to those in the militia regiments who have not even this scanty subsistence, a freehold property in the fertile lands in Upper Canada, the Cape of Good Hope, and the West Indies, would not only afford ample employment, but that species of ultimate ease and comfort which is not accessible in the parent state.

All the British colonies being now settled with interstices of crown lands between the different farms and plantations, the new settlers will experience few of those hardships and inconveniences, which attached to those who first established themselves in countries without a population or the means of procuring food for the first year. These difficulties are removed, and the expence of forming establishments greatly lessened.

To the officers and seamen of the navy, whose habits enable them to prosecute the fisheries, a two-fold advantage attaches. While they are enabled to cultivate their freeholds for the benefit of themselves and their posterity, they have a double r resource in the fisheries. They would have the monopoly of the British West India islands to the extent of nearly a million sterling, heretofore procured in the British American Seas by the inhabitants of the United States, in consequence of the thinness of the population in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward's Island, rendering it impossible to furnish the necessary supplies. They would also have an equal chance in the markets of Europe.'

Where officers are entitled to half-pay, an anticipation of five years would probably be granted by Government in order to form a capital; and, as a further encouragement, the camp furniture of the army and various useful domestic articles taken from dismantled barracks and from ships of war laid up in ordinary, which, although they cost much money, would sell for little or nothing, might be distributed among the settlers, with a view to enable them to furnish their dwellings, and to carry on the pursuits of husbandry and the fisheries. For this boon the nation would be amply repaid by the additional demand for British manufactures, and the increase of trade and navigation, which would be created through the medium of well directed and prolific industry.'

The masters, midshipmen, and warrant officers in the British navy comprise a body of men amounting in the whole to 9,000; of these at least 7,000 must be discharged. They cannot expect superior situations in commercial ships; and if inferior ones were accessible, the degradation and the low wages would render them unhappy. It would moreover afford but a scanty subsistence.'

Mr. C.'s desire of communicating his ideas on this subject was probably a principal reason for accelerating the publication of his book: but, while we do justice to the benevolence of this intention, we can by no means subscribe to an apprehension repeatedly expressed by him, that the restoration of peace will have the effect of diminishing the quantity of British shipping. This notion, entertained by too great a number of our merchants and ship-owners, is founded on the current supposition that the war had the effect of throwing a great increase of

commerce into our hands. On observing the augmented amount of our Custom-house-returns of exports and imports, they are disposed to ascribe to increased opulence that which ought, in a considerable degree, to be referred to the depreciation of money. Our Country, we hope and believe, has advanced in wealth during the last twenty years: but the extent of augmentation ought not to be computed by moneystatements, since the increased price of articles naturally swells the total of an official return; and here we must take occa→ sion to remark that Mr. C., in all his various enumerations of our extended resources, fails to make allowance for that most essential item in computations of national wealth. It never seems to occur to him that the land-holder who possesses at the present day 10,000l. a-year is scarcely richer than his father was before the French Revolution with half the income. Yet, if he turned to the Evidence adduced before the late Parliamentary Committee on the Corn-Bill, he would observe, from the reports of repeated witnesses, that, after all the rise that has taken place in rents, our land-holders consider themselves as less wealthy than they or their fathers were at the period which we have mentioned.

Objections might, in strict criticism, be made to many parts of the present work, on the ground of diffuseness, repetition, and deficient arrangement: but the author lays no claim to the character of a finished writer; and a copious index supplies, in some measure, the want of due method in the volume itself. His object we consider to be to do good by diffusing useful information, and this is a purpose calculated above all others to abate the severity of criticism. We therefore limit our animadversions to two leading points; the introduction of too minute details into a number of the tables, and a strain of unnecessary panygeric when speaking of the acts of Government, or the magnitude of our national resources. It may suit the vanity of Frenchmen to be called individually by such high sounding designations as célèbre, éclairé, généreux, or to style themselves in a collective sense la Grande Nation: but England has long been the land of plain and unexaggerated language. Epithets of amplification were perhaps necessary, or might at least be pardoned, while we stood alone in the contest with France and the Continent: but the time is now come at which we may exercise without scruple that strict impartiality respecting our advantages and drawbacks, which all parties agree in admiring in the historian of a past age. We need not fear that a cool examination of our circumstances, or even an exposure of particular defects, will inspire any feeling of discouragement or any distrust of our means to bear our part in a future

struggle.

struggle. The power of a free country rests on too solid a basis to dread investigation; it will be found to stand the most rigid scrutiny, and to be effectual under circumstances in which the resources of stratagem would be tried in vain, Under these impressions, we object to the frequent repetition of such phrases as the munificence of the sovereign and the nation,' (PP. 243, 244.) and to those enumerations of our military force which savour of Bonaparte's attempt at stage-effect when he talked of having in arms " a million of men." In treating, for example, of our land-forces, (p. 7.) Mr. C. has put down a total of 721,000, with great gravity, as if local militia and volunteers could with propriety be placed in the same line with our regulars; while, to complete the picture, 160,000 men are added to the above number for the British and native army in India.

A still more curious trespass on the same side of the question takes place in Mr. C.'s comments (p. 281.) on the subject of our national debt. He finds means to get rid of all idea of disadvantage or incumbrance from what appears to most people a very serious evil, by the simple expedient of dividing the whole into two parts, domestic and foreign debt. The latter alone is in his eyes a burden; and, as its amount does not exceed 18 millions sterling, the disadvantage seems to him a mere trifle when compared with the good effects arising from owing 600 millions among ourselves. Taxes, according to his very comfortable mode of reasoning, have a tendency to increase the property of a nation by dividing it into smaller shares; so that domestic debt, instead of being a bad concern, becomes at this rate a great addition to the sources of productive labour. It would be needless to dwell long on so extraordinary a position; and, as we are unwilling to part on bad terms with this veteran writer, we turn with pleasure to a topic on which his favourable assurances fortunately rest on a better foundation. We allude to the satisfactory intimation (pp. 19, 20.) that, during the last and the present age, a decrease has occurred in the proportion of our deaths to the total of our population. Specific calculations on such a subject are not easily attainable, but the affirmative of the proposition rests on the undoubted fact of an improvement in the lodging, the cleanliness, and, we believe, in the sobriety of the lower orders.

We conclude our extracts with a few of the most useful tables :

Rev. Dec. 1815.

• Revenue

Net £55.995,123 5 5 £4,155,599 3 11 £4,822,264 13 11 The total net revenue, in Great Britain and Ireland, is 64,972,9871. 35. 4 d.

The following short statement exhibits the different degrees of per Centage paid on the collection of our respective taxes, and may satisfy the political arithmetician that much less money is wasted between the subject and the treasury in this country than in France or the rest of the Continent.

We hope that, in a subsequent edition, Mr. Colquhoun, by having more leisure to arrange his materials, may class many of them in a manner more favourable to the attainment of useful results. We select a view of our annual expences for our Navy, Army, and Ordnance, from detached tables, in order to afford a comprehensive glance of their progression during the late war.

33,089,334

Ordnance. £3,819,466

4,352,628

4,620,147

4,464,273

Our next and last extract is a statement of the respective

numbers of our officers and men in the army and navy during

1812.

The Army may be stated as follows:

193,904

Regulars, according to the Military Estimates Officers and Men. for 1812 presented to the House of Commons, (exclusive of British Troops in the East India Company's Service and of Foreign Corps) after deducting for Non-Effectives, consist of Embodied Militia, from the same Estimates,

93,212

Total 287,116

It appears from the Army List, published for the Use of the WarOffice, that there are Officers of the Army, including reduced Officers receiving full Pay

Idem Royal Artillery

Idem

Engineers

Idem Embodied Militia, taken at about 8 per Cent. upon the Total number above mentioned

Commissariat, about

13,140

929

206

6,525

200

The Navy may be thus stated:

Men, including Non-Commissioned Officers.

With other improvements in a future edition, we shall look for the correction of such errors as M. Bourdonnau for M. Bourdonnais; the Mauritius for Mauritius; 95,199, (p. 20.)

instead of 1,095,199, &c. ; as well as an examination of the

very questionable statement (p. 27.) that in the year 1700 the, inhabitants of our metropolis amounted to 674,000; a number which, if we are to believe an accompanying estimate, experienced an increase of only 1900 in the long period which elapsed between that date and the year 1750.