dif dern times, under circumstances equally trying; and a degree of intrepidity in no degree more striking has served to throw a lustre over the deaths of many characters whose lives were of a very ferent complexion from that of this simple countryman.-But, Whatever farce the boastful hero plays, Virtue alone has majesty in death, And greater still, the more the tyrant frowns. A pension was settled by the Emperor Francis upon Hofer's family, and a sum of money given to enable them to settle in Austria, which they were invited to do; but his widow preferred returning to her old habitation in the valley of Passeyr, where, we have heard, she was visited by the emperor in his last return from Paris. The son is said to be very unequal in talent to his father; but his education and maintenance have also been provided for. A plain and substantial monument has been lately erected in honour of Hofer's memory, by command of the emperor, on an elevated part of the Brenner, and not far from his own habitation. We cannot close this article without some further mention of Joseph Speckbacher, one of Hofer's most efficient and faithful coadjutors. In reading the account of his exploits we feel ourselves once more transported into the times of Amadis and the old romances, when men were ten times taller, stouter, and properer than in these degenerate days; his hair-breadth scapes when beset by his enemies, though they savour rather of the marvellous, we see no reason to disbelieve. He was born at the little village of Gnadenwald, not far from Hall, in 1768. His father was one of the superintendants of the salt works at the latter place, and his grandfather had distinguished himself against the Bavarians in the early part of the century. This example seems at a very early age to have fired the imagination of the youthful Speckbacher, and to have led to the neglect of more peaceful pursuits. When seven years old he lost his father, and was sent to school, where he remained for a considerable time, but to very little purpose, as it would appear; for though there was no sort of roguery or mischief of which he was not capable, he could neither read nor write, in spite of all the instruction bestowed upon him. At the age of twelve he began to lead a Robin Hood kind of life in the forests of Bavaria, with five or six lawless companions, who were continually fighting with the officers; but his chief associate being killed in one of these wild excursions, Speckbacher took to more regular courses, and became an overseer at the salt mines at Hall, as his father had been before him. He there married a woman of some little property, to the management of which he dedicated a good deal of his time. Mrs. Speckbacher's first exploit was to compel her husband to make up for lost time, by learning to read and write; and it was well that RB3 she she did so, for in the following year honours came thick upon him, and he was chosen one of the committee of judgment in his district, an office much resembling that of our justice of the peace. All these quiet occupations, however, were instantly abandoned by Speckbacher when more turbulent times came on. He possessed in a great degree many of the qualities which fit a man for military command, and, amongst those of a minor description, a quickness of eye which enabled him to discern objects at a considerable distance with astonishing accuracy. His power over his followers, too, was great, and sufficient to repress their excesses, and to put a stop to all plundering, which he punished with severity. The enemy knew his value, and many efforts were made, but in vain, to bring him over to their side; a 1000 ducats too were offered for his head; but although it was known to upwards of thirty peasants that he was for eight days working with them, disguised as a labourer, in Rattenberg, (an expedient adopted by him in order to acquire a knowledge of the defences of the town,) no one seemed to notice him until his departure, and they then only spoke of his appearance with the finger on the lip. After his wonderful escape, the emperor offered him lands in Hungary, where he was disposed to settle; but his wife, whom he had left in the Tyrol, was first to be consulted, and we shall conclude our remarks with her answer, which for simplicity and tenderness we have seldom seen equalled. 6 My beloved Husband! * Dearest Joseph, Painful as it may be to you to be separated from me, and heavily as our domestic grievances may weigh upon your mind, yet your wife suffers no less severely in being compelled to live without you; in truth, whenever I look at any of my children, my heart is like to break, for my first reflection is, Ah! children, you are now little better than orphans without a father, and I a wretched widow without reputation or name!-But may God in heaven so dispose events, that pity may be shewn to me and my children, and their inheritance provided for. Oh, my dear Joseph, you know how your poor wife loves you, and by this love I implore you, for God's sake, not to take it amiss, if I repeat what I have already said, and even more strongly than before; that rather than go to Hungary, or any where else so distant, rather will I (alas! that I should be obliged to say so!) go begging with my children. Things are not quite gone that length as yet, (though not far from it,) but they cannot long remain as they are; so have you, my beloved husband, a beggar for your wife. I must stop, or my paper will be wet with my tears. This one consideration alone, dearest Joseph, must be a comfort to you in this distress, as it is to me your wife, that we have not drawn upon ourselves this misery, or the beggary which is now hanging over us, by any extravagance on our parts, or any other cause in which we are to blame; but it is your attachment alone to our good Emperor Francis, and the heartfelt longing again to be Austrians, which has has led you so far,-has placed you in the most imminent danger of your life, and your wife and little ones in the extremity of poverty and distress. Oh! my dear man, take courage, and throw yourself at the feet of our gracious emperor, who is yet so good to you, and tell him how it fares with your wife in the Tyrol. Let me implore your forgiveness, if I do not come after you, you know yourself that I am sickly and perhaps could not go through so long a journey, it is not only from old women that I have heard it, for sensible men have told me, that for those who are not of a strong constitution, and habit of body, Hungary is a bad place to live in, and you love your wife, I am sure, too tenderly to wish to contribute to her death. Do but you ask this in the way you ought to do, and I will pray to the saints in Heaven that our gracious sovereign the emperor may yet relieve us, and then God will set all matters to rights. But if his corrections must be inflicted upon us for a longer time, do you then implore for that which you may be able to obtain; that you may have something allotted to you in Stiria, or in that neighbourhood; and then, if all hope is at an end of our dear country again becoming Austrian, and of thy return to the Tyrol, then will I come to thee, beloved of my heart. I thank you, dearest Joseph, for your new year's wish. God grant that we may again meet under Austria's government in our own dear Tyrol. In order that you, my dearest, may be able to explain correctly to those who may be of use to us our calamitous situation, I must tell you, to my sorrow, as it will be to yours, that all our cattle are sick; one third we have already lost, and we cannot feel sure for a day, that the other two will not go also. Fifty florins are already expended in doctors and apothecary's stuff; think, too, in addition, of the heavy taxes we have to pay. Yet once more, dearest husband, I repeat to you, implore relief for your poor forlorn wife and children. I send you a thousand kind greetings, and commend you to the protection of God, and to the favour of our benevolent emperor. Write to me soon, and cease not to love Your faithful wife, 'Jan. 15, 1811.' MARIA SPECKBACHERIN.' 'P. S. Your children salute you tenderly; they anxiously pray for you, and often ask, "Will not our father come again to us?"" ART. IV.-An Essay on the Principle of Population; or, a View of its past and present Effects on Human Happiness; with an Inquiry into our prospects respecting the future Removal or Mitigation of the Evils which it occasions. By R. T. Malthus, A. M. late Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and Professor of History and Political Economy in the East India College, Hertfordshire. The Fifth Edition, with important Additions, Three Vols. 8vo. London. 1817. THAT preposterous course which is a fatal error in morals, is indispensable in political science; mankind must act first, and reason afterwards. The axioms of political economy, like those of BB 4 natural natural philosophy, can only result from experience and repeated observation: thus it happens that the progress of civilization, as it increases the variety of relations and combinations in which men are placed with respect to each other, and multiplies the transactions in which they are involved, has the collateral effect of introducing a new set of intellectual pursuits, and engaging mankind in the study of fresh sciences as it gradually advances. There is not a wider difference between the simple barter of wine or oxen for arms or slaves, and the bills of exchange which form the medium of modern commerce, than between the comparative knowledge of the principles by which national and individual transfers of property are regulated, as exhibited in the crude and contradictory Politics' of Aristotle, and in the scientific conclusions of the Wealth of Nations.' Aristotle was as well calculated as any man to build up a scientific system: but a sufficient series of experiments to found it upon, was wanting. Hence it was naturally to be expected that in the progress of civilization and political economy, the last subject studied and explained should be the facts relating to PoPULATION, because this branch of political science requires a collection of statistic details which can only be furnished by an advanced state of society: and because it is little likely to attract attention till men are generally placed in circumstances like those in which we find them in modern Europe. In ancient times, the density of population was limited by the facility, and still more by the habit of emigration, which, after all, while the distance is short, and climate similar, and artificial wants comparatively few, is a much milder process than expatriation from Europe to America, or from England to the shores of the Euxine. The universal habits of slavery, moreover, among the Greeks and Romans, and such a systematic demoralization as is betrayed by the enactment of a lex Julia, to say nothing of perpetual and murderous wars, would naturally tend to keep the subject out of view. During the middle ages, population had a regular preventive check in feudal habits, and a regular positive check in civil wars: and though famines were no less frequent than severe, it was quite evident that they did not originate in the redundancy of people, but in the want of channels for distributing produce, and in the total ignorance and neglect of agriculture. It was not, therefore, till the security of property and the tranquil state of things which followed the establishment of a settled government, made it the first desire of every man to sit down, if not under his own vine, at least by his own fire-side and in the circle of a family; it was not till avenues were gradually opened to industry and enterprise, and allowed that desire to be generally gratified; it was not till these prosperous circumstances gave an impulse to the power of population, that the inhabitants of of the various countries of Europe encroached rapidly upon the productive soil, and have made it at last a matter of speculation how far the territory itself may be able to support the numbers existing in it; and what proportion there is between the natural powers of the earth, and those of unrestrained population. Unquestionably the details which we now possess from registers and statistical tables and other authentic sources, are of a nature to invite the curiosity and ensure the attention of all those who have a taste for researches into the history of their fellow creatures, even apart from all practical consequences. The first survey of the subject affords a striking problem. It presents us with a view of men essentially the same in their passions, constitutions, and physical powers, yet, in different countries, or in the same country at different times, varying in the rate in which they increase their numbers through every degree of a very extensive scale: in some cases requiring no more than twenty-five years, and in others perhaps no less than a thousand, to double them. There is no occasion to travel far in search of instances, Our own dominions exhibit the following variations. In Canada, the population doubles In England and Wales (calculating In Hindostan (perhaps) .9.9 in 28 years. in 34 in 100 in 1000 Those who profess to see nothing remarkable in these variations, must have very different ideas from ours as to what is interesting in the history of the human race. Again, if we trace the subject back to the origin of the increase, we find in different countries a similar difference in the proportion which the number of annual marriages bears to the number of the existing population. Here, for the sake of wider illustration, we will extend our view beyond our own territories. In Russia, according to a table furnished by Mr. Tooke, it appears that among ninety-two persons one marriage is contracted, or of forty-six persons one marries annually: so that the proportion of marriages to the actual population is on the average as one to ninety-two. Whereas in most countries the proportion is considerably smaller being : in Sweden 110* + Preliminary Observations on the Population Abstract, by Mr. Rickman, p. xxix. |