soundest principles of our government; while Truth, too proud to encounter, and even too heedless to contemplate the controversy, will find when she awakes from her lethargy, her enemy in possession of all the strong passes of her citadel, and herself obliged to yield to the power and the progress of the foe she has imprudently despised. In the ultimate prevalence of truth we are nevertheless ready to believe; but although the great triumph of philosophy cannot be eventually avoided, yet it may be for a long time delayed by the thoughtless confidence or foolish pride of her defenders.

The third article contains a notice of Cowper's private correspondence.' With the exception of some two or three paragraphs, the notice is indifferently written, and strikes us as particularly trifling and objectionable. It is surely scarcely necessary to declaim with gravity against Cowper's wild and visionary superstition. The victim of physical infirmity and moral imbecility should be treated with tenderness and pity, and not visited with anger or contempt. There is a harsh ungenerous sternness in condemning with severity the weakness or follies of a kind and gentle spirit, which we think but little more excusable than the cold and cruel wickedness of some of Cowper's spiritual counsellors. This unhappy man was not the proper object of reproof. He was timid, weak and credulous; but these are attributes of mental, not of moral imperfection. He was merely the puppet of a coterie of crafty, or at least, of bigoted religionists, who alone are responsible for all the misery of this amiable man. We cannot reflect without serious regret, on the loss which English literature has sustained, in consequence of his spiritual advisers' puritanical insinuations, that exercises purely literary were abominations in the sight of the Lord. But we scarcely can repress our indignation when we see a knot of artful and unfeeling bigots, working with relentless cruelty upon a mild and timid spirit, agitating with unfounded doubts a man of quick and morbid sensibilities, torturing a mind of sensitive and gentle feelings into gloomy and incurable despair, and crushing to the earth beneath the arm of a powerful superstition, a being of the kindliest intentions and the tenderest affections, who, but for the pernicious taint of a deplorable asceticism, might easily have been all that his warmest admirers have considered him. We have expressed our opinions and our feelings with more freedom, because we are convinced that the mischief was committed, not by the authority of the sect to which these puritans happened to belong, but in utter violation of every principle of true religion and genuine morality. On the contrary, we feel

assured that the best and worthiest members of the church to which Cowper was attached, would have been the very first to disavow all approbation of this unkind and uncharitable combination against the happiness of a suffering fellow christian.

The essay on the Use of the Dead to the Living,' comes next in order, and we look upon it as the best written article in the volume. The object of the author is to prove the impolicy of those laws, which, while they rigorously prohibit exhumation, make no provision for the successful prosecution of the study of anatomy. We cannot help regarding, however, the arguments advanced to demonstrate the indispensable importance of this science as entirely superfluous. In this country, they are undoubtedly unnecessary. Not that the acknowledged value of an acquaintance with the structure and the functions of the organs of the human frame is sufficiently attended to, or acted on; for whatever be the unwillingness of the state governments to furnish the means of pursuing this study with effect, and whatever be the general indisposition of medical men to avail themselves of the few opportunities they now enjoy to extend their knowledge of this department of the healing art, it cannot be denied but that the meanest and most ignorant of our citizens are aware of the necessity of a studious cultivation of this invaluable science. It is true, however, that they do not know that a knowledge of anatomy cannot possibly be acquired without frequent opportunities of actual dissection; and that as this dissection must be necessarily made upon the human body, it follows that the first attempts of the operating surgeon must be made upon the bodies of the living, if he has no opportunity to make them on the dead. Passing over the anatomical details of the reviewer, as too remote from the apprehension of the ordinary reader, and too trite and familiar to the surgeon and physician, we take the liberty to make an extract from this article, which exhibits, in the clearest point of view, the ultimate effects of withholding from our schools of anatomy the necessary means of teaching and illustrating this very useful science.

“The question is, whether the surgeon shall be allowed to gain knowledge hy operating on the bodies of the dead, or driven to obtain it by practising on the bodies of the living. If the dead bodies of the poor are not appropriated to this use, their living bodies will and must be. The rich will always have it in their power to select, for the performance of an operation, the surgeon who has already signalized himself by success; but that surgeon, if he has not obtained the dexterity which ensures success, by dissecting and operating on the dead, must have acquired it by making experiments on the living bodies of the poor. There is no other means by which he can possibly have gained the necessary information. Every such Vol. II. No. VIII.

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surgeon who rises to eminence, must have risen to it through the suffering which he has inflicted, and the death which he has brought upon hundreds of the poor. The effect of the entire abolition of the practice of dissecting the dead, would be, to convert poor-houses and public hospitals into so many schools where the surgeon, by practising on the poor, would learn to operate on the rich with safety and dexterity. This would be the certain and inevitable result: and this, indeed, would be to treat them with real indignity, and horrible injustice; and proves, how possible it is to show an apparent consideration for the poor, and yet practically to treat them in the most injurious and cruel manner."

In one passage, the reviewer seems to labor under some misapprehension relative to the provision which the state of NewYork has made for the promotion and support of anatomical and physiological science. He supposes that this state has in no way provided for the schools of anatomy and surgery. A reference to the laws on this subject may, on many accounts, not be unnecessary. By an Act, passed April 3, 1801, by the Legislature of New-York, exhumation for the purpose of dissection is made a public offence, and the offender is liable to fine and imprisonment at the discretion of the court. An Act, passed March 19, 1813, provides that the bodies of all persons executed, and of all persons dying in the State Prison, may be delivered up for the purpose of dissection; the former at the discretion of the Court, the latter at the discretion of the inspectors of the prison. Again, by an act passed March 30, 1820, the bodies of all persons dying in the State Prison at Auburn, shall be delivered to the agent of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the western district, unless the body shall be claimed within twenty-four hours by the friends of the deceased.

Whether this provision is sufficiently ample for the purposes of successfully cultivating anatomical knowledge, is quite another question, and may admit of a reasonable doubt. For ourselves, we are convinced that it is not; and if so, every friend of the poor will be happy to see any arrangements by which the necessity of experimenting on their living bodies may be effectually avoided. We are not among those who apprehend any violent opposition to an extension of anatomical facilities. On the contrary, we profess an entire confidence in the good sense and discretion of our poorest fellow-citizens, and we should think that we grossly insulted them, if we showed by our suspicions that we held them incapable of comprehending their true rights and best interests.

From the doctrines set forth in the fifth article, we beg leave nearly altogether to dissent. That public institutions avowedly provided for the relief of the poor, in which the funds

appropriated to their relief are collected from the pockets of those who never see and never think of the objects of their charitable contributions, are pregnant with the most pernicious influence on society, and only promotive of the evil they awkwardly attempt to arrest, we are compelled to acknowledge, whatever be our wishes to the contrary. But that the well regulated and discreet indulgence of charitable feelings, whenever those feelings are excited, is forbidden by the true interests of humanity, is a doctrine which we candidly confess we can neither understand nor believe. We are aware that some writers have indiscriminately condemned all charitable donations whatsoever, on the ground that whatever is given to a mendicant or pauper is taken from the pockets of some other, to whom it would have gone, in return for some equivalent received. It is not a little surprising that this sophism, glaring as it is, is seriously urged in opposition to almsgiving in an admirable the causes andcure of pauperism in the Edinpaper on burg Review, for March, 1817. It is easy to prove that the author of the article in question has fallen into error; and as it may not be improper to show that an able and sensible writer may sometimes be guilty of extraordinary oversights in matters of argument, we shall here take the liberty to insert the whole passage to which we allude, with a notice of the fallacy which vitiates the inference.

"Indeed," says the reviewer, "without entering into the theory of population at all, it seems pretty evident, that should I retrench my own enjoyments, and give the produce of all this economy to the poor, I should only give to one set of human beings what I am withholding from another. The sum now expended in the relief of poverty, was formerly expended in payments for the articles of my own accommodation,-in the shape of support to those who supplied these articles.--or of remuneration to those who had vested their capital, or bestowed their industry, upon the preparation of them. And thus it appears, that wherever a great mass of wealth is directed to the maintenance of the poor, this is done by a great withdrawment of wealth from its former channels of distribution; by a great impoverishment of those who were formerly upheld by this wealth in the exercise of their callings; and, in fact, by the creation of poor in one quarter, just as you divert money away from those who were industriously earning the price of your articles of consumption, to the relief of poverty already exercising in some other quarter. And hence it may be seen, how, if all the men of wealth in the country were to reduce themselves to the mere necessaries of life, they would just dismiss from their service a mighty train of dependent artificers and workmen; they would just without forwarding by a single inch the cause of human enjoyment, exchange an industrious for a beggarly population."

Now, although we are convinced that most of our readers will detect the mistake into which the reviewer has fallen be

fore we get through with what we have to say in reply, yet, as we have seen before now as bad reasoning as this impose upon sensible people, we shall venture, at the risk of seeming dull or superfluous, to point out the flaw in the foregoing argu

ment.

It is not enough to reply to this position, that when A gives alms to B, the number of distributors of wealth is increased; for it may be said in answer to this, that as A would have given to C in exchange for some enjoyment, the same sum which he has given to B, C would have become as much a distributor as B, and the number of course is not increased. But the proper reply to the argument against the humanity of almsgiving seems to us to be this-that it is an error to distinguish in political economy between what is called a gift, and what is called wages, or hire, or compensation. The amount of enjoyment which is actually gained to society in every exchange, is measured by the difference between the sum of human enjoyments before, and the same sum after the exchange. Thus, in a case in which no third person is affected by an interchange of values between A and B, the exchange gives a gain to society, equal to the difference between the sum of the pleasurable emotions of A and B before, and the same sum after the exchange. Now let us suppose that A instead of giving a certain sum to B in exchange for a horse, a watch or an instrument of music, gives this same sum to C in exchange for his gratitude, or the pleasurable emotions which an unrestrained charitable act is calculated to produce. If we do not take into the estimate the remote good or evil consequences of these exchanges, the only way to compare their effects upon the happiness of society is to calculate what actual addition each has made to this happiness. When A for example, gives to B one hundred dollars for a horse, it will generally happen (if no fraud nor force has intervened in the exchange,) that A and B have each gained some slight addition to their enjoyments. It is not probable that either A or B can have gained much, (though this may sometimes happen,) because the tendency of mutual competition between the sellers and the purchasers of horses will be towards such a disposition of the price of horses, that the gains of A and B will be as small as the means of subsistence will allow. On the other hand, it cannot happen that either A or B can lose by the exchange unless where one of them is cheated, deluded, or compelled into the barter. In the second case, where A gives B one hundred dollars in exchange for thanks or blessings, it very often happens that B gains greatly by the exchange, and if the