the liability of the land to defray the war charges of the state, by attaching those liabilities to the individual laborers, while the land holders were allowed to carry off a free land. This, in fact, is the greatest political change that has taken place in England of infinitely more importance to the present generation than the revolution that expelled the Stuarts. The prerogatives of the crown could not have failed to undergo changes in the natural order of evolution. As knowledge progressed, the king, from a ruler, must have become an administrator. But the legal establishment of labor taxation, and the accordance of the land as the property of the aristocracy, fixed upon the country a system that had the appearance of right, and that brought with it the impress of imperial legislation; while it originated in the darkest ignorance or the most licentious overstretch of power, and could not fail to produce ultimately the most pernicious results. The tax-payers of England can never be sufficiently reminded, that there need have been no taxes had it not been for the alienation of the land from the state.

The enclosure of the common lands, again, was a proper measure, inasmuch as the lands were producing little; and every measure that caused the lands to produce more for the consumption of the country was so far beneficial. It would have been quite absurd to leave the common lands in pasture, while their enclosure would produce for the service of the country a much larger quantity of food. And the same argument that took away the lands of the peasantry, would now take away the lands of those proprietors who allow their lands to lie uncultivated.

On the effects of the enclosure of the common lands, we quote another passage from the same article in the Quarterly Review, July, 1829:

"Here, no doubt, it will be observed, that in every instance an allotment of land was, on the division of the waste, assigned to the owners of common rights," (incumbents, rather than owners ;)" and that an allotment in severalty, if properly attended to and cultivated, must have proved much more valuable to the cottager than what he had lost. If such had been the case, we readily admit that the division could not have proved detrimental to him; but, unfortunately, this very rarely happened. These allotments were assigned, under enclosure acts, not to the occupier, but the owner of the cottage. Few cottages were in the occupation of their owners; they generally, indeed, we may say universally, belonged to the proprietors of the neighboring farms; and the allotments granted in lieu of the extinguished common rights were generally added to the large farms, and seldom attached to the cottages. The cottages which were occupied by their owners had, of course, allotments attached to them; but these have by degrees passed by sale into the hands of some large proprietor in the neighborhood. De facto, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, the allotment has been detached from the cottage, and thrown into the occupation of some adjoining farmer.

"That such a change should have been attended with most important consequences, can excite no surprise in any reflecting mind. So far as it goes, a complete severance has been effected between the English peasantry and the English soil. The little farmers and cottiers of the country have been converted into day laborers, depending entirely upon daily earnings, which may, and frequently in point of fact do, fail them. They have now no land, upon the produce of which

they can fall as a reserve whenever the demand for labor happens to be slack. This revolution is unquestionably the true cause of the heavy and increasing burdens now pressing upon parishes in the form of poor-rates. Independently of all reasoning founded upon general principles, this is a truth capable of being substantiated by a mass of evidence, so clear and so well authenticated as to leave no room for doubt. In almost every instance the increase of poor-rates has kept pace visibly with the progress of enclosures."

The passage we have underlined a complete severance has been effected between the English peasantry and the English soil"-points out the great economical cause of England's periodical distress; a distress which, were it not for the poor-laws, would occasionally manifest itself (as it did in 1830–31) in tumultuous assemblages and breaches of the law. And assuredly that severance between the subjective labor and the objective soil will yet rectify itself. No class of society can be visited with long-continued evils, without entailing evil on the other classes. And though the manufactures of England, taking an expansion altogether unprecedented in the history of the world, were able to consume the redundant population, the time must come when the rate of increase will diminish, when the population shall find no maintenance either in the towns or in the country, and social changes, attended with a more equitable distribution of the sources of wealth, will result in spite of all that men can do to prevent them.

While the increase of the poor rates in England reached to such an extent, that in not a few cases the

half of the rental, and in the case of the parish of Cholesbury the whole of the rental, was absorbed; and while new legislative enactments were absolutely necessary to prevent the ruin of the land holders—it is singular to observe how little inquiry was made into the radical cause of England's pauperism. Rates and paupers are correlatives, and the rates increase because the paupers have increased. No remedial measure that attempts only to supply the wants of those who are paupers will ever reach the depths of pauperism; and while there is of course an imperative necessity to relieve a famished population, there is quite as great a necessity to inquire," Why does it happen, that in the richest country in the world a large portion of the population should be reduced to pauperism?" Until the causes of pauperism are satisfactorily ascertained, and until the remedy is applied to the cause, no remedial measure can do more than alleviate the evil. Apply the remedy to the cause, and the evil is eradicated. The cause, or at least one of the great causes, is that expressed in the words of the reviewer, "the severance between the English peasantry and the English soil;" and until the peasantry recover that soil, the inhabitants of England may rest satisfied that the curse of pauperism will pursue them; and if the remedy be not applied in time, that the vengeance of Heaven will be manifested against a nation-with so many privileges that allows her children to be condemned to want, and ignorance, and moral degradation.

Although we have presented the reader with this sketch of the historical politics of landed property, we attach little or no importance to it. No historical

argument is ever capable of deciding a present question of equity. Men must go forward, never backward. History may enlighten, may instruct, may teach us what has been, and may afford us the groundwork of an argument for anticipating what shall be in future; but history will not supply the motive for action, nor can it ever furnish the rule of action. For these we must look to the present times: the motive must be a living one, not a dead one; and the rule must be a rule that depends, not on one age rather than another, but a rule that always was valid had man been able to see it, that is valid now, and that will be valid when we shall have passed away, and our places are supplied by the generations that come after us. In the past we see the concrete manifestations of man's phenomena, we see the phases through which he has passed, and we may learn to extract or evolve the law of the direction in which he is progressing. In man's actual history, all variable as it is, like the outward appearances of nature, we behold a stupendous series of real phenomena, in which men and nations are the actors. The rulers and the ruled, the monarch, the aristocrat, and the serf, the priest, the artist, the mer. chant, and the soldier, all play their respective parts in man's political drama. Events roll on, and history records the scenes.

But beneath the outward variety of man's historic representations, can we not plunge below the surface and seize some stable element, some scheme, some law, some generalized fact, some plan or principle on which the drama has been constructed, some permanent truth that evolves amid all the apparent diversity