INTERESTING HISTORICAL SKETCHES. No. 1.

THE INTRODUCTION OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM INTO ENGLAND.

It cannot be denied that the state of this country at the time when William of Normandy came over, was far from being happy. Civilization had not risen to a very high degree,--a change-a great change was necessary before the people could enjoy those blessings which result from good government. But the change they wanted was by no means the change which the Norman invaders introduced; and though England was in a rude state then, yet it was not quite so bad as some have represented. Athelstan, long previous to this period, had done much towards improving and civilizing this country. He had added to and improved the code of laws left by Alfred, and made provisions for the poorest and most destitute of his subjects. He promoted the erection of monasteries-places for the religious ministrations, and for the security and retirement of persons devoted to study. He knew the value of bookshad made presents of many valuable manuscripts to the monks, and he encouraged the translation of the holy scriptures into the vernacular tongue. The embroidery of the English, previous to the Norman Conquest, was of so superior a kind, that it was celebrated all over Europe. They possessed many useful utensils, had many inventions of importance, and there is no reason for supposing that they would not have gone on progressing towards civilization every year, had they not been interrupted by those ravenous wolves-the Norman barons.

Odo, the uterin brother of the Conqueror, and Fitzsborn, when they entered the high office in which the king placed them, as soon as he left the country, themselves assumed the lofty mien ånd arrogant manners of conquerors. The complaints of the injured were despised—aggression was encouraged with impunity-the different garrisons insulted wives and daughters-abused the men, and rioted at free quarters upon the property of their neighbours. Such conduct as this was not likely to be tolerated by the English, and they, naturally enough, rose in rebellion; this was taken as sufficient excuse for exercising most barbarous despotism—the king was sent for back, and when he arrived the work of annihilation and devastation commenced in earnest. Tyranny wrapped in his sable mantle, then sat upon this throne grinning with delight at the slaughter of thousands upon thousands of human beings-watching the clouds of smoke issuing from cities in flames, darkening the firmament, and, as if it were, forming a curtain between heaven and earth, that the former might not witness the horrible crimes which were daily perpetrated upon the latter. William's express orders were spare neither man nor beast-destroy the houses, corn, and whatever may be useful and necessary for the support of human life, and these cruel commands were, alas, too faithfully obeyed. The work of plunder, slaughter, and conflagration, commenced on the left bank of the Ouse and reached to the Tees, the Ware and the Tyne. The number of men, women, and children, that fell victims to this monstrous and foolish policy exceeded one hundred thousand! It is said by some writers, that not a patch of cultivated ground between York and Durham could be seen for a century afterwards. Individuals who had been poor and unknown in Normandy, saw themselves raised to a high state in this country, and these men displayed all the arrogance of newly acquired power-they became petty tyrants. To be treated with the greatest contempt and the severest

oppression became the portion of the English. "I will not undertake" says an ancient writer, "to describe the misery of this wretched people, it would be a painful task, and the account would be disbelieved by posterity." Moreover, William and his atrocious gang were so rapacious, that even those very places which their own religion taught them to deem most holy, were ransacked and plundered to gratify their avarice.

PHRENOLOGY.

In reading your remarks on the science of Phrenology, one or two observations occur to me on the subject. You say "the doctrine of Phrenology is, that different parts of the brain have different functions," in other words, they divide the brain into different organs, corresponding to the several operations of the mind, and, as they say, causing them, and I believe it is considered that the energy of these organs is in proportian to their size. Now, in order, supposing this to be the case, to reason correctly respecting any particular brain, it is necessary to obtain a correct measurement of its various organs; but, I do not see how this can be accomplished, inasmuch as the internal and external surfaces of the skull rarely, if ever, correspond, the bone often being much thicker in some places than others. This circumstance was pointed out to me by a medical gentleman, and I have found it to be the case in two or three skulls wiich I have examined.

In the second place, I do not see how you can reconcile the responsibility of man with the inference you draw from the science, if a man's will depends entirely on his organization, and his conduct on the circumstances in which he is placed, the two sole causes of all his actions are entirely out of his own control, and he can no more be held responsible for those actions, than the steam-engine which exerts its titanian powers in obediance to the guidance of man. You will not contend that Adam's disobedience to the one command of God, was the simple consequence of his organization, such a supposition would be a gross libel on the justice and goodness of the Almighty Creator, that he should create a being formed for the purest and most exquisite happiness, that he should place him in a position, where every thing tended to the accomplishment of such a design, that he should do all this knowing that he had given to his creature such an organiza tion as should compel him, so soon as he should have tasted the blessings of Paradise, to forfeit them; should give him one short taste of bliss, merely to embitter by the memory of its loss all his future existence. Such would be the conduct, not of a most merciful God, but of a most malevolent demon. NEMO.

Nemo employs his pen upon a subject he does not understand. It is not for him to question the justice of the Almighty. That Adam should transgress the laws by which he was bound must have been the will of his Creator, without we deny one of the attributes of the Deity, namely-his foreknowledge of all that will come to pass. To our weak understandings it may appear that many of the ways of Providence are unjust and unmerciful-but who dares venture to profess to fathom his motives and the depths of his wisdom? There is better employment for our limited capacities to wonder at and admire those works of the Creator, the excellence and magnificence of which we can comprehend, than to cavil at and complain of those the mysteries of which no mortal can explain.

There is no fact more generally acknowledged than that as mankind advance in civilisation, their moral conduct becomes more estimable; they feel a moral responsibility to which before they had been strangers, and are now anxious that their actions should, at all times, comport with the standard laid down by society.

Glancing over the history of the different nations of antiquity, we find that those who were immerged in ignorance and governed with despotism, under regulations both stringent and oppressive, were the most demoralized; but as they gradually approximated to civilisation, and became aware of their actual position as men endowed with reason and contemplative faculties, they in proportion abdicated their barbarous and immoral practices, and gave indications of being sensible to the existence of an inward principle, by which they seemed to feel their actions ought to have been guided.

And as with nations, so with society generally or sectionally. We have only to trace back the history of our own country twenty years, to perceive how altered an aspect it presents. That class of society which was considered the most degraded, has, by an almost miraculous effort raised itself to a position, which, instead of degrading from its worth, adds to it additional brightness and enduring lustre: I allude to our Mechanics. And if such happy results follow the establishment of Institutions, which afford means of rational recreation and mental improvement, what moral reformation may we not resonably look for in the accomplishment of the emancipation of so numerous, and hitherto neglected a portion of our fellow-men as the Shopkeepers' Assistants. A demonstrative proof of this hypothesis may be found in the persons of those assistants, who are under more lenient regulations than the great bulk of them; they, in every respect, adorn society in so far as their small circle admits, by their good moral character. It is they, being actuated by a principle of good moral duty, that have done what has already been done on hehalf of their less fortunate brethren; and the character of their behaviour is, I think, a good and sufficient earnest of the beneficial consequences to society at large, and to the assistants severally, which would follow the immediate reduction in the hours of business.

The present stringent and restrictive regulations under which the assistants labour are unquestionably calculated to subvert their morals, and tend materially to shake off every sensibility as to moral agency. When men are kept confined for so long a period, as the Shopkeepers' Assistants are, without being able to avail themselves of any rational recreations, of which the constitution of man mentally stands in need, they become dead to every other kind of enjoyment than that which is bounden upon sense.

To them "the glorious face of nature, with all its sublime and beautiful alternations-the delights of social life-the pleasures arising from the exercise of the finer feelings and the cultivation of the intellect and all that higher class of gratification which nature has designed a moderate labour to place within the reach of all her creatures are entirely lost; and that, on account of a little time that might be allowed them, without any loss to their employers or the public-but a certain and substantial gain to allFrom their very occupation, as at present followed, they are incapacitated from acquiring that knowledge which is calculated to

arrest the natural inclination to vitiate taste, the acquiring of which in general expands the mind, exalts the faculties, refines the taste of pleasure, and opens innumerable sources of intellectual enjoyment. By means of it we become less dependent for satisfaction upon the sensitive appetites, the gross pleasures of sense are more easily despised, and we are made to feel the superiority of the spiritual to the material part of our nature."

That the system of long hours has a demoralizing influence upon its subjects is not only acknowledged but maintained by those who express a fear of setting this class of men at liberty for three or four hours in an evening. This timidity arises from an apprehension that they have not a sufficient controul over themselves to gaurantee a proper and becoming behaviour whilst from under their roof, and thereby render themselves incapable to a faithful discharge of their duties the following day. This has been alledged; it has been asserted by those who hold back from entering into an arrangement of closing their shops early; here then is an avowed admission. It may be as well to go a little further and ask, how is it to be accounted for, that these men, with the advantages of superior education, are less competent to act as rational beings than their neighbours, the mechanics? The latter have liberty from six in the evening, sometimes five: we do not hear that this liberty renders them unfit for the demands of the following day; vast numbers become members of their institutions, and of these, it is exultingly said, "members of mechanic's institutions are not to be found either amongst the disturbers of the peace, or the violators of the law."

A stream whose waters run smoothly and regularly along exhilerates and represses the neighbouring trees and surrounding plantations; but if its course be arrested and checked, it falls back, overflows its banks, and may be seen in a multiplicity of directions, advancing its confused strides, and thus it becomes, instead of ministering to the general prosperity of all around, at once an agent of dissolution and ruin. Similar results follow the absence of a proper and judicious arrangement of things amongst mankind; if any portion be debarred from participating in the requisite relaxation from toil and labour, the exercise of their mental qualifications become stinted, and their energies enfeebled; the whole organization of the mind little else than mechanism, working, as it were utterly devoid of perception. Being thus destitute of that species of gratification and enjoyment, which is inestimably more delicious and lasting-more pure and elevated than that of sense, they become, as a consequence, almost solely dependent for enjoyment upon the grosser and lower sources of gratification. Nor can this conclusion be warded. Indeed it is assumed as a reason by some, (very few I should hope, for the sake of human nature and of religion) a sufficiently valid reason, that there should be no departure from exisiting custom of keeping the shops open for such unnecessary long hours. "An experiment has been tried," say they," the result has not satisfied us;" What is the fact? a partial reduction was made, the assistants did not raise themselves in the scale of moral excellence at once-they did not, at once, exhibit an undivided inclination for studies and discourses, as was anticipated. Surely those who did thus anticipate were no philosophers of the human mind, otherwise they would have known that it requires time even to do that; human nature must be strangely changed before so sudden a turn in the constitution of mind can be effected; that close and inseparable connection between the two natures of man must altogether be done away with ere this can be the care, and in order to bring about so desirable a change in the morals of these young men, an immediate concession of the time required should be made; without such a liberal concession all other efforts will be vain and useless-let the hours be first shortened, and then, but not till then, can we reasonably expect to see so great and so desirable a moral change in the assistants as shall satisfy all the friends of morality and religion. I shall probably recur to this part of thesubject in a future letter. IOTA.

No. 12.

IMPORTANT FOR COMMERCIAL INVESTMENTS IN IRELAND.

WE last week called attention to the subject of Agriculture, and rejoice to find it has not been in vain. We consider the subject entitled to the first consideration of our commercial townsmen, situated within a few hours' sail of the most productive island on the face of the earth. Our readers will find benefit from the perusal of the following account of the reclamation of 860 acres of land in Ireland, from whence cattle can be landed in Liverpool for about 12s. 6d. per head; corn and other produce transmitted by the river Shannon, and the Royal and Grand Canal, at an equally low rate.

We have

calculated that the 860 acres only produced to the proprietor 31d. per acre, or £12 per annum, and at an expense of only £10 per acre, in about twenty months, half of the land was brought into an excellent state of cultivation, that must on the average be worth £25 per acre, leaving a surplus of £6000 per annum. And when we know that 10,000,000 of acres are almost in a state of nature in that countrywanting only capital and skill-with the most kind, civil, obliging, and devoted labourers, panting for employment, at wages from 4d. to 9d. per day, we trust our capitalists from the agricultural districts will turn their attention to emigrate to the banks of the river Shannon, whose creeks, rivers, and tributary streams shew a coast Inland upwards of 2000 miles in extent. In her mountains are embedded the richest minerals-iron, lead, copper, silver, coal in abundance; and in case of a war, Limerick would become the Plymouth of the United Kingdombeing brought (by aid of steam) within fourteen hours from London, soon as the railroads are finished, and then only five days' sail from America. This is deserving of serious consideration to our manufacturers also. Here is a population treble to that of Belgium, with a soil more productive, whose wants are increasing as they grow in prosperity-and it is notorious that wealth and comforts are the result of industry. That agriculture, manufactures, and commerce may unitedly flourish in Ireland, is our firm conviction. The current of English science, capital, and skill, has only to be directed that way;

1841.

the labourers in our factories and manufactories will soon follow in rapid succession. Without further comment, we present our readers with the following account of

IMPROVING OF 860 ACRES OF LAND, AT MULMUSSOG, NEAR KILLYBEGS, COUNTY OF DONEGAL.

AGRICULTURAL IMPROVEMENTS AT MULMUSSOG.

On Thursday, August 19, a most interesting meeting took place on the Mulmussog estate, in the parish of Innesteen, County Donegal, and about five distant from Killybegs, in consequence of invitations to the gentlemen, clergy, and principal farmers of the surrounding country, issued by Wm. B. Harcourt, of St. Leonards, County Berks, Esq., the proprietor of the estate, Ralph Deane, Esq., (a large landed proprietor in England,) the lessee of Mr. Harcourt, and Mr. Houghton, of Broom Hall, Sunning Hill, Berks, the agricultural agent for Mr. Deane upon his English estates and leasehold property in Ireland. The object of these gentlemen in convening the meeting was to prove, by the results of their own experiments on Mulmussog, the practicability of reclaiming, by a proper application of skill and capital, much of that bog land in Ireland which is now in a state of nature, and bringing it to a degree of fertility, equal to that of the best land in England; and this at an expense which will be far more than repaid by the profit attendant upon it, while the condition of the people will, through the more extended employment given to them, be greatly ameliorated.

The lands of Mulmussog, which extend to 860 English acres, were, until they came under Mr. Houghton's management, three years ago, almost a perfect waste. True, there were seven tenants upon them, who paid in all 127. of rent, which was sufficiently high, if viewed relatively, not to the inert capabilities of the soil, but to its actual produce. Small patches of it might have been scratched by them here and there, and grain and potatoes raised from them in the most inartificial measure; but all the rest was a scene of the most unmitigated barrenness, its choisest covering being rushes and the coarsest heaths, from which a few diminutive cattle contrived to pick a miserable subsistence. The whole estate was without shelter, and without a fence, and it was unpene.. trated by a single road, so that its occupants, when conveying their scanty produce to market, had to carry it on their backs, often wading knee-deep in mud, and always through streams, until they got far beyond its limits. We need scarcely add to this description that one and all of the tenants were in a state of the most abject penury. On first coming to this country, Mr. Houghton discovered, very much to his satisfaction, that the greatest part of the surface soil consisted of black bog, which is the most improveable of all the bogs; and the first step in his progress was to take the whole into his own hands, he paying the tenants for what is termed the goodwill of the land, instead of ejecting them, which arrangement