Art. III. A View of the present State of Sicily: its Rural Economy, Population and Produce, particularly in the County of Modica. With an Appendix, containing Observations on its general Character, Climate, Commerce, Resources, &c. From a late Survey of the Abbate Balsamo, Professor of Agriculture and Public Economy at the Royal Academy, Palermo. To which are added, with Notes throughout the work, an Examination of the Sicilian volunteer system, and Extracts from Letters written in Sicily in 1809 and 1810. By Thomas Wright Vaughan, Esq. 4to. pp. 353. Price 11. 11s. 6d. boards. Gale and Curtis. 1811.

Art. IV. An Historical Survey of the Foreign Affairs of Great Britain for the years, 1808, 1809, 1810: with a view to explain the Causes of the Disasters of the late and present Wars. By Gould Francis Leckie. 8vo. pp. 629. Price 12s. boards. Lloyd. 1810.

OUR object in this article is Sicily:-a spot to which

no inconsiderable portion of the resources of Great Britain has now for a long time been devoted, and to acquire some knowledge of which, therefore, with a view to understanding whether those resources have been applied with wisdom or with folly, is no trifling part of the national

concern.

In this view, the very few persons who have been pleased to give us any information on this interesting subject, are largely entitled to our thanks. How much does it say for the education, and liberal curiosity, and virtue, and good sense, and patriotism of the officers of our army, that we have had so large a military force stationed in Sicily, under by no means the most active and harrassing service in the world, for now a good many years, and that the fruit of their leisure has not appeared in any one attempt to make us acquainted with the state of things, in a place with which the policy of our government has so closely connected our interests, and with regard to which we stood, and still stand, so much in need of information!-The same remark applies to diplomatic gentlemen; of whom we have had no scarcity at the Sicilian court; but who, however great their utility in strengthing the bands of amity between the British and Sicilian crowns, would not have impaired the value of their other great and memorable services, by just giving us a few statistical notices relative

to the country, its government, and people.

One thing, it is true, we have heard advanced by military and diplomatic gentlemen from Sicily, when a little pressed by the conversational current, in behalf of themselves and brethren ;—and it is right they should have, as far as it goes, the benefit of their own plea. They said it would

be no matter of profit to military and diplomatic gentlemen in Sicily, to write about the country. Military and diplomatic gentlemen were very dependent gentlemen ;-they must be very careful whom they offend ;-they had staked the whole success of their lives upon promotion-and those from whom promotion comes are not always in a condition. to be pleased with information addressed even to themselves, and unspeakably less so when communicated to the public. They said that, to escape misfortune, military and diplomatic gentlemen must not write in any but the panegyrical strain; that these gentlemen were, by their interests, sufficiently disposed to that strain; but that there was not an individual, belonging to either the military or diplomatic sevice, bearing the name of Briton, so prostitute and base, as to write any thing in praise of the political management of Sicily. They contended, therefore, that this ought to be reckoned matter of praise and honour to the British gentlemen who have been, and are resident in that island. And, in fair and impartial judgement, it is a sort of subject for praise. Not to speak, is at least more honourable than speaking falsehood. It is one degree of virtue to be silent rather than mendacious: it is another to speak out the truth, when it is a very useful truth, without regarding whom it may displease. The British gentlemen of the military and diplomatic orders in Sicily, have, in the account of their defenders, the first degree of virtue, but not the second.

Without, however, meddling any further with this topic, let us attend to Mr. Vaughan and Mr. Leckie, who have done something, though not as much as could be wished, to serve us in this important particular.

The first gentleman, Mr. Vaughan, has given us a translation of the journal of a sort of agricultural tour in Sicily, by a Sicilian professor-together with certain additaments of bis own. The journal of the Sicilian professor is as meagre and uninstructive a piece, as it was natural to expect it would be. The observations are in general too vague to be of any use; and the facts are too isolated to afford any instruction. Of what advantage is it to be told, at one place, the ground is well cultivated;' at another, it is illcultivated, when you know not the sense in which the words are used? The terms well cultivated' in Britain, and well cultivated' in Sicily, are terms of as different meaning, as the terms tall in Lilliput and tall in Brobdingnag. Of what use, again, is it to be told the quantity of grain produced on a spot of certain dimensions, when you know not how much of it is owing to the bounty of nature,

how much to the art of the cultivator? From incidental facts, however, from the notes of the translator, and from the letters, or extracts of letters annexed, we get something; and under the little we know of Sicily, small contributions are useful.

The present volume of Mr. Leckie is made up of several tracts, which he has published at different times. The first part only is, in a particular manner, devoted to Sicily: the rest are on political topics of a more general nature. On Mr. Leckie's political notions we put no extravagant estimate. He is no guide of ours in speculation and we are persuaded we have little need to give any warning to our readers against adopting him for theirs. Mr. Leckie's errors are in no danger of becoming epidemical. We shall, therefore, on the present occasion, confine ourselves entirely to what he gives us on the subject of Sicily. And this is by no means of trifling importance. When it was first presented to the public, unless with those who could trace the connection between the facts reported by Mr. Leckie and the government under which they knew that the country had languished, these facts rested on no better foundation. than the testimony of the author, which could not go far. Perhaps the principal use which Mr. Vaughan's book is calculated to render, is stamping the seal of authenticity and truth upon the account which Mr. Leckie has rendered of the detestable government and deplorable condition of Sicily. Before, even those persons who were not disposed to doubt the veracity of Mr. Leckie, said the account was too bad to be true; the picture went beyond the bounds of credibility; so wretched a government could not possibly exist on European ground. Mr. Vaughan, though he does not himself go far in the statement of unpalatable facts, yet gives his testimony, and adds the testimony of Sicilians, to the statistical statements of Mr. Leckie. In offering, in his introduction, an account of what the reader is to expect from the work he has translated, Mr. V. says,

Although there can be no doubt that the details of the state of agriculture and rural economy are drawn from authentic and accurate calculations, it would be useful, for a more comprehensive view of the whole, to refer to Mr. Leckie's intelligent account of its financial details, of the accuracy of which there can be also no doubt, ex. tracted, as they are, from official returns. And from the collective information of these two publications, a tolerably just estimate may be formed of the island of Sicily.' pp. ii,iii.

And elsewhere he observes,

If the general opinion in Sicily of that work (Mr. Leckie's Survey)

is to be judged by the following extract of a letter, lately received from a highly respectable Sicilian, for whom it was put in Italian, it is no inconsiderable proof of the justice of his statements as to that country. Ho ammirato nella medessima un vivo retratto dell'oggetto che l'autore se propone di pingere; ed ho trovato sparsi sopra l'assunto i tratti veramente maestri, che d'un colpo d'occhio dimostrano la verità degli assunti con quella precisione dell' idee, che un Siciliano stresso, nato nell' Isola, non avrebbe potuto meglio rappresentargli. "I have had to admire in this work a lively picture of the object the author meant to display; and I have found throughout very masterly touches, which demonstrate, in a glimpse of the eye, the truth of the statements, with such correctness of conception, that a Sicilian himself could not have represented them better." pp. 251, 252.

This is highly important. The facts detailed by Mr. Leckie, however deplorable, however monstrous, may now be depended upon. Even the incredulous may now be convinced; and none can long withhold their belief, excepting those who have an interest, overbearing all other considerations, not to believe. We shall, therefore, as the most essential service, we are on the present occasion able to render, proceed to lay before our readers, at as much length as our limits will admit, the details with which Mr. Leckie has furnished us: and, that they may lose no part of their force, we shall give them in the words of the_reporter.The following extracts are selected from what Mr. Leckie calls the "picture of Sicily."

"Division of the landed property. Roger the Norman, conqueror of Sicily, contemporary with our William the First, on his accession to the throne, divided the lands of the kingdom into three portions. One third of these, called the demesnes of the crown, are administered by the corporations of the royal towns where they are situated: each town, according to the revenue of its demesnial lands, pays to the king a certain income, besides maintaining the police, roads, &c. &c.; and the tribute which each territory pays is called the royal patrimony: the Tribunal of Patrimony, of which we shall give a description in its place, is the supreme moderator and comptroller of this revenue. Another third part of these lands was distributed by King Roger among his nobles; some of these were fiefs contained within the territory of the royal or demesnial towns, while others had a town of their own, of which the estate or barony formed the ter ritory. Sometimes the townships of these baronial towns have estates belonging to them, which are administered by their corporations, called giurati. The remaining third portion was either distributed among the bishops or mitred abbots, or served to endow the several con vents which, in an age fertile in superstition, were so generally established.

• This distribution of property has remained ever since the Norman conquest, and all the noble fiefs, as they are held by a grant in military tenure, are supposed to belong to the crown, and given to VOL. VII. 4 C

a family and their descendants, subject to military service. This circumstance supposes an absolutely strict entail, which prevents the sale of fiefs without the king's sanction (verbo regio); it supposes also the indivisibility of the fief; hence the right of primogeniture, which has reduced the younger branches of families to a most miserable state. ...

Tribunal of Patrimony. The Tribunal of Patrimony consists of six members, viz. the president, the conservadore generale, who is the king's advocate, and four judges. As this board superintends the king's territorial revenues, so it commands the municipalities of the royal and baronial towns; and, as the property of every individual is implicated either in the one or the other, so it has become a civil court, under the pretence of an authority in what regards the royal interests. In the same manner it has an authority over all ecclesiastical lands, and the copyholds granted thereon by the crown; thus no act whatever with regard to landed property can be done without its cognizance. In the same manner as all duties on exports and imports (which answer to tunnage and poundage, and which are enforced with all possible rigour) and the exports and imports themselves, interest the royal revenues; so this board has assumed a dictatorial right to command, not by fixed rules or general laws, but by issuing an order or permission on every individual occasion. None of the produce of the country, that is, corn, oil, and some others, as cattle, &c. can be exported without its permission, though the exporter offers to pay the duties. The permission to export hemp is given annually, as an exclusive privilege, to one person in each maritime district; so that the merchant who would export it must not only pay the duties to the king, but a duty to this individual: thus the Tribunal, after obliging the merchant to pay the tax, farms another for their own emolument to the best bidder. With regard to corn, cattle, and oil, the greatest difficulty occurs in the exportation; and a particular order is requisite from Palermo to obtain a permission for the same: to procure this, the trader must bribe through thick and thin. Sometimes the right of exportation is allowed for a short time, and then suddenly stopped; and thus causes the ruin of those who had provided a quantity to ship off....The corn trade is a monopoly in the hands of the cor porations. In order to support them in this abuse, these are invested with an absolute authority to prevent the produce of their district from being carried to a neighbouring town, and to forbid that of another from being admitted into their territory. The privilege of supplying the city of Palermo with oil and cattle is granted to contractors, who exercise every kind of tyranny, as the Tribunal supports them in every measure which they can devise to oblige the holder to sell to a disadvantage, and these gentlemen are in return handsomely complimented by the contractors....

It will be natural to ask, who are the men who compose this board? They are lawyers, whose whole lives having been spent in scenes of the most iniquitous litigation, possess no kind of information on commerce, when they are promoted to this rank; so that all commercial regulations, which with us are fixed by act of parliament, are here left to their absolute will and caprice, to ignorance and venality....As