and injured party is not involved in any previously contracted engagement, and must naturally be slow to enter again into a connexion, in which the best feelings of the heart had been so sorely wounded. The greatest advantage of all perhaps would be, that such an enactment would provide the same law for all the classes of society, instead of leaving the humbler to form illicit connexions under the imperfect divorces of the ecclesiastical law, or to separate without any authority whatsoever, and abandon themselves to a course of profligacy, in their inability to procure a regular and authorized divorce.

For carrying into execution such a law as is proposed, it would not be necessary to extend the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts, but it might even be expedient that questions of divorce should be wholly withdrawn from them, and referred altogether to the constitutional and satisfactory determination of juries. What objection could be urged against submitting to their cognisance the entire question of the dissolution of a marriage, instead of referring to them the question concerning the injury sustained, and to the legislature the subsequent question concerning the maintenance of the nuptial union? Might it not be enacted, that the jury, impanelled to try the question of injury, and to estimate in money the wrong sustained, should also, by another and separate verdict, pronounce whether the plaintiff in the suit had been guilty of connivance, or of culpable negligence? The latter is at present reserved to the consideration of the legislature, so far as it belongs to the consideration of the dissolution of the marriage. A jury must, however, take it into consideration in estimating the injury, for by this consideration does it determine, whether there should be any abatement in the estimate, or whether the damages should be merely nominal. Two distinct verdicts, however, appear to be necessary, for no line of general distinction could be drawn, so that a mere verdict of damages should decide the question of the dissolution of a marriage. It would be impracticable to determine generally how much the estimate of damages might have been diminished by a consider

ation of misconduct proved against the plaintiff, and therefore it would be necessary to have a specific verdict, declaring the plaintiff entitled to the relief afforded by a dissolution of the marriage. This is the more necessary, as it is at present not unusual to allow the damage to be estimated without opposition, it being understood that the plaintiff would not require payment, so that nominal might apparently be converted into real damages, for procuring permission to complete the adulterous intrigue which had been the occasion of the suit.

The proposed law might accord, ingly determine, that in every case in which a jury should have granted damages on a charge of criminal intercourse, the same jury should be required also to declare by a separate verdict, whether the plaintiff had been guilty of connivance, or negligence, in regard to that intercourse, and that, if this other verdict should be favourable to the plaintiff, so that in the opinion of the jury he should be fairly entitled to a dissolution of the marriage, the marriage should be dissolved without any further authority. By such a law the remedy would, as our Saviour appears to have designed, lie open to aggrieved persons of either sex, and at the same time, as appears also to have been observed in the doctrine delivered by him, no more than a tacit permission would be given for other marriages of the persons offending. If such a law should be enacted for Scotland, equally as for the remainder of the United Kingdom, it would put an end to the strange and most inconvenient discrepancy at present existing under a common government, one part of the United Kingdom granting divorces, as it is conceived, with all the laxity of the civil law of Rome, but by a statute refusing, in every case of adultery, to the offending party the liberty of entering into another marriage, and the other granting divorces only by statutes enacted for individuals in the single case of adultery, and imposing no direct restriction in regard to marriage on offenders, the former also granting a divorce on the application of either party, and the latter limiting its interpositions to the case of the injured husband.

A SURROGATE.

WHEN we ventured in a late number to express our opinion of the state of the country, in such plain and emphatic terms as seemed to us suitable to the occasion, we little imagined that we were about to excite so much of the virtuous alarm of those whose nice gentility is shocked by the mention of any thing so coarse as the rights of the common people. We congratulate these very refined and worthy personages upon their newly-found sensibility to the excellence of our institutions, and we only entreat that they would be pleased to exercise their zeal amongst some of their friends where it may be really useful, rather than upon ourselves, whose most ardent desire it is, and ever has been, to preserve those institutions in their strength and purity, even when deserted by those whom we had fondly, and, as it appears, foolishly looked upon as their faithful guardians. It is our fashion to speak out boldly and plainly; and whatever may be the advantages which attend versatility in these times, we certainly have no stomach for the experiment, but must take leave to speak out, even as we have been wont. Since, however, very learned, or very refined people sometimes do not understand plain language, by reason of its very plainness, we are willing, without desiring to be particularly complimentary, to seek in this fact, the solution of the strange interpretation which has been put by some upon what we have said. To this must we attribute the cleaving the general ear with horrid speech, relative to "levelling principles," and the less articulate noise about" Spencean doctrines," the which, in hollow murmurs, we have been charged withal. These expert logicians, running with a nice and spider-like dexterity along the thread of an argumentum ab exemplo, spring from the assertion of a fact to the maintenance of a general principle, and thence look down, in all but speechless horror, upon the extent of revolution which their dialectic vision places before their eyes. Now, as we ourselves once went to school, we have no objection to the logical machinery, so as it were applied

with due precision; but as the drawing of inferences is an operation which requires rather a steady application of the intellectual eye, we should recommend practitioners, and particularly such as sit in dark libraries, to have recourse to their best spectacles ere they begin. For ourselves, we must object to this per saltum sort of logic, this leaping to conclusions in the dark, and this substitution of erroneous imputation for adverse argument.

If, however, we have, on the one hand, to regret the misapprehension of our plain and honest endeavours, we have, on the other, to rejoice in the sympathy of feeling, with which those whose sympathy we more regard, have hailed our exposition of true Tory principles-of principles which, while they maintain the due order and proportion of each separate rank in the state, maintain also that protection and support are the right of all, so long as there are the means, within the state, of affording them. In opposition to those cold and heartless politicians, who, with the words liberty and liberality ever in their mouths, look with scientific composure upon a people's sufferings, we would say, govern the people, and govern them strictly, for their good, but see that they are fed. The sort of liberty which the Liberals afford, is something like that which he would bestow who should turn his steed loose in the desert, with many encomiums upon his own magnanimity, forgetting, or not caring to remember, that while he gave the animal his freedom, he deprived him of his food. As Tories, we maintain that it is the duty of the people to pay obedience to those set in authority over them: but it is also the duty of those in authority to protect the people who are placed below them. They are not to sit in stately grandeur, and see the people perish, nor, indeed, are they ever to forget that they hold their power and their possessions upon the understanding that they administer both more for the good of the people at large, than the people would do, if they had the administration of both themselves.

If this were not Tory doctrine, we

should be ashamed of the name in which we glory; but because it is Tory doctrine; because it is the doctrine of genuine practical freedom, deduced from the precepts of our religion, and sanctioned by the principles of humanity; because it is all this, we grieve, aye, and are filled with disgust and indignation, at the pernicious folly which runs counter to it.

But to maintain that the poor have a right to be cared for, is, according to the science of liberal politicians, to advocate dangerous and levelling principles. We protest against such liberal interpretation. It is to advocate the principles of the Bible. It is to advocate the principles of the wisest philosophers of antiquity-the principles of the common law* of England, and of that illustrious statesman, under whose auspices the statute for the parochial relief of the poor was first enacted; but it is not to advocate any thing which is not strictly constitutional.

When we admonish those who revel in abundance and in luxury respecting the wretched condition of the common people, and tell them of the necessity which exists of a better distribution of those gifts which they unfeelingly monopolize, and when at the same time we protest against levelling principles, we are guilty of no inconsistency, or, if we are, it is an inconsistency which we share with those whose example we do not fear to follow. Cicero, in the first book of his "Offices," (we quote from the excellent translation of Dr Cockman, for the greater ease of certain critics that we wot of, who are far more clever than classical,) tells his son Marcus, that "those who design to be partakers in the government should be sure to remember those two precepts of Plato: First, to make the safety and interest of their citizens the great aim and design of all

their thoughts and endeavours, without ever considering their personal advantage. And, secondly, so to take care of the whole collective body of the Republic, as not to serve the interest of any one party, to the prejudice of or neglecting of all the rest." Now, he who recommends these as the principles of good government, was so far from being a leveller, that in the second book of the same work, he expressly reprobates levelling doctrines, and describes an assertion of Marcius Philippus the tribune, which favoured such opinions, as "a very pernicious and desperate saying, directly tending to bring all things to a level, which is the greatest misfortune that can befall any people."

But we have done with this controversy. The time has been when we should not have desired better amusement than to enter the lists with our adversaries, and break a lance in the field of argument, merely for the sake of victory; but we have fallen upon evil days and evil times, when graver matters demand our attention. We shall now, therefore, turn to the more serious object of this paper; namely, that of offering some brief considerations upon the domestic policy of the country.

In the present unhappy state of the mass of the population of these kingdoms, it cannot be supposed that the government will long delay the assembling of Parliament, or that, when assembled, they will long postpone that enquiry into the state of the country which circumstances so imperatively demand. It must be ascertained, so far as examination can ascertain it, what the causes are which have produced so deep and general a distress, as that which prevails; and next, it must be examined what relation subsists between these causes, and the political system we have been of late pursuing-whether the distress has its origin in the measures of the go

vernment; in which case the course to be taken will be evident; or supposing this not to be made out, whether the present system, or a different one, is that best calculated to extricate us from the gloomy position in which we find ourselves.

From the peculiar species of candour which distinguishes the ministerial leader in the House of Commons, we shall probably have an assurance that he considers it the most "manly" course to avow that great distress exists, but that he is sure it is only one of those temporary depressions to which all great commercial countries are liable, and that he confidently trusts to the excellent good sense of the English people, for bearing with their difficulties while they are inevitable, &c. &c. &c. We think we may, without violence to probability, and on that best ground of anticipation, the experience of the past, venture to predict, that in some such courteous and unmeaning fashion, he will endeavour to avoid a subject, which he will be unwilling to grapple with. We trust, that the time is come when some persons will be found in the House of Commons, with energy and industry sufficient to compel a strict investigation of things as they are, and to treat as it deserves any attempt to slip out of the subject, by the utterance of certain polite and vague generalities, which do not go even the smallest conceivable distance beneath the surface of the matter in hand. We hope that the time has gone by, when men will be content with mere words which mean nothing, or, if any thing, not that which makes the matter a whit clearer than it was before. It is really amazing, how, even in matters of the first importance, those who propound difficulties are satisfied with answers which are no more than the statement of some other difficulty, which they are induced to believe has some relation to the question. Nothing, for instance, is more common than to hear the distress of the people accounted for by "over production," while other sages are assuring us at the same time, that with such an increased and increasing population, it is in vain to expect that we can continue to have enough for all.

The first solution is a paradox, and

the second, which has the advantage of being intelligible, insinuates that which is not true. If one were to say that a man was miserably poor, and the reason was that his pockets were overflowing with money, it would certainly appear to most people, rather an absurd assignment of a cause; and yet, it is not more so than the unexplained and broad assertion, that the people are distressed, because there is an over-production of commodities. If over-production mean the produce of more than enough, how can that be the cause that the people have not enough? But if the matter be pushed a little farther, as rational men ought to push it, until they see some relation between cause and effect, they will no doubt discover that over production only means a greater produce than there is a demand for in the market; and then immediately follows the important political question, why should there not be a demand in the market for the commodities, the want of which distresses the people, and for which they would be but too happy to give their labour in exchange? This will bring the enquirer to the root of the matter; and it will be for him to examine whether the tendency of our policy has not been directly to diminish the value of domestic labour, which is the only equivalent the poor man can bring into the market; and to cause producers to depend upon a foreign demand, which is repaid in luxuries, used only by the rich, rather than upon the home demand, which circulates desirable commodities amongst the poor.

We have taken this instance of a very ordinary answer to those who enquire concerning the cause of public distress, in order to shew how idle it is, to take as a reply, a parcel of words which convey no satisfactory meaning, instead of sifting the matter to the bottom, and coming to something tangible, something that will bear to be argued about. We really do hope that the authors and abettors of our new system of policy will no longer be suffered to run away with the matter by mere talk, and quotations at large of custom-house returns, without the least particle of proof that such returns are true, either in spirit or in letter. We hope that they will be pinned

down (if we may use so homely an expression) to broad, distinct, and tangible facts, and forced to a satisfactory explanation, or put to shame, if that be indeed possible, by an open exposure of their incompetency. It is of great importance that no honest man in the House of Commons should be deterred from the task of rigid cross examination, which the state of the country makes it his duty to undertake, by any fear of the book learning, and the ready jargon about capital, and surplus profits, and so forth, with which these men of the new school seek to scare plain common sense. Let plain facts be steadily kept in view, and plain answers be sternly insisted upon; let there be no juggling, or bandying of pedantic phrases, when so great a matter as the misery of the whole mass of the common people is in question. The gentlemen pensioners and placemen of the new system have actually talked themselves into a kind of confused belief in its truth, because they have never been forced from behind their rampart of hard words, nor compelled to maintain their cause with the ordinary weapons of universally intelligible language.

As our new system of policy, with respect to trade and currency, has now had the benefit of a sufficient period of trial to prove its efficacy, or the contrary; it will be for its advocates to shew what practical good has arisen from it, and what class of the community is better, richer, happier, than before this bright light of political wisdom broke in upon our councils, and caused us to make alterations so important. If they can shew nothing of this kind, and in the present state of the country a different hypothesis is monstrous, the negative argument would be quite sufficient to give the victory to the adherents of the old system; for, in the affairs of a nation, alteration without improvement is an evil. But it would be well that those who are persuaded of the positively evil tendencies of the new system, should be prepared to show how the system operates in the production of distress and calamity, and thus come upon their opponents with the united force of argument and fact. We really think there is but little difficulty in this; yet in all matters of political

discussion, however obvious they appear, it is best to proceed cautiously, and not to venture upon too wide a field; for the liberals-to whom it must be conceded, that they are much more adroit in matters of speech, than the professors of what we conceive better principles-will be ready enough to seize upon one weak point, and by overturning it, throw an air of defeat upon a whole argument, which they have scarcely touched. The arguments, therefore, which they have hitherto produced, should be closely scanned, and their train of reasoning followed down to the point where the difference appears between what has happened, and what they argued would happen; and let it be put to them to explain the discrepancy if they can. In our opinion, the advocates of free trade have always argued, taking as an admitted principle, that which common experience proves to be false; namely, that all the labour which we save by getting from another country a commodity cheaper than we can ourselves produce it, is immediately turned to some other profitable account. Now we maintain, that in practice this does not happen, but that while we suppose we are getting the foreign commodity on terms more favourable to the nation, we actually render those who were formerly employed in its produce at home, totally unproductive, the country being at the same time burdened with their support. a year or two ago, a Political Economist, whose dictum is considered as cogent as "proof of holy writ," amongst the Whigs, informed us in the Edinburgh Review, that by the admission of foreign corn we might obtain the same quantity of food with the labour of a million and a half instead of two millions of people; and then he goes on to say, that "it is clear to demonstration, that after the fall of prices the surplus half million of hands would be employed in some other pursuit, and consequently, that the produce of their labour would be so much clear gain-so much of positive addition to the previous wealth and riches of the country." This is the ordinary language of the sect, and yet we put it to the common experience of any man who sees what is passing around him, whether it be

But