people of New England, can scarcely be overlooked. That it arises in a great measure from the similarity of their institutions for instruction, cannot be questioned. It is no doubt increased by physical causes. With a superior degree of instruction, each of these nations possesses a country that may be said to be sterile, in the neighbourhood of countries comparatively rich. Hence, emigrations and the other effects on conduct and character, which such circumstances naturally produce. This subject is in a high degree curious. The points of dissimilarity between these nations might be traced to their causes also, and the whole investigation would perhaps admit of an approach to certainty in our conclusions, to which such inquiries seldom lead. How much superior in morals, in intellect, and in happiness, the peasantry of those parts of England are, who have opportunities of instruction, to the same class in other situations, those who inquire into the subject, will speedily discover. The peasantry of Westmoreland, and of the other districts mentioned above, if their physical and moral qualities be taken together, are, in the opinion of the editor, superior to the peasantry of any part of the island. Note B. See p. 5. It has been supposed that Scotland is less populous and less improved on account of this emigration; but such conclusions are doubtful, if not wholly fallacious. The principle of population acts in no country to the full extent of its power: marriage is every where retarded beyond the period pointed out by nature, by the difficulty of supporting a family; and this obstacle is greatest in long-settled communities. The emigration of a part of a people, facilitates the marriage of the rest, by producing a relative increase in the means of subsistence. The arguments of Adam Smith for a free export of corn, are perhaps applicable with less exception to the free export of people. The more certain the vent, the greater the cultivation of the soil. The subject has been well investigated by Sir James Stewart, whose principles have been expanded and farther illustrated in a late truly philosophical Essay on Population. In fact, Scotland has increased in the number of its inhabitants in the last forty years, as the Statistics of Sir John Sinclair clearly prove, but not in the ratio that some had supposed. The extent of the emigration of the Scotch may be calculated with some degree of confidence from the proportionate number of the two sexes in Scotland; a point that may be established pretty exactly, by an examination of the invaluable Statistics already mentioned. If we suppose that there is an equal number of male as female natives of Scotland alive, some where or other, the excess by which the females exceed the males in their own country, may be considered to be equal to the number of Scotsmen living out of Scotland. But though the males born in Scotland be admitted to be as 13 to 12, and though some of the females emigrate as well as the males, this mode of calculating would probably make the number of expatriated Scotsmen, at any one time alive, greater than the truth. The unhealthy climates into which they emigrate, the hazardous services in which so many of them engage, render the mean life of those who leave Scotland (to speak in the language of calculators) not perhaps of half the value of the mean life of those who remain. Note C. See p. 13. In the punishment of this offence, the church employed formerly the arm of the civil power. During the reign of James the VIth (James the 1st of England), criminal connexion between unmarried persons was made the subject of a particular statute (see Hume's Commentaries on the Laws of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 332), which, from its rigour, was never much enforced, and which has long fallen into disuse. When, in the middle of the last century, the Puritans succeeded in the overthrow of the monarchy in both divisions of the island, fornication was a crime against which they directed their utmost zeal. It was made punishable with death in the second instance. (See Blackstone, b. iv. chap. 4. No. II.) Happily this sanguinary statute was swept away along with the other acts of the Commonwealth, on the restoration of Charles II. to whose temper and manners it must have been peculiarly abhorrent. And, after the Revolution, when several salutary acts, passed during the suspension of the monar chy, were re-enacted by the Scottish parliament, particularly that for the establishment of parish schools, the statute punishing fornication with death, was suffered to sleep in the grave of the stern fanatics who had given it birth. Note D. See p. 14. The legitimation of children by subsequent marriage, became the Roman law under the Christian emperors. It was the canon law of modern Europe, and has been established in Scotland from a very remote period. Thus, a child born a bastard, if his parents afterwards marry, enjoys all the privileges of seniority over his brothers afterwards born in wedlock. In the parliament of Merton, in the reign of Henry III, the English clergy made a vigorous attempt to introduce this article into the law of England, and it was on this occasion, that the barons made the noted answer, since so often appealed to: Quod nolunt leges Angliæ mutare; quæ huc usque usitatæ sunt et opprobate. With regard to what constitutes a marriage, the law of Scotland, as explained p. 14, differs from the Roman law, which required the ceremony to be performed in facic ecclesia, No. II. Note A. See p. 29. IT may interest some persons to peruse the first poetical production of our bard, and it is, therefore, extracted from a kind of common-place book, which he seems to have begun in his twentieth year; and which he entitled, "Observations, Hints, Songs, Scraps of Poetry, &c., by Robert Burness, a man who had little art in making money, and still less in keeping it; but was, however, a man of some sense, a great deal of honesty, and unbounded good-will to every creature, rational or irrational. As he was but little indebted to a scholastic education, and bred at a plough-tail, his performances must be strongly tinctured with his unpolished rustic way of life; but as, I believe, they are really his own, it may be some entertainment to a curious observer of human nature, to see how a ploughman thinks and feels, under the pressure of love, ambition, anxiety, grief, with the like eares and passions, which, however diversified by the modes and manners of life, operate pretty much alike, I believe, in all the species." "Pleasing, when youth is long expired, to trace The forms our pencil, or our pen design'd; Such was our youthful air, and shape, and face, Such the soft image of the youthful mind." Shenstone. This MS. book, to which our poet prefixed this account of himself, and of his intention in preparing it, contains several of his earlier poems, some as they were printed, and others in their embryo state. The song alluded to is as fol Tune-' I am a Man unmarried.' O once I lov'd a bonnie lass, Ay and I love her still, And whilst that virtue warms my breast, I'll love my handsome Nell. Tal lal de ral, &c. As bonnie lasses I hae seen, A bonny lass, I will confess, But without some better qualities But Nelly's looks are blythe and sweet, And what is best of a', Her reputation is complete, And fair without a flaw, She dresses ay sae clean and neat, And then there's something in her gait A gaudy dress and gentle air "Tis this in Nelly pleases me, For absolutely in my breast Tal lal de ral, &c. It must be confessed, that these lines give no indication of the future genius of Burns; but he himself seems to have been fond of them, probably from the recollections they excited. |