of the scheme, be put upon the granary list, but such as are of the lower classes of the people, manufacturers, labourers, and poor housekeepers, with their children; such, in a word, who may be supposed to be the most essentially hurt by the high prices of grain. gra "That proper lists be made at each nary of those who are to be supplied from it, and these in proportion to the grain which shall have been delivered, reckoning one quarter of grain for every person admitted upon the list. "That, upon opening the granaries, it shall not be allowed to distribute grain to any but to those upon the lists, nor to these above one month's provision at a time, according to the proportion above mentioned, of eight bushels for that of twelve months. This regulation to continue as long as the granaries remain open. "That, for the ease of the poor, who cannot purchase much at a time, there be markets opened by authority, for the retailing of small quantities, in the same proportion. "That the money arising from the sale of the grain be put into the hands of the receiver general of the land-tax, in order to be paid into the bank. "That he, upon making up his accounts with the exchequer, be obliged to produce corn-bills discharged by the bank for the amount of his receipt. That the said receivers-general be obliged, at least annually, to report to the commissioners the state of the grain in the several granaries, and the extent of the corn-bills in the hands of the bank. That, for the greater exactness, the granaries of each county shall be distinguished by particular numeros; which shall be respectively entered into the granary-book, and be indorsed upon the corn-bills issued by the granary: and when such bills come to be paid at the bank, they shall be entered into books kept for the purpose, according to their nu mero. "Having thus laid down the out-lines of a plan with as much brevity and clearness as I have been able, I must observe, that the small access I have to be well informed as to many facts, has induced me to keep as close to general principles as possible, and to avoid particular detail, which is, however, of the greatest use for rightly forming schemes, as well as for illustrating all political dissertations." In the first place, the price of grain cannot fall below the standard necessary for the desirable encouragement of agriculture. When corn ceases to repay, with an average profit, the expence of rent, tillage, and delivery, the farmer can convert his arable lands into pasturage, and thus increase the growth of hay, milk, butter, cheese, wool, and similar produc tions. Suppose these articles to fall below the price necessary to replace with an average profit the cost of growth, the far mer will decline to hire his land at the old That the consumers, who are the numerent. What will then have happened? rous class, will be benefited by the diminished price of produce, and that the proprietors, who are the few class, will be injured by the diminished price of rent. The farmer's profit will always in the long industrious classes, who are the mass of run be the average rate of profit; but the and the idle classes, who are the mass of consumers, will subsist more cheaply; proprietors, will subsist less conveniently. Industry will have been rewarded, and idleness punished. This is as it should be. More proprietors will in consequence become tillers, and recruit the productive classes; and all objects created by industry will become cheaper, more abundant at home, and more exportable abroad, than before, in consequence of the reduced cost of labour. The diminution of rent is a positive good, to be pursued directly by taxation, if it were not a necessary and natural result of the entire liberty of the corn-trade. The earnings and surplus is cheap; because more persons work, wages of a society are greatest, when rent and the workers subsist on easier terms. It matters not to a community where its food be bought, whether in Yorkshire, or at Alexandria in Egypt, or at Alexandria in North America, so it be bought at the cheapest: the task of importation is itself culture is most desirably employed in the a source of useful industry: domestic agriproduction of irremoveable commodities. The end to be answered by granting bounty-monies and restrictions on importation and exportation being bad, the forms of offering and distributing preniicussion. Yet the plan of founding public ums for growing corn do not deserve disgranaries is itself one of the worst of those forms. If the state is to interfere, and buy up corn whenever corn cheapens, and to house that corn in public warehousea until it be wanted, this branch of speculation will be snatched from the hands of private merchants, and will by them ba abandoned. The purchases of the state will always be proportioned to the cheapness, and not to the probable want of the commodity, they would else be infficacacious; and thus a bounty on production will be given, when a bounty on production ought to be withdrawn. The sales of the state will be profuse, in proportion to the dearth, and not to the probable deficiency of the commodity; else they would be inefficacious for their end, which is to level prices; and thus a bounty on production will be withdrawn, when a bounty on production ought to be given. But in the hands of private merchants depreciation takes place in proportion to the stock reserved for immediate consumption; and appreciation takes place in proportion to the deficiency of that stock; and thus growth and importation are invited at the right moment, versatile culture and exportation are stimulated at the right moment. To say nothing of the corrupt contracts, and careless stowage, and profligate waste, which attend public stores. Leave the corn-trade to itself, and rising markets will invite, and falling markets will repel, private capitals from this line of enterprize. Employ government-buyers, and the capitals invested will be always the same. But it is obviously proper that, during the rise of produce, the capitals employed to put agricultural industry in motion should be increased, in order to cause a more extensive growth; and it is obviously proper that during the fall of produce the capitals employed to put agrieultural industry in motion should be decreased, in order to check a superfluous growth. Private interest therefore operates aright, when public providence would operate wrong. Holland enjoyed during the last century an unrestricted exportation and importation of corn; she had no state-granaries, yet the price of corn was there less fluctuating than in England, and though she grew little or no corn, she was the cornucopia of Europe. Experience has confirmed the theory of Adam Smith in contradiction to the theory of sir James Steuart. See also our third volume, p. 306. The Plan for introducing an Uniformity of Weights and Measures deserves some attention. We are of opinion that governments cannot legislate very decisively on the subject. The weights and measures of the most commercial nation are always tending to generalize themselves. The motive for legislating is to spare the labour of translating into new figures the weights and measures already noted. The trouble of change is itself a grievance. It might be worth while to incur this trouble once for all, if each nation would concur in the same new standard. But for a single nation to make the change is to increase the grievance for no purpose. The best standard is not yet agreed. "The decimal divisions of the French lessen the arithmetician's labour, and may therefore be welcome in the counting-house; but they increase the difficulty of subdivision; quarters become fractions instead of integers, and thus the retail dealer and the vulgar reckoner is put to greater inconve nience. The French have returned to the twelve-hour day; they will probably return to the sixteen-ounce pound. Coins are most easily changed, a decimal division of coins has been found convenient at Naples; yet the metre-mongers of France chose to leave the coin unchanged. Nor have the poets deserted their Alexandrines for decasyllabics. The Greek jargon of science is ill adapted for a vulgar nomenclature; yet denominations common to all languages are as important a condition of the best weights and measures, as the universal intelligibility of arithmetic cyphers. There is this advantage in diversity: that it intercepts a precise estimate of profit, which ought to vary with the demand of a given place, but which could not vary without odium, if buyers were easily aware of the cost elsewhere. The profit of a druggist ought to be higher than the profit of a grocer; his trade requires more skill, and returns his capital less expeditiously; yet they both sell in many instances the same articles. Force on them the same weights, and the druggist will be reviled by the populace for his extortion. It is wise to ask why things are, before we vote for making them otherwise. The Observations on Dr. Beattie's Essay certainly deserve the perusal of those who think Dr. Beattie's Essay worthy of pe rusal. The Critical Remarks on the Systeme de la Nature have the higher value of attacking a superior book. The Defence of Newton is curious for having been composed in a foreign language; not so, for erudition; not so, for sagacity. A translation of this Defence terminates the collection of sir James Steuart's writings, which deserve to become a librarybook, and to be consulted for information often, for inference seldom. The style is rather European than idiomatic, but has more purity than was to be expected from so habitual an absentee. In Mr. D. William's Lectures on Political Principles, the character of this writer is given in an oracular but imprecise man ner. Sir James Steuart (he says p. 247), the most profound and original of all writers on political subjects, has collected information and formed conceptions with great anxiety and labour: but he produced his thoughts as they occurred; and he had nearly forgotten his native langinge. He is the miner who plunges into the bowels of the earth; while Montesquieu and Hume are amused with appear"ances of hypotheses on the surface: but he leaves the ore mingled with dross. Dr. Smith has formed some of it into metal: inferior authors have stolen pieces unobserved; and financiers, or the secret prompters of financiers, occasionally avail themselves of his skill. The general mass remains to be explored by some congenial spirit; who, it is to be hoped, will do justice to his memory while he profits by his labours." We do not accede to the assertions that sir James Steuart is very profound or very original: he only looked around him for the books whence his materials are drawn, not into the deep wells of antiquity, or into the chosen sources of intellect. He has collected information and formed conceptions with great anxiety and labour. He may be compared with a miner, whose exploits respect but ordinary ore, and who disinters copper of lead, while Montesquieu and Hume are delving for sparkling crystals or pure silver. Adam Smith is greatly indebted to Hume; but not so to sir James Steuart. Adam Smith had a clear head: what he writes is necessarily intelligible. But sir James Steuart has often permitted himself the use of jargon; and has written many pages (as concerning the distribution of taxes into propottional, cumulative, and personal) which, neither he nor any of his readers can ever have understood. The obscurity arising from muddiness by concealing the bottom may pass for profundity: but to such obscurity the great writers never recur. ART. XV.-The Policy and Interest of Great Britain with respect to Malta summarily: considered. 8vo. pp. 160. of Amiens had so allotted them! The French general intrusted with the government of Egypt, would by this time have rejected the sovereignty of a Parisian upstart; and would have been now courting our alliance to render Egypt independent: and Italy, consolidated by a conquest, would not despair of recovering a substantive independence, in concert with Switzerland, and with the aid of Austria and Britain. Half the enter-' prizes of our antijacobin ministers were made in our own wrong; and could only serve to restrict the French within retain-¡ able limits. The very difficulty which Malta opposes to the acquisition of Egypt by the French, is likely to be the cause of annihilating the Austrian power, by' compelling the pursuit of extension along the middle zone of Europe. Our politics are often antigallican to absurdity, British ministers think it their duty to oppose the undertakings of the French, even when those undertakings interfere with no British interests. If France must aggrandize herself, it is better she should do it southward, than northward; toward the Mediterranean, than toward the Baltic. During the antijacobin war, if the overflow of French force had been quietly tolerated in overspreading Italy, Greece, Syria, and Egypt, two of these countries, Italy and Egypt, would at first have been undividedly annexed to the French empire. If our ef forts had been wisely reserved, and wholly bent on the defence of Flanders and Holhave easily become subject to France. following passage: land, neither of these provinces would How much more advantageous to this This treatise displays historical and topographical knowledge of Malta, and probably originates with some of those placemen, who are distributing the benefits of British administration among the late subjects of the knights; it does not display, but it may purposely conceal, nautical knowledge; or the inutility of the island as a naval station would have been frankly avowed. As a piece of argument this work is ludicrously feeble.Observe the "I hold it no temerity to affirm, that country it would have been, if the peace a cautious, enlightened, and adequate con ANN. REV. VOL. IV. S sideration of this great question will produce an answer, comprehending the following propositions; viz. "1. That it is indispensably necessary that Great Britain should employ the most efficacious means that she can devise, to guard against the possibility of France ever again acquiring possession of Malta. 2. That, consistently with that object, and in necessary course to its attainment, it is indispensable that Great Britain should establish the permanent presence of her power at some secure, and insular, position, within the Mediterranean. "3. That the most simple and convenient, and, at the same time, the only certain and effectual mode of attaining both these ends, is, that Great Britain should remain in possession of Malta." Here, in order to guard against France's acquiring Malta, Great Britain is advised to occupy a Mediterranean island, and that island Malta. This is arguing in a circle, and treating identical propositions as inferences from one another. The most valuable part of this treatise is that which defends a passage in his Majesty's declaration or manifesto against France, by endeavouring to shew that the order of St. John cannot now be considered as the body to which the island of Malta was to be restored. Where a something so very like bad faith has sullied, as the French assert, the public conduct of Great Britain, one is eager to catch at the most plausible defence of the proceedings arraigned. We solicit the historian to weigh the grounds of defence, here adduced: many of them are entitled to his acceptance and repetition. A passage which indicates ambitions views in our governors is the following: "Whether the secret wish of his (Buonaparte's) mind be, to attempt a rapid operation for reaching our Indian empire; or whether he is prepared to prosecute that 4 object by a more tardy and lingering process; or whether those views are, for the present, absorbed in the immediate purpose of reviv ing the natural fertility of Egypt, and cor verting its immense dormant resources to the aggrandizement of France; by creating a colonial system, surpassing, in productive ness and security, all that our American islands can aspire to; which ever of these be the governing purpose of his mind, (though it is most reasonable to suppose that they are all combined in it), we are infinitely concerned in being early prepared to disappoint and frustrate it. And nature has provided no means by which we can possibly accom plish this, but by occupying Malta; which island, with its dependencies, she seems to have formed and prepared to become, in these latter days of general change, violence, and exertion, the representatives of the Britannia Insula within the Mediterranean. "But, in enumerating the political powers which we derive from the occupation of Malta, we are not to overlook a most efficacious mo ral power; of which we likewise became pos sessed, the moment that the genius of Britain, the evil genius of Buonaparte, first took post upon that island. Already has his empire of darkness suffered molestation from the prox imity and splendour of truth; the rays of which, diffused from the centre of Malta, have cast their light upon the opposite coasts, Already the illumination of a free press, discreetly used, and judiciously directed, has begun to dissipate the mists of error and deception which enveloped that wide horizon.* by which the tyrant governs the minds of his Already the system of falshood and deceit, subject nations, has experienced some counteraction from that efficacious engine; and he himself, and his tyranny, stand now fully exposed to the public view of Italy, of Greece, and the Levant." It is a puny ambition to possess a few rocks, which can at best serve as an orangegarden: the Cape and the river Zaire are worthier objects of culture. What Carthage coveted, we may disdain. ART. XVI.-Thoughts on the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland; with an Appendix. 8vo. pp. 108. SO long as the church of Rome and the church of Constantinople agreed in religious doctrine, their common creed had a right to the denomination of catholic, or universal; because it was, in fact, the only recognised and established form of christian confession. But as soon as the Greek and Latin churches began to mar shal under their respective patriarchs and popes, and became distinct sects, the term catholic ought to have been dropped. The notorious corruption of the Nicene creed, by the insertion of the words filio que, began at the council of Toledo, in For several months past, an Italian paper has been published weekly in Malta, the object of which may be inferred from what is here said. This paper, actively distributed in the Mediterranean by the opportunities which our naval superiority must ever coinmand, is perused with avidity, not only in the islands of Greece, but on the coast of Asia Minor, and at the regencies upon the coast of Africa." Spain, under king Riccaredo, in the year 599. This additional clause can be traced, as already accepted by the Gallican church, in 791. At the synod of Frankfort, in 794, this innovation was superinduced on Germany, and from the time of the coronation of Charlemagne, it may be considered as having become the orthodox doctrine of all that portion of christendom, which recognised the spiritual supremacy of the Pope of Rome. The Roman catholic faith, which differs from that of the ancient church, by maintaining the two-fold procession of the Holy Ghost, is, therefore, but a modern heresy, first established in the year 794; and has prevailed in Europe only during about half the interval that elapsed between the foundation of christianity and the reformation. The bishop of Orleans, Theodulfus, seems to have been the person through whose zeal the power of Charlemagne was moved to convene those councils, which established this recent and double genealogy of the Spirit; he is, therefore, the founder of the Roman catholic sect; the proselytes to which might fitly be termed, in ecclesiastical history, Theodulfians. About seven hundred years later than Theodolf, flourished Bucer, who was consulted by Archbishop Cranmer concerning the alteration of the English church, and who appears to have defined those articles of faith, which are now held sacred from the Tweed to the Channel. Ireland was first converted by the Theodulfians, and next undertaken by the Bucerists. Fourfifths of the inhabitants repeat the shibboleth of the one sect, and half the remaining fifth of the other: about a tenth are Calvinists. The Bucerists have attempted to draw the Calvinists into their alliance, and, under the common name of protestant, to advance a claim of ascendancy in Ireland. Assisted by the civil power of the British government, this arrogance has been so successful, that the tythe is collected over all the lands of Ireland, for the exclusive benefit of the priests of the Bucerists. A decimal fraction of the community has contrived to confiscate, for the benefit of its own peculiar priesthood, one-tenth of the annual produce, which is equivalent to the fee-siraple of one-sixth of the whole territory of Ireland. This has been accomplished and maintained by the forcible mtroduction and execution of penal laws against the celebration of mass, and other innocent actions of the priests of the Theodulfans (which laws have lately been withdrawn), and by the exclusion of their laity from offices of magistracy, honour, and profit (which exclusion still subsists). Under Elizabeth, and at the instigation of the Bucerists, one hundred and thirty priests of the Theodulfians were executed at Tyburn, and elsewhere, for no other crime than the inculcation of their tenets: so extensive a destruction of priests never accompanied any other persecution, except that by the late atheistical revolutionists in France. Under Charles the First, North America was stocked with the exiles of a less murderous, but not less extensive persecution. Under Charles the Second, two thousand Calvinist priests, who had been inveigled by the Bucerists into temporary alliance, for the sake of accomplishing the restoration, were, with the most ungrateful perfidy, ejected from their benefices, and had their private property, in the revenues of the church, totally confiscated, without indemnity, by an act of uniformity. What was thus done against the Calvinist clergy was extended, under William the Third, to their laity. Corporation and test acts were introduced, in order to deprive their adherents of all political influence. They yet labour under the same grievous privations as the Theodulfians. During the reigns of George the First and Second, a philosophic party gave the tone to our statesmen; the spirit of the hierarchy slumbered; Ireland was tranquil, and Britain happy: but the opportunity was lost of removing the legal infringements on the political equality of religious sects; and the evils of intolerance were all to be renewed during the ensuing reign. Every one recollects how much the rebellion of North America was embittered by the apprehension of being visited with episcopacy; and how much the rebellion of Ireland was occasioned by the refusal of cacholic emancipation. Two civil wars is a high price to have paid for our docility to this clergy. Our author, after dwelling at considerable length on these grievances, makes the following specific proposal : "What I should, therefore, advise is, that government should, without delay, remove all the remaining disqualifications and restraints on account of religious opinions; should substitute a political instead of a religious test, and endeavour to make the people forget that a contrary one had ever been imposed There should be no distinctions retained, and it is the interest of the state to promote the most entire oblivion of those which formerly |