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vellers on the ground of competition of interests with other landlords, whom our orator's argument supposes ready to give the barbarous accommodation which this one might refuse; would be very superfluous but for the gross unfairness, as to this point, of the passage we have quoted and, of another, (p. 18.) in which the traveller is represented as hinting to the post-boy that he means to dine at the next stage, and that if he does not bring him in in time, he will never go to his master's house again.' The acute maker of this speech saw clearly, that this threatened transfer of custom from one proprietor of post-horses to another, was the essen. tial basis of his argument against the application of a penal law to that proprietor. His interest, our orator argues, necessitates him to be servile and cruel, since by disobliging the traveller he would lose employment-the traveller instantly and ever after going to another inn, where no such humane regulations will retard him. Now what words can do justice to the mockery of maintaining an apparently, serious argument, on a ground so palpably taken from under the reasoner by the nature of the case? It being unavoidably present to his thoughts at the time, and it having been put in the most pointed form of words in Lord Erskine's printed speech, that such competition and transfers must be precluded by a law known to be equally restrictive on all the owners of posthorses. Can there be two places in England where a man could talk in this way without laughing out at his audience for gravely listening to him?

In prosecuting his argument, that people of wealth and rank might, if they pleased, do inuch, without the assistance of law, for the prevention of cruelty, the orator bestows some poignant sarcasms on hypocritical pretensions to sensibility and he will be cheered with animation by those who are in earnest for that prevention, at each vindictive sentence applied to such personages as those described in the following passages.

One of the favourite instances [in exemplification of cruelty] in the fashionable female circles, as they are called, of this town, (and who appear, by the bye, to have been very diligently canvassed,) are the cases with which the members of these societies have been continually shocked, of coachmen whipping their horses in public places: one instance, by the way, by no means of magnitude enough to call for the interference of the Legislature. But be its magnitude what it will, why must the Legislature be called in? Are there no means (sufficient probably for punishing the offence adequately in each instance, but certainly for preventing the practice) in the power possessed by masters and mistresses! But apply to any of these ladies, and satisfy them, after much difficulty, that their coachman was the most active and the Vol. VI. 4 E

most in the wrong, in the struggle, which caused so much disturb. ance at the last Opera, and the answer probably would be, "Oh! to be sure it is very shocking; but then John is so clever in a crowd! the other night at Lady Such-a-one's, when all the world were périshing in the passage, waiting for their carriages, ours was up in an instant, and we were at Mrs. Such-a-one's half an hour before any one else. We should not know what to do if we were to part with him." Was it the coachman here who most deserved punishment, or was it for the parties here described to call for a law?' p. 19.

In an assembly of confessedly unequalled rank in point of integrity, there evidently could not be a more effectual way for putting a question in a train for speedy decision, than by stating it so that the decision, as on the one side or on the other, shall appear to be identical with the honesty or the bypocrisy of that assembly. Our orator therefore has put his grand objection against the law as proposed by Lord Erskine,-its making an invidious and iniquitous distinction between the higher and lower orders, into this argumentum ad hominem form. The bill, he represents to the assembly, not merely proposes certain specific laws against certain specified modes of cruelty, but promulgates a grand abstract principle against cruelty to animals in general. Well; what are usually called sports, such as hunting, shooting, and fishing, are as decidedly of the nature of cruelty as any thing in the world can be, and therefore cannot, one should think (we are using his own words) be allowed an instant; as being, more than any others, in the very line and point-blank aim of the statute, and having nothing to protect them but that which ought in justice and decency to be the strongest reason against them; namely, that they are the mere sports of the rich.' But, behold! this bill, founding itself, and taking to itself the highest credit for being founded, on this grand general principle, leaves and sanctions the rich in the most perfect possession of all these cruel sports. And who is it that is to pass this bill into a law? Why, says he, a house of hunters and shooters:' and after suggesting to them what a fine figure their legislation would make in the world, when the newspapers should come to record in one column a string of commitments under the Cruelty Bill,' and in another, all the savage incidents of a desperate chace, under the head of Sporting Intelligence,' he exclaims,

Was it possible that men could stand the shame of such statements, that this house which tolerated such sports, nay, which claimed them, as the peculiar privilege of the class to which it belonged, a house of hunters and shooters, should, while they left these untouched, be affecting to take the brute creation under their protection: and be pass

ing bills for the punishment of every carter or driver, whom an angry passenger should accuse of chastising his horses with over severity.' It was in vain to attempt to disguise the fact, that if with such a pre amble (as Lord E.'s) on our statues, and with acts passed in consequence to punish the lower classes for any cruelty inflicted upon animals, we continued to practise and to reserve in a great measure to our selve the sports of hunting, shooting and fishing, we must exhibit ourselves as the most hardened and unblushing hypocrites that ever shocked the feelings of ma nkind.' pp. 25, 26.

With great dexterity and success this assailant of the new scheme of legislation cuts away the line of distinction, by which Lord E. had endeavoured to save the decorum of the legislature, while it should be excluding a large proportion of the animal tribes from the protection of a bill professing to proceed on a general principle of humanity, by calling those excluded animals the 'unreclaimed,' or fere naturæ. 'Why,' says Mr. W., because they did not ask man's protection, were they to be liable in consequence to be persecuted and tormented by him? On the contrary, if he did nothing for their good, he ought the rather to be required to do nothing for their harm.' It was in truth a matter of no small perplexity, in proposing a solemn legislative recognition of a principle condemning cruelty to animals in general, to explain to the persons. who were to make this recognition, how they might do it in perfect consistency with the retention of a legal right to seek sport in the infliction of pain. Perhaps on this part of the subject the mover of the bill was less fully prépared than on the other parts, to meet that extreme moral scrupulosity, which he could not be unaware he should find awake to every point of consistency. We really do not see not see how the proposition could be better introduced than in some such manner as the following.There is a great deal of cruelty exercised pn on brute animals in this country, which we certainly have the power in some degree to prevent; and I will endeavour to show that it is therefore our duty to do so. If, however, we adopt a formal measure on the subject, the assertion of something in the form of a general prin ciple condemnatory of cruelty, seems highly proper as the basis of any particular enactments, and may also be useful by exciting thought and impressing the moral sense. Then as to the particular enactments, let us try how many we can agree upon. You and I know very well that the pursuits of the sportsman are extremely cruel; but you and I also know very well that it would be utterly in vain for

me to propose to this assembly any restrictions on those sports. I am sorry for the appearance of inconsistency that will arise from this exception, especially as it is an exception made so insidiously in your own favour. But in a matter so urgent, it is better that something should be done, with whatever defects or inconsistency, than that nothing should. I think the enormous sum of pain that may be prevented by such regulations as we probably might concur to make, a far more important consideration, than the uniformity of the character of our legislation.. Retain, if it must be so, your asserted right and your practice of hunting, shooting, and fishing; but pray do not go to fancy it an indispensable point of beneficence to the people, to secure to them also an inviolable unlimited privilege to be cruel, in another way.'

It remains only to make one slight observation on the sort of consistency so carefully maintained in this speech between the professions of regret for the sufferings of animals, and certain other professions. Near the beginning of this article, we called these compassionate professions cant-whether justly or not, will appear immediately. After adverting to Lord Erskine's melancholy exhibition of cruelties and victims, (an exhibition in a great measure confined to horses, asses, and cattle appointed for slaughter,)' our orator, as we have seen, most strenuously insists, that the cruelties perpetrated by the vulgar on these animals are equalled, if not exceeded, by those that take place in the aristocratic amusements of hunting, &c. &c. Of course the senator expects it to be understood that he regrets also the sufferings of the victims of these amusements. But lest there should be the possibility of a doubt as to his feelings in this case, he takes care to say that,

"He begged not to be understood as condemning the sports_to which he had been alluding, and much less as charging with cruelty all those who took delight in them, cruel as the acts themselves undoubtedly were.' Though no sportsman himself, he should lament the day, should it ever arrive, when from false refinement and mistaken hu-' manity, what are called field-sports, (or sports indeed of almost any kind) should be abolished in this country, or fall into disuse. So far from arraigning those who followed them, his doctrine had ever been, that, strange as it might seem, cruel sports did not make cruel people!' p. 27.

We are, if possible, more pleased than even any of our readers will be, to have reached the end of these observations.' Nothing could have made us feel it pardonable to extend them so disproportionately, and so very far beyond the

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first intention, but the notorious fact, that the important branch of morality to which they relate, is not only disregarded in practice, by numberless reputable sort of members of the community, but also very criminally neglected in the instruction of parents, tutors, and preachers. It seemed worth while to examine a little, how far the persons so practising, and so neglecting, would do wisely to seek to draw any thing like sanction or extenuation from the opinions of the departed senator, or the decisions of the assembly in which this speech purports to have been de livered.

Art. III. The Life of Erasmus, with an Account of his Writings. Reduced from the larger work of Dr. Jortin. By A. Laycey, Esq. 8vo. pp. 392. price 8s. 6d. Lackington and Co. 1809.

THOUGH the genius of Erasmus was not of the high

est order, nor his virtues without a considerable alloy of human imperfection, yet his life must be ranked among the happiest subjects of biography.-We fall in with this celebrated scholar, after passing over a long and dreary track of history that presents little but absurdity, barbarism, and superstition. We find him, perhaps, somewhat vain and overbearing; but his good sense-his open and communicative temper-together with a perpetual flow of wit and humour, make him a most instructive and agreeable companion. As the greatest men of his age considered his friendship an addition to their honours, he naturally introduces us to an acquaintance with the principal actors in the political and literary, as well as religious affairs of those times. The useful and conspicuous part he bore, in the most extraordinary revolution in religion and literature the world ever saw, gives his story a peculiar interest to those who wish to investigate the origin and progress of an event, from which the nations of Europe have derived so many advantages, and whose influence is not yet entirely exhausted, There are few persons of any learning who have not, at some time or other, been instructed by his sense, or diverted with his satire; so that the account of his life cannot be perused without exciting in our minds the feelings with which we remember our best benefactors.-Erasmus furnishes, too, a very edifying example of persevering application. Without friends, without money, without teachers,-sickly in constitution, and in spite of the tyranny oppression of his superiors, he became by an ardour that nothing could repel, and a diligence that knew no fatigue, the oracle of learning. Notwithstanding the opposition and

and