resident in his particular parish, becomes the natural patron and superintendant of the parishschool, and is enabled in various ways to promote the comfort of the teacher, and the proficiency of the scholars. The teacher himself is often a candidate for holy orders, who, during the long course of study and probation required in the Scottish church, renders the time which can be spared from his professional studies, useful to others as well as to himself, by assuming the respectable character of a schoolmaster. It is common for the established schools, even in the country parishes of Scotland, to enjoy the means of classical instruction; and many of the farmers, and some even of the cottagers, submit to much privation, that they may obtain, for one of their sons at least, the precarious advantage of a learned education. The difficulty to be surmounted arises indeed not from the expense of instructing their children, but from the charge of supporting them. In the country parish-schools, the English language, writing, and accounts are generally taught at the rate

preceding the year 1797, the executions in that division of the island did not amount to six annually; and one quarter-sessions for the town of Manchester only, has sent, according to Mr Hume, more felons to the plantations, than all the judges of Scotland usually do in the space of a year. It might appear invidious to attempt a calculation of the many thousand individuals in Manchester and its vicinity who can neither read nor write. A majority of those who suffer the punishment of death for their crimes in every part of England are, it is believed, in this miserable state of ignorance.

of six shillings, and Latin at the rate of ten or twelve shillings, per annum. In the town, the prices are somewhat higher.

It would be improper in this place to inquire minutely into the degree of instruction received at these seminaries, or to attempt any precise estimate of its effects, either on the individuals who are the subjects of this instruction, or on the community to which they belong. That it is on the whole favourable to industry and morals, though doubtless with some individual exceptions, seems to be proved by the most striking and decisive experience; and it is equally clear, that it is the cause of that spirit of emigration and of adventure so prevalent among the Scotch. Knowledge has, by Lord Verulam, been denominated power; by others it has, with less propriety, been denominated virtue or happiness: we may with confidence consider it as motion. A human being, in proportion as he is informed, has his wishes enlarged, as well as the means of gratifying those wishes. He may be considered as taking within the sphere of his vision a larger portion of the globe on which we tread, and spying advantage at a greater distance on its surface. His desires or ambition, once excited, are stimulated by his imagination; and distant and uncertain objects, giving freer scope to the operation of this faculty, often acquire, in the mind of the youthful adventurer, an attraction from their very distance and uncertainty. If, therefore, a greater degree of instruction be given to the peasantry of a country comparatively poor, in the neighbourhood of other countries rich in natural and acquired advantages; and if the barriers be removed that kept them separate, emigration from the former to the latter will take place to a certain extent, by laws nearly as uniform as those by which heat diffuses itself among surrounding bodies, or water finds its level when left to its natural course. the articles of the Union, the barrier was broken down which divided the two British nations, and knowledge and poverty poured the adventurous natives of the north over the ferThe similarity of character between the Swiss and the tile plains of England, and more especially, Scotch, and between the Scotch and the people of New England, can scarcely be overlooked. That it arises in over the colonies which she had settled in the a great measure from the similarity of their institutions East and in the West. The stream of popufor instruction, cannot be questioned. It is no doubt lation continues to flow from the north to the increased by physical causes. With a superior degree of instruction, each of these nations possesses a country south; for the causes that originally impelled that may be said to be sterile, in the neighbourhood of it, continue to operate; and the richer country countries comparatively rich. Hence emigrations and the other effects on conduct and character which such is constantly invigorated by the accession of an circumstances naturally produce. This subject is in a informed and hardy race of men, educated in high degree curious. The points of dissimilarity be tween these nations might be traced to their causes also, poverty, and prepared for hardship and danger, and the whole investigation would perhaps admit of an patient of labour, and prodigal of life." approach to certainty in our conclusions, to which such inquiries seldom lead. How much superior in morals, in intellect, and in happiness, the peasantry of those parts of England are who have opportunities of instruction, to the same class in other situations, those who inquire into the subject will speedily discover. The peasantry of Westmoreland, and of the other districts mentioned above, if their physical and moral qualities be taken together, are, in the opinion of the Editor, superior to the peasantry of any part of the island.

There is now a legal provision for parochial schools, or rather for a school in each of the different townships into which the country is divided, in several of the northern states of North America. They are, however, of recent origin there, excepting in New England, where they were established in the last century, probably about the same time as in Scotland, and by the same religious sect. In the Protestant Cantons of Switzerland, the peasantry have the advantage of similar schools, though established and endowed in a different manner. This is also the case in certain districts in England, particularly in the northern parts of Yorkshire and of Lancashire, and in the counties of Westmoreland and Cumberland.

A law, providing for the instruction of the poor, was passed by the parliament of Ireland; but the fund was diverted from its purpose, and the measure was entirely

frustrated. Proh Pudor!

By

It has been supposed that Scotland is less populous and less improved on account of this emigration; but such conclusions are doubtful, if not wholly fallacious, The principle of population acts in no country to the full extent of its power: marriage is every where re tarded beyond the period pointed out by nature, by the difficulty of supporting a family; and this obstacle is greatest in long-settled communities. The emigration of a part of a people facilitates the marriage of the rest, by producing a relative increase in the means of sub.

in religious disputation. With a strong at tachment to the national creed, is conjoined a bigotted preference of certain forms of worship; the source of which would be often altogether obscure, if we did not recollect that the ceremonies of the Scottish Church were framed in direct opposition, in every point, to those of the Church of Rome.

The eccentricities of conduct, and singularities of opinion and manners, which characterized the English sectaries in the last century, afforded a subject for the muse of Butler, whose pictures lose their interest, since their archetypes are lost. Some of the peculiarities common among the more rigid disciples of Calvinism in Scotland, in the present times, have given scope to the ridicule of Burns, whose humour is equal to Butler's, and whose drawings from living manners are singularly expressive and exact. Unfortunately the cor

The preachers of the Reformation in Scotland were disciples of Calvin, and brought with them the temper as well as the tenets of that celebrated heresiarch. The presbyterian form of worship and of church government was endeared to the people, from its being established by themselves. It was endeared to them, also, by the struggle it had to maintain with the Catholic and the Protestant episcopal churches, over both of which, after a hundred years of fierce, and sometimes bloody contention, it finally triumphed, receiving the countenance of government, and the sanction of aw. During this long period of contention and of suffering, the temper of the people became more and more obstinate and bigotted; and the nation received that deep tinge of fanaticism, which coloured their public transactions as well as their private virtues, and of which evident traces may be found in our own times. When the public schools were esta-rectness of his taste did not always correspond blished, the instruction communicated in them partook of the religious character of the people. The Catechism of the Westminster Divines was the universal school-book, and was put into the hands of the young peasant as soon as he had acquired a knowledge of his alphabet; and his first exercises in the art of reading introduced him to the most mysterious doctrines of the Christian faith. This practice is continued in our own times. After the Assembly's Catechism, the Proverbs of Solomon, and the New and Old Testament, follow in regular succession; and the scholar departs, gifted with the knowledge of the sacred writings, and receiving their doctrines according to the interpretation of the Westminster Confession of Faith. Thus with the instruction of infancy in the schools of Scotland, are blended the dogmas of the national church; and hence the first and most constant exercise of ingenuity among the peasantry of Scotland, is displayed

with the strength of his genius; and hence some of the most exquisite of his comic productions are rendered unfit for the light. *

The information and the religious education of the peasantry of Scotland, promote sedateness of conduct, and habits of thought and reflection. -- These good qualities are not counteracted by the establishment of poor laws, which, while they reflect credit on the benevolence, detract from the wisdom of the English legislature. To make a legal provision for the inevitable distress of the poor, who by age or disease are rendered incapable of labour, may indeed seem an indispensable duty of society; and if, in the execution of a plan for this purpose, a distinction could be introduced, so as to exclude from its benefits those whose sufferings are produced by idleness or profligacy, such an institution would perhaps be as rational as humane. But to lay a general tax on property for the support of poverty, from whatever cause proceeding, is a measure full of danger. It must operate in a considersistence. The arguments of Adam Smith, for a freeable degree as a bounty on idleness, and a duty export of corn, are perhaps applicable with less exception to the free export of people. The more certain the on industry. It takes away from vice and vent, the greater the cultivation of the soil. This sub-indolence the prospect of their most dreaded ject has been well investigated by Sir James Stewart, whose principles have been expanded and farther illus. trated in a late truly philosophical Essay on Population.

In fact, Scotland has increased in the number of its inhabitants in the last forty years, as the Statistics of Sir John Sinclair clearly prove, but not in the ratio that Some had supposed. The extent of the emigration of the Scots may be calculated with some degree of confidence from the proportionate number of the two sexes in Scotland; a point that may be established pretty exactly by an examination of the invaluable Statistics already mentioned. If we suppose that there is an equal number of male and female natives of Scotland, alive somewhere or other, the excess by which the females exceed the males in their own country, may be considered to be equal to the number of Scotchmen liv. ing out of Scotland. But though the males born in

Scotland be admitted to be as 13 to 12, and though some of the females emigrate as well as the males, this mode of calculating would probably make the number of expatriated Scotchmen, at any one time alive, greater than the truth. The unhealthy climates into which they emigrate, the hazardous services in which so many of them engage, render the mean life of those who leave Scotland (to speak in the language of calculators) not perhaps of half the value of the mean life of those who remain.

Consequences, and from virtue and industry their peculiar sanctions. In many cases it must render the rise in the price of labour, not a blessing, but a curse to the labourer; who, if there be an excess in what he earns beyond bis immediate necessities, may be expected to devote this excess to his present gratification; trusting to the provision inade by law for his Own and his family's support, should disease suspend, or death terminate his labours. Happily in Scotland, the same legislature which established a system of instruction for the poor, resisted the introduction of a legal provision for the support of poverty; what they granted on the one hand, and what they re

Holy Willie's Prayer, Rob the Rymer's Welcome to his Bastard Child, Epistle to J. Gowdie, the Holy Tulzie, &c.

beguiles the weariness of his journey with poetry and song.*

The origin of this amatory character in the rustic muse of Scotland, or of the greater number of those love-songs themselves, it In appreciating the happiness and virtue of would be difficult to trace; they have accumu- a community, there is perhaps no single crilated in the silent lapse of time, and it is now terion on which so much dependence may be perhaps impossible to give an arrangement of placed, as the state of the intercourse between them in the order of their date, valuable as the sexes. Where this displays ardour of atsuch a record of taste and manners would be. tachment, accompanied by purity of conduct, Their present influence on the character of the character and the influence of women rise the nation is, however, great and striking. in society, our imperfect nature mounts on the To them we must attribute, in a great measure, scale of moral excellence, and from the source the romantic passion which so often character of this single affection, a stream of felicity deizes the attachments of the humblest of the scends, which branches into a thousand rivulets people of Scotland, to a degree, that if we that enrich and adorn the field of life. Where mistake not, is seldom found in the same rank the attachment between the sexes sinks into of society in other countries. The pictures an appetite, the heritage of our species is comof love and happiness exhibited in their rural paratively poor, and man approaches the consongs, are early impressed on the mind of the dition of the brutes that perish. "If we could peasant, and are rendered more attractive from with safety indulge the pleasing supposition the music with which they are united. They that Fingal lived and that Ossian sung,+" associate themselves with his own youthful emotions; they elevate the object as well as the nature of his attachment; and give to the impressions of sense the beautiful colours of imagination. Hence in the course of his passion, a Scottish peasant often exerts a spirit of adventure, of which a Spanish cavalier need not be ashamed. After the labours of the day are over, he sets out for the habitation of his mistress, perhaps at many miles distance, regardless of the length or the dreariness of the way. He approaches her in secrecy, under the disguise of night. A signal at the door or window, perhaps agreed on, and understood by none but her, gives information of his arrival; and sometimes it is repeated again and again, before the capricious fair one will obey the summons. But if she favours his addresses, she escapes unobserved, and receives the vows of her lover under the gloom of twilight, or the deeper shade of night. Interviews of this kind are the subjects of many of the Scottish songs, some of the most beautiful of which Burns has imitated or improved. In the art which they celebrate he was perfectly skilled; he knew and had practised all its mysteries. Intercourse of this sort is indeed universal, even in the humblest condition of man, in every region of the earth. But it is not unnatural to suppose, that it may exist in a greater degree, and in a more romantic form, among the peasantry of a country who are supposed to be more than commonly instructed; who find in their rural songs expressions for their youthful emotions; and in whom the embers of passion are continually fanned by the breathings of a music full of tenderness and sensibility. The direct influence of physical causes on the attachment between the sexes is comparatively small, but it is modified by moral causes beyond any other affection of the mind Of these, music and poetry are the chief Among the snows of Lapland, and under the burning sun of Angola, the savage is seen hastening to his mistress, and every where he

Scotland, judging from this criterion, might be considered as ranking high in happiness and virtue in very remote ages. To appreciate her situation by the same criterion in our own times, would be a delicate and difficult undertaking. After considering the probable influence of her popular songs and her national music, and examining how far the effects to be expected from these are supported by facts, the inquirer would also have to examine the influence of other causes, and particularly of her civil and ecclesiastical institutions, by which the character, and even the manners of a people, though silently and slowly, are often powerfully controlled. In the point of view in which we are considering the subject, the ecclesiastical establishments of Scotland may be supposed peculiarly favourable to purity of conduct. The dissoluteness of manners among the Catholic clergy, which preceded, and in some measure produced the Reformation, led to an extraordinary strictness on the part of the reformers, and especially in that particular in which the licentiousness of the clergy had been carried to its greatest height-the intercourse between the sexes. On this point, as on all others connected with austerity of man.. ners, the disciples of Calvin assumed a greater severity than those of the Protestant episcopal church. The punishment of illicit connexion between the sexes was, throughout all Europe, a province which the clergy assumed to themselves; and the church of Scotland, which at the Reformation renounced so many powers and privileges, at that period took this crime under her more especial jurisdiction.‡

attachment between the sexes is said to be weak, and The North-American Indians, among whom the love, in the purer sense of the word, unknown, seem nearly unacquainted with the charms of poetry and music. See Weld's Tour.

+ Gibbon.

In the punishment of this offence the Church employed formerly the arm of the civil power. During the reign of James the VIth (James the First of England), criminal connexion between unmarried persons was

PREFATORY KEMARKS.

Where pregnancy takes place without marriage, the condition of the female causes the discovery, and it is on her, therefore, in the first instance, that the clergy and elders of the church exercise their zeal. After examination before the kirk-session touching the circumstances of her guilt, she must endure a public penance, and sustain a public rebuke from the pulpit, for three Sabbaths successively, in the face of the congregation to which she belongs, and thus have her weakness exposed, and her shame blazoned. The sentence is the same with respect to the male; but how much lighter the punishment! It is well known that this dreadful law, worthy of the iron minds of Calvin and of Knox, has often led to consequences, at the very mention of which human nature recoils.

While the punishment of incontinence prescribed by the institutions of Scotland, is severe, the culprits have an obvious method of avoiding it, afforded them by the law respecting marriage, the validity of which requires neither the ceremonies of the church, nor any other ceremonies, but simplythe deliberate acknowledgment of each other as husband and wife, made by the parties before witnesses, or in any other way that gives legal evidence of such an acknowledgment having taken place. And as the parties themselves fix the date of their marriage, an opportunity is thus given to avoid the punishment, and repair the consequences of illicit gratification. Such a degree of laxity respecting so serious a contract might produce much confusion in the descent of property, without a still farther indulgence; but the law of Scotland legitimating all children born before wedlock, on the subsequent marriage of their parents, renders the actual date of the marriage itself of little consequence. Marriages contracted in Scotland

made the subject of a particular statute (See Hume's Commentaries on the Laws of Scotland, Vol. ii. p. 332.) which, from its rigour, was never much enforced, and which has long fallen into disuse. When in the middle of the last century, the Puritans succeeded in the overthrow of the monarchy in both divisions of the island, fornication was a crime against which they directed their utmost zeal. It was made punishable with death in the second instance, (See Blackstone, b. iv. chap. 4. No. II.) Happily this sanguinary statute was swept away along with the other acts of the Commonwealth, on the restoration of Charles II. to whose temper and manners it must have been peculiarly abhorrent. And after the Revolution, when several salutary acts passed during the suspension of the monarchy, were re-enacted by the Scottish Parliament, particularly that for the establishment of parish schools, the statute punishing fornication with death, was suffered to sleep in the grave of the stern fanatics who had given it birth.

*The legitimation of children, by subsequent marriage became the Roman law under the Christian emperors. It was the canon law of modern Europe, and has been established in Scotland from a very remote period. Thus a child born a bastard, if his parents afterwards marry, enjoys all the privileges of seniority over his brothers afterwards born in wedlock. In the Parliament of Merton, in the reign of Henry III. the English clergy made a vigorous attempt to introduce this article into the law of England, and it was on this occasion that the Barons made the noted answer, since so often appealed to; Quod nolunt leges Angliæ mutare; quæ huc usque usitata sunt approbate. With regard

without the ceremonies of the church are considered as irregular, and the parties usually submit to a rebuke for their conduct, in the face of their respective congregations, which is not, however, necessary to render the marriage valid. Burns, whose marriage it will appear, was irregular, does not seem to have undergone this part of the discipline of the church.

Thus, though the institutions of Scotland are in many particulars favourable to a conduct among the peasantry founded on foresight and reflection, on the subject of marriage the reverse of this is true. Irregular marriages, it may be naturally supposed, are often improvident ones, in whatever rank of society they occur. The children of such marriages, poorly endowed by their parents, find a certain degree of instruction of easy acquisition; but the comforts of life, and the gratifications of ambition, they find of more difficult attainment in their native soil; and thus the marriage laws of Scotland conspire with other cir cumstances, to produce that habit of emigration, and spirit of adventure, for which the people are so remarkable.

The manners and appearance of the Scottish peasantry do not bespeak to a stranger the degree of their cultivation. In their own country, their industry is inferior to that of the same description of men in the southern division of the island. Industry and the use. ful arts reached Scotland later than England; and though their advance has been rapid there, the effects produced are as yet far inferior, both in reality and in appearance. The Scottish farmers have in general neither the opulence nor the comforts of those of Englandneither vest the same capital in the soil, nor Their clothreceive from it the same return. ing, their food, and their habitations, are al most every where inferiort. Their appearance in these respects corresponds with the appearance of their country; and under the operation of patient industry, both are improving. Industry and the useful arts came later into Scotland than into England, because the security of property came later. With causes of internal agitation and warfare similar to those which occurred to the more southern nation, the people of Scotland were exposed to more imminent hazards, and more extensive and destructive spoliation, from external war. Occupied in the maintenance of their independence against their more powerful neighbours, to this were necessarily sacrificed the arts of peace, and at certain periods, the flower of their population. And when the union of the

to what constitutes a marriage, the law of Scotland, as explained above, differs from the Roman law, which required the ceremony to be performed in facie ecclesiæ.

These remarks are confined to the class of farmers; the same corresponding inferiority will not be found in the condition of the cottagers and labourers, at least in the article of food, as those who examine this subject impartially will soon discover.