisa. Vols. i. iii. 1832-4. 3. Lettres 3. Lettres écrites d'Egypte et de Nubie, en 1828, 1829. Par Champollion le Jeune. Paris. 1833. 4. Materia Hieroglyphica. 4 Parts. By I. G. Wilkinson, Esq. Malta. 1828. 5. Examen Critique des Travaux de feu M. Champollion sur les Hieroglyphes. Par M. J. Klaproth. Paris. 1832. 6. Des principales Expressions qui servent à la Notation des Dates sur les Monumens de l'Ancienne Egypte d'après l'Inscription de Rosette. Par François Salvolini. Paris. 1833. WE E contemplate the two works at the head of our list with mingled feelings, among which pride in the literary glory of our country does not predominate. We do not mean that the work of Mr. Wilkinson is not at least as creditable to its author as that of the Italian scholar; but we cannot look without some jealousy on the more costly form and the more splendid engravings of the Tuscan publication. This is no fault of the author, who, no doubt, would feel an honest pride in seeing the laborious collections of many years brought before the public in a complete and imposing shape, and his own claim as a discoverer in that region of antiquarian research, to which he has devoted a considerable period of his life, placed upon a durable record. Still less blame can attach to the publisher, who would soon cease to publish, if he were to embark in splendid and expensive works without a fair expectation of profitable return. The state of the case is this. No sooner is a new impulse given to the study of Egyptian antiquities than an expedition is fitted out at the expense of the French and of the Tuscan governments. The persons appointed on this literary mission are absent about a year and a half, make a rapid survey of the splendid objects of their inquiry, employ regular draughtsmen, who are placed at their service, and return home (not, we lament to say, in Champollion's case) to enjoy the well-earned rewards of their labours. In the meantime some English gentlemen, animated solely by an ardent thirst for knowledge, and a lively interest in the antiquities of the ancient and mysterious parent of Western civilization, devote their own time, at their own cost, to the same objects of research. One of these, Mr. Wilkinson, in his undivided devotion to this absorbing study, resides for twelve years in the country, acquaints himself with the language and habits of the people, takes up his dwelling for a considerable time in one of the tombs at Thebes, makes the most accurate surveys of the district, copies, with the minutest accuracy, all the wonders of the monuments, and brings back to England the accumulated treasures of all his years of travel. On the return of the French and Tuscan expedition, the publication of their respective works is undertaken by |