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On one remedial measure, the institution of parish schools," we are at issue with the present Writer. He deems it the

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first in importance, in practicability, and in efficacy.' And yef, in the very next sentence, he admits, what appears to us tantamount to a refutation of the foregoing assertion, that nothing of this kind can be successful or durable from the influence of law or of rules only;' that there must be a presiding mind on the spot, to invigorate such institutions, or even to keep them alive!' To the clergy of course, he adds, the duty especially belongs, of giving such institutions efficiency; and there is every reason to think that a sense of its high importance is daily spreading among them.' Will not this cold compliment be taken rather as a covert sarcasm? Alas! for the institutions which depend altogether for their success or durability on the presiding minds of professional inspectors!

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The following remarks are quite to our satisfaction.

While that disproportion exists between the wages of agricultural labour and the profits arising from it, the gain rests with the employer. If by a rise of wages his profits are much lessened, the worst land will go out of cultivation--less corn will be grown--and when free foreign competition is again let in, the difference of profit may be considerable. The loss however which during the existing lease falls upon the farmer, must soon be transferred to the landlord, supposing the demand for produce not to increase, or to be supplied at a cheaper rate from abroad. The country at large however seem convinced that foreign competition ought for a time to be excluded. Meanwhile an opportunity will be afforded for directing the surplus of agricultural labour into some new channel: but the labour that is retained ought surely to be paid adequately by its own employer, and not be driven to solicit extraneous and indirect assistance. Let this natural state of things be once restored, and the several interests will speedily settle of their own accord into the right places.

There is now no scarcity of subsistence : it is a civil not a physical embarrassment we labour under-and the advance of wages, would have no tendency, as in times of scarcity, to increase the evil. The wages are in fact advanced, but not charged to the right person-nor measured by the true standard. They are measured by the standard of parochial subsistence--and are therefore either too low for wages, or too high for alms. It is of the last importance that a marked difference should exist between the two things.' pp. 108-110.

Upon the whole, we may congratulate the public that members and tutors of the learned University of Oxford, are beginning to turn their attention to subjects of this nature; and we feel not less disposed to congratulate the Author of these Letters, on the progress we think he has very perceptibly made during the interval between the two publications, in the study of political economy. This progress seems to be indicated by

the very mottoes he has chosen. The over-hackneyed quotation, Laissez nous faire, which it is so easy to reiterate, and so nice a point to apply, is discarded from the title-page of the second Letter, to make room for the following just correction of the sentiment by Burke: It is one of the finest problems in legislation, what the State ought to take upon itself to direct by the 'public wisdom, and what it ought to leave with as little inter'ference as possible to individual exertion.'

Bishop Watson undertook to lecture on chemistry at a time when he was perfectly unacquainted with the elements of the science, and be finished by being one of the first chemical philosophers of the day. We wish there were at each university a professorship of political economy.

Art. II. 1. Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay. With Engravings. pp. xxxviii. 319, 4to. London. 1819.

2. Enquiry concerning the Site of Ancient Palibothra, conjectured to lie within the Limits of the modern District of Bhaugulpoor; according to Researches made on the Spot in 1811 and 1812, 1814 and 1815. By William Francklin. 4to. Plates and Maps. London, Part I. 1815, Part II. 1817.

THE

HE mass of books relating to India and the adjacent regions, now lying before us, presents at once a gratifying and a formidable aspect. They are not of a kind to be put aside, and the value of their matter requires that a fair exposition of their contents be communicated to our readers; but since, in many particulars, they relate to similar subjects, they will demand somewhat more than ordinary discretion in the selection of the more interesting points, and in the avoidance of unnecessary repetition. The first of the two volumes which claim our present attention, contains the primitiæ of a new Literary Association, established in a commanding part of our Eastern possessions, and promising an active co-operation with the Asiatic Society of Bengal. If, in this first published collection, the Bombay Society have not produced essays of so striking a character as some of those which have appeared in the volumes of the Calcutta Transactions, yet, it has sent forth a series of very valuable and more than commonly interesting papers, which, while they communicate much valuable information to the systematic inquirer, are replete with interest to those who read for less specific instruction,

The Literary Society of Bombay was instituted in 1804, and held its first meeting on the 26th November in that year, under the presidency of Sir James Mackintosh, whose opening Discourse, then read, is the introductory article of the present volume. Sir James begins with general observations, and

afterwards points out the various objects of moral and physical inquiry to which he would direct the active efforts of literary and scientific men. A Note' of considerable length and value is appended to this address, including remarks on the state of the population in the adjoining country, and tables illustrative of the preceding statements, or rather furnishing some of the facts on which the note is chiefly founded. It appears, that in the year 1804, a severe famine afflicted the provinces adjacent to Bombay, and that it had been, in some degree, felt in 1803. The population of the neighbouring territory flocked into the island, in the faint hope that the liberality of their wealthier countrymen, and the active charity of European residents, might afford them the means of supporting existence. Every exertion appears to have been made; but notwithstanding this, the deaths of 1804 were trebled in amount, and the effects were visible in the returns of the succeeding year.

But the more striking feature of this paper may be traced in the contradiction-partial, it is true, but at the same time direct and fatal as far as it extends-which it furnishes to the hypothesis of Montesquieu, that in warm climates the females far outnumber the males, and that polygamy is the natural effect of this peculiarity. In support of this hazarded supposition, Bruce, with his characteristic audacity, advanced, palpably with no sufficient means of acquiring specific information, the extraordinary assertions, that in certain regions of Western Asia, the population contained a proportion of females, varying from two and a small fraction, to two and three-fourths, to one man ; that from Suez to the Straits, the proportion is four to one; and that the same numbers probably apply to the full extent of thirty degrees beyond the equator. In opposition to this, it appears from authentic and official documents, that in certain extensive districts in India, this is so far from according with facts, that the excess is actually somewhat on the other side! The Mahometans are the only class of the inhabitants of India, who indulge themselves in polygamy to any extent; and it is stated, that out of 20,000 who are resident in the island of Bombay, not more than one hundred have two wives, and only five individuals have three. Polygamy, Sir James remarks,

' arises from tyranny, not from climate; it degrades all women for the sake of a very few men. And the frame of society has confined its practice within such narrow limits, that it never can oppose any serious obstacle to beneficial changes in the moral habits, domestic relations, and religious opinions of the natives of India.'

We cannot, however, refrain from expressing our surprise and concern, that out of 10,324 individuals making up the total of

the female Mussulman population of the island of Bombay, not fewer than 1,200 should live by prostitution! In an early part of the Discourse, Sir James availed himself of the opportunity to deliver the following eloquent and just eulogy on the late Sir William Jones.

'On such an occasion as the present, it is impossible to pronounce the name of Sir William Jones without feelings of gratitude and reverence. He was among the distinguished persons who adorned one of the brightest periods of English literature. It was no mean distinction to be conspicuous in the age of Burke and Johnson, of Hume and Smith, of Gray and Goldsmith, of Gibbon and Robertson, of Reynolds and Garrick. It was the fortune of Sir William Jones to have been the friend of the greater part of these illustrious men. Without him, the age in which he lived would have been inferior to past times in one kind of literary glory. He surpassed all his contemporaries, and perhaps even the most laborious scholars of the two former centuries, in extent and variety of attainment. His facility in acquiring was almost prodigious, and he possessed that faculty of arranging and communicating his knowledge, which these laborious scholars very generally wanted. Erudition, which in them was often disorderly and rugged, and had something of an illiberal and almost barbarous air, was by him presented to the world with all the elegance and amenity of polite literature. Though he seldom directed his mind to those subjects of which the successful investigation confers the name of a philosopher, yet he possessed in a very eminent degree that habit of disposing his knowledge in regular and analytical order, which is one of the properties of a philosophical understanding. His talents as an elegant writer in verse were among his instruments for attaining knowledge, and a new example of the va riety of his accomplishments. In his easy and flowing prose we justly admire that order of exposition and transparency of language which are the most indispensable qualities of style, and the chief excellencies of which it is capable when it is employed solely to instruct. His writings every-where breathe pure taste in morals as well as in literature; and it may be said with truth, that not a single sentiment has escaped him which does not indicate the real elegance and dignity which pervaded the most secret recesses of his mind. He had lived perhaps too exclu. sively in the world of learning for the cultivation of his practical understanding. Other men have meditated more deeply on the constitution of society, and have taken more comprehensive views of its complicated relations and infinitely varied interests. Others have therefore often taught sounder principles of political science: but no man more warmly felt, and no author is better calculated to inspire, those generous sentiments of liberty without which the most just principles are useless and lifeless, and which will, I trust, continue to flow through the channels of eloquence and poetry into the minds of British youth? pp. xiii, xiv.

I. An Account of the Festival of Mamangom, as celebrated on the Coast of Malabar. By Francis Wrede, Esq.

Hamilton, in his account of the East Indies, published in

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1727, had given an imperfect, and, in some respects, erroneous description of this very extraordinary festival. He had stated, that it was celebrated every twelfth year, and that toward the close of the festivities, it was not unusual for such as chose to risk their lives in so desperate an attempt, though he seems to limit the allowed number to four, to attack the chief in the midst of his guards; and if they had succeeded in the daring enterprise of killing him thus defended, his crown would have been their recompense. A somewhat different statement is given by Mr. Wrede. The feast, which has not been celebrated for the last forty years, was duodecennially celebrated at Tirnavay, near a pagoda sacred to Sheeven. It was at one time under the presidency and guard of the Vellaterra rajabs, who were degraded from that honourable office, in consequence of the usurpation of the Zamorin. Unable to brook this abridgement of their privileges, at every repetition of the festival, some of the bravest of the Vellaterra chiefs and their followers, have successively perished in the attempt to reach the usurper in the midst of his guards.

It happened, however, towards the middle of the present century, that the Zamorin was in imminent danger of being murdered by a Nair chief, who, after having cut down with incredible bravery every man in his way, had already ascended the steps of the Zamorin's throne, when a Mapilla priest threw himself in his way, and gave the Zamorin time to save himself.

II. Remarks upon the Temperature of the Island of Bombay. By Major (now Lieutenant Colonel) Jasper Nicholls.

This paper consists of details, with a chart: we must content ourselves with this simple reference to them.

III. Translations from the Chinese, of Two Edicts; the one relating to the Condemnation of certain Persons convicted of Christianity; and the other, concerning the Condemnation of certain Magistrates in the Province of Canton. By Sir George Staunton.

These are two very interesting documents. The first recites, that the European Te-tien-tse, (Father Adeodato, a missionary at Pekin,) having been permitted to reside at the Chinese capital, for the purpose of assisting the Imperial astronomers in their calculations, had availed himself of the opportunity to disseminate his religious opinions, by printing and distributing thirty-one books in the Chinese language; and not only that he had been successful in converting the simple peasantry and 'women,' but that many of the Tartars had been proselyted. Admitting the Father's full right of retaining his own sentiments, the Edict affirms him to have been guilty of a very odious offence,' in persuading others to embrace them. Te-tien-tse is

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