Imatges de pàgina
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sum of the deaths by 491, or nearly vées and other servile tenures begin to 82 per annum; about of the whole be commuted for money. A bank of population of the city. The whole credit is established at Copenhagen, for kingdom increases, or nearly in the loan of money to persons engaged a year. There is no city in Denmark in speculations of agriculture and minProper, except Copenhagen, which has ing. The interest is 4 per cent., and a population of more than 5000 souls. the money is repaid by instalments in The density of population in Denmark the course of from 21 to 28 years. In Proper is about 1300 to the square the course of 12 years the bank has lent mile. The proportion of births and about three millions of rix-dollars. The deaths in the duchies is the same as in external and domestic commerce of Denmark; that of marriages, as 1 to grain is now placed upon the most 115. Altona, the second city in the liberal footing. The culture of potatoes Danish Dominions, has a population (ce fruit modeste) has at length found of 20,000. The density of population its way into Denmark, after meeting in Marschland is 6000 per square mile. with the same objections which it exThe paucity of inhabitants in Norway perienced at its first introduction from is not merely referrible to the difficulties every nation in Europe. Hops are a of subsistence, but to the administrative good deal attended to in Fionia, though system established there, and to the enough are not yet grown for the supply bad state of its civil and economical of the country. Tobacco is cultivated laws. It has been more than once ex- in the environs of Fredericia, in Jutland, posed to the horrors of famine, by the by the industrious descendants of a monopoly of the commerce of grain French colony planted there by Fredeestablished there, from which, however, rick IV. Very little hemp and flax is it has at length been delivered. The grown in the Danish dominions. They proportion of births to the living, is as had veterinary schools previous to the 1 to 35; that of deaths to the living, present establishment of them in Great as 1 to 49. So that the whole Danish Britain: indeed, there was a greater dominions increase, every year, by necessity for them in Denmark; as no about; and Norway, which has the country in Europe has suffered so worst climate and soil, by about; severely from diseases among its aniexceeding the common increase by mals. The decay of the woods begins nearly of the whole population. to be very perceptible; and great quanOut of 26,197 persons who died in tities, both for fuel and construction, are Denmark in 1799, there were 165 be- annually imported from the other countween 80 and 100; and out of 18,354 who tries bordering the Baltic. They have died in Norway the same year, there pit-coal; but, either from its inferior were 208 individuals of the same ad-quality, or their little skill in working vanced age. The country population is to the town population in the ratio of 13 to 137. In some parts of Nordland and Finmarken, the population is as low as 15 to the square mile.

Within the last twenty or thirty years the Danes have done a great deal for the improvement of their country. The peasants, as we have before mentioned. are freed from the soil. The greater part of the clerical, and much of the lay tithes, are redeemed; and the cor

The average time in which old countries double their population is stated by Adam Smith to be about 500 years.

The same rule is used here as in p. 28. This proportion is a very remarkable proof of the longevity of the Norwegians.

it, they are forced to purchase to a con-
siderable amount from England. The
Danes have been almost driven out of
the herring market by the Swedes.
Their principal export of this kind is
dried fish; though, at Altona, their
fisheries are carried on with more ap
pearance of enterprise than elsewhere.
The districts of Hedemarken, Hodeland,
Toten, and Romerige, are the parts of
Norway most celebrated for the culti-
vation of grain, which principally con-
The distress in Norway
sists of oats.
is sometimes so great, that the inhabi-
tants are compelled to make bread of
various sorts of lichens, mingled with
their grain. It has lately been dis-

covered that the lichen rangiferus, or from Lubeck to Hamburg. The amount reindeer's moss, is extremely well cal- of cargoes despatched from Copenhagen culated for that purpose. The Norway for Iceland, between the years 1764 and fisheries bring to the amount of a million 1784, was 2,560,000 rix-dollars; that and a half of rix-dollars annually into of the returns, 4,665,000. The comthe country. The most remarkable merce with the isles of Faroe is quite mines in Norway are, the gold mines inconsiderable. The exports fron of Edsvold, the silver mines of Konigs-Greenland in the year 1787 amounted berg, the copper mines of Ræraas, and to 168,475 rix-dollars; its imports to the iron mines of Arendal and Krageræ, 74,427. None of these possessions the cobalt mines of Fossum, and the are suffered to trade with foreign nablack-lead mines of Englidal. The tions but through the intervention of Court of Denmark is not yet cured of the the mother-country. The cargoes defolly of entering into commercial specu-spatched to the Danish West Indies conlations on its own account. From the sist of all sorts of provisions, of iron, of year 1769 to 1792, 78,000 rix-dollars copper, of various Danish manufactures. per annum have been lost on the royal and of some East India goods. The mines alone. Norway produces marble returns are made in sugar, rum, cotton, of different colours, very beautiful gra- indigo, tobacco, and coffee. There are nites, mill and whetstones, and alum. about 75 vessels employed in this comThe principal manufactures of Den-merce, from the burden of 40 to 200 mark are those of cloth, cotton-printing, tons. If the slave trade, in pursuance sugar-refining, and porcelain ; of which of the laws to that effect, ceases in the latter manufactures, carried on by the Crown, the patient proprietors hope that the profits may at some future period equal the expenses. The manufactories for large and small arms are at Frederickwaerk and Elsineur; and, at the gates of Copenhagen, there has lately been erected a cotton spinning-colonists, are delicate points, which mill, upon the construction so well Mr. Catteau, who often seems to think known in England. At Tendern, in more of himself than of his reader, Sleswick, there is a manufacture of lace: passes over with his usual timidity and and very considerable glass manufac- caution. The present year is the period tories in several parts of Norway. All at which all further importation of the manufacturing arts have evidently negroes ought to cease; and if this travelled from Lubeck and Hamburg; wise and noble law be really carried the greater part of the manufacturers into execution, the Danes will enjoy the are of German parentage; and vast numbers of manufacturing Germans are to be met with, not only in Denmark, but throughout Sweden and Russia.

The Holstein Canal, uniting the Baltic and the North Sea, is extremely favourable to the interior commerce of Denmark, by rendering unnecessary the long and dangerous voyage round the peninsula of Jutland. In the year 1785, there passed through this canal 409 Danish, and 44 foreign ships. In the year 1798, 1086 Danish, and 1164 foreign. This canal is so advantageous, and the passage round Jutland so very bad, that goods, before the creation of the canal, were very often sent by land

Danish colonies, the establishments on the coast of Africa will become rather a burthen than a profit. What measures have been taken to insure the abolition, and whether or not the philanthropy of the mother-country is likely to be defeated by the interested views of the

glory of having been the first to erase this foulest blot in the morality of Europe, and to abolish a wicked and absurd traffic, which purchases its luxuries at the price of impending massacre and present oppression. Deferred revenge is always put out to compound interest, and exacts its dues with more than Judaical rigour. The Africans have begun with the French: Jam proximus ardet

Ucalegon.

Tea, rhubarb, and porcelain are the principal articles brought from China. The factories in the East Indies send home cotton cloths, silk, sugar, rice,

pepper, ginger, indigo, opium, and arrack. Their most important East Indian settlement is Fredericksnager.* Denmark, after having been long overshadowed by the active industry of the Hanseatic towns, and embarrassed by its ignorance of the true principles of commerce, has at length established important commercial connections with all the nations of Europe, and has regulated those connections by very liberal and enlightened principles. The regulations for the customs, published in 1791, are a very remarkable proof of this assertion. Everything is there arranged upon the most just and simple principles; and the whole code evidences the striking progress of mercantile knowledge in that country. In Looking over the particulars of the Danish commerce, we were struck with the immense increase of their freightage during the wars of this country; a circumstance which should certainly have rendered them rather less disposed to complain of the vexations imposed upon the neutral powers during such periods. In the first six months of the year 1796, 5032 lasts of Danish shipping were taken up by strangers for American voyages only. The commercial tonnage of Denmark is put at about 85,000 lasts.

There appears to exist in the kingdom of Denmark, according to the account of Mr. Catteau, a laudable spirit of religious toleration; such as, in some instances, we might copy, with great advantage, in this island. It is not, for instance, necessary in Denmark that a man should be a Lutheran before he can be the mayor of a town; and, incredible as it may seem to some people, there are many officers and magistrates who are found capable of civil trusts

We should very willingly have gone through every branch of the Danish commerce, if we had not been apprehensive of extending this article too far. Mr. Catteau gives no general tables of the Danish exports and imports. A German work places them, for the year 1768, as follows:Exports, 3,067,051 rix-dollars; imports, 8,215,085.-Ur. Kunden, par Gatspari.

To say nothing of the increased sale of Norway timber, out of 86,000 lasts exported from Norway, 1799, 76,000 came to Great Britain.

though they do not take the sacraments exactly in the forms prescribed by the established church. There is no doubt, however, of the existence of this very extraordinary fact; and, if Mr. Catteau's authority is called in question, we are ready to corroborate it by the testimony of more than one dozen German statists. The Danish Church consists of 13 bishops, 227 archpriests, and 2462 priests. The principal part of the benefices are, in Norway, in the gift of the Crown. In some parts of Denmark the proprietors of the privileged lands are the patrons; in other parts, the parishes. The revenues of the clergy are from the same sources as our own clergy. The sum of the church revenues is computed to be 1,391,895 rix-dollars; which is little more than 500 for each clergyman. The Court of Denmark is so liberal upon the subject of sectaries, that the whole Royal Family and the Bishop of Seland assisted at the worship of the Calvinists in 1789, when they celebrated, in the most public manner, the centenary of the foundation of their church. In spite of this tolerant spirit, it is computed that there are not more than 1800 Calvinists in the whole Danish dominions. At Christianfield, on the frontiers of Sleswick and Jutland, there is a colony of Northern Quakers, or Hernhutes, of which Mr. Catteau has given a very agreeable account. They appear to be characterised by the same neatness, order, industry, and absurdity as their brethren in this country; taking the utmost care of the sick and destitute, and thoroughly persuaded that by these good deeds, aided by long pockets and slouched hats, they are acting up to the true spirit of the Gospel. The Greenlanders were converted to Christianity by a Norwegian priest, named John Egede. He was so eminently successful in the object of his mission, and contrived to make himself so very much beloved, that his memory is still held among them in the highest veneration; and they actually date their chronology from the year of his arrival, as we do ours from the birth of our Saviour.

*The Jews, however, are still prohibited from entering the kingdom of Norway.

The people of Holstein and Sleswick are Dutch in their manners, character, and appearance. Their language is in general the Low German; though the better sort of people in the towns begin to speak High German.* In Jutland and the isles, the Danish language is spoken: within half a century this language has been cultivated with some attention: before that period, the Danish writers preferred to make use of the Latin or the German language, It is in the island of Finland that it is spoken with the greatest purity. The Danish character is not agreeable. It is marked by silence, phlegm, and reserve. A Dane is the excess and extravagance of a Dutchman; more breeched, more ponderous, and more saturnine. He is not often a bad member of society in the great points of morals, and seldom a good one in the lighter requisites of manners. His understanding is alive only to the useful and the profitable: he never lives for what is merely gracious, courteous, and ornamental. His faculties seem to be drenched and slackened by the eternal fogs in which he resides; he is never alert, elastic, nor serene. His

There are, in the University of Co- | students in the same university we penhagen, seven professors of Theology, were a good deal amused to find only two of Civil Law, two of Mathematics, one student dedicating himself to one of Latin and Rhetoric, one of Belles Lettres. Greek, one of Oriental Languages, one of History, five of Medicine, one of Agriculture, and one of Statistics. They enjoy a salary of from 1000 to 1500 rix-dollars, and are well lodged in the University. The University of Copenhagen is extremely rich, and enjoys an income of 3,000,000 rixdollars. Even Mr. Catteau admits that it has need of reform. In fact, the reputation of universities is almost always short-lived, or else it survives their merit. If they are endowed, professors become fat-witted, and never imagine that the arts and sciences are anything else but incomes. If universities slenderly endowed are rendered famous by the accidental occurrence of a few great teachers, the number of scholars attracted there by the reputation of the place makes the situation of a professor worth intriguing for. The learned pate is not fond of ducking to the golden fool: he who has the best talents for getting the office has most commonly the least for filling it; and men are made moral and mathematical teachers by the same trick and filthiness with which they are made tide-waiters and clerks of the kitchen. The number of students in the Uni-state of animal spirits is so low, that versity of Copenhagen is about 700 what in other countries would be they come not only from Denmark, deemed dejection, proceeding from but from Norway and Iceland: the casual misfortune, is the habitual tenour latter are distinguished as well for the and complexion of his mind. In all regularity of their manners as for the the operations of his understanding intensity of their application; the in-he must have time. He is capable of struments of which application are undertaking great journeys; but he furnished to them by a library con- travels only a foot pace, and never taining 60,000 volumes. The Danes leaps nor runs. He loves arithmetic have primary schools established in better than lyric poetry, and affects the towns, but which have need of Cocker rather than Pindar. He is much reform before they can answer slow to speak of fountains and amorous all the beneficial ends of such an in-maidens: but can take a spell at stitution. We should have been happy porisms as well as another; and will to have learned from Mr. Catteau the make profound and extensive comdegree of information diffused among binations of thought, if you pay him the lower orders in the Danish dominions; but upon this subject he is silent. In the University of Kiel there is an institution for the instruction of schoolmasters; and in the list of

Mr. Catteau's description of Heligoland is entertaining. In an island containing a population of 2000, there is neither imagined the possibility of such a fact in horse, cart, nor plough. We could not have any part of Europe.

for it, and do not insist that he shall | We have been compelled to pass either be brisk or brief. There is some-over many parts of Mr. Catteau's book thing, on the contrary, extremely more precipitately than we could have pleasing in the Norwegian style of wished; but we hope we have said and character. The Norwegian expresses exhibited enough of it, to satisfy the firmness and elevation in all that he public that it is, upon the whole, a very says and does. In comparison with valuable publication. The two great the Danes, he has always been a free requisites for his undertaking, moderaman; and you read his history in his tion and industry, we are convinced looks. He is not apt, to be sure, to this gentleman possesses in an eminent forgive his enemies; but he does not degree. He represents everything withdeserve any, for he is hospitable in the out prejudice, and he represents everyextreme, and prevents the needy in thing authentically. The same cool their wants. It is not possible for a and judicious disposition, which clears writer of this country to speak ill of him from the spirit of party, makes him the Norwegians; for, of all strangers, perhaps cautious in excess. We are the people of Norway love and admire convinced that everything he says is the British the most. In reading Mr. true; but we have been sometimes inCatteau's account of the congealed and duced to suspect that we do not see blighted Laplanders, we were struck the whole truth. After all, perhaps, with the infinite delight they must have he has told as much truth as he could in dying; the only circumstance indo, compatibly with the opportunity of which they can enjoy any superiority telling any. A person more disposed over the rest of mankind; or which to touch upon critical and offensive tends, in their instance, to verify the subjects might not have submitted as theory of the equality of human con- diligently to the investigation of truth, dition. with which passion was not concerned. How few writers are, at the same time, laborious, impartial, and intrepid!

If we pass over Tycho Brahé, and the well known history of the Scaldes, of the Chronicles of Isleif, Sæmunder, We cannot conclude this article withHiinfronde, Snorro, Sturleson, and out expressing the high sense we enterother Islandic worthies, the list of tain of the importance of such reDanish literati will best prove that searches as those in which Mr. Catteau they have no literati at all. Are has been engaged. They must form there twenty persons in Great Britain the basis of all interior regulations, and who have ever heard of Longomon-ought principally to influence the contanus, Nicholas Stenonis, Sperling Lau-duct of every country in its relations renberg, Huitfeild, Gramn, Holberg, towards foreign powers. As they conLangebeck, Carstens, Suhm, Kofod, tain the best estimate of the wealth Anger? or of the living Wad, Fabri- and happiness of a people, they bring cius, Hanch, Tode, and Zaga? We do not deny merit to these various personages; many of them may be much admired by those who are more conversant in Danish literature than we can pretend to be: but they are certainly not names on which the learned fame of any country can be built very high. They have no classical celebrity and diffusion: they are not an universal language: they have not enlarged their original dominion, and become the authors of Europe, instead of the authors of Denmark. It would be loss of time to speak of the fine arts in Denmark; they hardly exist.

theory to the strictest test; and measure, better than all reasoning, the wisdom with which laws are made, and the mildness with which they are administered. If such judicious and elaborate surveys of the state of this and other countries in Europe had been made from time to time for the last two centuries, they would have quickened and matured the progress of knowledge, and the art of governing, by throwing light on the spirit and tendency of laws; they would have checked the spirit of officious interference in legislation; have softened persecution, and expanded narrow con

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