dent clergy, and magistrates, if any. Let this body applot the sums necessary to be levied on the different properties in the parish; the principle of applotment to be not merely the bare valuation, but consideration to be also given to the condition of the different estates or townships with regard to the number of paupers they contain, and thrown for relief on the common fund, whether by ejectment, or other circumstances. An appeal against the rate to lie to the Petty Sessions Bench in the first instance; and, finally, to the Quarter Sessions. Let the poor apply for relief to the vestry, who should judge of and determine their claims; with a power to the petty sessions bench to make an order for relief. The vestry under no pretence to grant more than trifling temporary relief to able-bodied labourers. These, if they continue chargeable, they are to send to the general county committee, with a certificate, to be employed on the public works. The vestry not to employ any labourers or pay wages in any shape out of the poor-rate, under a penalty, except with the sanction and by the direction of the county committee, who should only permit their employment on the roads or other public works, so as not to interfere with the ordinary demand for labour. The secretary of the committee will keep an account with every parish in the county, charging them with the wages of the labourers sent thence for employment, and giving them credit for their due proportion of the proceeds of the works, as the tolls on canals and roads, the rent or value of the land reclaimed by drainage, or embankment, &c. The books of the secretary will always enable this adjustment to be executed with sufficient accuracy at the end of any lapse of time; and if the expenditure is judiciously made, as must be the case under a well-arranged system, it is probable that the rate required to be raised for this purpose will in reality be but trifling, the capital borrowed upon the credit of the assessment supplying the greater part of the first outlay, and the produce of the works aiding materially in carrying it on. Power should be given to the vestry, with the warrant of a magistrate, to levy the rate by distress on the occupier,—one half (or two thirds?) to be set off by the latter against his rent to the owner of the property rated. The accounts of the parish vestry, who would elect their own overseer, secretary, and treasurer, should be open for inspection to every parishioner paying rates. Vagrancy and mendicity must be at the same time severely repressed; and a power of removal of paupers to their parishes given to the petty sessions, on application of the parish in which they are domiciled. An appeal to lie to quarter-sessions against an order of removal. With With regard to the settlement of paupers, it should be deter mined-first, by industrious residence (not as a pauper) for three years. In failure of this-secondly, by birth. If this cannot be ascertained-thirdly, by the last residence, as is the case in Eng land. The general survey and valuation of lands which has been long going on in Ireland, will form a most favourable basis for a parochial assessment. And the experience which the principal inhabitants of most parishes have lately had, in the valuation and adjustment of local burthens, under the Tithe Composition Act, and in the applotment of grand jury cess, will greatly facilitate the practical establishment of a poor-rate. If difficulties spring up in its administration, practice will soon suggest resources for correcting them; and the legislature may, after a few years' trial, make any alterations that experience shall prove to be advisable; but even though some inconveniences should result, which it may be found hardly possible to obviate, we concur fully in the sentiment of Dr. Doyle,* that inconveniences, in a great and necessary measure of this kind, must be borne with. We should rather argue with Pope, that all partial ill is universal good,' than suffer the Irish poor to perish as they do now? Shall we have their blood upon us, rather than encounter a few difficulties, which, after all, will probably turn out to be inconsiderable? In all human institutions we find defects and evils. They are not absent even from the mighty works of Providence; and we cannot expect to manage a limited system of government in a wiser manner than that in which the Supreme Being governs the uniLet parliament do its duty-we have no doubt it will— and we shall hear no more either of Mr. O'Connell, or of the repeal of the Union. verse. ART. VIII.—1. The Wrongs of Man. Windsor. 1831. 2. The Question of Reform considered: with Hints for a Plan. London. 1831. 3. On Parliamentary Reform. By Charles Tennyson, Esq., M.P. 1831. 4. On Parliamentary Reform and the Distresses of the Country. By T. Barber Beaumont, Esq. Second Edition. 1831. 5. The State of the Nation at the Close of 1830: its Prospects from a New King and a New Ministry. By T. Potter Macqueen, Esq. 1831. 6. A Letter to the King on the present Crisis of the National Affairs. 1831. 7. England in 1830: being a Letter to Earl Grey. 1831. 8. A Letter from Munich to the Right Honourable Viscount Palmerston, on the late happy Change of Ministry in England. By A. V. Kirwan, Esq. 1881. 9. Plain Thoughts on Corruption. 1831. 10. Letters of Radical and Philo-Radical. (Times Newspaper.) 1831. 11. Popular Opinions on Parliamentary Reform considered. By Sir John Walsh, Bart., M.P. Second Edition. 1831. 12. Some Remarks on the present State of Affairs, respectfully addressed to the Marquis of Lansdowne. By Lieut.-Col. Matthew Stewart. Edinburgh. 1831. OF Fall the revolutions which the last eventful six months have brought to light, there is none which it would be so difficult to reconcile with the ordinary principles of human action, if one could possibly suppose it real, as that revolution of opinion which, we are assured from all quarters, has taken place among the educated and even the upper classes of society in this country, on the question of parliamentary reform. It must be allowed, that evils deeply rooted and widely extended, the immediate fruits of the speculations and crisis of 1825, aggravated by that operation affecting the currency, of which this Journal has often treated in detail, had been pressing more or less severely on all the productive classes of the community, agricultural, manufacturing, and commercial; and that this pressure, prolonged through a period of unexampled duration, and gaining rather fresh intensity, as it seemed, instead of the usual mitigation, from time, had begun to impair the sources of the revenue, and, by an unhappy concurrence with two bad harvests in succession, and, in particular districts, with the permanent mal-administration of the poor-laws, was sensibly deteriorating the condition of the labouring population. All this is past question. Nor can it be matter of surprise that so much suffering should have bred some discontent. Of the many persons whose interests are affected by vicissitudes of this nature, few can be supposed to have acquired much knowledge of their elementary causes ;-few indeed have been accustomed to reason on such subjects at all. So that, when once fairly thrown out of the track of their ordinary experience, and bewildered by crosses and disappointments neither foreseen nor understood, the weaker easily learn to regard the whole frame of society round them with a sort of mixed feeling of distrust and despair, and their minds. become open to the impression of almost any doctrines, the most absurd and anti-social, and at the same time the most discordant from from each other, provided only they flatter their present passions, hold out some vain promise of bettering their condition, or throw the blame of that condition on those whose lot in life has been more fortunate than their own. Such is very much the course of discipline which, during four cheerless years, had been left to operate almost uncontrolled on the minds of the working classes, the artisans, retail dealers, and many of the smaller capitalists throughout England. Early in the spring of last year, however, a better dawn began to appear. We shall be supported, we believe, by the testimony of the most practised observers, when we state that, during some succeeding months, the increase of consumption and the rise of prices were simultaneous and progressive-that the workmen throughout the manufacturing districts were already in pretty full employment, the markets for colonial produce slowly reviving, the funds on the advance, and that, with the promise of an abundant crop on the ground, the whole face of industry was resuming that healthful complexion to which it had been long a stranger. That this amendment was neither illusory nor superficial, we have the most conclusive proof in the improvement of the revenue, which has, in fact, continued steady and progressive even to the moment at which we write, in spite of all that has recently happened to interrupt the course of commerce, and disturb the foundations of property and order, both at home and abroad. With returning prosperity, the fever of opinion too was subsiding. Finding a renewed source of hope and interest in their private affairs, men were perplexing themselves less with those of the state. And though, in particular instances, the seeds of disquiet and disaffection might have taken too deep a hold to be so quickly eradicated, and the common traders in sedition had relaxed nothing of their wonted activity, it may safely be affirmed that, at the period of his present Majesty's accession, nothing was less expected, or less probable, than the success of any early attempt to disturb materially the established system of the legislature. Since then, what a change! If there be any faith in the organs of public opinion-if we are to judge from the language of popular meetings-from the all but unanimous voice of the pressfrom the declarations in parliament itself-before a few short weeks shall have passed over our heads, that parliament of England, so long a prodigy and an enigma in the eyes of surrounding nations -that parliament under whose auspices we have attained our present station in arts and arms, and have contrived for nearly a century and a half to unite the advantages of the most unbounded freedom of discussion, with the most thorough subordination and security of property,-that parliament is to perform a voluntary act act of abdication, to declare its own incompetency to exercise its functions any longer with benefit to the nation, and to resign those functions into the hands of a new and unknown body, constituted on other principles ! This great measure of relief and redress,' as it has been called, is demanded, we are told, by the whole country, with an impatience that admits neither of delay nor of compromise. Its advocates (and thay have the argument just now very much to themselves) never speak of it but as of a thing quite decided and inevitable. Indeed, they give us very plainly to understand, that we are to have no alternative between that and a bloody revolution. The very idea of its rejection, they treat as a supposition 'too monstrous to be thought of for a moment.' It is a sort of fulfilment of destiny, in short, about whose possible consequences we need give ourselves no concern, since, do what we may, we can have no hope of escaping it. The newspapers, always echoing the voice which for the time is loudest, throw in their too powerful influence, to work on the enthusiasm of some, and the fears of others. The only question admitted at all, is with respect to the degree and manner of the reform. A person who at any of the late county meetings should have presumed to doubt the soundness of the general principle, would have been hooted down as an idiot. Scarcely even a stray pamphlet ventures to raise its feeble cry on the side of prudence and reflection. And the most illustrious man of our period becomes for a time almost a mark for popular odium, merely because he has the manliness to stand forward alone, and declare his opposition to parliamentary reform, in terms precisely to the same effect as those employed only three years before on a similar occasion by Mr. Canning, at the zenith of his popularity, and amidst the cheers of an applauding, we might almost say of a worshipping, audience. But the most amusing circumstance of all, (if anything can be deemed amusing where the whole is in truth so melancholy,) is the simplicity with which individuals, the most diametrically opposed to each other in principle,-men who have never before been able to agree on any given proposition-knots of exclusive theorists in politics and political economy, possessed with dogmas the most incompatible, and advocating every one some sovereign specific of his own for the evils which he thinks beset the nation, have yet all submitted themselves to the common prestige, and join, or affect to join, in hailing a consummation, which, as each little antagonist unit fondly imagines, is to bring the little antagonist nostrum of each into active operation. One calls for reform, because it is to be the precursor of unbounded freedom of trade; another sees in it the triumphant revival of the old system of pro tecting |