of

whom, they assure the directors, were most scrupulously examined previous to the administration of that initiatory rite. By their fruits, however, we must prove and know them; and it is truly gratifying to learn, that many them have owned the force of Christian principle by abandoning the practice, to which the unchristian conduct of their masters so powerfully tempts them, of prostituting the sabbath to secular employments, in conveying to market the produce of their little plots of ground; using instead double diligence to cultivate them, in the short cessations from labour allowed them by their inhuman taskmasters during the week, and raising live stock to sell to the higglers, who go about the plantations. By their diligence, and abstaining from the temptations of the towns, they are richer than those who attend the sabbath markets, and spend in them most of their gains in rum, thus affording an additional confirmation of the apostle's assertion, that "godliness is profitable for all things, both for the life that now is, and for that which is to come."

Owing to the difficulty of getting out a Periodical Work at this particular season of the year, from circumstances, over which they have no control; the Editors regret that they are compelled to postpone to the next Number the summary, which they had regularly put into the hands of the Printer, of the proceedings of the Moravian, Baptist, Methodist, and Particular Baptist Missionary Societies of England, and those of Basle and America. Dec. 29, 1821.

COMMENCING, as usual, our retrospect at home, there are not many circumstances in the political state of Great Britain which call for particular notice, though some of them are rather of a painful nature. The riots at the funeral of the late Queen have been attended by very important and unpleasant consequences, as to two individuals, Sir Robert Baker, chief magistrate of Bow-street, who has resigned his office, in consequence of his Majesty's displeasure having been signified, at his yielding too easily to the demands of the mob to change the route of the procession; and Sir Robert Wilson, who has been dismissed the service, for improper language to the officer in command of the Life Guards, upon duty on that occasion. the right of the king to take these strong measures, there can be no doubt, however we may question the policy of resorting to them, especially in the latter instance, in which a court-martial, or court of inquiry would have afforded so much more satisfactory a mode of ascertaining and punishing the alleged delinquency.

On

The affairs of IRELAND have lately assumed a very alarming aspect. In several districts, some of which have recently been declared in a state of insurrection, and therefore placed under martial law, it is evident that an extensive conspiracy exists for arming the lower orders of the people. What is its ultimate object-if object or plan beyond lawless violence, it has a regularly organized one--it is difficult to say, but from present appearances we should conjecture that it is utterly unconnected with politics, or a change of government. It seems indeed to be a contest between oppression and starvation. Poor tenants,-for in Ireland most of the peasantry are tenants, few of them labourers-turned out of their miserable hovels and patches of 'potatoe-grounds for arrears of rent, or distrained upon and deprived of all VOL. IV. No. 7.

Q

means of support, for non-payment of tithes - rising in the fearful wrath of ignorant and uncultivated minds to take vengeance for their real or fancied wrongs; ruffians whose object is but plunder and destruction joining their ranks, and goading them on to deeds of blood; houses, hayricks, and corn stacks fired; landlords, and others, refusing to give up their arms at the summons of a lawless mob, murdered by regularly armed bandssuch is the melancholy picture which a part of Ireland now exhibits, and has exhibited but for too long a time. Government is evidently alarmed at what it ought to have prevented, or at least have endeavoured to prevent. The Guards are proceeding, by forced marches, to the disturbed districts, in which the soldiery and the populace have more than once met in sanguinary conflict; but their presence can do little more than smother the flame, that will break out with greater fury at a future day, unless other means for suppression be speedily and heartily adopted. The Irish nobility and great land-owners must reside upon their estates a due proportheir time, and no longer leave their wretched tenantry to that odious race of middle men, whose sole object is to screw alike from owner and occupier of the land, as large a profit for themselves as self-interested ingenuity without principle or feeling, can possibly extort. The tythe system must be modified in that country, at least, where the great mass of the population, being Roman Catholics, are compelled to pay double tithes even of their potatoes and their milk. The contributions which they pay in support of their own priesthood, are not, let it he remembered, as with the dissenters in England, mere voluntary payments, but are exacted under the sanction of anathemas and excommunications, more fearful of the two than the processes and distresses by which the protestant clergyman of the parish, or his inexorable lessee asserts his claim to the goodly portion of the church. If both these must still be paid in full-and the Catholic priest will not, we may rest assured in Catholic counties, go short of his lot, let, we would say, the non resident landlord be compelled to pay the tithes claimed from the Catholic tenant to the Protestant church, or such proportion of it as shall operate as an inducement to residence. Double taxes on batchelors have, we know, been more than once, even since the principles of taxation have been better understood than they were in the Stuart times, and the distinguishing between residents and non-residents, in the present critical juncture of affairs in Ireland, is less objectionable in principle, and would be more beneficial in practice. Amidst the general gloom which seems at present to hang over the affairs of this unhappy country, there are, however, some gleams of promise of better days at hand. The corporation and the police magistrates of Dublin have, we are rejoiced to learn, resolved upon discontinuing those Orange processions which have hitherto been a source of so much wanton irritation to the Irish Catholics. It is, however, not a little singular that the adoption of this conciliatory measure should have been co-eval with an attempt, happily as futile as it was ridiculous, on the part of some unknown fiery zealots, who know not what manner of spirit they are of, to revive this long exploded partizan celebration in the heart of London. But there we trust that every effort will be made to crush in its bud the revival of the No Popery mobs of 1780. The appointment also of the Marquis of Wellesley, an Irishman, and one of the most enlightened statesmen of his time, to the lord lieutenancy, is one of the most prudent measures that could possibly have been adopted, and a pledge, we fondly hope, of the intention of the ministry to do some good for Ireland, to whose gallant but ill-governed population England owes so large a debt.

There is one other subject connected with the administration of our domestic affairs, to which we recur with pain; but which it would be a gross

dereliction of principle to pass over in silence. We allude to the dreadful number of executions which have lately taken place in the metropolis. Eight of our fellow creatures at one time-four at another, with an interval of only a few days between the awful spectacles - have been launched into eternity, for offences committed against the property of their neighbours; for in very few of the cases was any thing like violence to their persons offered, and in two only did that violence amount to a serious injury. An officer of marines; an attorney's clerk; a man of an education sufficiently liberal to enable him partly to support his family by his literary productions; and three others, the eldest of them 26, the youngest but 10, cut off in the prime of life by an ignominious death, for uttering -forgeries of notes, which those who make enormous gains by their bring the · chief medium of circulation, take so little precaution to protect from imitation, that an engraver's apprentice, or an ordinary draughtsman, with a camel's-hair pencil can imitate them;-the life of a man reduced by losses in trade from opulent circumstances, to such extreme poverty, as from a large brewer, and farmer of some hundred acres, to become a farmer's labourer, taken away for half a dozen sheep; and that of another for stealing a fifty-pound note: -- -- these surely are circumstances calling loudly for a revision of our criminal code, which, like Draco's, seems now to be written in blood. One of these unhappy men was condemned to death, it should also be recollected, upon his own confession-a confession made in the hope of saving his life, under circumstances in which we ourselves have known the lives of many a wholesale dealer in forged Bank notes to have been saved. Several other executions have also taken place in London, since our last retrospect; and though we should be the last persons needlessly to question the grounds of selection of these unhappy victims to the sanguinary laws of our country, or to comment on particular cases, the circumstances of which have, we doubt not, been most carefully investigated in the proper quarter, we cannot but advert to the case of one poor man, who was executed on a conviction under Lord Ellenborough's act, for cutting and maiming, with intent to kill, a person whom there seems to be strong ground to suspect of an improper connexion with his wife-a well-founded jealousy of whose conduct led at last to the perpetration of this unjustifiable deed. Far be it from us to justify vindictive conduct in any case, especially where life is endangered; but when it should be the object of the executive government, to spare, where circumstances of mitigation appear, offenders, whom the strict letter of the law has doomed to death, we cannot but think that so strong a provocation, (which, under certain circumstances, would have justified in the eye of that law, what otherwise would have been murder), should have led to the most minute investigation of this distressing case, in the hopes of finding in it a ground for a commutation of the sentence. Whilst duellists, who take away life deliberately for an angry expression, a scornful look, or a thousand trifles, light as air, escape punishment altogether, or incur one so slight in comparison with their crimes as to be a farce; it is folly to turn to such a case as this, and laud the impartiality and equal justice of our penal laws.

In the East our arms have been successful against the refractory Arab tribe of Ben Boo Ali, and also in obtaining satisfaction for the gross insults offered to the British resident at Mocha, which town was bombarded by an armainent sent into the Arabian gulf, whose cannon did their office so effectually, that a treaty was speedily signed; securing protection to the British flag, the abolition of the anchorage duty, and the reduction of that on imported and exported goods. These commercial advantages were not ob

tained, however, without some sacrifices; all the officers engaged in the expedition having been either killed or wounded.

The king of France has opened the session of the Chambers with a speech, exhibiting a very pleasing view of the internal condition, and external relations, of that country; in which, if correct- -as speeches from the throne are not at all times-we cordially rejoice. The revenue has improved so materially, that some of the more oppressive taxes are about to be removed, and a strict investigation is promised into the practicability of further reductions. A measure is likely soon to be submitted to the consideration of the legislature, calculated, in our opinion, materially to contribute to the internal tranquillity of the countrythe establishment of a provincial magistracy, similar to our justices of the peace, into whose constitution and functions we happen incidentally to know that two French advocates have lately been sent to this country to inquire. We wish they could carry back with them, and naturalize in France, our English notions of the liberty of the press; and we should then hear no more, but to execrate them, of censorships, which, in the course of seventeen months, have suppressed nearly one-fourth part of the matter composed for one of the Parisian papers. We still hope, however, for better days to France; and should be disposed to augur favourably, from the encouragement afforded by the king to a new translation of the Bible into the French language, printing at the royal press but that this also will, we presume, first have to pass through the ordeal of a licenser. The Ultra-Royalists, one of the most mischievous parties in France, have gained strength by the late elections; and have strangely united, or in our parliamentary language have coalesced, with their most violent opponents, the Revolutionists, or Napoleonists, to turn out a ministry whose chief sin, in their eyes, is one of their great virtues in ours, that they belonged to neither of them. The answer carried by this heterogenous, but formidable opposition to the king's speech, breathes accordingly a warlike tone, very ill accordant with the pacific wishes expressed by the ministry. We shall not, however, easily be persuaded, that their zeal in the cause of the oppressed Greeks, the specious pretext of their remonstrance, is the real cause of this call to arms; which, we doubt not, originates in the restless spirit of the military part of the population, and their hatred to those European powers most likely to be engaged in a Turkish war, whose conquest of their idol chief, his partizans can neither forget nor forgive.

The Editors regret, that for the reason assigned in a former part of this Number, they are compelled to close their Work, at the last moment allowed them to bring it out in time, without being able to present their readers with the remarks duly prepared for the press, on the present aspect of continental politics with whose details Christmas festivities which they could not interrupt, but very ill accord. They hope to do better another year, should they be spared to its termination; and, in the mean while, inost cordially wish their readers every happiness at its commencement, and to its close.

Dec. 29, 1821.

APRIL, 1822.

Biographical Sketch of ARTHUR YOUNG, Esq. F. R. S. &c. &c. &c.

IT is seldom that a person, who, in a christian country, has imbibed and deliberately maintained the principles of an infidel philosophy, becomes a genuine friend and supporter of evangelical religion. Such instances, though rare, have, however, occurred; and a striking one is afforded in the individual here selected for more particular notice, in our necrological retrospect of the year eighteen hundred and twenty, which this article brings to a close.

Arthur Young, Esq. celebrated as an agriculturist, was a younger son of the Rev. Arthur Young, D. D. prebendary of Canterbury, and chaplain to the right honourable Arthur Onslow, speaker of the House of Commons, from whom he derived his baptismal name. He was born on the 7th of September, 1741, at Bradfield Hall, between Long Melford and Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, on the estate of his father, who was rector of Bradfield, and possessed in that parish about two hundred acres of land, which had been in the family upwards of two centuries. Dr. Young not being able to provide very liberally for his younger children, designed Arthur for trade, and accordingly apprenticed him to a wine-merchant, at Lynn, in Norfolk; but having evinced an early attachment to agricultural pursuits, on his father's death in 1761, he returned home, and managed the farm at Bradfield, for the benefit of his widowed mother and her family. His first essays in agriculture were not successful; for, trying experiments before he had sufficient practical knowledge to form any accurate judgment of their probable results, his failure in them produced disputes which caused him to leave his maternal roof in the year 1767, having during his five years' farming there kept. a register of his experiments, which formed the basis of his Course of Experimental Agriculture,' published anony mously in 1770, and well received by practical farmers, and by the public; though its author was unduly wroth with the Reviewers, for insinuating that he had highly coloured experiments, which certainly were not productive to those for whose benefit they were made. Yet when years and