his powdered head—a guinea for the out in the militia, which is stated in coat of arms upon his seals -a three official papers, to amount to 748,000 guinea licence for the gun he carries persons. upon his shoulder to shoot game; and is so fortified with permits and official sanctions, that the most eagle-eyed informer cannot obtain the most trifling advantage over him.

America has borrowed, between 1791 and 1815, one hundred and seven millions of dollars, of which forty-nine millions were borrowed in 1813 and 1814. The internal revenue in the year 1815 amounted to eight millions of dollars; the gross revenue of the same year, including the loan, to fiftyone millions of dollars. Army.

Nary. On the 8th of June, 1781, the Americans had only one vessel of war, the Alliance; and that was thought to be too expensive, it was sold! The attacks of the Barbary powers first roused them to form a navy: which, in 1797, amounted to three frigates. In 1814, besides a great increase of frigates, four seventy-fours were ordered to be built. In 1816, in consequence of some brilliant actions of their frigates, the naval service had become very popular throughout the United States. One million of dollars were appropriated annually, for eight years, to the gradual increase of the navy; nine seventy-fours *, and twelve forty-four gun ships were ordered to be built. Vacant and unappropriated lands belonging to the United States, fit to produce oak and cedar, were to be selected for the use of the navy. The peace establishment of the marine corps was increased, and six navy yards were established. We were surprised to find Dr. Seybert complaining of a want of ship timber in America.

During the late war with Great Britain, Congress authorised the raising of 62,000 men for the armies of the United States, though the actual number raised never amounted to half that force. In February, 1815, the army of the United States did not amount to more than 32,000 men; in January, 1814, to 23,000.* The recruiting service, as may be easily conceived, where the wages of labour are so high, goes on very slowly in America. The military peace establishment was fixed in 1815 at 10,000 men. The" Many persons (he says) believe that Americans are fortunately exempt from the insanity of garrisoning little rocks and islands all over the world; nor would they lavish millions upon the ignoble end of the Spanish Peninsula -the most useless and extravagant possession with which any European power was ever afflicted. In 1812, any recruit honourably discharged from the service was allowed three months' pay, and 160 acres of land. In 1814, every non-commissioned officer, musician, and private who enlisted, and was afterwards honourably discharged, was allowed, upon such discharge, 320 acres. The enlistment was for five years, or during the war. The widow, child, or parent of any person enlisted, who was killed or died in the service of the United States, was entitled to receive the same bounty in land.

Every free white male between eighteen and forty-five, is liable to be called

Peace with Great Britain was signed in December, 1814, at Ghent.

VOL. I.

our stock of live oak is very considerable; but upon good authority we have been told, in 1801, that supplies of live oak from Georgia will be obtained with great difficulty, and that the larger pieces are very scarce." In treating of naval affairs, Dr. Seybert, with a very different purpose in view, pays the following involuntary tribute to the activity and effect of our late naval warfare against the Americans.

"For a long time the majority of the people of the United States was opposed to an extensive and permanent naval establishment; and the force authorised by the legislature, until very lately, was intended for temporary purposes. A navy was considered to be beyond the financial means of our country; and it was supposed the people would not submit to be taxed for its sup

port. Our brilliant success in the late war has changed the public sentiment on this

The American seventy-four gun ships are as big as our first-rates, and their frigates nearly as big as ships of the line. U

subject many persons who formerly op- | United States receives about 6000l. a

posed the navy, now consider it as an essential means for our defence. The late

transactions on the borders of the Chesa

year; the Vice-President about 600l.; the deputies to Congress have 8 dollars per day, and 8 dollars for every 20 miles of journey. The First Clerk of the House of Representatives receives about 750l. per annum; the Secretary of State, 1200.; the PostmasterGeneral, 7504.; the Chief Justice of the United States, 1000l.; a Minister Plenipotentiary, 2200l. per annum. There are, doubtless, reasons why there should be two noblemen appointed in this country as Postmasters-General, with enormous salaries, neither of whom know a twopenny post letter from a general one, and where further retrenchments are stated to be impossible. This is clearly a case to which that impossibility extends. But these are matters where a prostration of understanding is called for; and good subjects are not to reason but to pay. If, however, we were ever to indulge in the Saxon practice of looking into our own affairs, some important documents might be derived from these American salaries. Jonathan, for, instance, sees no reason why the first clerk of his House of Commons should derive emoluments from his situation to the amount of 6000l. or 7000l. per annum; but Jonathan is vulgar and arithmetical.

peak Bay cannot be forgotten; the extent of that immense estuary enabled the enemy to sail triumphant into the interior of the United States. For hundreds of miles along the shores of that great bay, our people were insulted; our towns were ravaged and destroyed; a considerable population was teased and irritated; depredations were hourly committed by an enemy who could penetrate into the bosom of the country; without our being able to molest him whilst he kept on the water. By the time a sufficient force was collected to check his operations in one situation, his ships had already transported him to another, which was feeble, and offered a booty to him. An army could make no resistance to this mode of warfare; the people were annoyed; and they suffered in the field only to be satisfied of their inability to check those who had the dominion upon our waters. The inhabitants who were in the immediate vicinity, were not alone affected by the enemy; his operations extended their influence to our great towns on the Atlantic coast; domestic intercourse and internal commerce were interrupted, whilst that with foreign nations was, in some instances, entirely suspended. The Treasury documents for 1814 exhibit the phenomenon of the State of Pennslyvania not being returned in the list of the exporting States. We were not only deprived of revenue, but our expenditures were very much augmented. It is probable The total expenditure the amount of the expenditures incurred on of the United States varied between the borders of the Chesapeak, would have 1799 and 1811, both inclusive, from been adequate to provide naval means for 11 to 17 millions dollars. From 1812 the defence of those waters: the people might then have remained at home, secure to 1814, both inclusive, and all these from depredation in the pursuit of their years of war with this country, the tranquil occupations. The expenses of the expenditure was consecutively 22, 29. Government, as well as of individuals, were and 38 millions dollars. The total very much augmented for every species of expenditure of the United States, for transportation. Every thing had to be 14 years from 1791 to 1814, was 333 conveyed by land carriage. Our communi-millions dollars; of which, in the three thousand dollars were paid for the trans- last years of war with this country, portation of each of the thirty-two pounder from 1812 to 1814, there were excannon from Washington city to Lake Ontario, for the public service. Our roads became almost impassable from the heavy loads which were carried over them. These facts should induce us, in times of tranquillity, to provide for the national defence,

cation with the ocean was cut off. One

and execute such internal improvements as

cannot be effected during the agitations of war." (p. 679.)

Expenditure. The President of the

pended 100 millions of dollars, of which only 35 were supplied by revenue, the rest by loans and government paper. The sum total received by the American Treasury from the 3rd of March, 1789, to the 31st of March, 1816, is 354 millions dollars; of which 107 millions have been raised by loan, and 222 millions by the customs and tonnage: so that, exclusive

of the revenue derived from loans, 222 | schoolboy whips his taxed top — the parts out of 247 of the American re-beardless youth manages his taxed horse, Feline have been derived from fo- with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road; reign commerce. In the mind of any and the dying Englishman, pouring his sensible Americar, this consideration medicine, which has paid 7 per cent., onght to prevail over the few splendid into a spoon that has paid 15 per cent. actions of their half dozen frigates, flings himself back upon his chintz which must, in a continued war, have bed, which has paid 22 per cent. — and been, with all their bravery and ac expires in the arms of an apothecary tivity, swept from the face of the ocean who has paid a licence of a hundred by the superior force and equal bravery pounds for the privilege of putting him o the English. It would be the height to death. His whole property is then of madness in America to run into immediately taxed from 2 to 10 per cen'. another naval war with this country if Besides the probate, large fees are dei could be averted by any other means manded for burying him in the chancel; than a sacrifice of proper dignity and his virtues are handed down to posterity character. They have, comparatively, on taxed marble; and he is then gathered oland revenue; and, in spite of the to his fathers to be taxed no more. In Franklin and Guerrière, though lined addition to all this, the habit of dealwith cedar and mounted with brassing with large sums will make the cannon, they must soon be reduced to the same state which has been described by Dr. Seybert, and from which they were so opportunely extricated by the treaty of Ghent. David Porter and Stephen Decatur are very brave men; but they will prove an unspeakable misfortune to their country, if they influme Jonathan into a love of naval gory, and inspire him with any other love of war than that which is founded upon a determination not to submit to serious insult and injury.

-on

We can inform Jonathan what are the inevitable consequences of being too fund of glory; — TAXES upon every ertice which enters into the mouth, or Caters the back, or is placed under the fast-tares upon every thing which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste -ares upon warmth, light, and locotaxes on every thing on earth, and the waters under the earth try thing that comes from abroad, or grown at home. taxes on the raw material-taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of - taxes on the sauce which pampers mura's appetite, and the drug that rerex him to health on the ermine hh decorates the judge, and the rope which bangs the criminal on the poor Da's salt, and the rich man's spiceon the brass nails of the coffin, and the rbads of the bride- - at bed or board, couchant or levant, we must pay.

The

Government avaricious and profuse; and the system itself will infallibly generate the base vermin of spies and informers, and a still more pestilent race of political tools and retainers of the meanest and most odious description; while the prodigious patronage which the collecting of this splendid revenue will throw into the hands of Government, will invest it with so vast an influence, and hold out such means and temptations to corruption, as all the virtue and public spirit, even of republicans, will be unable to resist.

Every wise Jonathan should remember this, when he sees the rabble huzzaing at the heels of the truly respectable Decatur, or inflaming the vanity of that still more popular leader, whose justification has lowered the character of his Government with all the civilised nations of the world.

Debt.-America owed 42 millions of dollars after the revolutionary war; in 1790, 79 millions; in 1803, 70 millions; and in the beginning of January, 1812, the public debt was diminished to 45 millions of dollars. After the last war with England, it had risen to 123 millions; and so it stood on the 1st of January, 1816. The total amount carried to the credit of the commissioners of the sinking fund, on the 31st of December, 1816, was about 34 millions of dollars.

Such is the land of Jonathan-and

Malthuses?

thus has it been governed. In his of any civilised and educated people. honest endeavours to better his situa- During the thirty or forty years of tion, and in his manly purpose of their independence, they have done abresisting injury and insult, we most solutely nothing for the Sciences, for cordially sympathise. We hope he the Arts, for Literature, or even for the will always continue to watch and sus- statesman-like studies of Politics or pect his Government as he now does Political Economy. Confining our-remembering, that it is the constant selves to our own country, and to the tendency of those entrusted with power, period that has elapsed since they had to conceive that they enjoy it by their an independent existence, we would own merits, and for their own use, and ask, Where are their Foxes, their not by delegation, and for the benefit Burkes, their Sheridans, their Windof others. Thus far we are the friends hams, their Horners, their Wilberforces? and admirers of Jonathan. But he-where their Arkwrights, their Watts, must not grow vain and ambitious; or their Davys? their Robertsons, allow himself to be dazzled by that Blairs, Smiths, Stewarts, Paleys, and galaxy of epithets by which his oratheir Porsons, Parrs, tors and newspaper scribblers endea- Burneys, or Blomfields ?- their Scotts, vour to persuade their supporters that Rogers's, Campbells, Byrons, Moores, they are the greatest, the most refined, or Crabbes ?—their Siddons, Kembles, the most enlightened, and the most Keans, or O'Neils?their Wilkies, moral people upon earth. The effect Lawrences, Chantrys ?-or their paralof this is unspeakably ludicrous on lels to the hundred other names that have this side of the Atlantic- and, even on spread themselves over the world from the other, we should imagine, must be our little island in the course of the last rather humiliating to the reasonable thirty years, and blest or delighted part of the population. The Ameri- mankind by their works, inventions, or cans are a brave, industrious, and acute examples? In so far as we know, people; but they have hitherto given there is no such parallel to be produced no indications of genius, and made no from the whole annals of this selfapproaches to the heroic, either in their adulating race. In the four quarters morality or character. They are but of the globe, who reads an American a recent offset indeed from England; book? or goes to an American play? and should make it their chief boast, or looks at an American picture or for many generations to come, that statue? What does the world yet owe they are sprung from the same race to American physicians or surgeons? with Bacon and Shakspeare and New- What new substances have their cheton. Considering their numbers, in mists discovered? or what old ones deed, and the favourable circumstances have they analysed? What new conin which they have been placed, they stellations have been discovered by the have yet done marvellously little to telescopes of Americans? What have assert the honour of such a descent, or they done in the mathematics? Who to show that their English blood has drinks out of American glasses? or been exalted or refined by their repub- eats from American plates? or wears lican training and institutions. Their American coats or gowns? or sleeps Franklins and Washingtons, and all in American blankets? Finally, under the other sages and heroes of their re- which of the old tyrannical governvolution, were born and bred subjects ments of Europe is every sixth man a of the King of England-and not slave, whom his fellow-creatures may among the freest or most valued of his buy and sell and torture? subjects. And, since the period of their separation, a far greater proportion of their statesmen and artists and political writers have been foreigners, than ever occurred before in the history

When these questions are fairly and favourably answered, their laudatory epithets may be allowed: but till that can be done, we would seriously advise them to keep clear of superlatives,

1. Safe Method for rendering Income arising from Personal Property available to the Poor-Laws. Lorgman & Co. 1819. 2. Summary Review of the Report and Evidence relative to the Poor-Laws. By

S.W. Nicol. York.

& Essay on the Practicability of modifying

the Poor-Laws. Sherwood. 1819.

4 Considerations on the Poor-Laws. By

John Davison, A. M. Oxford.

OCR readers, we fear, will require some apology for being asked to look at any thing upon the Poor-Laws. No subject, we admit, can be more disagreeable, or more trite. But, unfortunately, it is the most important of all the important subjects which the distressed state of the country is now crowding upon our notice.

POOR-LAWS. (E. REVIEW, 1820) | fathers and mothers they are commanded to obey and honour, and are to be brought up in virtue by the churchwardens. And this is gravely intended as a corrective of the PoorLaws; as if (to pass over the many other objections which might be made to it) it would not set mankind populating faster than carpenters and bricklayers could cover in their children, or separate twigs to be bound into rods for their flagellation. An extension of the Poor-Laws to personal property is also talked of. We should be very glad to see any species of property exempted from these laws, but have no wish that any which is now exempted should be subjected to their influence. The case would infallibly be like that of the Income-tax,-the more easily the tax was raised, the more profligate A pamphlet on the Poor-Laws gene- would be the expenditure. It is prorally contains some little piece of fa-posed also that alehouses should be vourite nonsense, by which we are diminished, and that the children of gravely told this enormous evil may be the poor should be catechised publicly perfectly cured. The first gentleman in the church,—both very respectable recommends little gardens; the second and proper suggestions, but of themcows; the third a village shop; the selves hardly strong enough for the fourth a spade; the fifth Dr. Bell, and evil. We have every wish that the so forth. Every man rushes to the poor should accustom themselves to press with his small morsel of imbe- habits of sobriety; but we cannot help cility; and is not easy till he sees his reflecting, sometimes, that an alehouse impertinence stitched in blue covers. is the only place where a poor tired In this list of absurdities, we must creature, haunted with every species of not forget the project of supporting wretchedness, can purchase three or the poor from national funds, or, in four times a year three pennyworth of other words, of immediately doubling ale, a liquor upon which wine-drinking the expenditure, and introducing every moralists are always extremely severe. possible abuse into the administration We must not forget, among other of it. Then there are worthy men, nostrums, the eulogy of small farmswho call upon gentlemen of fortune in other words, of small capital, and and education to become overseers — profound ignorance in the arts of agrimeaning, we suppose, that the present culture; and the evil is also thought Overseers are to perform the higher to be curable by periodical contribuduties of men of fortune. Then Merit tions from men who have nothing, and is set up as the test of relief; and their can earn nothing without charity. To worships are to enter into a long ex- one of these plans, and perhaps the amination of the life and character of most plausible, Mr. Nicol has stated, each applicant, assisted, as they doubt-in the following passage, objections less would be, by candid overseers, and that are applicable to almost all the neighbours divested of every feeling of rest.

malice and partiality. The children are next to be taken from their parents, and lodged in immense pedagogueries of several acres each, where they are to be carefully secluded from those

well superintended and well regulated ; magistrates and country gentlemen would be its visitors. The more excellent the establishment, the greater the mischief;

"The district school would no doubt be