when a war either had begun, or was impending; when it would be particularly desirable to conciliate rather than alienate the minds of the people; and when an increase and not a diminution of the revenue was equally to be wished for?

If the government of a country was mad enough to take such a step, would the people submit to it? I believe not. I believe no government on earth, were it ever so despotic, could long continue a system so fraught with ruin; and the rapid and almost miraculous downfall of the colossal power of Buonaparte, arising as it did in a great measure from the feeling excited on account of this very attempt to fetter trade, is an awful and most useful lesson to all go

vernments.

Upon this subject, however, we may proceed upon proof and experience, and need not, therefore, trust to general reasoning. It is well known that this country constantly imports nearly all the hemp it uses; it is equally clear, that, if deprived of it, the consequences to us, a maritime and commercial people, would be to the last degree injurious. If there be one article more than another, of which an hostile country would wish to deprive us, it would be this very article of hemp, which may be fairly considered the sinews of naval warfare. But were we ever deprived of it? was there ever any serious obstruction, either to our naval armaments or to our commercial speculations, arising from a deficiency of this important article? If not, it is chimerical to imagine that we should ever be deprived of the corn we are in the habit of importing. But if no dangers are to be apprehended from this trade, are there no advan tages accruing from it? Without reference to the question of profit, which is all in favour of it, let us consider it in a moral point of view. Alliances, it will be admitted, with foreign nations, are in the present state of society essentially necessary, both with a view to the continuance of peace, and as a support in war. These we often purchase by immense subsidies, and too commonly find that the friendship we thus endeavour to secure is hollow and unsubstantial : it rests upon no firm basis, it is the growth of no settled principle, and, if preserved during the moment of paying the subsidy, which is not always the case, it leaves nothing behind it, no sense of gratitude remains, no amicable feeling is created, nothing to counteract those envious jealousies, and heart-burnings which the collision of interests and rivalry of power ever produce among nations. It is far otherwise when trade upon liberal principles is established: benefiting one country, it ever advances the interest of the other. In fixing by laws as immutable as those by which the level of the ocean is preserved, that nations in different climates and in different stages of society shall each possess a something which the others want, the Almighty Ruler of the universe has established a principle of harmony, of union, and of concord, to counteract the brutal ferocity and savage enmity of man. It mitigates the horrors of war, it heightens the blessings, and prolongs the duration of peace. It is the balm

poured into the bitter cup of dissension, and anger, and jealousy, by which one nation is separated from another: it is the tie distegarded often by the careless observer or mere politician, but of adamantine strength, by which man is linked to his fellow man.

Let us, then, seriously reflect what may be the consequences with respect to our foreign relations, if we attempt to counteract this beautiful and harmonious dispensation in so important an article as the corn trade. It will separate us still more widely from the nations of Europe; it will turn still more decidedly the channel of trade from our own portion of the globe to those more distant regions, with which, however beneficial the trade may be, it cannot be otherwise than of a more precarious and uncertain nature; it will shut us up in jealous exclusion from the more civilized and more powerful parts of the world; it will raise us up a host of enemies throughout the whole Continent of Europe; it will weaken our influence in peace, and increase our danger in war: it will, by forcibly diverting the application of capital from manufactures to agriculture, raise up powerful competitors to dispute with us the possession of the more distant markets of the world.

All are now jealous of our power; all look with envy at our maritime and commercial superiority; all hate that right of search so essential to its preservation. Let us beware how, to these sources of irritation and hostility, we add the positive injury our corn laws inflict upon the interests of the nations around us-injuries which our ancestors never dreamt of inflicting, and which are equally opposed to the intelligence of the age as to our own true interests. But the monopoly system neither can nor will last. Nature is too powerful an antagonist for man to oppose. By some of her throes and convulsions, she will at length overturn all the feeble obstructions he endeavours to place in her course. But we cannot be subdued, nor can she be vindicated, without causing immense misery; and we shall be the sufferers. Killed with kindness, oppressed and suffocated with protection, the agriculturist will at length perceive that he is pursuing an ignis fatuus, which will lead him on to his destruction. Let him take warning by the sufferings of the present period! Let him read aright the signs of the times, and trace the evil to its true source! It is in his power to avert a recurrence of distress; and, proceeding upon the sober, solid ground of good sense and liberal feeling, he may again see his fields smiling around him, and ensure to himself and to his posterity all that substantial comfort and real happiness, which, until the present disastrous moment, ever attended the country gentleman and the farmer of England. But until the agriculturists generally do alter their feelings upon this subject-until they will look at it calmly, and not under the influence of irritation and passion, the Legislature cannot act. All interests ought to be effectually represented; and most especially do I wish to see the landed interest preserve their weight and influence in the House of Commons. That they do possess it, was clearly manifested in the

discussions of the last Session. The question then rests as it ought to do with them; and if they choose to continue the present system, it must continue.

But again I would implore them to weigh calmly the whole of the arguments upon this subject, and, above all, to watch narrowly the consequences which will ensue. And let them not imagine, that when high prices again return, as with a small deficiency they must, let them not imagine that their difficulties are then over. Great and ruinous fluctuation of price, it cannot be too often repeated, is the necessary and inevitable consequence of the present system; and they may be assured, that, in proportion to the vibration of the pen. dulum on one side, will be its oscillation on the other. pp. 76-84.

Had agriculture been at this moment in a very prosperous state; had prices been as high as 70s. or 80s. the quarter, and had improvement been making a rapid progress, the opening of the ports might have been objected to on the ground that it would give a violent shock to agricultural industry, and be the means of destroying a considerable quantity of agricultural capital. But such is not our situation. Our prices are now as low as the common level of the Continent. All that revulsion and derangement which must always be occasioned by the transition from one system of policy to another, has already taken place. Rents and wages have been reduced; a good deal of bad land has been thrown out of cultivation; and industry is now accommodated to a new order of things. This, then, is of all others the most favourable moment for striking a decisive blow at the restrictive system. Circumstances, beyond the reach of control, have paved the way for its immediate abolition. Ministers are most justly entitled to the public thanks for the measures they have already introduced for freeing industry and commerce from the shackles imposed in a less enlightened age; and we trust they will not throw away the opportunity now afforded of completing the system they have so happily begun; but that they will earn for themselves a new and more powerful claim on the gratitude of the country, by ridding it at once and forever, of the monstrous and intolerable nuisance of Corn Laws.

ART. IV. A Tour in Germany, and some of the Southern Provinces of the Austrian Empire, in the Years 1820, 1821, 1822. In two volumes 12mo. pp. 816. Edinburgh, 1824.

TH

HERE is a sensible improvement, we think, of late years, in the quality of our books of travels. The merited failure of so many dull tourists has put our authors, we suppose, on

their mettle, and our publishers on their guard:-and since travelling has become so extremely common, an ambitious man is not so much tempted to make the public the confidant of his summer excursions, or to believe that all which was new to him must be instructive to intelligent readers. This, at any rate, we can safely say, is a very agreeable and respectable work-and, though it leads us through some of the most accessible and best known parts of Europe, will be found to convey to most readers a great deal of new information, in a very pleasing form.

The author, though he has modestly withheld his name, is evidently a person of education and general intelligence-independent in his sentiments, and calm in his judgments-who has taken pains to see things with his own eyes, and to estimate them by his own reason--a little too rigid, perhaps, as to morals-and a little too much a latitudinarian as to politicsspeaking of the fine arts rather sensibly, than with science or feeling rather caricaturing manners and institutions, and yet delineating characters and estimating literature with something of timidity and reserve-writing clearly and with spirit, though often both inelegantly and inaccurately-sometimes exaggerating unconsciously, and sometimes indulging wilfully in paradoxes, from the love of effect-not very graceful in his pleasantries, and not very picturesque in his descriptions.

His book, in short, is not without its faults; but yet we must say, that we do not recollect to have met with a more reasonable traveller,—or indeed with many authors of any description, who have more successfully united amusement with solid information, or entered on so great a variety of subjects, with so little hazard of being represented as either tedious or superficial.

He conducts us from Strasburgh along the Rhine, by Manheim, Heidelberg and Frankfort, to Weimar and Jena;-and then by Leipsic to Dresden, Cassel and Gottingen-thence to Hanover and Berlin, and through Silesia, and by Cracow and Moravia to Vienna-closing by a sweep through Styria to Carniola, and the shores of the Adriatic. In this long route, he has not only given us a clear description and intelligent account of all the remarkable places he visited-but has also contrived to include in his two neat little duodecimos by far the best account of the extraordinary condition of the German universities, the modern literature of the country-the finances and recent political changes of Prussia-the plica polonicaand a variety of other curious things that is anywhere to be found in our language. As we mean rather to recommend his

book to our readers, than to make a theme of it for ourselves, we shall give but a few specimens of his manner, and leave them to be judged of by themselves.

The most curious part of the book, perhaps, is the account of the Universities, which are all nearly on the same footing, though the details are given chiefly in reference to that of Jena, which was the first which happened to come under the author's observation. There is generally a vast establishment of lecturing professors, at Jena no less than twenty-eight regularly on the foundation, besides a score of extraordinary teachers. The regular men have salaries of less than 80l. and exact a fee of about 15s. for their lectures, though that is often beat down by a sturdy higgler to a still smaller sum. The whole annual expense of a student is usually under 75., and yet the total number at Jena has not averaged of late more than 400. They live about in the town, as at our Scottish colleges, and have no connection with their teachers but at the hour of lecture. The effect of this want of discipline and controul, however, we are sorry to say, has been much more pernicious in the case of these disorderly Teutonic youths, than in that of our sober countrymen; and it is chiefly in reference to the gross disorders in which they systematically indulge, that we have spoken of the extraordinary condition of these seminaries of learning. Almost the whole of the young men, or Burschen, as they term themselves, are united in a sort of secret society, for the purpose chiefly, as it would seem, of what, in their slang language, they term renowning and scandalizing, that is, doing things to annoy and astonish the sober citizens, or fighting duels with each other. The following is a part of our author's very picturesque account of these votaries of the Muses.

Once outside of the class-room, the Burschen show themselves a much less orderly race. If they submit to be ruled one hour daily by a professor, they rule him, and every other person, during all the rest of the four-and-twenty. The duels of the day are generally fought out early in the morning; the spare hours of the forenoon and afternoon are spent in fencing, in renowning-that is, in doing things which make people stare at them, and in providing duels for the morrow. In the evening, the various clans assemble in their commerzhouses, to besot themselves with beer and tobacco; and it is long after midnight before the last strains of the last songs die away upon the streets. Wine is not the staple beverage, for Jena is not in a wine country, and the students have learned to place a sort of pride in drinking beer. Yet, with a very natural contradiction, over their pots of beer they vociferate songs in praise of the grape, and swing their jugs with as much glee as a Bursche of Heidelberg brandishes his römer of Rhenish.