to bear up all ascertained and accustomed privileges of the House against oversights of the ennobled legislature, the conflicting authority of courts of law, or the less perceptible and more untangible influence of the sovereign himself. By his casting vote he may decide questions of the greatest moment to the safety of the state, and the liberty of the subject. On his personal character-on his love and right understanding of liberty-on the reach and vigour of his capacity, -it depends whether he shall exonerate himself well from a responsibility which is almost awful. On the same grounds he may, under some happy conjuncture of circumstances, infuse a spirit into the House, and give a character to its whole proceedings. He has to return its thanks to those who have done eminent service to their country. His taste and literture, therefore, are of some consequence. For the historian is guided, after all, in his estimate of the taste, turn of thought, and spirit of the age, by those memorials of the national gratitude to the heroes who have fought for it, or to the sages who have benefitted it, which are scattered through the journals of its parliament. The Speaker will be a grave, stiff, slow man of precedent; and, however wide his reach of thought, or correct his own internal estimate of things, he must appear to be guided by forms rather than by substances. Forms are often essential parts of our liberties. Forms are the landmarks by which these liberties have been ascertained and made palpable to the general mind, after their value had been evinced through the happy generalizations of first thinkers, and their existence assured by the struggles and blood of patriotism. They are the expedients by which, as a great mind has determined it, the high-souled benefactors of their species first "kept measures with prejudice, which they deemed necessary to the order of society," and by which "they imposed on the grossness of the popular understanding by a sort of compromise between "* fact and right. So in all free states much depends on forms, that, to ardent spirits, may appear cold, trifling, unseemly, and sometimes contemptible. If a Speaker, however,

See "Vindiciae Gallicæ," p. 302.

should, on great questions, hamper the House with a reference to precedents not often acted on, or forms not essential to the constitutional efficacy of its proceedings,―he may lower the dignity of that House in the world, and shake its character with our country for freedom, and capacity for existing circumstances, and aptitude for emergent exigencies. If he happens to be a man that has leaped into public life from college and the bar,-with no taste for general speculation on the theory of law, government, and national polity, and with a relish for classical themes merely because they are ancient, or for what is ancient only because it is classical;-he may evince a taste accurate as to modes of expression, genteel manners, and a love of justice merely abstract;—but his appearances will be uninteresting. He will shew, on great occasions, a feebleness of intellect-seeking after trimness and neatness, rather than grasp and force of allusion-always reaching out the dignity of the House as in a state of mere competition with other dignities, rather than, what it essentially is, a mode by which the rights of that people which gave it existence are to be practically asserted. In particular circumstances, he will appear rather more out of place, and rather more ridiculous, if he puts forth his little hand to support the ark of the constitution when there is no danger nigh;-learning unthinking men, as Wordsworth says,

"To speak of danger which they fear, And honour which they do not understand—” Not recollecting that, in the house of which he is the mouthpiece, there have been, and may be, credulous, weak, unserviceable, and subservient sort of men,-while, perhaps, all that is effected for the safety and character of the nation within its walls is sown, germinated, fructified, and ripened, by the courage, intellect, and information, which exist without.

He should be a grave and discreet person; and, if it be possible to unite such varying qualities, full of that warmth which excites and sustains the eloquence of generous passion, and, when they are conjoined, makes the wise pliancy which wins mankind appear a virtue. It is desirable, too, that he be fond, from early habit and subsequent conviction, of our old

English writers,-rather tinctured with the peculiarities of their rich flowing style, which compasses, at once, so much radical product of the essential thinking-principle with the poetry of eloquence and the language of imagination. In this way he may be able to quote from the best of them, and sometimes from a source whence it is least expected, such a passage as Mr Horner once quoted from Sir Robert Cotton, and of which he strikingly said, "the language is simple, but, in my mind, pregnant with wisdom." To this sort of taste and learning he should join a love of political science, as it treats of man relatively to his moral dignity, and lays down the rights and duties of citizenship,-together with a full appreciation of the doctrines of political economy-their application, results, and extension.

The Speaker is commonly, as he ought to be, a lawyer. The study of the law of England, taken fully, is itself as wide as the stretch of the most retentive memory, and fully calculated to try the most strenuous capacity for attentive application. To excel in it requires extraordinary gifts and propensities. The forms and precedents of Parliament themselves, might well employ the study of an ordinary life. Before a man can at all pretend to have gained the vantage-ground of such studies, his character must have been insensibly formed. It is ten to one, therefore, if, at middle life, he sits down, with these acquirements secured, any thing like a finished man. He may have much knowledge, and some clearness of idea, with minute acuteness and tactual penetration of habit, and yet have none of that deeptoned, yet well harmonized, affection, -that easy play of fancy,-that excitability of imagination, or that taste for the beautiful in nature, and the purely commendable in action; without which no man can be said to have a character fully intellectual. Without some of these, however, neither his classical associations, nor his knowledge of law, nor his acquaint

ance with precedents, nor his love and even pride of his office, can make a finished Speaker. Without something, at least, of what we have endeavoured to delineate, he will, after all his knowledge, appear but a third or fourth rate man. He will be feeble, dry, and unproductive,-not keeping pace with the knowledge of his time,

and not fitted to comprehend those alterations of public opinion, or to fall in with those changes in the face of establishments which it is the business of a masculine intellect not to wonder at, but to grapple with and to understand. Ever since Montesquieu observed, when speaking of the English constitution, (in reference to TACITUS, de moribus Germanorum,) “on verra que c'est de'ux que les Anglois ont tiré l'idee de leur gouvernement politique; ce beau systeme a été trouvé dans les bois,"-it has been fashionable to add the study of legal antiquity to an admiration of our constitutional liberties. But it is something essential to the nature of liberty that, while it does not run riot at every ignis fatuus of fancied improvement, it is not to be stagnant, or unenlargeable on the grounds of reason and expediency;-of reason which makes expediency-and of expediency which gives a sanction to reason. Nor, is that progressive liberty which suits advances in knowledge and changes of society to be meted out, or withheld, according to ancient authorities, taken from times remote, and not at all like the present in form and spirit. For this last, it is enough to say, that such authorities are inapplicable. And, at all events, the mind which too much uses them, is likely to degenerate into that most unphilosophical habit-the idola specus.

The Speaker should be a man above the enticements of high rank. It is customary to confer the peerage on a Speaker who has served in several Parliaments, and ends his public life in that capacity. But it is not befitting the dignity of this high office, that he who holds it should enlist himself with the high-flown aristocracy and the Crown against the people. He ought to be as seldom as possible found a guest at the table of his prince, or pressing forward at levees, or countenancing projects for addresses of congratulation. There

T

to be so deep and various as to require, in order that it may be rightly balanced and safely directed,-a mind of an higher cast than even our higher gownsmen and highest benchmen,a penetration that can assist him in difficult investigations, and a ready self-possession that can put on, almost insensibly, the armour of prudence on instantaneous emergencies,-and a temper not to be hurt in "the strife of little tongues,"-a temper more bland than facile, but rather easily pliant than obstinately firm,—with enough of the respectable quality of firmness to make its exertions regarded, and its sacrifices valued.

should, in short, be no glances and oglings," (to use Mr Burke's phrase,) for favour and confidence from illustrious personages. In such a case, the Speaker would sink into the condition of a first-rate Lord of the Bedchamber. He might come at last, unconsciously to sacrifice that independence and high-mindedness essential to his office, to an homage which in other men might be even praise-worthy, but in him fatal. It is now a trite remark of politicians, that, ever since the French Revolution and those popular excitements to which it gave rise in this country, there has been a strong tendency, among the holders of office, however independent of the Crown, de facto, and among those whose property or birth is such as to give them the peculiar feelings of a class,-to support what is called the dignity of the Crown against popular encroachment. But, it is not trite to bear this in mind, to watch its tendency,-and to grasp it under the changing forms which it assumes as the false guise of its purposes.

Of late years, the most important labour of the Speaker has been saved in a Committee of Finance, of which some experienced member is the permanent chairman. For all this, however, the Speaker should add to his other acquirements a thorough knowledge of the nature and extent of our financial resources. Political economy will make him familiar with the origin of public wealth,—the media in which it exists freely and securely, and the means by which it is dilapidated or upheld. His own industry will do the rest. And he must have laid his hand on all the pages of our voluminous statute-book-from the monopolybreakings of Elizabeth, and the blunders of Cecil, down to the better understood freedom, but not much better practice, of George III. and the pre

tensions of Pitt. He must know the origin and motives of our laws,-the rise and history of our alliances,-and the nature and progress of our Funding System.

To sum up all in a few words:The Speaker of the House of Commons should have a large acquaintance with the whole frame of our government and be thoroughly conversant with the forms and precedents of Parliament. His knowledge, in fact, ought

I am afraid that I have fallen into two faults in this discussion about a Speaker's qualifications,-lengthiness and over-rigidity of exaction. But, something like an approximation to this offered standard is what the state of our country and the tone of the general mind require. H. A.

THE CRANIOLOGIST'S REVIEW.

[OUR friend Doctor Ulrick Sternstare, undertaken to supply us with a course of a learned German, now residing here, has scientific criticisms upon the organization of such individuals as he may judge worthy of attention. This is no jest. The Doctor is, a most persevering observer of nature, and has long turned his thoughts to the consideration of the physical structure of man

kind.

He therefore now steps forward, pregnant with matter, and elated with conscious knowledge, and assumes the dignity of a reviewer, meaning to wield the iron sceptre of criticism with no lenient hand. The Doctor intends to lay the axe to the root of the tree, and to examine, not the productions of the brain, but the brain itself. The review will be conducted with an impartiality inaccessible to political prejudices; and the thick vest shags of hair shall neither will also occasionally analyse works of art.] disguise praity, nor shelter stupidity. He

No I.

Napoleon's Head.

NATURE Seems to have bestowed much pains upon this individual. His organization is massive, and his cerebral parts largely developed in almost all directions. No region of his brain has been starved, and I am inclined, after a careful examination of those

parison with every conqueror, except Julius Cæsar, who perhaps deserved better to be loved than any other person guilty of an equal proportion of mischief.

THOUGHTS CONCERNING TYTHES;

WITH ANSWERS TO QUERIES ON

THAT SUBJECT, LATELY CIRCULAT

ED IN SCOTLAND BY A MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT.

MR EDITOR,

THE payment of tythes to ecclesiastical persons, and for charitable purposes, was a burden long severely felt by almost every nation in Europe. Whilst this ancient tax was levied in kind, that is, in a certain share of the produce of land, it was evidently attended with numerous inconveniences both to the payer and the receiver. Hence a commutation of this burden into a money payment has taken place, upon one principle or other, in almost every country of Europe; and except in England, and perhaps in Spain and Portugal, the tax is not now levied according to the principles upon which it was originally established.

The arrangement made in Scotland concerning tythes, during the reign of Charles I., is so well known, that it need not at this time be illustrated. Suffice it to say, that by substituting a certain part of the rent in lieu of tythe, strict justice was not only done to the parties concerned, but the fullest opportunity was thereby gained for making future improvements; seeing that the fruits of these improvements could not afterwards be taxed, or made liable for tythe, as would otherwise have happened, had the arrangement in question remained unexecuted. To the law for regulating ty thes, may the uncommon improvements which have taken place in Scotland be chiefly attributed. In fact, no barren country can be improved under the tythe system, for 10 per cent. of its produce far exceeds the amount of any profit which can thereby be derived. Of this our southern neighbours are now fully sensible; hence, in every bill for the division of waste land, an exoneration from tythe is always a prominent feature; and the commutation in lieu of tythe, is a certain share of the land to

the tythe-holder, whether he is an ecclesiastic or a lay impropriator.

But though in the division of common waste land, where in every case a particular act of the legislature is required to sanction the measure, a compensation for tythe may be easily adjusted, it seems quite impracticable to make any arrangement which can free the land held in severalty from that burden, unless the legislature is pleased to pass a general act, which can apply to the whole kingdom. Why a measure of such importance has been so long neglected is not easily accounted for; though it is quite plain that the country cannot be improved to the height of which it is capable before such an act is passed. A tythe of 10 per cent. upon produce, though apparently an equal tax, is in fact the most unequal burden that can be imposed. It might easily be shown, were this the proper place, that a tenth of the produce of inferior soils. falls as heavy upon the occupier as if three-tenths were exacted from soils of a different description; that is, when the disposeable produce from each is fairly estimated.

I have some reasons for believing, that circumstances, such as these mentioned, are now operating amongst our southern neighbours, and that a strong desire will soon appear to have tythes settled and arranged in a way that may prevent the improvement of the country from being obstructed by this tax. To me there seems no difficulty in preparing an equitable arrangement, provided the business was taken up by those who alone possess sufficient influence to carry it through the legislature with success. Were a certain proportion of rent, say one sixth, to be taken at all times in lieu of tythes, this would at once secure the interest of all parties. According to this plan, the tythe-holder would receive his share of every advantage which might arise from the growing prosperity of the country. The proprietors of land would be permitted to receive the full value of their respective properties-a circumstance which cannot take place so long as tythes are drawn in kind, or paid for in money, agreeably to an annual valuation. The tenantry would be secured in the quiet and peaceable possession of the lands in their occupation, whilst the whole manure would be kept upon the premises, to the great benefit of the soil from which it