die. A coach was procured to carry him from the jail to the scaffold-the horses, frightened at something in the crowd, ran away, and the wretched man, handcuffed as he was, through the instinct of self-preservation, burst open the door, and jumped out, lest he should be overturned. Even this circumstance the people laid hold upon, to strengthen their favourite idea, that he was not to suffer the punishment due to his crimes-they said it was a trick to cause delay, and that he would be taken back to jail. They were again mistaken. The horses were stopped, M'Gloghlin again put into. the carriage, borne to the place of execution, and hanged; but not until he was dead, and in accordance with the tenor of his sentence, his body given to the surgeons to be anatomized, would the common people believe, that the severity of the law would be actually enforced against one who was

neither a poor man nor a Roman Catholic. In more recent times, however, this feeling has greatly died

away.

M'Gloghlin died as he had lived, sullen, and ferocious, and with his last breath protesting a lie. He asserted to the very last that he was not guilty of the murder. This circumstance caused some uneasiness to those, whom the circumstantial evidence had convinced of his guilt; but in about a year afterwards, his associate Sheehan, who was also executed for the murder of a soldier in an affray about a private still, made, while under sentence, a full confession of the matter, which explained M'Gloghlin's denial to have arisen from his not having actually committed the murder with his own hands-and afforded the materials for the foregoing tale.

J.

FROM 1680 to 1828, almost every year has produced most alarming predictions of the speedy ruin of this country, from the pressure of its debt, and from the consequent increase of taxation. The first of these awful prophecies which we have seen, is intituled "Britannia Languens," or a "Discourse on Trade;" the last, an appalling article in the 92d Number of the Edinburgh Review. We could almost say with Henry IV. of France, whose death the astrologers were every year foretelling, "These fellows must be right at last;" but as the country has been progressively increasing in wealth and power during the last one hundred and fifty years, we are somewhat inclined to doubt the predictions of these gifted seers, and to look for other causes than national debt and taxation to effect the ruin of the Queen of Nations. At the same time, we do not pretend to say that either or both may not mediately cause rapine, bloodshed, and revolution, and bring ruin on thousands; but the immediate causes of mischief will be the ignorant aid and rash experiments of the political economists and would-be philosophers of the age in which we live ; mistaking symptoms of health for those of disease, they will convert

what might be goodly food into poison, and their unlucky patient will at last die of the doctor.

Qu'est-ce donc que toute cette affaire? Et que me voulez vous? Vous guerir. Me guerir? Qui.

Parbleu, je ne suis pas malade!

This pithy expostulation might fairly be used by the nation with the crowd of financial quacks, who would fain cure her of the disorders incident to her state of wealth and prosperity; but, unfortunately, John Bull resembles rather the Malade Imaginaire than the M. de Pourceaugnac of the witty dramatist; he will be ill in spite of health; he will be poor in spite of riches; and we must, like Toinette, indulge for a while the delusion, in order to dispel it. Hé bien, oui, Monsieur, vous êtes malade; n'ayons point de querelle là-dessus; oui, vous êtes fort malade, j'en demeure d'accord, et plus malade que vous ne pensez; voilà qui est fait.-In truth, John Bull is so much more ill than he is aware, that we see no chance of effecting his cure speedily, but must rely on the slow and sure operation of time. In time he will get rid of the deadly nostrums of

"Free Trade,” relaxed "Navigation Laws," non-protection to Agriculture, &c., &c., all which he has of late so greedily swallowed, to the manifest injury of his health. He will then be gin to see that a national debt and taxation are not such undiluted evils as he supposed them to be; he will then acknowledge that, so far as home production and home demand are concerned, the conversion of capital into revenue, which is the effect of the one, must necessarily increase the proportion of demand to the supply; and that the conversion of the revenue of individuals into the revenue of the government, which is the effect of the other, can have no tendency to diminish the general amount of demand. But he is too ill just now for physic, however salutary; all we can do for him at present, is to agree, oui, vous etes fort malade; and, without venturing to prescribe any remedies of our own, to show him the probable effects of those so confidently recommended to him by other and more daring doctors. In order to do this, we shall examine a prescription which appeared in the last Number of the Edinburgh Review, not only because it is the newest and latest, but because, containing, as we will show, ingredients of the most dangerous nature, we shall be the better able to guess at the remaining contents of the Whig political pharmacopoeia. Our readers will doubtless remember, and if they do not, the printed reports of the speeches in Parliament for the last 20 years will remind them, how that the Whigs have constantly and unceasingly, and session after session, charged every administration with unnecessary expenditure of the public money, more especially in support of our military, naval, and other establishments of the like nature: how they have over and over again, affirmed, and produced calculations, to show, that a vast reduction might be made in every one of them, and a mint of money saved annually to the country. St Stephens yet rings with what they could and would do in the way of retrenchment and economy, if they had the management of our ill managed affairs. Many persons, we believe, staggered by their bold assertions, dazzled by the glitter of their theories, or moved by their pathetic description of the miseries of the

country, were induced to join their party, and wish for their admission to power. Men who would have laughed at the idea of consulting Dr Eady in any matter of bodily ailment, yet thought that, in the matter of finance, Joseph Hume might do some good. We who have tracked them through the various mazes of inconsistency, have long since reached the nil admirari point with regard to their actions and opinions; but the misled persons above alluded to, will perhaps hear the following declaration with some surprise :-"We believe that Lord Goderich and his colleagues have the public interest too much at heart to hesitate about giving the fullest effect to every practicable scheme of retrenchment. At the same time, however, we must say, that those who expect that any retrenchments which it is in the power of the best intentioned and most powerful ministers to adopt, will, of themselves, afford any material relief from the pressure of taxation, are a great deal more sanguine than we are." Now this is precisely the answer which former Tory administrations gave to the Whig clamours for retrenchment. When the late Lord Londonderry, in the language of truth rather than of prudence, talked of an 66 ignorant impatience of taxation," what indignation was expressed! What charges of want of feeling and want of ability were heaped on his devoted head! Yet now, the Edinburgh Review, the Whig organ, coolly tells the people, "You are very much oppressed by taxes, no doubt, but hope nothing from retrenchment—no material relief can be afforded you from that source." Not content with thus, at one stroke, dashing from our lips the cup which their own hands had filled to the brim with hope, these cruel Whigs will not even allow us the little comfort we might obtain from the dregs, but proceed with hyper-stoical apathy to show that expenditure in each department is already on the lowest possible scale. "Some savings may be made; but it is visionary to imagine that they can have any perceptible effect on the financial condition of the country." As to the Army," it is very doubtful whether there are at present any considerable number of supernumerary soldiers in the country."-As to the Navy, "we have very great doubts

ble, should cause to explode, and spread terror and destruction around them, must be watched by a vast military force? Can that policy be sound which would make the country at once a workshop, and a garrison? a mighty combination of steam-engines, and dragoons? Yet it is the fashion of the day to decry all modes of accumulating national wealth, except the manufacturing;-to seek by a free trade in corn, to force yet more capital from agriculture, to drive our rural labourers from the plough to the loom, and to add thousands more to a population, "liable to be suddenly thrown out of employment and exposed to every sort of privation." It would not be difficult, if our limits would allow us, to show that the pressure which affects the manufacturing and commercial branches of our industry is caused by too much capital having been, by various causes, turned from the channel in which it would have naturally flowed, namely, the improvement of the soil into those of manufactures and commerce; and that if it had not been so diverted, we should have been as a nation actually wealthier. But allowing for a moment that the latter modes of employing capital, do tend the most rapidly to wealth, can we contemplate their effects on that important part of the community, the labouring class, without perceiving

"How wide the limits stand

Between a splendid and a happy land;" and without wishing that the other course had been pursued, even though we had been somewhat less rich? Pauperism and crime, impaired health and vitiated morals, seem to follow as naturally in the train of manufactures, as rapine and cruelty in that of war; but, as observes a writer of the present day, whose inquiries into the subject of pauperism, do credit both to his heart and his understanding, "History would certainly encourage the conviction, that it is not in the nature of the humblest agricultural or pastoral pursuits to depress the intellect, corrupt the taste, or impair the virtuous feeling of those who are engaged in them."*

Having now stated what in our Doc

tor's opinion ought not to be done, we shall proceed to examine what he thinks ought to be done towards effecting the cure of our disordered state. The first of his minor remedies is to open the ports to foreign growers of corn, by which measure he puts no less a sum than L.19,200,000 annually into the pocket of the country, without taking anything worth speaking of out of that of the English landlord. Marvellous man!-Secondly, by depriving the West Indian planters of the monopoly of the home market, he saves L.1,583,000 more.-Dear Doctor! Thirdly, by abolishing the charter of the East India company, L.2,000,000, and fourthly, by the equalization of the duties on timber, L.1,500,000— making in all the lumping sum of L.24,283,000 sterling!! Truly now, Swift's "Wonder, of all the Wonders that ever the world wondered at, the famous artist John Emanuel Schoitz," was a very common, every-day sort of person, compared with this man!

We have neither time nor inclination at present, to discuss all these matters at length, and the much mooted questions of tea and timber must wait a while longer. With regard to the first and most important subject, the protection of home agriculture, we have in former numbers so fully exposed the injustice and impolicy of impoverishing the British grower of corn, in order to force open another and a worse market for the British manufacturer, that if we have hitherto failed to convince all those on whose minds it is at all worth while to work conviction, no new arguments that we could now adduce, would have the effect. One observation, however, we will make, in addition to those formerly offered to our readers, and for this reason, namely that the writer of the article, now under examination, is disposed not only to sacrifice the British farmer to the manufacturing interest in his own country, and to the agriculturist of another, but also, as will be more clearly seen by and by, to enrich the fundholder at his expense. We say then, that if by withdrawing from agriculture the protection now afforded to it, the price of corn were to fall to 50 shillings per quarter (and it would probably fall much lower,)

and labour and other commodities in the like proportion, the fundholder would be benefited, not only at the expense of the owners and occupiers of land, but at that also of the industrious classes of society, and consequently at the expense of the wealth and prosperity of the whole country; and we prove it thus:-During the twenty years from 1794 to 1813, the average price of British corn was about 83 shillings per quarter-during the last ten years of the above period, 92 shillings -and during the last five years of the same period, 108 shillings. Now, during these said twenty years, nearly 500 millions were added to the capital of the debt at a rate of interest, amounting, on a rough average, and exclusive of the sinking fund, to about five per cent. But if the price of corn should fall to 50 shillings a quarter, and that of other commodities in proportion instead of about five per cent, the stockholder would really receive 7, 8, 9; and for the last 200 millions, ten per cent. And who is to pay it? by whom alone can it be paid, but by the industrious classes, and by the landlords, that is, by all those whose nominal incomes will vary with the variations in the measure of value, and out of a nominal income, thus diminished by one half, they will have to pay the same nominal amount of taxation. Whigs and Political Economists may call this justice, but we, who (Heaven be praised) are neither the one nor the other, cannot so easily reconcile measures of such a tendency with our old fashioned notions of equity and fair dealing. If to open the ports to foreign corn be indeed of such immense importance to the welfare of the country, as they would have us believe, let the fundholder contribute his share towards the good work, by giving up such a portion of his capital as may be equivalent to the loss the agriculturists would sustain on theirs ; let him do this, and there will be some degree of fairness in the proposition.

On the relative qualities of West India and of East India sugar, and on the policy of equalizing the duties on them, by which measure individuals would, if we may believe the Doctor, save at least a penny a pound in that article, and the nation at large a million and a half, we cannot at present enter. VOL. XXIII.

We are sure, however, that a trade or monopoly, call it which you will, by which British manufactures, to the amount of five millions, are on the average annually exported, and which contributes more to support the strength of our navy than any other trade we possess, is not a thing to be tampered with by such men as our friend the Doctor. Most people would have rested quite satisfied with effecting a saving to the amount before stated. Not so the Doctor. He is one of that active class of persons who think that nought is done whilst ought remains which may be done; and, having prepared his patient by gentle doses, he now proceeds to effect a radical cure, by paying off one half of the national debt, and thus saving about 15 millions more annually.

The payment of this debt, our readers scarcely need be informed, has been, for upwards of a century, the grand desideratum of financial projectors; like the favourite hobby of mechanicians, perpetual motion, it has been ridden at full speed by many a galloping genius; and, like that hobby, it has never failed to spill his rider, and leave him sprawling. A gentleman jockey, in the reign of George I., a Mr Archibald Hutcheson, mounted, in the hope of being able to keep the saddle, but he too bit the dust; for though the scheme he proposed was, says Hume, "approved of by some men of sense, it was never likely to take effect;" and his scheme was thisto deduct 10 per cent from the principal of the funded debt, and to lay an assessment of 10 per cent on all other capital in the country: a power was to be given, by act of Parliament, to the proprietors of estates to sell as much of them as might be required to defray their share of the assessment, notwithstanding any disability arising from settlements or entails, (we beg our readers to bear in mind this part of the plan,) and to enable them to deduct 10 per cent from all mortgages and other burdens with which they might be affected. difference that we can perceive between Mr Hutcheson's plan and the one now proposed by the Whig organ, is that which results from the increased amount of the debt. In the reign of George I. an assessment of 10 per cent would have extinguished the

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