And it is given !-the surge The tree-the rock-the sand- The vision of thy band And is thy grandeur done? Mother of men like these ! At page 19 there is a head of Sappho, from a gem in Tassie's collection. It differs a good deal from the common bust of the poetess on gems; but it is an undoubted antique, and of exquisite workmanship. The expression of the face is one of the deepest dejection. Croly's lines are splendid. She loved-she felt the lightning-gleam, And she had hope-the treacherous hope, Then all gave way-mind, passion, pride! The whole concenter'd strife of Love! How graceful is the following stanza! It stands alone, and almost conveys the image of the gem it is intend. ed to illustrate. THE EDUCATION OF BACCHUS. I HAD a vision !-'Twas an Indian vale, Whose sides were all with rosy thickets crown'd, That never felt the biting winter gale;And soon was heard a most delicious sound; And to its music danced a nymph embrown'd, Leading a lion in a silken twine, That with his yellow mane would sweep the ground, Then on his rider fawn-a boy divine! While on his foaming lips a nymph shower'd purple wine. One more specimen, and we shall have done. No one that has ever seen any bust of Pindar can require to be reminded of that solemn physiognomy, in which the fire of an Apollo, and the strength of a Hercules, are blended together. PINDAR. In the grave this head was laid ;- For a thousand years have play'd, Through a thousand shapes have gone; Quick with life, or cold with death, Still but withering dust and breath! It has blossom'd in the flower It has floated in the waveIt has lit the starlight hour It has whisper'd through this cave! Has the spirit perish'd all? This was but its mouldering wall ! Greece-the name is lost in tears,- Glow'd and triumph'd, fought, and died, Till the chain no longer clanks,- It would be quite superfluous for us to say more about this little volume. We have done enough to make its existence known to such as are likely to appreciate the elegance and skill of the gentlemen concerned in its preparation. The verses appear to us to be, in many instances, of the very highest order of merit. They bear the marks of that ardent enthusiasm, which is among the author's richest gifts, and yet they have all the graceful simplicity-without which nobody should ever presume to approach the hallowed soil of Greece. After all, when one considers the number of engravings, 8s. 6d. is not much of a price :-therefore take courage, and "Go forth, my little book!" One word, however, at parting, to Mr Croly. What absurd affectation is this you have fallen into, of printing your verses here and there, after the fashion of the age of Rowley? The lines, for example, on "Venus clipping the wings of Cupid," are in every respect, phraseology, versification, &c. as modern as any in the volume, and yet you write, "Nothinge borne of sunne or gloome, Is so deadlie as thatte plume;" and so forth. This was all very well in Mr Snodgrass's ballad about "Whyttingtonne hys Catte;" but, do you, Mr Croly, avoid the like henceforth, as you value your skin.-Verbum sat. HINTS TO THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN, IN A LETTER TO C. NORTH, ESQ. SIR, I am surprised that you have not yet favoured your readers with any opinion on that great topic which at present so universally engrosses the public attention,-I mean the AGRICULTURAL QUESTION. It is due from the vigour and independence with which your work is conducted, that some notice should be taken of the humbug connected with that important subject, and that the merits of the case, got up for the country gentlemen, should be exposed, not so much in its principles, as in the important considerations which are so carefully kept in the back-ground. It seems to me that an attempt is made, with great industry, and some degree, both of talent and ingenuity, to represent "THE LANDED INTEREST" as "the Nation;" and by a dexterous juggle, to confound the metaphor "country," with those plain matter of facts, "the country gentlemen." Every thing relative to the general question, as far as the whole community is concerned, is lost sight of, and our fears and understandings are puzzled with crude notions of political economy, somehow deduced from "the stottery" philosophy of Malthus, and doctrines drawn from the theoretical dogmas of the radicals. It seems to be assumed as incontrovertible, that our population exceeds our means of employment; and that, although we are overladen with abundance, it is yet necessary to encourage emigration. It seems also, in like manner, to be assumed, that there does exist certain inherent rights in the lower classes of the people, by which they are authorised to set aside the order of things which has grown up among us, which order of things is as much a necessary, I would say a natural product, as the man himself is, that is formed in our civilized state of society by the influence of the education he receives, and of the circumstances in which he is placed. The rights of man, which it has been the misfortune of the world to hear so much about during the last thirty years, are only practically applicable to the condition of mankind in a state of nature; they are only useful as integers for the scientific calculations of philosophy. They have no operative existence in the manifold combinations and dependencies of the civilized state, saving and excepting that of equality, which, in legislation, is the principle of justice. In every other respect, by the blessing of God, and the progress of that amelioration which forms so visible and so beautiful a part of his Providence, THE RIGHTS OF SOCIETY have superseded THE RIGHTS OF MAN, and it is no longer a question, what we are entitled to, but what is the best mode for continuing that progressive state, which necessarily evolves itself by a careful conservation of the rights of society from the shocks and injuries to which they are exposed by those who venture to set human law at defiance, and to act on the instigations of nature. Nothing, I conceive, can be more indisputable, than that it is the nature of society to generate for itself, out of the industry, the intelligence, and the power of individuals, a stock of public wealth; and that in the judicious appropriation of this stock by public opinion, consists the secret of preserving communities progressive in all those things which adorn the physical world, and improve the delights and wonders of the intellectual. Now, the inferrence which I would draw from the history of this country, is, that bitherto the British nation has been progressive, and that out of the appropriation of the stock of public wealth by public opinion among us, has arisen that power and frame and order of things which now exists, and by which such achievments in arts and arms and benevolence have been performed. This does not, however, appear to be the opinion either of the Country Gentlemen, or of the Radicals. The former, as I have already said, appear to consider the country as theirs, and theirs only, merely because, in the existing order of things, their official duty to the public, is to see that the land is properly cultivated and improved; and the Radicals, on the other hand, with their one-eyed reason, regard the stock of public wealth as capable of being apportioned equally to all, and that the progressive state which we enjoy may still be preserved, totally forgetting to consider what would be not only the moral, but the political consequences of a change, that would have the effect of destroying these institutions which, like public conduits and fountains, constantly repair in their effects and operations the detriment that is done to the rights of society, by those who venture to assert the rights of man as individuals. The adjudication of "guilty," is the VOL. XII. land-mark which shews where the rights of man end, and those of society clash with them. But not to enlarge on these points beyond what is requisite as a preface to my immediate object, I wish to draw your attention to the agricultural question, in relation to the rights of society, and to suggest to the members of his Majesty's government the only possible mode of reducing the evil with which that body of public servants, the Country Gentlemen, are at present afflicted. I call them public servants, because if they cannot be so considered, they must be public enemies; for I hold it to be utterly impossible, in the interwoven interests of such a state of society as exists in this country, that there can be any class of the community endowed by the order of things with public trusts, who are not de facto public officers, by whatever name or title they may be distinguished or classed. I do not pretend to point out any way by which the difficulties of the agricultural question can be lessened to government; but I expect to be able to shew that the views which the Country Gentlemen have taken of the subject, are not only erroneous in principle, but deserving of general reprobation. The object of Country Gentlemen, if I can understand what they want, is, that in order to enable them to enjoy their present exorbitant and unnatural rental, the national establishments must be reduced, and that, to effect this, it is necessary to abridge the amount of the taxes. And they go much farther: They say, if the reduction of the national establishments are not sufficient, the public creditor must make up the difference. Now, I propose to myself the task of examining the causes which have led to this open profession of private greed and public dishonesty. In the first place, I would ask, by what superiority of right are the landlords entitled to any preference in the general cominonwealth over the rest of the community? They are but the custodiers of the soil, for the behoof of the nation at large, and their incomes, arising from the rents thereof, are but of the nature of salaries for their superintendence and care of the sources of the national sustenance. In former ages--in the feudal times-they were, it is true, somewhat 3 P more important than the mere stewards to which they have been reduced by the change in manners, and the rise of the commercial system; for they not only held their lands by the natural tenure of supplying the people with the produce, but also upon condition of rendering military service to the crown. The whole army, in the ancient periods of the monarchy, was raised and maintained at the expence of the landlords.-I am not going into this subject minutely; but treating a general question upon its general merits, and this broad fact shall not be nibbled at, merely because there were probably here and there some half a score of jocular tenures— I, therefore, repeat, that the land was pledged for the maintenance and support of the army; that the landlords raised the recruits at their own expence, accoutred them for the field, and not only maintained them there for a certain time, free of expence to the country, but afterwards, in common with the other subjects, contributed to their support so long as the Crown required their service. By the rise of the commercial system, and the requisite establishments, in consequence of standing armies, available for colonial purposes, the obligation of military service was commuted, and the land-tax, and other assessments on rural industry, substituted. Lawyers may say that there is no record of this in the statutebook; how, indeed, was it to be expected that the nature of territorial property should be set forth in the preambles of tax-bills? But the historial fact is so; and the enormous free incomes of the modern landlords, distributed according to their own pleasure, is the effect of the advantageous arrangements which they made for themselves, by being the legislators, when they gradually disencumbered the land from the obligations of the feudal tenures. It is, therefore, clearly manifest, that the landlords, instead of possessing any superiority of right entitling them to a preference in the general commonwealth over the rest of the community, actually stand in the predicament of enjoying a larger remuneration for their trouble as custodiers of the soil, than what they ought to possess; the feudal charges of which they have disencumbered themselves, being, at this time, much heavier to the community, than the whole amount of the land-tax, and the direct taxes on agriculture. But even were the amount of these taxes equal to those charges, supposing for a moment it had been practicable to have continued them in the altered state of society under the commercial system, still, by the change which that system has induced on the old agricultural system, the cares and hazards of the custody of the soil have been so much reduced, that the remuneration of the custodiers ought also to be reduced. But what is the fact? Their remuneration has been increased, and they have been largely benefited by the change. In one sentence, and regardless of the consternation which it may produce among "the pluckless," the landlords, during the growing and glorious advantages of the commercial system, have been reduced into the condition of DRONES their occupation is in a great measure gone, and the race of great farmers, generated by the commercial system, has become the custodiers of the soil, the rent which they pay to the landlords being of the nature of superannuation pensions. The Country Gentlemen have placed themselves in this invidious light, by encouraging the system of farming on a large scale, a system of which I shall have occasion to speak hereafter, but which, I may here notice, has had the effect of making the rents more irregularly paid, although at first it promised great facilities in the mode of collection. Now we would ask the landlords, how is it that they dare presume to hope or expect that their pensions and salaries are to be preserved entire, at their present exorbitant rate, and those of all the other public servants abridged or sacrificed? Do they think that those new custodiers of the land will continue to support their sinecures; or rather, which is the more scientific mode of placing the truth, do they imagine that the agricultural system, as it is at present modified, can afford a surplus of profit, (after paying the tear and wear of capital, and the expenses of labour,) we say, do they expect that it can af ford a surplus of profit equal to the amount of those fixed incomes, which they have for so many years calculated on receiving?-It cannot; and this they perfectly know and understand; but averse to look at the real circumstances of their case, and to acknowledge the truth, they factiously and jacobinically tell, in their thousand absurd, and craftily-got-up petitions to the legislature, that it is not their sinecures, so rigorously exacted from the farm. ers, which is the cause of that destruction of the capital employed in agriculture, that is impoverishing the land, but the burden of the national establishments.-"It is not our high rents," say they to their tenants, "but the heavy taxes, which grind you down; pay you, therefore, your rents cheerfully as before, and we will use our predominating influence in the legislature to force government to reduce the taxes; no matter what the consequences may be to the rest of the community; no matter what misery it may entail on thousands of honest, and enlightened, and meritorious men, who have spent their days in the public service; no matter to what crimes, the fruit of poverty, it may reduce those brave and gallant spirits, whose duties were dangers, and who, in so many battles, and under so many pestiferous climates, fought and bled, to keep us safe at our banquets and our revels, when the greatest foe that ever conquered had sworn our destruction. Think not of the moral anarchy that must arise in such a community as that of Great Britain, by thousands of ingenious and daring minds thrown for subsistence on the resources of their ingenuity and their bravery; continue to pay our rents, and we will, by every means that dishonesty can suggest, whether it be to plunder the official servants, or to degrade the national heroes, or to defraud the public creditors, we will by chaos and clamour in the Houses of Parliament, enable you to do so, unless the Gvernment is firin enough to expose our nefarious principles, as we are consci ous they may be exposed. But in that case, Lord have mercy upon us, for we shall then be obliged to yield to public opinion; or if we venture to resist, as for a time we may, we shall in the end be compelled to scamper off, as dastardly and as despicably as the chaff of the French nobility and gentry, who abandoned their country to the Hunts and Humes and Cobbetts of Paris." That the real cause of the agricultural distress is known to a few enlightened landlords is acknowledged in the laudable and voluntary reductions which they have made in their rents.* By the progress of the commercial system, not only the produce, but the land itself, became a commodity of mercantile speculation; local attachments, entails, and restrictions on the disposal, prevented it, however, from being rendered entirely transferable; but premiums, in the shape of advanced rents, or fees, or grassums, were given to the holders for the chances of the rise that might take place in the course of a specified period of years, not merely in the value of the produce, but in the value of the land itself, in consequence of anticipated augmentations to the national wealth, from whatever cause accruing. It is the nature of mercantile speculation to occasion an unsound increase of value, and the value of land was, in consequence, inflated and swollen. In considering therefore, generally, the question of agricultural distress, it may be predicated as a principle to be referred to hereafter-THAT AT THE CLOSE OF Mr Campbell of Blytheswood, the member for Glasgow, we understand, has adopted the principle of regulating his rents by the fiars. It was worthy of the representative of so great, so enlightened, and so enterprizing a city, to adopt the only rational means of securing to himself a fair proportion of the return which the capital, the skill, and the labour employed in the cultivation could afford. Does it never occur to those landlords, who are so ready in rouping out their tenants, that it might be better to reduce the rent to the tenant in possession, rather than to an untried stranger? To say nothing of the advantages, which in all times of trouble and danger, kind landlords have derived from the fidelity of their tenantry, does it not look very like injustice and oppression, to sell the stock and implements of a tenant, to make up the deficiency of a rent, which deficiency is afterwards satisfied in the form of a reduction to a new tenant? Why should the stranger receive this premium over the possessor? On this subject much might be said, but enough is suggested for consideration at this time. |