elsewhere" Henretta," but the knot was book. The narrative of the American war often cut by talking of Queen Mary. We end with two extracts from the same page of very different natures. Here is one: A WARNING TO SABBATH BREAKERS: a remarkable Story, taken from the Theological Miscellany, Shewing the fate of three Jews, two of whom would continue their journey on the Sabbath day and consequently fell among thieves & were torn to pieces by a Bear, & the third, who observed his Sabbath, was preserved. Here is the other : is perhaps unnecessarily full, but in the latter portion of the King's reign the annals of the English Court are not interrupted by superfluous details of military and political occurrences. The conquests of Napoleon have been fully recorded; and it is more to Mr. Jesse's purpose to quote the singular phrase by which George III. designated his formidable enemy than to discuss campaigns and battles. The King could not, as he told Bishop Hurd, believe that "that unhappy man really intended to invade England. As Buonaparte was, at the time, at the summit of power and prosperity, the epithet must be understood in a moral or theological sense. It was one of the characteristic and A Full, true, and particular account of the Birth, Parentage, and Education, Life, Character, and popular peculiarities of George III. to use Behaviour, and notorious Conduct of NAPOLE- in perfect good faith the most flagrantly ONE BUONAPARTE, the CORSICAN conventional language. Perhaps, in writing MONSTER, alias the POISONER, who is to a bishop, he may have unconsciously shortly expected to arrive in England, where he adopted even more readily than usual the Mr. Jesse's readers means to massacre, burn, sink, and destroy. With language of a sermon. a short description of the various Murders, will find ample materials for forming a vivid Poisonings, and Assassinations committed by conception of a character which, notwithhim and his Gang in Foreign Parts. standing extreme intellectual narrowness and grave moral defects, was original, typical, and amusing. Though George III. had little English blood in his veins, he was the model of a respectable, prejudiced, resolute, industrious, and rather stupid Englishman. He had gleams of a higher order of sagacity, but his acuteness was chiefly practical. His long experience never approached a poetic strain; but a familiarity of fifty years with public business constitutes a kind of education which is beyond the reach of private persons. "Napoleone Buonaparte "-nine syllables in full- has a comforting look in these days when exaltation is marked by cutting a name short. When Cnut of Denmark (not our Cnut) was made a saint, he gained Abram lengthened into Abraham. Dignity His worst faults were his obstinate personal antipathies, especially when they happened to be directed against his most illustrious or most brilliant subjects. Great public misfortunes might have been avoided if he could have forgiven the despotic haughtiness of Chatham or the factious viclence of Fox. In both cases the King had received the strongest provocation, but it was his undoubted duty to prefer the interests of the country to his own private feelings. He would perhaps have made the sacrifice had he been capable of understanding that opposition to his Government was compatible with loyalty and patriotism. It must also be remembered that Chatham was chief Minister for two or three years during the reign of George III., and that Fox died in office. The King's dislike to inferior personages was for the most part readily tolerated, especially by the large section of his subjects which shared his feeling to George Grenville, to the Duke of Bedford, and to Lord Loughborough. The monarchy has, within the last century, approached so near to a republic that a modern English Sovereign accepts without hesitation, as Minister, the chosen leader of the strongest party in the State. George III. took his prerogative in earnest, especially as he struggled, not with the great body of the people, but with a cluster of powerful families. When Fox, on two successive occasions, deliberately excluded Burke from a Whig Cabinet, the King might be excused for believing in hereditary privilege. His deficiency in humour and in imagination made him slow in appreciating constitutional and social fictions. He believed in dignitaries, preferring Lord Eldon among Chancellors, and the dry and pompous Hurd among Bishops; he laughed loudly at farces and pantomimes; he repeated the responses loudly in church; he walked on Windsor terrace with the Queen by his side, and his children following two and two; and during his entire reign he never allowed his goutiest Minister to sit down in his presence. accompanied and guided by the best of English letter-writers; and although Horace Walpole is unapproached by any rival, Lord' Malmesbury, Lord Auckland, Mr. Hugh Elliot, Lord Loughborough, and Lord Grenville rise far above mediocrity in acuteness of observation and in literary aptitude. Mr. Jesse is, on the whole, an impartial writer, although he displays in a moderate degree the proper passion of a biographer for his whimsical old Royal hero. In some instances he carries his candour to excess, as when he records how Washington "happily succeeded" in one of his attacks on the English troops. When George III. is not immediately concerned, Mr. Jesse would seem to be a Whig and a Reformer. The King more than once asserted that he was himself an old Whig, but he never pretended to any love for political changes. In one of his letters he informs his congenial favourite, Bishop Hurd, that Mr. Addington, who had just succeeded to office, was a friend of the Church and of our happy Constitution, and as little disposed as the Mr. Jesse's Memoirs form an excellent King himself to reforms or supposed imdigest of the innumerable volumes of cor- provements. It is not easy to ascertain respondence which furnish materials for the whether Mr. Jesse approves of the celehistory and biography of the reign. Nearly brated speeches about the Coronation Oath, every conspicuous politician of the time has which caused the postponement of Catholic made posthumous contributions to the gene- Emancipation for nearly thirty years; but ral stock, and, among more recent writers, he collects several curious illustrations of Mr. Croker, Lord Brougham, Lord Macau- the King's tolerance for Protestant dissent, lay, Lord Russell, and Sir George Lewis and of his exceptional deviation into heterhave illustrated their commentaries and odoxy by habitually abstaining from repeatcriticisms on various published compilations ing the responses in the Athanasian Creed. with traditional knowledge of their own. It is well known that, in his final derangeMr. Jesse also has been assiduous and fortu- ment, he inclined to the communion or to nate in collecting oral anecdotes, and he has the discipline of the Lutheran Church, discovered a few unpublished letters; but in a vague hope of obtaining a divorce. the greater part of his story is unavoidably In the good old times Western Christianity familiar to the habitual reader of political was broadly divided into the two great biography and gossip. The Chatbam papers, persuasions of Protestant and Catholic. the Grenville papers, the Malmesbury cor- It had never occurred to George III. respondence, the letters of Fox published that the Establishment was other than by Lord Russell, the memoirs of Lord Auck- Protestant, and he was deeply impressed land, of Mr. George Rose, of Lord Colches- with his own rights and duties as the supter, of Lord Cornwallis, form but a small posed Head of the Church. The present part of the original sources of Ministerial work contains an amusing letter in which and Parliamentary history. To the indolent the King reproves Dr. Cornwallis, Archstudent who wishes to combine light reading bishop of Canterbury, for giving routs in with the pursuit of a respectable kind of Lambeth Palace. The ingenious advenknowledge, no period is more attractive turer who lately fabricated an order of the than the latter part of the eighteenth cen- King's for the rebaptism of a child, “to retury. It is not necessary to visit the Record main in force till further orders," only cariOffice or to consult obscure authorities for catured the Royal sentiments and style. the comprehension of intrigues and changes The poor King was probably out of his mind which are confidentially described by their when he once astonished the congregation own authors or by contemporary witnesses.of the Chapel Royal by reciting in a loud For more than thirty years the inquirer is voice, with a strong emphasis on the per sonal pronoun," Forty years long have Iished posterity if unreasoning confidence been grieved with this generation, because they have not known my ways." The duration of Lord Bute's influence after his retirement from office has been the subject of controversies which are not worth prolonging. Some historical critics have thought that George III. soon became tired of his early favourite, and it is certain that the opposite impressions of contemporary statesmen were grossly exaggerated. The Duke of Cumberland, in a letter which has been often quoted, expressed an opinion that, among all his Ministers, the King was most strongly attached to Lord North and to Addington. Writing in 1709 to Lord Bute's son, Dr. Stuart, Bishop of St. David's, and afterwards Archbishop of Armagh, George III. professes his regard for him, both on account of his own merits, and as the son of "the best and truest friend I ever had." The opinions which Lord Bute had instilled into his pupil were retained to the last, for George III. never reconciled himself to the system of government by party which he was forced to tolerate. The Constitution which is now firmly established in England and in all the great English colonies was but imperfectly recognized by the nation three quarters of a century ago. The same form of government has been imitated with imperfect success in a few Continental countries; but in France, in Austria, and in the United States it is utterly rejected. The King of Prussia is now engaged in the same kind of contest in which George III. spent a great part of his life, and the result is still uncertain. It was extremely unjust to accuse the King of aiming at despotism, and it was absurd to pretend that he had succeeded in making himself absolute because Pitt had a majority in the House of Commons. Fox habitually designated the King by Dante's phrase for omnipotence "Là dove si puote ciò che si vuole "; and when invasion seemed imminent, he professed to doubt whether the despotism of Buonaparte would be worse than the despotism of George III. Allowance must, however, be made for the violent language of a statesman who habitually spoke of Pitt as a villain, and who, more excusably, asserted that Addington was a fool. It is fair to Fox's memory to admit that he was ready to coalesce with Pitt, that he coalesced on friendly terms with Addington, and that in his final term of office he exerted himself with tact and success to conciliate the King. The complacency of the English nation in the midst of peril and under the government of incapable rulers, would have aston had not again and again been justified by the event. Insanity bore a considerable part in the history of the time, for Lord Chatham was undoubtedly deranged during 1766 and 1767, when his colleagues and the King himself vainly entreated the Minister to attend to business, or even to grant them interviews. Charles Townshend caused the American war, by his tax upon tea imported direct from China, while Lord Chatham was still the ostensible head of the Government. But for the unhappy disorder of the great statesman, although the colonies would long since have become independent, the inveterate hostility to England which forms a part of American education might perhaps never have been engendered. Five or six years later, a war with the new States, and with France and Spain and Holland, aggravated by the unfriendly armed neutrality of Prussia, Russia, and Sweden, seems scarcely to have disturbed the general equanimity. In the last years of the century, the Irish Rebellion, the Mutiny at the Nore, and the conquests of the French Republic, were regarded with the same imperturbable disbelief in the possibility of national ruin. It was known that the King was periodically insane, but no party or statesman ever proposed to restrain his interference with public affairs in lucid or partially lucid intervals of his disease. The less violent attacks were kept secret by his family and by his Ministers, who were sometimes obliged to consult the physicians in attendance before they solicited an audience. The King's antipathy to Chatham, and his coldness to Pitt, were not unlike the feelings which a patient entertains for a keeper. When George III. was in full possession of his faculties, he was thoroughly conscientious, according to his lights, in the discharge of his public duties. No clerk in his service was more industrious or more punctual, and he repaired to a great extent the disadvantages which he had suffered by his mother's scandalous neglect of his education. His manners were dignified, and his movements and gestures on State occasions are said to have been worthy of the most accomplished actor. His conversation and his epistolary style were awkward and incorrect, but his letters could not have been more intelligible if they had been graceful and grammatical. If he had possessed more literary cultivation he would have resembled in almost all respects an old-fashioned College Don. Respectability, private morality, profound conviction of the importance of himself and his duties, and, except as to the Athanasian Creed, unimpeachable ortho- blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, and doxy, would have insured the esteem of a the like-ranged from about 10,000 as a University, as the same qualities command- minimum, to 240,000 as a maximum, in each ed the respect and attachment of a nation. class. In fine, a complete analysis of the When foreign and Irish affairs were not in figures proves that upwards of seven-eighths question, there was some advantage in a of the entire population are engaged in agridrag on the Constitution while it was rapid- cultural pursuits, or in the various trades ly transforming itself into an unprecedented and professions materially dependent thereform. A king who resolutely struggled to on. assert the reality of a prerogative which was passing into a fiction was more estimable than a passive Merovingian puppet, or than a frivolous idler. If George III. had been a man of genius, he would either have changed the course of English constitutional history or he would have provoked a revolution. From the commencement of his final illness the personal power of the Crown has declined rapidly, although in the earlier part of the present reign sagacious efforts were made to give a meaning and an object to modern Royalty. The Prince Consort, although he failed to acquire popularity, had the great merit of teaching an entire generation to respect the Royal office. If his life had been prolonged, his labors might have produced a more lasting effect. His task would have been comparatively easy if, like George III., he had presented to the commonplace Englishman a magnified image of himself. A FEW WORDS ABOUT AMERICA. SIR SAMUEL MORTON PETO has published a book, which, as he pointedly and truly observes, "bristles with figures." It is an account of "the Resources and Prospects of America, ascertained during a visit to the States in the autumn of 1864." It is a book worth the studying, and though we cannot pretend to give an adequate notion of its contents, we have marked a few figures and facts for extract. In agreement with this fact, the most important branch of manufacturing industry in America is that of agricultural implements, which rose in value from a little under 7,000,000 dollars in 1850, to nearly 18,000,000 dollars in 1860. The great increase in this branch of manufacture has been stimulated by a grievous deficiency in the supply of agricultural labour, causing a high rate of wages, and naturally leading to invention. America, indeed, has become quite remarkable for the rapid succession of labour-saving machines which it has produced, and the value of labour is, no doubt, the leading cause of this. A slight improvement in "straw-cutters" enabled the inventor, in a western tour of eight months, with only a model instrument, to realise 40.000 dollars. Another inventor sold a machine for threshing and cleaning grain for 60,000 dollars. The "M-Cormick reaper" yields its inventor a princely income. A single manufacturer has paid as much as 117,000 dollars in a year for the use of a patent right in an agricultural machine. On the other hand, be the value of the fact what it may, the textile manufactures of America cannot compare with those of England. In the year 1860, for which Sir Morton Peto gives the returns, we employed 30,387,267 spindles. In the United States only 5,235,727 were at work; and this, it will be observed, was before the disturbance of industry by the late civil war. If we take the increase in the period from 1850 to 1860 the figures are still more remarkable. The amount of raw material used in America rose in that interval from 272,527,000 lbs. to 422,704,975 lbs. To compare with these People who are accustomed to the idea figures we have the return of British imports of "Yankee smartness," think too exclusive- of cotton from the United States for 1849 as ly of Americans as a trading and mercantile being 634,504,050 lbs., and for 1860, 1,955,community. The country is in truth essen- 982,800 lbs., or more than thrice the weight. tially agricultural. In 1860 the census The comparison is not less striking when showed 8,217,000 heads of families and made between the woollen manufactures of other individuals whose occupations were the two countries; and, in both cases, the recorded. Of this number, upwards of article produced in America is of inferior 3,000,000, or more than one-third, were quality. directly occupied in the tillage of the soil. Under these circumstances our American The merchants and clerks of the United cousins resort to the exploded system of States altogether only numbered 300,000" Protection," as a means of encouraging souls. The leading mechanical trades- the home manufacture of textile goods. The fact is interesting, as it tends to show, railway from twelve to nineteen hundred in conjunction with other and more material miles; she has increased her wheat and oat facts, that the great progress made by crops, her wool, the value of her forests, America, and the originality of some of her and wealth, more than we have, though she manufactures, are the results of special cir- is naturally inferior in climate, soil, and cumstances, and not primarily either of position." The strict impartiality of a regreater capacity in her people, or of greater port, written in the spirit of which this is liberality in her institutions. What those only one faint indication, may fairly be circumstances may be would form a suitable doubted. Our purpose, however, is not to subject of inquiry at another opportunity. comment upon the facts of the case, but to Perhaps they would enable us to find an in- direct attention to the careful study of telligible reason for another of Sir Morton Peto's impressive statements - - for the alleged fact that there is no such thing as Pauperism in the United States! - People's Magazine. From People's Magazine. CANADA AND THE RECIPROCITY TREATY. them. Some of our hard-headed working men, who may be in want of a subject of study connected with their special interests, will find one in a public question of this nature worthy of their most serious attention. The problem has a direct bearing on the connection between legislative action and industrial progress; and further, on the morality of international legislation directed against the welfare of a neighbouring people. On the latter point a few words may not be inopportune. Is it justifiable in one nation to legislate against the interests of another? The answer involves a question of personal moAN important public question is raised rality, for if the received rule of conduct by the termination of the Reciprocity for an individual be that of self-interest, it Treaty entered into between the govern- cannot, logically, be different for a nation. ment of the United States and our North Statesmen have acted on this principle American provinces. The question has its from time immemorial. Take down Puffpolitical bearings, but these lie not within endorf, for instance, and what do we find? our province. It is as a commercial and At the end of every chapter is a discussion industrial question that we are interested of what it is for the interest of every state in it. A problem has now to be solved to do in relation to other states, without which it would take a volume of goodly the slightest pretence of regard for moral bulk to elucidate. Is it in the power of right or wrong. Thus, in the chapter on the United States Legislature to check the the Netherlands-"It is the interest of growing prosperity of our American prov- the Hollanders, either by goodness or inces? And this involves a prior question. cheapness of their commodities, and an "Is the prosperity of the last fifteen years easy deportment, to endeavour to draw the to be wholly accounted for by the friendly chief benefit of trade to themselves; for legislation of the United States?" To an- this is the easier and less odious way to heap swer either of these questions it would be up riches, than if they should attempt publicly necessary to study the statistics of the to wrest the foreign trade from all other natrade of Canada during the last fifteen tions." This, however, we call Dutch moyears. Such a study seems to be extant in rality, by way of distinction from the Mr. Derby's report on the Reciprocity Treaty, made to the secretary of the United States Treasury, and criticised by one of our Quarterly reviewers in October last. But then, we are far from being certain that Mr. Derby's study is an impartial one. He speaks complainingly of the prospects of Canada. "From 1851 to 1861 (the period reviewed) she has increased her miles of Christian doctrine of free intercourse, founded on the recognition of the brotherhood of nations, in the present policy of Great Britain. Query Is this Dutch morality to be the future policy of the United States? and if so, will a reward equal to that which the Dutch have reaped from it satisfy the mighty ambition of the American people? |