Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

But although nothing more may be required to establish the legitimacy of the title of the coin, a question may arise as to the propriety of its device. Could no image or idea of a tutelar be found to accompany the image and superscription of the SOVEREIGN, more national or animating than the flat, stale, and unprofitable impression of St. George of Cappadocia ? That was, indeed, awhile, a type employed on some of our English coins; but, even in the times of legendary influence, could not retain a place. If any figure were expedient as an emblem of the defence or glory of our country, could any one more obvious or appropriate be devised, or at any era more consistently be resumed and displayed, than that by which the English NOBLE was of old distinguished-the long and warmly cherished image of the SHIP? Submitting this suggestion to the adoption, at a future time, of those whom it may concern, it may be with confidence affirmed, that the coin with this device would then assert an indisputable claim to a character in a peculiar and striking manner British; and while it bore the appellation of SOVEREIGN, and exhibited the image of the SOVEREIGN OF THE COUNTRY, it would shew, according to the idea of the writer that has beeu quoted, a symbol of that species of SOVEREIGNTY of which the country is now in unrivalled possession, and on which its independence and prosperity, under PROVIDENCE, entirely depend.

[ocr errors]

A SYBIL'S LEAF.

Among many other elegant appella tions applied to history by Cicero, is the Light of truth;" the propriety of which term must necessarily be viewed with some diffidence, since it is greatly vested in the mind of the author, and subservient to the principles by which he may be actuated. From this we are led to consider that prevailing opinion, too frequently realized, that many authors, impatient of labour, in the investigation of truth, readily seize that which first presents itself to their notice, and like a drowning wretch in despair, who clings to the humblest branch for safety and escape, grasp at the merest shadows of its substance with eager avidity. This indolence of disposition, this want of energy, in an Europ. Mag. Vol. LXXII. Oct. 1817.

.

author is most highly culpable; for on
what just pretensions can be ground
his claim to literary honour, who is
alike indifferent to the means of ob-
taining it and the sources of its origin.
To elucidate not to deceive, to inves-
tigate not to employ speculation, is his
province; and every path, however long
and tedious, must be trod, by which
he may establish the truth of his nar-
ration.

Qui cupit optatam cursu contingere metam,
Multa tulit feritque puer sudavit et alsit.
No mass of reading, however abstruse,
must be neglected; no circumstances
which corroborating may tend to give
information and develope truth, even in
its "naked deformity," must be des-
pised.

Investigation is the duty he owes the world; it is an office imposed by himself,-no fear of labour or fatigue should retard its course-no ambitious designs nor interested motives should impede its progress. Every other principle must be sacrificed at the shrine of independence, where Truth is the victim and facts the exalting Pæan. Employed, however, in this investigation, an author cannot be too careful of committing any thing to print which may mislead posterity, and produce error and misconception. Though difficult the task, and frequently scanty the means of information, he should record nothing on the page of history which has not truth for its substance, and reality for its form.-" An historian," says an ancient author, " may easily be pardoned for slips of ignorance, since all men are liable to them, and the truth hard to be traced from past to remote ages; but those who wilfully neglect to inform themselves, and knowingly deviate from the truth, justly deserve to be censured."-Herodotus, by many ancient and modern writers, has been accused of not having had a sufficient regard to the austere and sacred dignity of historic truth. Plutarch has made strong and violent objections to many of his assertions. These have been indeed ably refuted, and the reproach has recoiled back upon himself, as being malignant and incorrect;

for that historian seems particularly to have guarded himself against this imputation, and generally in his relation of wonderful facts, he qualifies his narrative with such ex"This pressions as “I have heard," or does not appear credible.” X X

4

OF THE POLITIC ECONOMY OF THE
BRITISH ISLANDS.

-Omnia vincit Labor; Industria-divitiæ est Opifex." The first elements, the prime regard of mankind in the association of numbers, are, the soil and the labour of the community they form. The solitary man, or wandering unconnected savage, is not the subject of our contemplation, but "man in society," and in the condition of increasing numbers. This is a determinate state, and it is that of the British Isles at this hour.

Land, population, and labour, are the three inseperable co-existences of social progression. The first of our wants and cares is food, in all climates; the next, in our portion of the globe, is clothing; and the third, everywhere, is some shelter for the night, and for the inclemencies of the changing seasons. In every habitable part of the globe, while men are in small numbers, on a given spread of land, its spontaneous productions, offruits, roots, and animals; its forests, caves, and sheltering hills, will furnish two of these necessaries of existence; and nakedness is little or no inconvenience in the largest and most inhabited circles of this earth. As numbers increase, some exertion is called for, and some rude ingenuity awakened to procure sufficient sustenance; hunting and fishing were first resorted to; with some attention to collect and store the nuts and fruits of summer abundance; and some cultivation attempted.

The traces of the actual steps of the progression of mankind, in all the past ages, and different quarters and climates of this globe, cannot now be discerned; the earliest traditions handed down to us in the records of the most ancient histories, refer alike, in the Hebrew revelation, and in the Heathen belief of the oldest time, to some divine or superhuman communication with man; the greatest boon of nature, the first incite ment, and the best reward of labour, the harvest of the golden grain, have every where, with a natural piety of gratitude, been ascribed to the kindness of a beavenly Providence; the plough itself, the first, and still the most powerful, as the most universal of machines, was supposed to have come down from the immortals, the gift of Ceres; that is, of some manifestation, grace, or bounty of the Deity, by some super-human intervention.

The toil or labour of men is then first, or chiefly, required for their food"by the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread;"-but here the bounty of creation, the fertility of the earth, "the glad reward" of the labour of its teeming bosom, with the powerful aid of the happy "machinery" of the plough, and of the animal force of the patient ox, or horse, or ass, do together, at once redeem the sons of men from the severe penalty of a "fallen" condition; he can eat and live," without continual drudgery; the softer sex is exempted from the labours of the field, and man himself has" leisure" for many addic tions; he can even, by the sufferance of nature, through the order and design of the Creator, be "wise and good," if he will be just and merciful to his fellow

men.

And now he can direct a part of his time and industry to the accommodation and ease of some clothing for his body, and a habitation for shelter and rest; very soon he finds leisure, art, and faculty for many other inventions;"— he has not yet found out how to use, and to direct to their best ends, in their best manner, one half the means with which the bounty of nature, the design of Providence, the faculties of order, art, mechanism, science, and good policy, with fraternal equity for one another, can endow, gratify, and bless even this transitory, human, short-lived condition of his existence.

Agriculture, in every great state and numerous aggregation of men, in fired and settled society, must predominate over every other application of the human industry; but with a soil of moderate fertility, reclaimed, and tended with the skill of experience and the application of the acquired arts of cultivation, to the produce of roots and grain in harvests of a great return; the time and industry of mankind can achieve much more for their ease and enjoyment, than can be yielded by the labour of the fields alone; the women, besides their domestic attentions, can spin and knit, and weave; the men can build, and forge, and go upon the waters; reduce the animals to their service, and by degrees progress, by gradual exten, sions in arts, and by improvements in mechanism, science, and machinery, to that point, where we now stand, and seem to "halt" a little, surprised by our advance, puzzled to maintain our position, and uncertain whether we must

retrograde, or can still progress in our course, and advance further in refine ment, ease, aud the enjoyment of greater and more widely spread productions, and possessions, physical and moral.

It may be said at once, let us hope, with as much truth as confidence, that we may, we ought, we must persevere; that we can hold all we have acquired and can reach much more, placed within our power. Let us then suppose the will with the power-the task remains to point out the means.

The ethical and moral recommendations of patience, energy, perseverance, and other qualities, may be insisted on in many words; let these too, be supposed to be with us; the physical and politic means, and the order and march of conduct and of practice, remain to be developed-" Hic labor, hoc opus est."

When our numbers, labour, art, and machinery, from the plough to the cotton machine of ARKWRIGHT, and the steam engines of BOLTON, and others, have produced for us "all," sufficient food and raiment and necessary shelter for our climate, with the needful moderate conveniences of domestic comfort, and something more than our own internal wants and consumptions for all our people, fairly rewarded for their labour and industrious toil-with which, by the aid of navigation, to traffic with transatlantic colonies, and to exchange with our neighbours, for the aliment of sugar, the refection of good wine, the drugs of healing, and some articles of harmless luxury, or general delectation, we are then arrived at a stage of human improvement, at which some provident care of legislation, or some economical influence and wisdom, should look down all the lines and ranks of society, to see what should be its next motions, in the march to reach the best point of secure, easy, and rational position, in physical, mental, and moral condition. For we can surely still do much more, we can go much further, and we are at this point, in great danger, to progress without advancing, to move on, but in a vicious circle.

Here let us look round us-we are increasing fast in numbers, we are improving much in the arts of agriculture, and of all the alimentary supplies and enjoyments, wanting only encouragement for farther productions, the continued encouragement of a fair reward in price, or of exchange; we progress in

art, science, navigation, skill, and ease in every handicraft; we abound more and more in all the accessorials of metals, precious and useful; of minerals, fuels, drugs, chemicals, and above all, in the direction of the natural powers of wind and water, and of the ingenious and extended use of the powers of steam, and the inventions of most elaborate and wonder-working machinery. All these are benefits and blessings, riches, and power, or the antipodes of them all; as we may now know how to employ, use, and direct them. The expression and emphasis of all the people, and of labour fairly rewarded, must not be overlooked nor unheeded in this place.

We have already a numerous population, and their subsistence, and the necessary accommodations of domestic wants, and moderate comforts, which can be fairly spread among all who are industrious and prudent of their share; and we have still, time and power, labour, skill and machinery, faculty, industry, and moral quality, to do, and to produce more. This has long, in most of the respects adverted to, been the condition of the Chinese- of more than 300 millions of people, under one government, or in one association of habit, and nearly secluded from all foreign intercourses. But what they know how to produce, they do not seem to know, or to have felt properly, how to use wisely or equitably; an excess of magnificence, and an exaggeration of human misery and squalid destitution, exist side by side with this singular, ancient, and numerous people, now nearly two centuries subjected to their more robust neighbours, the Northern Tartars(not the Russians yet!)-and at last commixed with them, as we were, exactly seven centuries and a half ago, with our Norman invaders and conquerors.

We must not imitate the Chinese, nor sink like them, a large proportion of our population to so wretched a condition, of base, oppressed, and miserable existence.

It is not true that an extravagant and unlimited labour and expense of our products and industry, for export to the foreigners, are necessary for us; it is true these have been a stimulus to activity, production, and a means of an active and in part, and at times, of a wholesome circulation of exchanges, and of the currency and abundance of

money, and of other mediums; if they are no longer practicable to the same extent, we must study to improve our own consumptions and circulations, by rewarding the agriculturist with fair prices, the labourer with liberal wages, for private industries, or for public useful works and improvements, of which we have yet few to boast of, for advantage or enjoyment: a great coast little improved in harbours; rivers not navigable, an established church without temples for half its professors, a monarchy without palaces, parliaments and public resorts without halls, children without education, put to work at five or six years of age, and reduced below the brutes they envy, or the machines they move, instead of being trained to the human capacities, till 12 or 14, and made filter for the calls and duties of the rest of their existence.

No infant under 12 or 14, should be put to labour of any kind, or for training only; never was this moral or humane, and now it is not even politic or economical. Old age, too, should be relieved at 63; fifty years, half a century of " saving" prudent, diligent, well directed labour, are enough: our habits have long been too precocious for labour, as for other addictions; we have now long been rearing too many of a degenerate race; children have been as profitable in some quarters to breed and bring up to early labour, as pigs for market; it is time this unnatural and base stimulus should cease.

The farmers have perhaps, of recent years, too eagerly and hardly depressed the general wages of their labouring class; and sometimes the manufacturers, perhaps, also. Of the men lately tried at Glasgow for sedition, one was proved to be a "Foreman" of a large muslin manufactory, a man of some faeully and skill, struggling to support himself and family on 5s. a week, or less, for 14 hours a day of application and labour; while the coal-heavers of London were dividing above 60s. a week to their whole gang in one employ-a sad condition of contrast and inequality.

It is true that this labour and exertion, with their wages, and the property of all, are pawned and mortgaged for an enor mous debt of money or means, borrowed to bring us through our difficulties, and support our exertions of the last century of years; and this load "doubles" in its weight, through the defects of the accident of our monetary system; whenever

our labour is reduced in its rate of wages, and its products reduced in their price or exchangeable value, one day's fabour, one acre's product, lent, must now, besides an hourly and heavy rate of interest, be repaid for the most part doubly this is an artificial difficulty of condition, which cannot be mitigated by bending under it; but calls for an energetic submission to the efforts, which, if continued, can, with some equitable palliatives of regulation, and by the operation of time, relieve it; in truth, its continuance will make it much less felt, and its entire removal hardly to be desired: to lighten it, however, and above all, not to increase its proportion to the sum of our properties, capitals, and incomes, is of urgent prudence, and even necessity. If the agricultu rist be encouraged and rewarded, the labourers well paid, consumptions and circulations large and brisk, and values supported, the public annuitants can be secure of their fair incomes, and the public prosperity, in ease and riches will be sustained, and progress; and this, too, whether the Chinese will accept our block tin and and dollars for lea leaves; or that the French and Germans will permit us still to spin cotton twist for their looms; or the Dutchman and Polander will give us their white wheat, at double its value, and take back, our manufactures at half their cost, in materials, capital, and labour, as for too long they have done already, since 1810. June, 1817.

POTATOES.

R.

[blocks in formation]

of 20 degress of Reamur is very pure, and has neither taste nor smell different from that produced by the distillation of grapes. The method she employs is very simple, and within every person's reach.

Take 100lb. of potatoes, well washed, dress them by steam, and let them be bruised to powder with a roller, &c. In the mean time, take 4lb. of ground malt, steep it in luke-warm water, and then pour it into the fermenting back, and pour on it twelve quarts of boiling water; this water is stirred about, and the bruised potatoes thrown in and well stirred about with wooden rakes, till every part of the potatoes is well saturated with the liquor.

Immediately six or eight ounces of yeast is to be mixed with 28 gallons of water, of a proper warmth to make the whole mass of the temperature of from 12 to 15 degrees of Reaumur; there is to be added half a pint to a =piat of good brandy.

The fermenting back must be placed in a room to be kept, by means of a stove, at a temperature of fifteen to eighteen degrees of Reaumur. The mixture must be left to remain at rest.

The back must be large enough to suffer the mass to rise seven or eight inches, without running over. If, notwithstanding this precaution, it does so, a little must be taken out, and returned when it falls a little: the back is then covered again, and the fermentation is suffered to finish without touching it-which takes place generally in five or six days. This is known by its being perceived that the liquid is quite clear, and the potatoes fallen to the bottom of the back. The fluid is decanted, and the potatoes dressed dry. The distillation is by vapour, with a wooden or copper still, on the plan of Count Rumford. The product of the first distillation is low wines.

When the fermentation has been favourable, from every 100lb. of potatoes six quarts and upwards of good brandy, of 20 degress of the arometer, are obtained; which, put into new casks, and afterwards browned with burnt sugar, like the French brandies, is not to be distinguished from them.

The Countess de N. has dressed and distilled per diem 1,000lbs. of potatoes at twice, which gives 50 to 70 quarts of good brandy. We may judge from this essay what would be the advantages

of such an operation, if carried on on a grand scale, and throughout the year.

The residue of the distillation is used as food for the stock of her farm, which consists of 34 horned cattle, 60 pigs, and 60 sheep; they are alt excessively fond of it when mixed with water, and the cows yield abundance of milk. The sheep use about five quarts per diem each; viz. one half in the morning, and one half at night. The malt must be fresh ground-the Countess has it ground every week.

On the Means of extracting Polass from Potatoe-tops.

One of the most important discoveries of the present day is that of a druggist of Amiens, by which Europe will be freed from the heavy tribute she pays to America for the article of potass. The author of this discovery has, in a truly patriotic manner, made known his discovery-after ascertaining, by a series of experiments, the truth of his conclusions. The French Society of Agriculture, and the Society for Eucouragement of National Industry, have both named Commissioners to frame official reports; in the mean time, we feel it important to give an account of the process, in the hope that, even in the present season, it may be turned to account-as it interests landlords, tenants, merchants, and manufacturers.

it is necessary to cut off the potatoetops the moment that the flowers begin to fall, as that is the period of their greatest vigour: they must be cut off at four or five inches from the ground, with a very sharp knife. Fresh sprouts spring, which not only answer all the purposes of conducting the roots to maturity, but tend to an increase of their volume, as they (the sprouts) demand less nourishment than the old top. The tops may be suffered to remain on the ground where cut; in eight or ten days they are sufficiently dry without turuing and may be carted, either home or to a corner of the field, where a hole is to be dug in the earth, about five feet square, and two feet deep (the combustion would be too rapid, and the ashes cool too quick, and thereby diminish the quantity of alkali, were they burnt in the open air.) The ashes must be kept red hot as long as possible; when the fire is strong, tops that are only imperfectly dried may be thrown in, and even green ones will then bura well enough,

« AnteriorContinuar »