Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

even to sacrifice something that ought | lax, and corrupt administration of its to be done, in order that much may be laws. It is certainly inconvenient, in done. Upon this principle, the clergy- many cases, to have no other guide to man should not be confined to his parsonage-house, but to the precincts of his parish. Some advantage would certainly attend the residence of the clergy in their official mansions; but, as we have before observed, the good one party would obtain bears no sort of proportion to the evil the other would suffer.

resort to but the unaccommodating mandates of an act of Parliament; yet, of the two inconveniences, it is the least. It is some palliation of the evils of discretionary power, that it should be exercised (as by the Court of Chancery) in the face of day, and that the moderator of law should himself be moderated by the force of preUpon the propriety of investing the cedent and opinion. A bishop will exBench of Bishops with a power of en. ercise his discretionary power in the forcing residence, we confess ourselves dark; he is at full liberty to depart toto entertain very serious doubts. A morrow from the precedent he has esbishop has frequently a very tempo-tablished to-day; and to apply the same rary interest in his diocese: he has fa- decisions to different, or different decivours to ask; and he must grant them.sions to the same circumstances, as his Leave of absence will be granted humour or interest may dictate. Such to powerful intercession; and refused, power may be exercised well under one upon stronger pleas, to men with- judge of extraordinary integrity; but out friends. Bishops are frequently it is not very probable he will find a men advanced in years, or immersed proper successor. To suppose a series in study. A single person who compels many others to do their duty, has much odium to bear, and much activity to exert. A bishop is subject to caprice, and enmity, and passion, in common with other individuals; there is some danger also that his power Sir William Scott has made it very over the clergy may be converted to a clear, by his excellent speech, that it political purpose. From innumerable is not possible, in the present state of causes, which might be reasoned upon the revenues of the English Church, to great length, we are apprehensive to apply a radical cure to the evil of the object of the Legislature will be nonresidence. It is there stated, that entirely frustrated in a few years, if it out of 11,700 livings, there are 6000 be committed to episcopal superintend-under 80l. per annum; many of those ence and care; though, upon the first 20l., 301., and some as low as 21. or 31. view of the subject, no other scheme per annum. In such a state of endowcan appear so natural and so wise. ment, all idea of rigid residence is out of the question. Emoluments which a footman would spurn, can hardly recompense a scholar and a gentleman. A mere palliation is all that can be applied; and these are the ingredients of which we wish such a palliation should be composed :

Dr. Sturges observes, that after all the conceivable justifications of nonresidence are enumerated in the Act, many others must from time to time occur, and indicate the propriety of vesting somewhere a discretionary power. If this be true of the penalties by which the clergy are governed, it is equally true of all other penal laws; and the law should extend to every offence the contingency of discretionary omission. The objection to this system is, that it trusts too much to the sagacity and the probity of the judge, and exposes a country to the partial, VOL. L

of men so much superior to temptation, and to construct a system of church government upon such a supposition, is to build upon sand, with materials not more durable than the foundation.

1. Let the clergyman have full liberty of farming, and be put in this respect exactly upon a footing with laymen.

2. Power to reside in any other house in the parish, as well as the parsonage house, and to be absent five months in the year. E

4. Penalties in proportion to the value of livings, and number of times the offence has been committed.

5. Common informers to sue as at present; though probably it might be right to make the name of one parish. ioner a necessary addition; and a proof of non-residence might be made to operate as a nonsuit in an action for tithes.

We

3. Schoolmasters, and ministers bonâ | ecuted with great diligence and good fide discharging ministerial functions sense. Some subjects of importance in another parish, exempt from resi- are passed over, indeed, with too much dence. haste; but if the publication had exceeded its present magnitude, it would soon have degenerated into a mere book of reference, impossible to be read, and fit only, like a dictionary, for the purposes of occasional appeal: it would not have been a picture presenting us with an interesting epitome of the whole; but a typographical plan, detailing, with minute and fatiguing precision, every trifling circumstance, and every subordinate feature. should be far from objecting to a much more extended and elaborate performance than the present; because those who read, and those who write, are now so numerous, that there is room enough for varieties and modifications of the same subject; but information of this nature, conveyed in a form and in a size adapted to continuous reading, gains in surface what it loses in depth, and gives general notions to many, though it cannot afford all the knowledge which a few have it in their power to acquire, from the habits of more patient labour, and more profound research.

6. No action for non-residence to lie where the benefice was less then 804 per annum; and the powers of bishops to remain precisely as they are.

These indulgences would leave the clergy without excuse, would reduce the informations to a salutary number, and diminish the odium consequent upon them, by directing their effects against men who regard church preferment merely as a source of revenue, not as an obligation to the discharge of important duties.

This work, though written at a period when enthusiasm or disgust had thrown most men's minds off their balance, is

We venture to prognosticate, that a bill of greater severity either will not pass the House of Commons, or will fail of its object. Considering the times and circumstances, we are convinced we have stated the greatest quantum of attainable good; which of course will not be attained, by the cus-remarkable, upon the whole, for sobriety tomary error, of attending to what is desirable to be done, rather than to what it is practicable to do.

CATTEAU, TABLEAU DES ETATS DANOIS. (E. REVIEW, 1803.) Tableaux des Etats Danois. Par Jean Pierre Catteau. 3 tomes. 1802. à Paris. THE object of this book is to exhibit a picture of the kingdom of Denmark, under all its social relations, of politics, statistics, science, morals, manners, and everything which can influence its character and importance, as a free and independent collection of human beings.

This book is, upon the whole, ex

and moderation. The observations, though seldom either strikingly ingenious or profound, are just, temperate, and always benevolent. We are so far from perceiving anything like extravagance in Mr. Catteau, that we are inclined to think he is occasionally too cautious for the interests of truth; that he manages the court of Denmark with too much delicacy; and exposes, by distant and scarcely perceptible touches, that which it was his duty to have brought out boldly and strongly. The most disagreeable circumstance in the style of the book is the author's compliance with that irresistible avidity of his country to declaim upon commonplace subjects. He goes on, mingling bucolic details and sentimental effusions, melting and measuring, crying and calculating, in a

prises, with an heroic valour, which merited wiser objects, and greater ultimate success. The spirit of the Danish nation has, for the last two or three centuries, been as little carried to literature or to science, as to war. They have written as little as they have done.

manner which is very bad, if it is poetry, and worse, if it is prose. In speaking of the mode of cultivating potatoes, he cannot avoid calling the potato a modest vegetable; and when he comes to the exportation of horses from the duchy of Holstein, we learn that these animals are dragged from the bosom of their peaceable and modest country, to hear, in foreign regions, the sound of the warlike trumpet; to carry the combatant amid the hostile the Great Belt. It is not sufficient ranks; to increase the éclat of some pompous procession; or drag, in gilded car, some favourite of fortune."

With the exception of

Tycho Brahé, and a volume of shells, there is hardly a Danish book, or a Danish writer known five miles from

to say, that there are many authors read and admired in Denmark: there are none that have passed the Sound, We are sorry to be compelled to none that have had energy enough notice these untimely effusions, es- to force themselves into the cirpecially as they may lead to a suspicion culation of Europe, to extort uniof the fidelity of the work; of which versal admiration, and live, without fidelity, from actual examination of the aid of municipal praise, and local many of the authorities referred to, approbation. From the period, howwe have not the most remote doubt. Mr. Catteau is to be depended upon as securely as any writer, going over such various and extensive ground, can ever be depended upon. He is occasionally guilty of some trifling inaccuracies; but what he advances is commonly derived from the most indisputable authorities; and he has condensed together a mass of information, which will render his book the most accessible and valuable road of knowledge, to those who are desirous of making any researches respecting the kingdom of Denmark.

ever, of the first of the Bernstorffs, Denmark has made a great spring, and has advanced more within this last twenty or thirty years, than for the three preceding centuries. The peasants are now emancipated; the laws of commerce, foreign and interior, are simplified and expanded; the transport of corn and cattle is made free; a considerable degree of liberty is granted to the press; and slavery is to cease this very year in their West Indian possessions. If Ernest Bernstorff was the author of some less considerable measures, they are to be atDenmark, since the days of Piracy, tributed more to the times than to the has hardly been heard of out of the defects of his understanding, or of his Baltic. Margaret, by the Union of heart. To this great minister succeeded Calmar, laid the foundation of a mon- the favourite Struensee, and to him archy, which (could it have been pre- Ove Guldberg: the first, with views of served by hands as strong as those improvements, not destitute of liberawhich created it) would have exercised lity or genius, but little guided by a powerful influence upon the destinies judgment, or marked by moderation; of Europe, and have strangled, perhaps, the latter, devoid of that energy and in the cradle, the infant force of Russia. firmness which were necessary to exDenmark, reduced to her ancient bounds ecute the good he intended. In 1788, by the patriotism and talents of Gus- when the King became incapable of tavas Vasa, has never since been able business, and the Crown-prince asto emerge into notice by her own sumed the government, Count Andrew natural resources, or the genius of her Bernstorff, nephew of Ernest, was called ministers and her monarchs. During to the ministry; and, while some nathat period, Sweden has more than tions were shrinking from the very once threatened to give laws to Europe; name of innovation, and others overand, headed by Charles and Gustavus, turning every establishment, and viohas broke out into chivalrous enter-lating every principle, Bernstorff stea

dily pursued, and ultimately effected, | coast of Jutland, from Riba to Lemvig, the gradual and bloodless amelioration is principally alluvial, and presents of his country. His name will ever much greater advantages to the culti form a splendid epoch in the history vator than he has yet drawn from it. of Denmark. The spirit of economical The eastern coast is also extremely research and improvement which em- favourable to vegetation. A sandy anated from him still remains; while and barren ridge, stretching from north the personal character of the prince of to south, between the two coasts, is unDenmark, and the zeal with which he favourable to every species of culture, seconded the projects of his favourite and hardly capable of supporting the minister, seem to afford a guarantee wild and stunted shrubs which languish for the continuation of the same system upon its surface. Towards the north, of administration. where the Jutland peninsula terminates In his analysis of the present state of in the Baltic, everything assumes an Denmark, Mr. Catteau, after a slight aspect of barrenness and desolation. It is historical sketch of that country, di-Arabia, without its sun or its verdant vides his subjects into sixteen sections.

:

islands; but not without its tempests or sands, which sometimes overwhelm 1. Geographical and physical quali- what little feeble agriculture they may tics of the Danish territory: 2. Form encounter, and convert the habitual of government: 3. Administration. wretchedness of the Jutlanders into se4. Institutions relative to government vere and cruel misfortune. The Danish and administration : 5. Civil and government has attempted to remedy criminal laws, and judiciary institu- this evil, in some measure, by encouragtions: 6. Military system, land army, ing the cultivation of those kinds of and marine 7. Finance: 8. Popula- shrubs which grow on the sea-shore, tion 9. Productive industry, com- and by their roots give tenacity and prehending agriculture, the fisheries, aggregation to the sand. The Elymus and the extraction of mineral sub- Arenaria, though found to be the most stances: 10. Manufacturing industry: useful for that purpose, is still inadequate 11. Commerce, interior and exterior, to the prevention of the calamity.* including the state of the great roads, the canals of navigation, the maritime insurances, the bank, &c. &c.: 12. Establishments of charity and public utility: 13. Religion: 14. Education: 15. Language, character, manners, and customs: 16. Sciences and arts.-This division we shall follow.

From the southern limits of Holstein to the southern extremity of Norway, the Danish dominions extend to 300 miles in length, and are, upon an average, from about 50 to 60 in breadth; the whole forms an area of about 8000 square miles. The western

The mile alluded to here, and through the whole of the book, is the Danish mile, 15 to a degree, or 4000 toises in round numbers: the ancient mile of Norway is much more considerable.-It may be as well to mention here, that the Danes reckon their money by rixdollars, marks, and schellings. A rixdollar contains 6 marks, and a mark 16 schellings; 20 schellings are equal to one livre; consequently the pound sterling is equal to 4 r. 4 m. 14 sch., or nearly 5 rixdollars.

The Danish isles are of a green and pleasant aspect. The hills are turfed up to the top, or covered with trees; the valley animated by the passage of clear streams; and the whole strikingly contrasted with the savage sterility, or imposing grandeur, of the scenes on the opposite coast of Jutland. All the seas of Denmark are well stored with fish; and a vast number of deep friths and inlets afford a cheap and valuable communication with the interior of the country.

The Danish rivers are neither numerous nor considerable. The climate, generally speaking, is moist and subject to thick fogs, which almost obscure the horizon. Upon a mean of twenty. six years, it has rained for a hundred and thirty days every year, and thun

There is a Danish work, by Professor Viborg, upon those plants which grow in sand. It has been very actively distributed in Jutland, by the Danish administration, and might be of considerable service in Norfolk, and other parts of Great Britain,

dered for thirteen. Their summer tions of rational liberty by the wise rebegins with June and ends with Sep-strictions imposed upon its returning tember. A calm serene sky, and an Monarch, the people of Denmark, by atmosphere free from vapours, is very a solemn act, surrendered their natural rarely the lot of the inhabitants of Denmark; but the humidity with which the air is impregnated is highly favourable to vegetation; and all kinds of corn and grass are cultivated there with great success. To the south of Denmark are the countries of Sleswick and Holstein. Nature has divided these countries into two parts; the one of which is called Geetslund, the other Marschland. Geetsland is the elevated ground situated along the Baltic. The soil resembles that of Denmark. The division of Marschland forms a band or stripe, which extends from the Elbe to the frontiers of Jutland, an alluvium gained and preserved from the sea, by a labour which, though vigilant and severe, is repaid by the most ample profits. The sea, however, in all these alluvial countries, seldom forgets his original rights. Marschland, in the midst of all its tranquillity, fat, and silence, was invaded by this element in the year 1634, with the loss of whole villages, many thousands of horned cattle, and 1500 human beings.

Nature is as wild and grand in Norway as she is productive in Marschland. Cataracts amid the dark pines; the eternal snow of the mountains; seas that bid adieu to the land, and stretch out to the end of the world; an endless succession of the great and the terrible, leave the eye and the mind without repose. The climate of Norway is extremely favourable to the longevity of the human race, and sufficiently so to the life of many animals domesticated by man. The horses are of a good breed; the horned cattle excellent, though small. Crops of grain are extremely precarious, and often perish before they come to maturity.

In 1660, the very year in which this happier country was laying the founda

*We shall take little notice of Iceland in this review, from the attention we mean to pay to that subject in the review of "Voyage en Iceland, fait par ordre de sa Majesté Danoise," 5 vols. 1802.

rights into the hands of their Sovereign, endowed him with absolute power, and, in express words, declared him, for all his political acts, accountable only to Him to whom all kings and governors are accountable. This revolution, similar to that effected by the King and people at Stockholm in 1772, was not a change from liberty to slavery; but from a worse sort of slavery to a better; from the control of an insolent and venal senate, to that of one man; it was a change which simplified their degradation, and, by lessening the number of their tyrants, put their servitude more out of sight. There ceased immediately to be an arbitrary monarch in every parish, and the distance of the oppressor either operated as a diminution of the oppression, or was thought to do so. The same spirit, to be sure, which urged them to victory over one evil might have led them on a little further to the subjugation of both; and they might have limited the King by the same powers which enabled them to dissolve the senate. But Europe, at that period, knew no more of liberty than of Galvanism; and the peasants of Denmark no more dreamed of becoming free, than the inhabitants of Paris do at this moment.

At present, Denmark is in theory one of the most arbitrary governments on the face of the earth. It has remained so ever since the revolution to which we have just alluded; in all which period the Danes have not, by any important act of rebellion, evinced an impatience of their yoke, or any sense that the enormous power dele. gated to their monarchs has been improperly exercised. In fact, the Danish government enjoys great reputation for its forbearance and mildness; and sanctifies, in a certain degree, its execrable constitution, by the moderation with which it is administered. We regret extremely that Mr. Catteau has given us, upon this curious subject of the Danish government, such a timid and

« AnteriorContinua »