if the higher orders did their duty,' &c. p. 72. If he means to say that any possible vigilance in the governing part of the church could wholly prevent individual instances of indecorous conduct, he is completely mistaken. If he means to insinuate, that the conduct of the governing part of the church exhibits an unwillingness to make proper enquiries into the state of matters under their charge, and a backwardness to interfere on just occasions, we believe that experience will give a direct negative to his assertions. Scanty, indeed, must be his knowledge, if it have not supplied him with many instances of persons in the highest stations of the church, who unite, to great respectability of private character, and great extent of learning, a most zealous attention to the duties of their charge, an anxious desire to provide against abuses, and to promote, by precept, discipline, and example, the proper discharge of all important duties.

Our limits will not permit us to follow the author through his statement of the several causes of evil to the church, and his plans for removing them. We are the less anxious to do this, as we perceive little that has not been often produced before, or that evinces. either sagacity, judgment, or competence to the subject. He complains of the facility of granting licenses to dissenting ministers, the distribution of preferments by private hands, the unequal division of church property, and the non-residence of the clergy. On the latter, he remarks, p. 42, with his usual flippancy, that Sir W. Scot's Bill was unwise, unnecessary, and impracticable.' He devotes one whole letter (p. 80) to the defence of tythes, and another (p. 94) to the subject of small livings, and the mode of augmentation.

He expresses himself feelingly alive to the injury which the Established Church is sustaining from the rapid and alarming' increase of seceders from its rites and offices, and professes an anxious desire to remedy the evil by the most effectual means that can be devised. The subject is certainly important, and deserves to be deeply considered.

Whilst human nature remains as it is, some difference of opinion on these interesting topics must always subsist. Where a free profession of religious tenets is tolerated, and where the spirit of proselytism is allowed to exert itself without restraint, there the variations of opinion and the division into sects will most abound. It is difficult to bring into comparison the present number of seceders from our church and that of former periods; but, undoubtedly, at no time since the reformation has the number been inconsiderable. Witness the publications of the several periods, teeming nearly as much with complaints of the alarming increase of dissenters as those of the present day. Witness also the political influence which history shews them at all periods to have obtained.

It

It is natural for us to see, in an exaggerated point of view, an 'evil which exists in our own days, and to suppose it greater than it has ever been. All matters of this kind, however, are subject to alternations. Particular opinions, feelings, and prejudices, become current, spread for a time, and afterwards die away. If the present be a period in which secession from the church has been on the increase, a time may come when, from causes equally unassignable, it may decline. We are unwilling to augur an increase to an unlimited extent, which will end in the downfal of the Establishment. We certainly cannot allow that any increased negligence of our clergy is productive of the evil; at the same time, we are fully sensible that an augmentation of zeal and activity on their part must ever furnish the most powerful means of checking and diminishing it.

Whatever we may think of the author's proposals for preventing the increase of dissenters, we differ from him very essentially respecting the means by which this increase will not be prevented. It most certainly will not be prevented by the plan which he pursues of degrading the regular clergy in public estimation, by exaggerating their faults, by dwelling with malignant pleasure on every topic of invective, and affixing, as stains on the whole order, instances of bad conduct, which, in exception to the general practice, occur in individual members.

Amongst the most important subjects connected with the increase of dissenters, is that of granting licenses to dissenting ministers in the manner now allowed by law. This is a subject which must be touched (if it ever be touched) with a very tender hand. Feelings and prejudices, of the strongest and warmest kind, are tremblingly alive upon it. Not only must we avoid the slightest violation of the genuine principles of a free toleration, but also every approach to it. At the same time, the case, as it now stands, is truly alarming. The lowest and vilest of human beings may commence gospel ministers at pleasure-may preach any absurdities when and where they please-if they fail of listeners in one place they may try their fortunes in another—the licenses do not merely supply ministers to existing congregations, they tend to create them. Successive swarms of teachers roam through the country, and feed, with a continual supply, that appetite for novelty, which prevails amongst the vulgar, in a manner the most favourable to their views. The matter, as we have already remarked, certainly deserves to be weighed with the most serious

attention.

Another measure which calls for immediate notice, is some effectual augmentation of the stipend to the minister in those parishes where it is now too small to provide for the performance of the

church

church service, at least once every Sunday. In these circumstances, is it to be wondered, if the methodist preacher is successful, if schism and dissension spread, and the church loses its members? Whatever remedy be thought most advisable, it is evident that the existing evil is extremely striking; and that justice, and policy, equally call for some speedy correction. There remains another subject, which it is surprising that a government, well disposed to the Established Church, should have so long neglected. We allude to the want of accommodation in churches, for the inhabitants of large and populous districts. We will give this in the words of the author.

This deficiency of churches must be apparent to every one. The parish of Mary-le-bonne alone is said to contain 60,000 inhabitants, while its church will not accommodate more than 900 persons. That of St. Pancras is in the same predicament. And many other instances, of the same sort, exist in the metropolis, and in various parts of the kingdom. On what ground this indispensable object has been so long postponed, or can be any longer delayed, I am at a loss to conceive. The plea of economy, on such a subject, can only be coupled with the most disgraceful hypocrisy. Shall a nation, possessing a public revenue superior to those of all the other states of Europe combined, have no part of it to bestow on that religion which is our safe-guard here, and our only means of happiness hereafter? Have we the means of enriching favoured families who want nothing, and can we found gaols, bridges, roads, barracks, &c. &c. and have nothing to spare towards affording the people at large the means of attending divine worship? p. 131, &c.

Unquestionably, if we wish the people to remain attached to the church establishment, we must give them the means of attending the church service. If we wish to check the growth of heresy and schism, we must not leave matters in that state which affords decided advantages to the dissenting interests over those of the church. Dissenters of all descriptions provide, without the smallest impediment, abundant accommodation for the most numerous congregations. To what then are we to attribute so striking an inattention? Has the existence of the evil admitted of doubt? Has it not been pressed with sufficient earnestness on the notice of our legislators? or have difficulties of any magnitude opposed the desired remedy? We most sincerely hope, that the wishes and expectations of the friends to the Established Church, on this subject, will not remain long disappointed; and that, as soon as circumstances permit, some effectual plan will be presented to the consideration of parliament.

ART,

ART. VI. The Substance of a Speech delivered by Lieutenant General Tarleton, in a Committee of the House of Commons, on the Army Estimates, March 4, 1811. Svo. pp. 56. London. J. Ebers, Bond Street.

THIS is no common pamphlet: criticisms we have had of all sizes, from the ponderous quarto down to the newspaper paragraph, on the policy and conduct of our present system of warfare in the Peninsula; but none of them have been recommended to our attention by circumstances of such weight and authority as those possessed by the work before us; the work, as the titlepage informs us, of a senator and a soldier, of one who has himself commanded armies, (at least at home,) and who still boasts a share in our public councils; of Banastre Tarleton, Esq. M.P. for the town of Liverpool, Lieutenant-General of His Majesty's Forces, Colonel of the 21st Regiment of Light Dragoons, and Governor of the Fortress of Berwick upon Tweed.

But these are not the sole claims of this pamphlet to notice; not content with the effect which his eloquence and wisdom produced on the House of Commons, the gallant orator has thought it necessary to embody them in a substantial and imperishable form. This we collect, not from the mere circumstance of the publication, but from a preliminary notice, which, though consisting of nearly nine lines, contains but one grammatical error, and not more than two or three statements which can be fairly charged with either inaccuracy or obscurity.

We could have wished to give the whole of the gallant orator's speech in his own clear and well-chosen expressions; but this is not possible-we have not room to hang up a full length, and must therefore content ourselves with exhibiting a miniature, taken from the report of the debate in the Times of the 5th of March, but which we shall subsequently amplify and illustrate, from the fuller and more authentic source with which the Lieutenant-General has furnished us.

'General Tarleton entered into a statement of the Continental war in which Great Britain was at this moment, and had for some time past been, engaged. He did this, he said, for the purpose of shewing that the means of this country were inadequate to the end, and that the contest must therefore terminate in destruction. In order to prove. this, he, in a speech of great length, went over the whole of our expeditions to the Peninsula, and to Portugal, from the battle of Vimeira to the present hour, in which he endeavoured to shew that we had in the whole course of that time been playing a losing game, and that Buonaparte and Massena were secretly laughing at the folly and insanity of our present ministers. The first operation we had undertaken was to defend the Peninsula, the second was to defend Portugal, which having failed to do by suffering the enemy to take Ciudad Rodrigo and

Almeida,

Almeida, the third operation commenced by retreating before the enemy, for the purpose of defending Lisbon. Lord Wellington, after having gained the battle of Talavera, for which he had been rewarded by that House with their thanks, and for which his Majesty had conferred on him the dignity of Viscount, had the very next day, retreated, and kept continually since retreating before General Massena, till he had been driven within the lines of Torres Vedras. To these lines General Massena had followed him close, with not more than two-thirds of his army, which was represented by Lord Wellington himself as wanting every necessary, and yet he suffered him to remain close to him with a very inferior force for upwards of three weeks-and after doing so, to get thirty hours start of him and make good his retreat to Santarem, where he was so strongly entrenched, that he could not attack him without the greatest risk. There (at Santarem) Massena, as he said to his master, was supporting his army by resources drawn from Portugal alone, while Lord Wellington was obliged to feed his own army, the numerous Portugueze who had been induced to quit their habitations and go within the lines of Lisbon--and the whole population of that city-on resources drawn from England, Ireland, America-the Azores, and almost the whole world-we were even obliged to supply the army in Portugal with red port, which was infinitely worse than sending coals to Newcastle! The general concluded by saying, that he should not make any motion on the subject, nor object to the estimates now moved, but he thought it his duty to make the statement he had done.'

From this sketch (ex pede, Herculem) our readers will form no very inaccurate idea of the scope and object of Lieutenant-General Tarleton's speech; and they, no doubt, will agree with us, that Liverpool is no less fortunate, in its military Mentor, than we endeavoured, in our last Number,* to prove it to be in its politician and philosopher. We there expressed some surprise at Mr. Roscoe's abstinence from all notice of the Peninsular war

-our wonder is now at an end, and the deficiency is at last amply and ably supplied. Mr. Roscoe, we find, aspires only to the direction of our foreign policy, and trusts, with the due courtesy of office, the war department to the judicious management of the Governor of Ber

wick.

It has been justly observed, that much of the original spirit of a picture or a poem is apt to evaporate in the process of subsequent correction, and that high finishing and minute accuracy are too frequently purchased by some diminution in the vigour, and if we may use the expression, the vehemence of the piece. This observation is, we think, peculiarly applicable on the present occasion; for though the work before us possesses many minute graces and highly wrought illustrations, which are not be found in the above sketch, yet it must be confessed to fall somewhat short of it in strength;

Article V.

and,