forty years. We fear his morals have not been much improved by the air of France. Some of the epigrams are not quite those which a discreet gentleman of fifty-five should republish. But a great deal is to be said for the mistakes of a man who prints at his own expense; and moreover, the Baronet appears good-natured, without a single aversion but matrimony-which is a natural one for a resident in foreign lands. Sir James must not, however, be thought unpatriotic : he was a detenu, and so grew to have a liking for his cage. We have been endeavouring to find a morceau to quote, but between the poverty and the pruriency of the book, that is out of the question. There is a new edition published of a very clever book, which affords capital light reading for summer weather. It is Babylon the Great. We should not notice a new edition, unless, as in this case, it contained a great variety of new matter. The author of Babylon has, evidently, not thrown away the opportunities for observation which presented themselves to him. He does not pretend to tell us the "goings-on" of fashionable life,—and we are glad of it. But he talks well of subjects which are interesting to every man-the great component parts of London society-the parliament-the courts of lawthe newspapers, &c. Over these somewhat hacknied themes he contrives to throw the strong light of original views; and he handles the scalpel with abundant energy and knowledge. The great defect of the book is, that the writer is much fonder of discussion than description; and he sometimes indulges his love of paradox to an extent that startles like a smart and sudden electric shock. However, even this is not a bad thing, for it sets us thinking;-and whether the author of Babylon or ourselves be in the right, is of little moment. The work is to be concluded in two more volumes. We have been disappointed in Letters from Cambridge t.' The subject was a capital one for a lad of spirit to have seized upon; without personality he might have made it interesting to all. But this is a poor dawdler, who mistakes the horse-laugh of a wining coterie for the applause of the world; and who prints his small wit, and his local allusions, as if any one person living, out of a set, cared for his jokes or his enmities. There is a stupid machinery carried on in this book, which assumes that the Letters' are written by one man, and edited by another; and this precious scheme renders the volume doubly tedious. But we must not deny the book some merit. It occasionally tells the truth without shrinking. The person who pays the following tribute to the religious instruction of the English universities, about which so much has lately been canted, is one who hates every thing "out of the pale," and is therefore an impartial evidence : We are very pious, indeed, here: poor deluded sinners think if they go twice a week to church, and offer up their prayers in the simplicity of their hearts, they have done enough, as far as public devotion is concerned. What *Babylon the Great; a Dissection and Demonstration of Men and Things in the British Capital. 2 vols. Colburn. Letters from Cambridge, illustrative of the Studies, Habits, and Peculiarities of the University.-Richardson. a fatal error!-eight times a week is considered not at all too little here, and in some Colleges more is insisted on." It must produce a marked effect on your conduct and demeanour."-It does produce a marked effect, and you may mark it through life, if you please. It produces listlessness and indifference, and it stifles true piety. To be plain with you, attendance at chapel is made much more a point of discipline than a point of duty; I mean religious duty. In some of the Colleges ten times, in other eight, and in none, I believe, fewer than five a week are required from all undergraduates: this is a very severe, and a very impolitic rule also. Is a true perception of the efficacy of prayer likely to be given in a compulsory abuse of its purposes? Will the "beauty of holiness" strike the mind so forcibly on hearing men who, if they presented themselves on an earthly stage, and thus mutilated the language of earthly minds, would be driven with hisses from that stage ;on hearing, I say, these men presumptuously profane the language of heaven? What is the excuse ?-What is the plea urged?" O, it is necessary to have some kind of muster-roll." And so the priests of God will hang the musterroll on the high altar, will they? The formal Pharisee could do no more. If a muster-roll be so necessary, why not make it at Hall? The restrictions imposed on the porters of colleges, and on licensed lodging-house keepers, would form an adequate support to this, if any apprehensions were entertained of the misapplication of the intervening time. This is bad enough; but there is worse to come, and come it shall. Put it to the serious-minded man, and ask him what he would think, were he to be told, that not merely the regular services are so abused, but that the most awful ceremony of the Christian church-no less than the Sacrament itself-is treated in many of these establishments (some I except) with equal levity and contempt ?Whenever celebration of it is enjoined, you must attend: no scruples of conscience are admissible; no sense of unworthiness can be pleaded. If you have just risen from a debauch, your senses steeped in wine, your better feelings unawakened to a sense of duty:-well :-if, the bread touched, and the tremendous cup tasted, you return to the carousal you have quitted-no matter-an imperious necessity commands, and you hope (and I trust not in vain) the shame, and the guiltiness of the deed, will rest on their heads who dragged you to it. I have said I except some: these are Trinity, Catherine Hall, and St. John's: there may be more: I shall be happy to be corrected. I do not recollect any at present.' Religious instruction! Read this, ye denouncers of that Institution which would have left religious instruction to the parents and guardians of their students, and then say what this forced piety is worth. We remember a truly religious man at one of our public schools, who affirmed that the boys were driven to chapel twice a day, as a preparation for atheism. Several volumes are on our table, waiting to be cut up. reserve them for critical food is becoming scarce. ་ We must P.S.-We have to offer a few words on a passage in our last Number, from which it might be imagined that Messrs. Hayes and Jarman, gentlemen of the bar, who are editing a new edition of Fearne's Contingent Remainders,' were the authors of an article in the Law Magazine,' depreciating Mr. Butler's edition of that work. We have the best authority for stating, that these respectable gentlemen have no concern with the periodical in question; and their own assurance of this fact is quite sufficient to render us anxious to obviate the construction to which our observations might be liable. THE LONDON MAGAZINE. No. VI. SEPTEMBER, 1828. PRIVATE BILLS OF THE SESSION 1828. THE "List of Petitions and Private Bills in Parliament" is to us one of the most interesting of the many important documents which mark the course of legislative inquiries and proceedings. This return is merely an alphabetical enumeration of the measures for public improvements which have been submitted for parliamentary sanction; but, when analyzed with sufficient attention, and compared with the same list for former years, it opens out so many striking views of our national condition, that we cannot bestow our time better, than in laying before our readers, at some length, the results at which we have arrived by a diligent consideration of this paper. We shall first make a numerical abstract of the list of petitions and private bills for the Session of 1828 : Petitions presented Bills read first time Bills read third time Bills which received the royal assent 244 212 195 185 182 The inferences from these figures can only be drawn from comparison; and by referring back as far as the year 1825-a year of feverish and unnatural excitement, in which both the real and imaginary resources of the country were called forth for the purpose of internal improvement, with a prodigality little short of madness-we shall find that the steady progress of great public enterprises has not been interrupted by any re-action proceeding from the disappointed hopes of that period. This is exceedingly satisfactory, and is good evidence that many, even of the abortive projects of that season of commercial speculation, proceeded from a plethora of wealth; and satisfies us that the spirit and good sense of the people themselves, with whom the great enterprises that form the subjects of private bills originate, are quite sufficient to enable them to discriminate between objects of real improvement that promise a fair return for capital, and those fallacious projects which, originating in ignorance or fraud, were calculated for a time to throw a gloom over every honest and rational undertaking. It is further consolatory to reflect, that even in the wildest period of speculative excitement, the legislature did very much to protect the people from the consequences of their own folly. In 1825, there were 438 petitions presented to Parliament for private bills, of which only 286 received the royal assent. We thus see that more than a third of these projects were rejected; and, when we come more minutely to examine SEPT. 1828. L them, we find that, whilst the natural and healthy plans for inclosures, The petitions presented in 1826 were 287, of which 206 measures passed into law. In 1827 the number of petitions was 249, and of bills passed, 185; which number may be considered as wholly resulting from a steady dedication of capital to public works, the necessary creations of the utility and wealth of the age, whether applied to the demands of agriculture, of commerce, or of local convenience. The number of the present year is singularly steady,-244 petitions, being only 5 less than 1827; and 182 bills passed, being only 3 less than that year. We have thus the satisfaction of knowing, that whereever there are inconveniences to be remedied, such as the existence of common fields, as in inclosure bills-wherever there are new comforts and accommodations to be introduced, such as the bills for local improvements-wherever the public communications of the country, whether roads, canals, rivers, or railways, are to be improved, or newly called forth-wherever commerce demands new docks and harbours-still the activity and wealth of the people is ever on the alert, to call forth the individual resources of the nation, to accomplish these objects in the best way which the scientific ability of the age can devise; and all that Parliament requires, is to be satisfied that in the anxiety to accomplish a local good, the rights of private property, or the proper interests of the public generally, are not disregarded. It is thus that the capital and industry of the British people is filling the country with the most glorious monuments of civilization ;-asking no support from the Government, and allowing no interference, beyond the preliminary step of a legislative sanction. haps, not be too much to assert, that the public improvements of It would, perEngland alone, in one year, are more extensive and important than those of all the rest of Europe;-and the reason is, that the people originate those measures, for their own benefit; while in other countries, not excepting France, where the commercial principle is still imperfectly understood, every improvement depends upon the Government. One of our poets, looking round upon the great monuments of an industrious generation, harbours, bridges, roads, and aqueducts, exclaims These are imperial works, and worthy kings! We, in less stately, but more philosophical, language, say of the steady progress of these, and of much more important undertakings, that the poetry of the last century never dreamt of-these are the works of an industrious, and of a rich, because of a free, people; and they are worthy the laws by which the rights of property are everywhere respected, and which require only of the Government impartiality to sanction, but not to interfere with, the natural course of public spirit. Before we proceed to examine the Private Bills of 1828 more in detail, we shall collect the materials for a comparison with the three previous years, by classifying the bills which have passed into law, from 1825 to 1828. They may be divided as follows: Having thus presented, as clearly as we can, such a comparative view of the progress of public improvement, during the period of the last four years a period remarkable, above all others, for its extraordinary commercial fluctuations, we shall leave to others the task of following up those considerations which naturally arise out of this particular view of the subject. We shall proceed to examine the particular measures of 1828 more in detail; and, as a preliminary step, we have prepared the following Table : ABSTRACT OF PETITIONS AND PRIVATE BILLS IN PARLIAMENT, SESSION 1828. |