will take it with him-and that his separation from his native home and country, is only what thousands of professional persons in the higher ranks of life are constantly undergoing for the same allsufficient reason, namely, to better their fortunes.

Mr. Sadler-who believes that there can be no redundancy, because people will breed down to the level of food-is only consistent in his opposition to a plan, which, distrusting his miraculous machinery for contracting the number of consumers, has for its object the widening of the range whence they can supply themselves with food. But there are other gentlemen who, without looking for miracles, believe that by strictly domestic steps, such as the cultivation of our home wastes, or the allotting garden land to labourers, the pressure of a redundant population may be entirely obviated without having recourse to emigration. The wisdom and expediency of the domestic efforts thus alluded to have been nowhere more vigorously enforced than in this journal; but it is our duty to put it to these most excellent persons, whether it is not possible to carry on such modes of affording relief and employment to some of the labourers who cannot obtain work, contemporaneously with emigration; whether it is not fair, and would not be also wise, to allow a trial, at least, of both experiments; and, in one word, whether it is possible, in the present state of the country, to open too many avenues for the employment or disposal of the excess of our labourers? What is to prevent their bringing forward any measures they may think likely to aid this desirable object, and carrying them into practice, without, at the same time, thwarting other plans having the same end in view, and which, far from interfering, will co-operate and harmonize with their own? We have all along strenuously advocated the scheme which they patronize-but we have never been able to see why the Bishop of Bath and Wells and Lord Braybrooke should refuse to hail and sympathize with the brotherly efforts, in another style, but with the same great object in view, of Mr. Wilmot Horton.

3. Lastly, there are some individuals, at the head of whom Mr. Tennant, the member for St. Alban's, has ranged himself, who virulently oppose the bill brought forward by government, because they are desirous of driving them to adopt a rival colonization scheme of their own concoction. Mr. Tennant has published a pamphlet on this subject, the title of which stands at the head of our article, and from which we collect that he is desirous that government should place a very high price on all its colonial lands, and carry on emigration only by means of the funds obtained from their sale.

We have canvassed this proposal in a former number, and the opinion

opinion we then gave has been confirmed, not altered, since that time, by the further facts that have come to our knowledge, and even by Mr. Tennant's new publication. We then showed, that if emigration is only to be carried on upon funds raised in this manner, it will be in all probability never begun; for the only consequence of placing a high minimum price of 21. or 31. per acre on government land, must be, either the diverting the stream of colonization to the United States, Mexico, and South America, where rich land is to be had for next to nothing-or, at least, the giving a complete monopoly of the market to the owners of the millions of acres of land already prodigally lavished upon landjobbers and speculating companies, the enabling these persons to undersell the government, and dispose of every acre of their enormous grants at high prices, before a single pound can be raised by government from any fresh sales. If the members of the National Colonization Society,' whose scheme this is, are owners of some of the three millions of acres of waste land already granted away to individuals in New South Wales, or of the two and a half millions of acres similarly appropriated in the Canadas, we can understand their eagerness to push forward this plan, even to the extent of opposing the present emigration bill, which is so certain to benefit them in an extraordinary degree, by causing a great and continually increasing demand for land in the colonies. If Mr. Tennant and his friends have not a pecuniary interest in raising the price of colonial land, we are at a loss to understand the motives of their opposition to a system of emigration, of the general principle of which they profess themselves such anxious advocates.

We have ourselves, before this, expressed an opinion that a great and permanent scheme of colonization, worthy of this enlightened country, whose resources for the purpose so greatly exceed those heretofore enjoyed by any, might be founded on the principle of removing annually the excess of labourers which may show itself here, by means of a fund raised through a duty on the employment of these same labourers in the colony-thus taking the cost of the supply of labour where it is so much wanted directly out of the profits made upon its use, and so avoiding all expense whatever to the mother country. This, however, is applicable only to Australia and the Cape, not to the Canadas; and anxious as we are that such a scheme should be eventually adopted, and confident of its success, we yet consider the bill now before parliament the fit and proper step to be taken at the present moment. The pressure of the actual redundancy is severe, and requires an immediate remedy; and the relief afforded to parishes by this bill will be great and effectual, notwithstanding their being

subjected

subjected to the full expense of the removal of their paupers. This plan will afford a fair trial of the principle of emigration, and pave the way for its future extension, if it be found to produce the advantages which we anticipate from it.

We do, therefore, earnestly hope, that neither prejudice nor party spirit will throw impediments in the way of this most benevolent measure. The evils under which the labouring classes have long been suffering, are acknowledged by all; and here is a practical proposal for affording them relief, which can do harm to no one, since it is left to the option of all the parties concerned to avail themselves of the facilities it affords; and which must, as far as it is possible to anticipate its consequences, be beneficial to all: to the parishes and landowners, who will be enabled by it to reduce their rates, and get rid of a great and increasing burden; to the colonies, which will gain an accession of the article they so much require-labour; to the emigrants themselves, who will exchange pauperism and want for high wages and independence ; and to the labourers remaining at home, whose condition will be improved by the removal of that excess, which, by its competition, now keeps wages permanently below the fair remuneration for a life of toil. That the country generally will also gain by an improvement in the morals of the lower classes, by the diminution of crime, and the greater security of internal tranquillity, seems equally certain.

Finally, to those persons who oppose emigration upon general principles, whether as tainted with the gloomy doctrine of Malthus, that to enlarge the sphere of human happiness is only to superinduce a greater accumulation of ultimate misery; or as disciples of the more cheering, but equally visionary theory of Sadler, that local superfecundity is impossible, for that a mysterious law of nature cuts down the population of every square mile to fit its resources; or under the influence of any other phantasy more peculiarly their own;-we beseech them, by the ardour they profess in the cause of humanity, to contemplate the happy, industrious, and flourishing condition of more than twelve millions of their fellowmen in the United States of America, the result of emigration alone. We ask them if it be possible, not only at no sacrifice to the mother country, but to her great relief and continued benefit, to raise up two, or three, or more, similar nations, by the regulated discharge of our redundant and suffering population upon the fertile soils of Canada, the Cape, Van Diemen's Land, and New South Wales,―to create, in parts of the globe now inhabited but by brutes, or by a hundred or two of half-starved savages approaching to brutes, several populous, wealthy, and civilized communities, Englishmen in race, language, laws, habits, morals,

and

and religion; and united to England, for years to come, in colonial dependency, and for ever by the ties of a common origin, tongue, and literature, of commercial intercourse and mutual benefit-if experience unites with argument to prove that this is possible, easy, certain-can they reconcile it to their reason or their consciences to throw any obstacles in the way of the realization of a prospect so gratifying to humanity, of such an extension of the empire of civilization over the globe, of such an immense accession to the aggregate of human happiness and virtue, and of the multiplication of mankind in that form which must be most pleasing to the contemplation of the Creator, and which, of all the world has yet witnessed, appears least unworthy of representing the high and mysterious character of His Image?

ART. IV.-Fragments of Voyages and Travels, including Anecdotes of a Naval Life; chiefly for the use of young persons. By Captain Basil Hall, R.N., F.R.S. 3 vols. 12mo. burgh, 1831.

Edin

THE merits and demerits of this writer are so generally understood and acknowledged, that we feel no temptation to introduce these little volumes with the pomp and circumstance of a regular critique. Captain Hall has lived in this world some forty years, and during eight-and-twenty of them he has been performing voyages and travels, keeping all the while copious journals, and therein recording his impressions fresh as they were stamped; and his method of working up these materials for the press is familiar to us all. That he has a keen, quick eye, voracious curiosity, restless activity, a gay temperament, and an upright, virtuous mind—no man who has perused his previous lucubrations can doubt. That he is apt to see one side of a thing so vividly as to forget that there is another side at all--that his complete satisfaction with himself and everything about him, though unaccompanied with the slightest shade of cynicism, is too prominent not to move now and then a passing smile-and that his sincerity cannot always excuse his dogmatism-are facts which his warmest admirers seem to admit. That he tells a story with clearness and energy-describes manners and scenery with very considerable skill and effect-seizes the strong points of a moral or political question, in general, with ready shrewdness, and delivers his opinions on all subjects fairly and frankly-writes in a manly, unaffected style, rough but racy-and makes us feel throughout that we are in the hands of a practical man, clever, humorous, kindhearted, who has read much, seen more, studied and enjoyed life

in

in a hundred spheres and shapes, a staunch and ardent lover of his country, and in all respects a gentleman-these are statements to which we presume the Captain's bitterest political opponent would hardly refuse his imprimatur. He has been for some time past, on the whole, the most popular writer of travels in England; and we have no sort of doubt that his present work will find even wider acceptance than the last and best of its predecessors. The field is wider, the interest more various, and the execution, we think, even more lively. Here is, in truth, a fragment of a thing which has never before been attempted-and which we hope the gallant author will live to complete-a straightforward autobiography of a thorough-bred British sea-officer. Never did good book hang out a worse concocted title-page-but such is the fact. Captain Hall entered the navy, quite a boy, in 1803, and these three volumes bring down his career to the close of 1810, being, in short, the cream of seven years' letters and diaries of a midshipman and young lieutenant, who seems never to have been three days off duty all the while, and saw in the course of it almost every possible variety of service. The words on the title-page-' chiefly for the use of young persons,' are, perhaps, meant to apologise for the minuteness with which things, familiar to grown persons in the Captain's profession, are occasionally explained: but, judging from ourselves, it is exactly this minuteness that will give the book its chief value in the eyes of grown landsmen. The actual details of what passes on board a man-of-war were never described with half so much clearness as in these pages; and the man who has read them, before he opens Lord Collingwood's letters, Southey's Life of Nelson, or Beechey's Voyage, will have as essential an advantage over him who has not, as the student of one of Buonaparte's campaigns owes to the possession of a good map. The whole existence of the midshipman, in particular, is painted with exquisite truth, pith, and drollery;-honest Jack himself is exhibited in many an attitude, equally graphic and grotesque; and the different methods and systems adopted by superior officers, of different characters and dispositions, to maintain order and discipline, are touched to the life, and illustrated and commented on with a breadth and freedom of handling, which, delighting the uninitiated, will, peradventure, here and there startle and confound the adept.

The Captain is, we need hardly tell any of our readers, an optimist-a veritable optimist, diametrically opposed in all his views and opinions to him whose creed is summed up in the famous 'conclusion,' que l'homme est fait pour vivre dans les convulsions de l'inquietude, ou dans la lethargie de l'ennui. Though he exposes and dissects, cruelly enough, certain errors into which naval

commanders