Let it be remembered, that if you pay the labourers but half their wages, still they must be fed: you by these unjust means increase to a tremendous degree the poor's rate taxes; you destroy the morals of the poor; you starve and make them discontented; and then, justly fearful that their enraged feelings will drive them to some desperate efforts, you oblige the government to continue a large standing army to restrain and keep them in awe by legal coercion.'

It is not true, that the undue depression of wages is the result of a redundant population merely. It arises, not from the mere excess of the supply of labour, but from the steady and unaccommodating nature of the article supplied, under all the fluctuations in the demand, and from the urgency of the dealer,

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which places him at the mercy of the buyer in striking his hargain. Besides the natural operation of the law of supply and demand, there is at work in another shape the ever active spirit of selfishness,-a selfishness often cruel and always shortsighted. Besides the immediate effect of competition among the poor, there is the effect of a tacit combination among the rich,of that legalised species of extortion which consists in taking an unfair advantage of the necessities of the labouring classes.

To prevent this ruinous depreciation of labour at the expense of the country at large, the Spitalfields Act was passed; and the experience of fifty years has fully attested its efficacy. The facts brought forward by Mr. Hale are decisive. For the past twenty years, the workmen of Spitalfields have been more constantly employed and better paid than in any one of the manufacturing districts throughout the kingdom.

I speak,' adds Mr. Hale, from long and accurate observation when I say, that we seldom meet with a pauper amongst the weavers, unless he has been brought into distress by illness or depravity. Our poor rates are only four shillings in the pound for the whole year; and at no period since I have been the treasurer of the parish, have they exceeded six shillings.'

In Coventry, where no such local act protects the journeymen weavers, the poors' rates were in 1818, NINETEEN SHILLINGS in the pound! The case of the Framework knitters of Leicester has recently been brought under public notice by a most competent and eloquent advocate, who has ably exposed the flippancy, or hypocrisy, of bringing forward stale hypothetical objections to legal provisions in favour of the labouring classes, in the face of the mass of existing statutes to protect the agricultural, the manufacturing, and the mercantile interests. As to the Author of the attack on the Spitalfields Act, whosoever he may be, we hope that he will have the good sense and the candour to acknowledge the force of Mr. Hale's very temperate and conclusive remarks. But we wish also, that the facts which he has brought forward, interesting and important as they are in a much wider reference, may attract the general attention they deserve. The principles of Political Economy are soon learned, and, in their bare and literal truth, easily understood; and so are the rules of arithmetic. But a good arithmetician may make a sorry financier. So, as to the subjects to which the rules of Political Economy apply, the difficulty lies in their application.

Art. V. Letters from the Illinois, 1820, 1821. Containing an Account of the English Settlement at Albion and its Vicinity, and a Refutation of various Misrepresentations, those more particularly of Mr. Cobbett. By Richard Flower. With a Letter from Mr. Birk beck; and a Preface and Notes by Benjamin Flower. 8vo. pp. 76. Price 2s. 6d. London, 1822.

WE

E take it for granted that our readers have not quite forgotten Morris Birkbeck and his Illinois prairies; and the thought tras doubtless crossed their minds, when Mr. Owen's parish farms, or the charms of Van Diemen's Land, or the merits of the Timber question, have been under discussion, How go they on in the Illinois? This pamphlet is to tell them that the settlement goes on swimmingly. Its founders not only continue to be reconciled to their escape from this land of taxation, but exult, with something of self-gratulation,' in the fulfilment of all their reasonable expectations,' in their present abundance of good fare, and their brilliant prospects. They are rather in want, it seems, of farming labourers and female servants; for the latter get married as fast as they come. Also, of tailors and shoemakers, and, in the dry season, of stock water'-ponds or the Thames water-works. But the finest water is to be raised at all times from twenty-five to thirty feet from the surface. The infant town of Albion has increased in its population one hundred since last September, and its vicinity seventy; and no foreignmarket, Mr. Flower states, will be wanted, in all probability, to take off the surplus produce, for ten or a dozen years to come. The number of deaths has been in the ratio of four in ninety-five in each year. Albion contains at present, thirty habitations, in which are found a bricklayer, a carpenter, a wheelwright, a cooper, and a blacksmith; a well supplied shop, a little library, an inn, a chapel, and a post-office, where the mail regularly arrives twice a week.' The Reformed or Unitarian liturgy is read on the Sunday, together with the Scriptures and sermons 'from our best English authors.' Mr. Birkbeck has opened a place of worship at Wanborough, his residence, where he officiates himself, and reads the Church of England service; so that,' Mr. Flower facetiously adds, Wanborough is the seat of orthodoxy, and our place stands, as a matter of course, in the ranks of heresy.' The moral state of the settlement is more fully described in the following paragraphs.

6.

On the return of Christmas day (1819), we invited our ur party as at Marden, my late residence in Hertfordshire: we assembled thirty-two in number. A more intelligent, sensible collection I never had under my roof in my own country. A plentiful supply of plum-pudding, roast beef, and mince pics were at table, and turkeys in plenty, having purchased four for a dollar the preceding week. We found among the

party good musicians, good singers; the young people danced nine couple, and the whole party were innocently cheerful and happy during the evening. The company were pleased to say I had transferred Old England and its comforts to the Illinois. Thus, my dear Sir, we are not in want of society; and I would not change my situation for ally in America, nor for disturbed or tumultuous England.

My efforts to assemble the people to public worship have been suc-. cessful our place is well attended, from forty to fifty people, and amongst our congregation we often number a part of Mr. Birkbeck's children and servants. Our singing is excellent; our prayers the formed Unitarian service. The sermons which have been read are from an author I never met with in England, Mr. Butcher; they are, without exception, the best practical sermons I have ever seen. Our LibraryRoom is well attended in the afternoon; the people improving in cleanliness and sobriety, recover the use of their intellectual faculties, and interest themselves in moral and Christian converse.

When I arrived at Albion, a more disorganized, demoralized state of society never existed: the experiment has been made, the abandonment of Christian institutes and Christian sabbaths, and living without God in the world has been fairly tried. If those theologians in England who' despise the Sabbath and laugh at congregational worship, had been sent to the English settlement in the Illinois at the time I arrived, they would, or they ought to have hid their faces for shame. Some of the English played at cricket, the backwoodsmen shot át marks, their favourite sport, and the Sunday revels ended in riot and savage fighting: this was too much even for infidel nerves. All this also took place at Albion; but when a few, a very few, better men met and read the Scriptures, and offered prayer at a poor contemptible log-house, these revellers were awed into silence, and the Sabbath at Albion became decently quiet One of its inhabitants, of an infidel cast, said to me, “Sir! this is very extraordinary, that what the law could not effect, so little an assembly. meeting for worship should have effected." Sir," said I, "I am surprised that you do not perceive that you are offering a stronger argument in favour of this Christian institute than any I can present to you. If the reading of the Scriptures in congregation has had such efficacious and such wonderful effects, you ought no longer to reject, or neglect giving your attention to its contents, and its excellent religious institutions."

Thus, my dear sir, my efforts for the benefit of others have been greatly blessed. I appear at present more satisfied with my lot, because I appear to be more useful than ever : in England all my attempts at use fulness were puny compared to what they are here. Many people here openly express their gratitude to me as the saviour of this place, which, they say, must have dispersed if I had not arrived. This is encouraging to a heart wounded with affliction as mine has been, and is urging me on to plans of usefulness. A place for education, á sunday-school, and above all, a Bible Society, if we increase, shall be my aim and en deavour. I have already abundant testimony that God will bless his word, and if the rest of my life should be spent in such useful employment, my death-bed will be

if the rest of myre calm than if I had been taken from

life before I had arrived at this period of utility. You will, I trust, be able to appreciate the station Providence has placed, me in, and feel pleasure at this communication.'

There were many things in Mr. Birkbeck's Letters, and there are some things in the present publication, very little to our taste. Being neither Republicans, nor Unitarians, nor Americans in sentiment or feeling, neither hating our country, nor despairing of it, there appeared to us nothing in the glowing picture of the Illinois paradise adapted to captivate either the heart or the imagination; while there were many circumstances which seemed to render doubtful the eligibility of the settlement to those who, as a last resource, are driven to the hard expedient of emigration. We must still be allowed to remain sceptical as to the superior advantages_possessed by Albion or Wanborough over other settlements. But putting this question aside,-now that this little colony appears to have actually taken root, and fairly laid hold of the ground, whatsoever differences, whether of religious or political opinion, or of taste, may exist between its founders and ourselves, we are not disposed to regard its nascent prosperity with that affected contempt or those jealous and unkindly feelings which have been betrayed on the occasion by some of our conteinporaries. The display of enterprise, perseverance, and energy of mind which such an undertaking peculiarly calls for, the successful struggle of the colonists with new and untried difficulties, the illustration which this miniature specimen presents of the origin and progress of society, the interest attaching to it as a moral as well as a political experiment, -all this renders the future destinies of these rival establishments the object of even a philosophical curiosity. We should be unfeignedly sorry to hear of their being from any cause abandoned. There are, we are aware, persons who would rejoice in the complete failure and annihilation of the scheme. We do not envy them their feelings, in whatever dirty source they origi pate. Hitherto, the progress which the Colony has made, has been quite as rapid as could be rationally anticipated, and the greatest difficulties appear to be surmounted. The degree of ridicule originally attaching to the plan as a chimerical or Utopian project, will soon blow oyer; and when it is found that the settlers do not come back, people will soon begin to applaud their sagacity.

Mr. Benjamin Flower's preface and notes consist chiefly of a statement of his own theological opinions, and strictures upon Cobbett, who, it seems, has sworn that he would write down Birkbeck and his settlement. That this marble hearted reprobate, as Mr. Flower styles him, should still retain any hold on the public mind, is a circumstance to be accounted for only in the same manner as the success of Messrs Cooper and