it is identical with the Kibbee, said to come from the north-west, and enter the sea near the town of Juba, immediately under the equator. If not the Kibbee, it must be the Quilimancy, which disembogues, by several estuaries, between Patta and Malinda, four degrees farther south. Its volume of water is very large, and it is supposed to be navigable for a long way; and from the reports, it appears, that its mouth is known, and is already navigated to a considerable distance inland by white people, who frequent it in pursuit of the horrible traffic in human flesh-a traffic of which the enormity is there rendered the more glaring, because many of its victims are Christians.

We have said nothing concerning the commercial and political bearings of the public mission which these volumes record. Nor do we propose to take up this important topic at the close of this notice. One word only regarding the principle and character of such undertakings. Expeditions, having for their object to take possession for a nation of an unoccupied territory, or to gain for it a footing and influence in one already peopled and partitioned, have been long known. But the unparalleled height of civilization to which our own and some other nations have now ascended, has laid them under stronger inducements, and at the same time furnished them with more efficient means than have ever hitherto been in operation, to prosecute such enterprises. We may, accordingly, expect to see them daily multiplied, and attaining to greater importance in the affairs of nations. It is evident that very different motives are conspiring to cause them. Some have sprung from political ambition alone. They have been the effects of rivalry between the great powers, prompting them to seize and fortify themselves in new posts of attack or defence. Others aim at introducing, as it were, one people to another—at throwing down the walls of partition between communities—at bringing the influence of all to bear on the resources within the possession of each, in order that every where men may work, under the most urgent motives, and by aid of the best appliances, at the great task set to their progenitor in Eden, of subduing the earth to human dominion, and extracting from it the fullest amount of human uses. Of these the former are in principle unjustifiable and wicked, and in their effects must be pernicious. The latter are not only praiseworthy, but seem indeed to rank among national duties. To this class, the mission which Major Harris conducted professedly belongs. Having this opinion of its object, we regard it with approbation and interest, trusting that its issue may never belie the fairness of its opening promise, and that the new people, whom our colossal Empire has drawn within the circle of its influence, may never have to tell of the injustice, oppression, and degradation which, in too many

quarters of the globe, have been the sole fruits of British interference.

There are various appendices to the volumes, containing specific information regarding the natural history of the Adel country, and regarding the geology, botany, and zoology of Abyssinia. For these, the author was indebted to Dr. Roth, the naturalist of the Embassy, and they are highly valuable. There is also added an accurate copy of the Abyssinian Calendar, from which it appears that their year commences on our 29th August, which is their 1st September-that every day of the year has at least one saint, while many have a great number-and that the lives of the saints, or the detail of the miracles assigned to each day, are publicly read in the churches at the service, beginning at the cock's first crowing.

ART. III.-JACOB's Tracts on the Corn Trade. 1828, &c. Influences of the Corn Laws, as affecting all Classes of the Com munity, and the Landed Interests. By JAMES WILSON, Esq. 1839.

Statements illustrative of the Policy and probable Consequences of the proposed Repeal of the existing Corn Laws, and the imposition, in their stead, of a Moderate Fixed Duty on Foreign Corn when entered for Consumption. By J. R. M'CULLOCH, Esq.

1841.

Great League Meeting in Edinburgh, January 11th, 1844.

In 1801, the population of Great Britain was

8,331,434

In 1811, it was

In 1821, it was

In 1831, it was

And in 1841, it was

9,538,827

14,072,331

16,262,301

18,531,941

The increase in the ten years before 1841 is nearly fourteen per cent., and in the twenty years before is more than thirty-one per cent., and in the forty years, or from 1801 to 1841, the increase is upwards of one hundred and twenty-two per cent., or greatly more than doubled.

We prefer that our argument should be grounded upon data presented in this form, rather than upon any general doctrine on the subject of population. The truth is, that next to being earnest for the soundness of our views, are we in earnest for the acceptance of them. But we are aware of the strong repugnance which obtains in a large class of minds for truth, however

soundly generalized, if generalized at all-even though based on unquestionable facts, and being indeed nothing more than the compendious or summary expression of them. They have a great passion for statistics; but, on the moment of these statistics being transmuted, however rightly, into science, they lose all confidence and regard for it-then, calling it theory, which, without making distinction between a right and a wrong theory, is tantamount, in their estimation, to a baseless and extravagant speculation. They are in their element among figures and tabellated views, and so linger all their days among the primary or raw materials of philosophy; for the philosophy itself is what they recoil from with the utmost aversion and distrust. There has been no subject which has been more exposed to this treatment than the recent doctrine of population, as promulgated by Malthus, although he has done nothing more than affirm to be true on the large scale, what every sagacious housewife knows to be true on the small scale, with no other guide to instruct her than her own observant common sense, concentrated within the limits, and practised on the affairs of her own family. No one will charge her, surely, as if bewildered by the light of a specious or false hypothesis, when she deprecates the premature marriage of one of her own children, or would mourn over the superinducement of another family on means already contracted enough for the expenses of her present establishment. Now, all which Malthus and his followers have ventured to assert is, that what is true of a single household holds true of an aggregate of households, even though expanded to the amount of a whole province or a whole empire. They have but ventured on a summation, every item of which might be verified or deponed to by the simplest of our cottagers. The truths which, in detail, are palpable and familiar to all, have been translated by them into a succinct and general formula, and so become, in their hands, a truth universal; and it is for this that they have been branded as visionaries, or still worse, and as if humanity had been outraged by their reasonings, they have been denounced as most unfeeling and cold-blooded speculators.

We shall not, therefore, burden our argument with a theory, which, though we hold it to be demonstratively certain, is so obnoxious to many. We will not let them off, however, from the stubborn exhibition of those facts wherewith we have prefaced this article-presented to them, too, in their own favourite form, and which the statists and economists of our day will be least of all disposed to quarrel with. All which we need to take for granted is, that the produce consumed bears a sufficiently near proportion to the number of consumers, for the purposes of our argument; or, in other words, that, as the population has doubled

in a given time, the quantity of corn used by them must have about doubled also. This is not a point, however, upon which we require to be particularly strenuous; for if the corn should have more than doubled during the period in question, does not the outcry of starving multitudes prove that the mere increase of food brought to market is not of itself a specific for the distress under which our nation is said to be labouring? Or if the corn should have less than doubled, does not this fasten that conclusion upon the adversaries of the Malthusian doctrine which they recoil from so violently?-even that the population may keep ahead of the means of subsistence, and so far ahead as, notwithstanding the mighty enlargement of our resources, to account for the wretchedness and want which are alleged to exist amongst us.

But, not to speak of population in these general terms, or so as to make of it the article of a creed-not to travel beyond the brief prefatory record which we have placed at the head of this article-we gather from it that, during the ten years between the two last censuses, the increase of number in the inhabitants of Great Britain amounts to about 14 per cent. Now the greatest annual importation of corn ever known, never amounted to more than the consumption of 33 days, or about 9 per cent. of the whole consumption for the year. Even though we should imagine an importation so large as this to be the immediate effect of the abolition of the corn laws, it is not long before a population increasing at the rate of the few last years, would fully overtake it. The only difference between the two cases is, that the one increase would follow on the increase of supplies from abroad, whereas the other has mainly followed on the increase of our own home produce. Even the most captious of our antagonists will not affirm that this is a difference which should in the least affect the result, that experience warrants us to anticipate from the abolition of the Corn Laws.

We offer these views, not because we in the least desiderate the continuance of these Laws, but because we should like, and that for the sake of a great and high interest, to chasten and, if possible, repress the extravagant hopes of those who, in the spirit, we have no doubt, in many instances of a pure philanthropy, are now labouring for the abolition of them. Why, there are advocates of the measure who talk, as if it were to usher in a long millennium of indefinite and ever-advancing prosperity, telling us, as in one of their recent speeches, that the blessing would spread and multiply, and be,

"still educing good,

And better still and better thence again,
In infinite progression."

Now, we should like to know from these friends of our species why it is that the agricultural produce of our own island should have more than doubled within the recollection of many of us, and yet that this progressive amelioration, whether in the state or habits of the common people, has never been realized ? How comes it, that at this moment there should be as vehement complaints of a wide spread destitution, and not complaints only, but probably as much, if not more, of severe and actual suffering as ever? Is there any charm in the corn to be imported from abroad, which, certain it is, that we have never yet experienced in all the additional corn which from year to year has been raised within the limits of our own territory? We are quite aware of the impulse given by every fresh supply of corn from without to our export manufactures; but it were easy to demonstrate that an equal impulse is given to home industry, or to home and export manufactures together, by the same additional supply of corn from within. The proportion of native and foreign grain brought to our market, but affects the distribution of employment among our people, and not the remuneration which is given for it. And the question still recurs, why, with all the undoubted enlargement that has taken place in these supplies, we yet see no corresponding enlargement or elevation in the sufficiency and comfort of the working classes? It is for their sake, and from a strong genuine unaffected regard for their interests, that we thus write. They have been the subjects of many a fruitless experiment hitherto, and of many a speculation, all the bright and beauteous promises of which have vanished into nothing. We hold it the greatest of all cruelties thus to practise on the popular imagination, or to strike up a false and bewildering light in this one and that other quarter, so as to lure away either their own attention and effort, or that of their best friends, from the only road which can lead to their secure and permanent amelioration. Certain it is, that they have not yet been placed on that road, nor has it yet been effectually pointed out to them. And certain it is, that the abolition of the Corn Laws is not in itself the pathway which leads to the desired consummation, though we think it possible that this abolition might help us on to it. Meanwhile, it is sufficiently glaring that though an increase of food may be the specific for a larger, it forms no infallible guarantee for a happier or better-conditioned population.

And yet, however powerfully this consideration is fitted to tell on statesmen and philanthropists, in mitigating their desire for freer and fuller supplies of subsistence from abroad, and so causing them to sit loose to the question of the Corn Laws, we are not to expect from the community at large, and least of all from