the sugar which kills them: more of it is made in proportion in Trinidad, than anywhere else." In South Carolina the House of Assembly has passed a bill to prohibit people of colour from being instructed in reading and writing, by a vote of seventy-one to forty-two! Game Laws.-Attempts are now making by the Marquis of Salisbury to alter the game laws. There is a party in the state, however, that, notwithstanding the rapid increase of crime produced by these laws, and the system of civil warfare they are rapidly engendering, openly opposes every experiment at effecting an amelioration. No opponent of the present game laws pretends that game as private property should not be sacred. On this question there is no difference of opinion. What then, it may be inquired, is the obstacle raised by those enemies of the community who thus resist alterations? Why, simply a feudal hanging about them of ancient barbarities—a desire to retain an obsolete right, which they imagine confers consequence and dignity-a wish to be something above their fellow-citizens in privilege, if they cannot compete with them in understanding. These persons see the seeds of civil war sown with amazing complacency, and are too obtuse to reflect that they must be the earliest sufferers. They coolly note some fifty villains, gamekeepers and poachers (for in character there is not much difference between the two races), arrayed against each other to shed blood, that they themselves may retain a ridiculous power, which long ago should have been laid in the dust. For six years has Lord Wharncliffe laboured in vain to cause an alteration in these barbarous laws, and this party has always neutralized his efforts. The most curious anomalies are caused by the practice of magistrates in their support. At Devizes house of correction at the present time, out of two hundred and forty-five prisoners, ninety-six are offenders against the game laws! The county of Wilts (half of which is open downs) beats the most cultivated and inclosed counties in game-law committals; for in 1825, out of a population of 223,157, on a surface of 1283 square miles, there were one hundred and forty-seven committals! Now the committals for the same year in Cornwall, Devon, and Somerset united, having a population of 1,015,801, amounted to fifty-four only. Nay, even in York, with a surface of 11,457 square miles, and a population of 1,175,248, added to the three counties already mentioned, making an aggregate of 2,227,049, we find immured for game offences in all four counties but one hundred and sixty persons, or thirteen more than Wilts alone! How is this to be accounted for? Somerset, adjoining, a well-cultivated county, with a population of 358,314, has but twenty-nine committals. It is said that game is more severely kept in Wilts and Hants than in any other counties; and it seems true enough. Hants has a population of 282,208; but that county, with a fifth greater population, shows but ninety-four committals on a surface of 1523 square miles. Again, the committals for Chester, Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and Worcester, upon a surface of 7135 square miles, with a population of 1,506,323 united, are ninety-two, or two less than the single county of Hants! Bedford is painfully pre-eminent, as well as Oxford and Cambridge, in committals. Surrey is low, while Sussex and Suffolk are rather high. Sussex, with a population of 232,927, has ninety-four committals; while the agricultural county of Norfolk, with 344,368, commits but sixty-two. There are causes for these differences that imperiously demand explanation. At the late Quarter Sessions in Chester, all the cases for trial, without one exception, were indictments under the Game Laws! All were convicted. Two were sentenced to fifteen months' imprisonment and hard labour; one, transportation for seven years; two, three months and two months; one, eighteen months; two, twelve months; and one, six months, to hard labour. Sentences on five postponed.-The agriculturists of Herefordshire are going to petition the legislature for the revision of the game laws, and as one reason state, that though they are debarred from killing game themselves, they are not only burdened with keeping it, to the destruction of their own crops, but are taxed, in the shape of county rates, to prosecute and maintain poachers. We wonder it has never before struck the farmers who complain so bitterly of the poor rates, that in order to sustain the exclusive privilege of qualified sportsmen, they see their pockets emptied, and robberies multiplied. Let them petition in every county, and support such measures as Lord Wharncliffe's with spirit, and the nuisance will soon be abated. The Schoolmaster v. the Sword.-When the French Revolution broke out, Dr. Parr saw to what things tended immediately; and that the convulsion which had been caused by the attempts made from without, not to repress the excesses of the time, but to extinguish its spirit, would ultimately be unavailing; and his opinion he lived to see turn out true. "It is the contest," said he, "between Pen the conjuror, and Sword the giant, and depend upon it the conjuror will beat." Otello.-A theatrical critic in "The Times" newspaper, after a judicious estimate of the value of the music of this opera, as a musical composition, expresses his inability to account for its want of success in England. Kean and Young, he observes, draw crowded houses when Othello is played, and yet the attendance upon the opera is scanty. Is not the reason clear? Who can place value on the burlesque of a noble subject when the latter is itself within his reach? Who can find any thing of Shakspeare in the opera of Otello, even with Pasta's voice? It is Rossini alone who must draw the audience, not Shakspeare. The singing or chaunting the immortal conceptions of our great poet, traduced into Italian, and rendered back into doubledistilled nonsense by Harriet Wilson's sister, the wife of the noted Bochsa, and reported laureate of the Opera, who does the translations, is reason enough why Kean and Young and Shakspeare are preferred. Macbeth or Othello chaunted in bad Italian poetry, and Macbeth and Othello played by first-rate English actors, are very different things. John Bull is right in not patronizing the degradation of his mighty poet by the fiddlers, however well they may scrape their notes; we commend his plain, downright, honest good sense. The works of foreign poets whose merits cannot be appreciated here, are those alone adapted for the Italian opera in this country. Fashion may prefer Rossini's Otello to that of Shakspeare, because fashion is folly; but no one of the most moderate pretensions to intellect will do so. We think and hope that the operatising our noblest English tragedies will never succeed, let the music be as excellent as it may. The foreigner may be amused with it, but the native sees in it only a caricature of his noblest and most cherished recollections. Increase of Crime.-Sir E. Wilmot, a Warwickshire magistrate, we believe, has published some remarks upon the increase of crime, a great proportion of which he attributes to the imprisonment of mere children, who become initiated into every artifice of villainy during their confinement for one single offence. In our childhood, if a schoolboy stole a few apples from an orchard, a complaint was made to his friends or his schoolmaster, and he was soundly flogged. Now he is committed to a common gaol, to await his trial with felons, and is trained to be an incorrigible villain. Many magistrates commit youth when it is unnecessary, we have heard severe animadversions upon this subject from the Bench. Then the law of freedom from expense in prosecutions, which Mr. Peel should alter so as that the allowance should only extend to offences of a prescribed class, age of offenders, or for certain grave felonies. Sir E. Wilmot recommends summary punishment by two magistrates, for trivial offences in youth. We think he is right, and that it should extend to first offences of all youth under sixteen years of age. We only want a guarantee to secure the public from the abuse of such punishments while the game-laws exist. Woe to the child of the poacher brought before some clerical magistrates! the Mosaical number of stripes would, we fear, be outnumbered but too often. In the list of auxiliary causes, Sir Eardley Wilmot enumerates:-"1st, in creased population, (to which he might have added the increasing poverty of the lower classes); 2, the abuses of the Poor Laws; 3, poaching, or, with more correctness, an abominable system of Game Laws, fit only for the dark period which gave rise to them; 4, the uncertainty of punishment; 5, an indiscriminate payment of the expense of prosecutions for insignificant offences; 6, the facility with which the police detects crimes, and its reluctance to prevent them. But these are all eclipsed, though reinforced and aggravated by one which the author describes to be the great and paramount cause of crime, namely, the early imprisonment of children, and their consequent contamination by the society of hardened offenders. The convictions for felony in Warwick for seven years, ending Michaelmas 1826, was 3840. Of these one half were by offenders under twenty-one years of age, and many scarcely above the age of childhood." While the very administration of justice increases the number of offenders against the laws, and is backed by the peculiar circumstances of the times, it cannot be wondered at that crimes increase; it is rather wonderful they are not more. It is pleasant to find we have unpaid magistrates who reason thus honestly and justly on the defects of our criminal system. Duelling.-A letter from Count Munster has appeared in the foreign newspapers, in reply to a challenge sent him from the Duke of Brunswick by Baron Munchausen, the Duke's Counsellor of State. It declines acceptance of the amiable appeal of this hot-headed youth, by command of the King of England. Really these German princes are important sovereigns in self-opinion, though not in territory. We have some fear for the safety of our own Sovereign thus menaced by his ward. Fifteen hundred pounds sterling a-year, and a sovereignty over 20,000 slaves, is a great thing on the other side of the Rhine, and will, no doubt, make the Sovereign of twentytwo millions of freemen tremble. It is excellent too, this employing a Munchausen on such an errand-it brings out the burlesque admirably! Retrocession of Intellect.-In contrast with the sneering phrase of the "March of Intellect" directed at the instruction of the inferior classes, we may place the "retrocession of intellect" in a class of society which thinks itself far above the swinish multitude in all things-more advanced in civilization, loftier in talent, more religious, more sacred, more gifted-" more wise, more learned, more just, more every thing." How unfortunate that the community at large do not judge of them as they of themselves! Two singular examples of the claims of this race of individuals to their self-placed position in the body social have been exhibited during the last month. The first and most curious is the speech given in the newspapers of an illustrious obscure named Sir Abraham Elton, ("obscure," we say, for we believe few of our readers, any more than ourselves, ever heard of him before,) at a Bath district meeting for the propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts. This person is stated by the newspapers to have said: "Another jargon he should notice, and that was, the march of intellect.' Now he was one of those who thought that intellect might march too far. It might march too far, when it dared to outstep the bounds which God had placed for its inquiries. To promote the march of such intellect, a college had been founded in the metropolis of this kingdom, upon the avowed system of discarding all religion; nay, in open defiance to the established religion of the country. It was a thing so anomalous, that a parallel could not be found to it in the annals of the world. If we," said the hon. baronet, "desert the path marked out by our ancestors, and by all wise and religious men, heathens as well as Christians, since the beginning of the world, of making religion the basis and crown of all education, of all knowledge, we do not, we cannot, deserve the blessing of Heaven upon our labours."-Now if the speaker, whoever he be, had really any respect for religion beyond the name as a watchword, he would have been more regardful of truth. It is untrue-and if the speaker did not know it to be so, he had made no inquiry respecting either the truth or falsehood of what he asserted-we say it is untrue, that the "London Uni versity" discards all religion in the sense he would insinuate, or defies the established religion of the country. The larger part of its supporters are in the establishment, some of them his Majesty's ministers, (we believe all but one of its professors yet named are of the establishment,) and so far from discarding religion, it instructs persons of every faith, and bars out none who come for education on account of creed. What a merciless being must this miserable orator be, who would exclude half the people of England, nearly all the population of Scotland, and six millions and a half of those of Ireland, from education, because they will not take an oath they are episcopalians! for this is the only proof of religion required at the great universities, and the only religious instruction taught there, except in the studies of those destined for "orders." The word "parallel," and those following it above, show how grossly ignorant the speaker was of existing institutions, nay even of the history of our own. Did he not know that till wizard-loving James I. came to the throne, all persons were by the laws of our "ancestors" free to study at those lay and not ecclesiastical corporations, Oxford and Cambridge? Did he not know that, except in Spain, nearly all the modern universities of Europe are even now open for study to every applicant?-The second instance of "retrocession of intellect" is to be met with in a speech of the Rev. Mr. Vaughan of Leicester, on a proposal for founding a school for infant instruction in that town. The name of this gentleman is familiar to our readers, as the supporter, in a recent sermon, of doctrines analogous to that of a certain bishop, who when asked by one of our Stuart monarchs why he could not take his subjects' money without all the fuss of a parliament, replied, "God forbid your Majesty should not, for we are the breath of your nostrils!" Mr. Vaughan contended that all the money in England was the property of the King, because it bore his Majesty's effigy! and recommended on that account that every pocket should surrender its borrowed contents freely! What say Mr. Huskisson and the political economists to this opinion of the Leicester seer? Mr.Vaughan displays great tenderness for the children of the poor, whom he would not separate from their parents for the sake of education, even when their parents cannot support them. He thought an education not exclusively high-church was worse than none at all. His opposition to infant schools was supported by his curate. But his attack resembled that of Don Quixote on the windmills, though supported by his Sancho Panza. Mr. Otway Cave and a brother divine or two of Mr. Vaughan's, left the latter in a state in argument as deplorable as the knight of Salamanca after his argumentum ad baculum with the vanes. When will the Rev. Gentleman, and some others whom we know, come up to the front, instead of dragging on in the rear of the intellectual march? Mr. Northcote and Lord Eldon-Mr. Northcote, in his Fables, has a picture of Lord Eldon, and the inscription or title, "The Owls, the Bats, and the Sun." Lord Eldon is the "Sun," the conspicuous luminary that warms and animates creation, against whom the "Owls" and "Bats" (children of modern darkness and error-we presume Canning, Huskisson, Lansdowne, and Brougham) level their satire. His Lordship, strong in the intellectual brightness of the feudal ages and the glory of obsolete usages, resplendent in intolerance and brilliant in procrastination, tells these miserable children of gloom, that he might scorch them up if he pleased, but he shall only revenge himself by " shining on." We presume this was his Lordship's only alternative! Scottish Constancy.—A youth and damsel of Elgin formed a mutual attachment in 1794. They were separated from each other, and their marriage forbidden by their relations. Ten years of life passed over their heads, and their union was again well nigh achieved, when they were again doomed to disappointment, and twenty added years expiring, saw them still mutuallyconstant and in uninterrupted correspondence. They are just married. Would it not have been better to wait a little longer, till death was on the point of calling one or the other away, and then, like Wycherley the dramatist, in his last illness, have taken the two sacraments together! The blooming hours of this life passed away, little else could be left to such a couple than the hope of what another and better might bring forth. It has been said that no tragedy or romance ever described scenes which have not been equalled by realities in life-we begin to be of this opinion. Such a constant couple could only belong to a clime of the "cold in blood," as Byron has it. Freaks of the Paid Authorities.-A beadle at Mary-le-Bonne Church lately took a young man into custody in church, and locked him up for the night on the charge of taking liberties with a young woman, and smiling on her. It appeared that he was a stranger to the female, who had merely asked him for the loan of his prayer-book. The going to church as well as walking the streets after 10 o'clock at night, is becoming a dangerous practice-the liberty of the subject falling rapidly to a discount, as the Exchange people say. This young man has his remedy by action, at the expense of forty or fifty pounds, and fifty shillings damages. Grievances like these are serious evils. This youth will doubtless take care how he goes to church again, and will perhaps, instead, attend the conventicle, where no such insults await him. Who can blame him? Mr. Peel has an arduous task to reform thoroughly the home-police. Watchmen and beadles are most of them rogues, and their petty despotism on one hand, with their connivance at knavery and theft on the other, often place his Majesty's London subjects in pleasant predicaments between insult and plunder. 66 MYRTLE GARLANDS FOR THE BRAVE!" MYRTLE garlands for the brave in the fight of Navarin !— They have dyed in Moslem blood the crescent flag of green, Myrtle garlands for the brave! 'tis now the set of sun, His dead are on the waters, his pride is in the wave, Myrtle garlands for the victors!-bring chaplets for the brave! Bring cypress for the fallen! Freemen, weep o'er them, There is worth in dying well, and on the bough of Freedom's stem Bring chaplets for the fallen that will never fade, Wreath'd in crowns immortal for each hero's shade; For nobly have they combated and gloriously have bled— When shouted free-born men and true, "Bring myrtles for the victors, and cypress for the dead!" |