YORKSHIRE.

Wakefield Education Return. This document, prepared by the parochial authorities, pursuant to an order of the House of Commons, has just been forwarded to the Home Secretary, by which it appears that there are 2649 children under instruction at the different schools within the township, viz. :—

Of the above number of schools, four are confined to the Established Church, and two to the Dissenters. Fourteen have been established since 1818.

IRELAND.

Irish Tobacco. The commissioners for the purchase of Irish tobacco are now at Drogheda, where 17,031 lbs. had been collected by the Excise, of which 12,000lbs. were forwarded to the King's stores, where they were classified and burnt, like the former quantities. The only three growers in the Drogheda district having quantities on hand were Baron Foster, Henry Smith, Esq., of Athboy, county of Meath, and Thomas Brodigan, Esq., of Piltown, in the same county. The total quantity on hand in Ireland, as returned from the different excise collections on the 1st of July last, was 1,152,802 lbs., a quantity fully equal to 1000 hogsheads, the duty on which, at 3s. per lb., would amount to 172,9201. The largest returns are from Kilkenny and Wexford; that from Dublin amounted to 171,000 lbs., of which 101,017 lbs. have been burnt; 20,000 lbs. are in the hands of a merchant who has a negotiation pending with the Treasury; and 35,000 lbs. are supposed to remain unconsumed in the hands of manufacturers.

Allotment of Land to Labourers.-The following letter of the Duke of Bedford is from "Facts and Illustrations," published by the Labourers' Friend Society

"London, July 27, 1833.-Sir,-I have received the communication from the Labourers' Friend Society of the 13th ult. I am happy to say the more I see of the effects attending the allotment and cottage-garden system, the more I am persuaded of the advantages derived from it by the labouring classes. I am convinced that in a short time there will be scarcely a parish in Bedfordshire that has not adopted the system; and I am so satisfied with its beneficial results in the parishes where I possess property, that I am giving encouragement to it in other countiesDevonshire, Bucks, &c. &c."

Private Bills.-For the Session 1833 it appears, by the list just published, that there were in the whole 212 petitions for private bills presented. Of these, 18 immediately fell to the ground, no bill founded upon them having been read even a first time; and 26 more did not get far enough to receive the Royal Assent. The nature of the private bills now most petitioned for is somewhat indicative of the spirit and features of the times. A few years back, what most struck everybody was the vast number of Inclosure Bills annually petitioned for and passed. The list of the Sessions just concluded presents only 17. On the other hand, a species of bills have begun to make their appearance which, it requires no great prophetic power to say, will very shortly outnumber all others, albeit utterly unknown to the period to which we allude: we speak of Railway Bills. These, last Session, amounted to 14 petitioned for; and 10 actually passed. The number of common Road Bills petitioned for was 80.

THE

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

FRENCH LIBELS ON THE ENGLISH*.

"THE English have realized the fable of living with a window in their bosom." So says Madame de Stael. How, then, comes it to pass that they are so ill understood by foreigners, and that those who are nearest to them in proximity comprehend them the least? This is a problem that a little attention will enable us to solve. We shall attempt, at least, to throw some light upon it.

In the first place, it does not always happen that those who undertake the ambitious task of pourtraying the character of a people, of whose government, laws, institutions, and manners, they are practically ignorant, are the best qualified to perform it. They may be very ordinary personages in their own country, and the last on whom that country would devolve the honour of making it known to the rest of the world; yet they never doubt their own competency to describe the phenomena, and to lay open the hidden springs of the social system in large and powerful communities among whom, for a few months or years at farthest, they have merely sojourned as aliens and strangers.

In the second place, the very facts on which Madame de Stael founds her observation have deceived travellers of no mean capacity into the persuasion that everything in England may be seen at a glance; that because mystery is repugnant to the spirit of her government and the habits of her people, all the great principles of her civil constitution may be easily ascertained. There cannot be a greater fallacy. The transparency which seems to admit the most superficial observer into the knowledge of the national heart, which bares everything to public view, is the effect of causes which it requires the greatest subtlety to detect, and which, when discovered, operate with so strange a complexity, and so apparently in opposition to each other, that even the profoundest sagacity is often at a loss to account for the uniformity of the result, and the practical benefits which it confers. Of this even Mr. Rush, a very enlightened and liberal expositor of our national peculiarities, was not at first aware. The revelation came upon him slowly and by degrees. On his arrival, he imagined that, in the institutions, manners, and social habits of America, he possessed a key which would enable

* 1. Narrative of a Residence at the Court of London, by Richard Rush, Esq., Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary for the United States of America from 1817 to 1825.

2. Great Britain in 1833, by Baron D'Haussez.

Dec.-VOL. XXXIX. NO. CLVI.

2 D

him to understand whatever might appear to be incomprehensible in our civil and domestic economy; that being alike in so many particulars, it would be easy to trace the lines by which the one country diverged from the other, and thus clearly to mark their distinctive characters. But he was, at last, reluctantly convinced that Great Britain has no parallel, that she stands alone a colossal miracle among nations, an inexplicable wonder even to those most conversant with her history. His remarks are ingenious and striking. It is thus he introduces the fourteenth chapter of his exceedingly interesting narrative:

"A country is not to be understood by a few months residence in it. So many component parts go to make up the grand total, where civilization, and freedom, and power, are on a large scale, that the judgment gets perplexed. It pauses for examination. It must be slow in coming to conclusions if it would be right. Often it must change them. A member of the diplomatic corps, an enlightened observer, said to me, a few days ago, that, at the end of the first year, he thought he knew England very well; when the third had gone by, he began to have doubts; and that now, after a still longer time, his opinions were more unsettled than ever. Some he had changed entirely; others had undergone modification; and he knew not what fate was to befall the rest.

"There was reason in his remark. If it be not contradictory, I would say that he showed his judgment in appearing to have at present no judgment at all. The stranger sees in England prosperity the most amazing, with what seems to strike at the root of all prosperity. He sees the most profuse expenditure, not by the nobles alone, but large classes besides; and throughout classes far larger the most resolute industry supplying its demands and repairing its waste; taxation strained to the utmost, with an ability unparalleled to meet it; pauperism that is startling, with public and private charity unfailing to feed, clothe, and house it; the boldest freedom with submission to law; ignorance and crime so widely diffused as to appal, with genius, and learning, and virtue to reassure; intestine commotions predicted, and never happening; constant complaints of poverty and suffering, with constant increase in aggregate wealth and power-these are some of the anomalies which he sees. How is he at once to pass judgment on them all -he, a stranger, when the foremost of the natives, after studying them a lifetime, do nothing but differ?"

If these observations are entitled to any weight, what value can we attach to nine-tenths of the foreign literature of which our country is made the subject? especially to the productions which have recently issued from the press? We may, indeed, be amused by the German Prince; his coxcombry and his sentimentalism, his affectation and his vanity, may help us to while away a tedious hour,—that is, if time hang heavy on our hands;-under the momentary influence of bile, we may threaten our Italian libeller with the knout; and when we wish to impose upon ourselves a severe penance, sit down to the hopeless task of enumerating the countless blunders of the French Baron. But as for information, or anything approaching to just and enlarged views on any subject connected with the professed object which these writers have undertaken to elucidate, there is not the slightest evidence.— The tourist, the traveller, and the exile, have given us their distorted and isolated facts; they have gossiped, indeed, on every possible topic of interest suggested by the scenes and circumstances around them; they have favoured us with their lofty and their little speculations, and

have contrived to make us acquainted with a philosophy of their ownthe philosophy of ignorance: all this they have done, and it was gratuitous. But where is England? Where is the Great Britain of whose politics, statistics, government, laws, and customs their pages were to render us familiar? The people on the continent may read these works, and know just as much of our national character and institutions as before. A third reason why continental authors, and especially those of France, so often fail when they attempt to describe Great Britain, is to be found in their political prejudices. The Liberals see in our constitution an imaginary despotism, at total variance with all their notions of popular freedom. The Ultras regard our democratic tendencies with equal aversion, and denounce our free institutions as the nurseries of anarchy and revolution; thus reading, as they fondly believe," a great moral lesson" to the innovators at home, who, in their insane violence, have successfully opposed a constitutional government to a legitimate and worn-out tyranny. To writers of this latter description it is in vain that Britain lays open the fair and ample page of her prosperity; that she lives with "the window in her bosom," and invites the scrutinising inquiry of all who wish to understand the secrets of her political and moral greatness; they read, indeed, only to be the more perplexed. The light shines upon their darkness, but they comprehend it not. Some are wilfully blind, resolved to pervert and misrepresent all they see and hear, imagining that they exalt their own country by depreciating ours. Every nation has its Mrs. Trollope. We do Baron D'Haussez, however, the justice to admit, that while breathing the spirit of his party, he has written with perfect honesty, and with a more generous feeling than belongs to many of his class. His work is just such an one as might have been expected from an Ultra Royalist, and a member of the Polignac administration. Mr. Rush's narrative at once convinces us, that the free alone can justly appreciate freedom. The same objects presented themselves to his observation and elicited his comments, to which Baron D'Haussez has given prominence in his volumes, but through what a different medium are they contemplatedwhat opposite impressions do they produce!

The American Envoy writes like a statesman who considers the happiness of mankind as the grand end to be pursued by those who govern them, and regards the privileged orders as invested with their immunities not for their own sakes, but solely that they may advance the true interests of the communities over which they preside and on which they depend. The Bourbon minister, on the contrary, cherishes towards kings a devout and superstitious reverence; every appendage of royalty is, in his eyes, sacred. All that appertains to thrones is to be approached with the awe inspired by the presence of a divinity. Monarchs, legitimate monarchs, however base and plebeian their remote origin-whatever contempt they may pour upon the slaves, too happy in being permitted to breathe under their august sovereignty-are to play their fantastic tricks before high heaven, and to be adored at the very moment they are trampling on the rights of outraged and insulted humanity. The Baron is of opinion, that the English princes of the blood are unmindful of their dignity when they deign to mingle with the people at their festivals of charity; and from this circumstance augurs the ultimate degradation of the royal house. He does not, or will not, under

stand, that in England loyalty is devotion to the laws, and that the monarch holds his sceptre by the same tenure which secures to his meanest subject his place in the social system; that to bind themselves up with that system is the best policy of those who have the greatest stake in its prosperity; and that where the people as well as the sovereign are the makers of the laws, there should be a community of interests between them, an interchange of human kindness and fellowship, where, regardless of factitious distinctions, they can occasionally associate as members of the same great family. What fills the Baron with alarm inspires Mr. Rush with confidence, and he views with complacency what the other dreads as the presage of all evil.

The ex-minister of an ex-sovereign ought surely to remember, that revolutions do not overturn constitutional, but legitimate thrones; and that the victims of popular commotions have ever been those who have lived above, and not with the people. The will of an autocrat is a slight barrier when opposed to the will of a nation; but laws which control both, preserve both within their proper limits. Mr. Rush comprehends this; the Baron does not; it is easy to divine the reason.

The first part of "Great Britain in 1833" is devoted to the consideration of the lighter manners of the class of society in which the writer moves; and as this portion of the work does not involve principles, but simply regards matters of taste, we shall content ourselves with merely pointing out some of its most obvious discrepancies with facts which have fallen under our own cognizance.

We are certainly not among the number who look upon the cuisine of a domestic establishment with indifference. Meals are with us an affair of some moment, and though not gourmands in the offensive sense of the term, we think that to dine is something more than to eat. We give to France its deserved pre-eminence in the science of cookery, and have sometimes been inclined to the opinion of Governeur Morris, of American and diplomatic celebrity, that if " the French had revolutionized the kitchens of Europe instead of its courts, they would have rendered a service that no party would have called in question." Still we think Baron D'Haussez has most unreasonably depreciated the matériel and the arrangements of an English dinner. Can he refer to the elegant entertainments of our noblesse, or even of our wealthy commoners, when he says, "to cover a table with immense pieces, boiled or roasted, and to demolish them in the confusion in which chance has placed them, appears to be the whole gastronomic science of the country"?

The description that follows is equally unsupported by truth; his complaints are utterly groundless;-families of any consideration have their French cooks-fish are not always boiled-eggs are not excluded from English dinner-tables—omelettes are much more in vogue than roast beef-and the entremets are neither scantily supplied, nor are they exclusively composed of creams and insipid jellies. We know not in what circles the Baron was regaled, but really we were never present at an entertainment where a considerable time was lost in fetching our plate for any dish of which we wished to partake. The account of the winedrinking after dinner-the ladies waiting for the gentlemen till the coffee was cold-with all the other train of circumstances which Baron D'Haussez tells us is descriptive of Great Britain in 1833-may apply