'bation or contempt. It is hard for a man to be made to pay for 'preaching against doctrines which in his conscience he believes to be true, and which he thinks it meritorious to disseminate.' He shows how the most pious and charitable institutions become changed in their nature when made compulsory, and that the hand of power profanes instead of strengthening real religion. With regard to Poor-laws in general, without being prepared to go the length that there ought to be none at all, Mr. Eisdell is nevertheless convinced that their tendency is decidedly detrimental. The rights of property, he admits, are in every instance limited by the right which extreme necessity confers. A drowning man, for instance, has a right to seize the first boat or plank he can lay his hand upon; and, by analogy, he argues, that a pauper ready to perish through cold or hunger, possesses a sort of right to the first relief that happens to fall within his reach. Philanthropy, perhaps, would sooner let such assertions pass, without testing them, than run the risk of getting cold-hearted in the Arctic regions of logic, or mere abstract principles. One thing can hardly fail to strike every philosophic mind, and that is, the growing artificiality of every portion and department in the social framework of our country. Property in all its phases is not more affected by the existence around and upon it of vast masses of pauperism, than it is by being doomed to groan under a national debt of eight hundred millions sterling. Whether our forefathers were honest, or otherwise, in bequeathing us this millstone, there it nevertheless hangs, and must be dealt with equitably. The interest which we have to pay on it is about £28,000,000, in round numbers; which need, however, alarm no one, when we remember, that Ricardo has estimated the whole national revenues of the three kingdoms at three hundred millions per annum. Even with the expenses of the Bank of England, it is not a tithe of the community's income; and yet, such are the positive evils resulting from it, that it has been the experimentum crucis, with certain statesmen, to attempt, or at least contemplate, its extinction in an honourable manner. Carrying out the plan of a tax on capital, to which we have already ventured to allude, so soon as the public mind shall have learned to endure it, something might be done towards the desired object. If the impost were raised, for instance, from three shillings and four pence to one pound per cent upon the understanding that it should last no longer than five years, £36,000,000 per annum would be annually levied during that period. Such a surplus of revenue would send up the three per cent funds, amounting collectively to about £480,000,000, to the price they bore a century ago, very much above par. By applying the proposed property tax to paying off these, the Consols and Reduced, at the end of the term, would present a remaining burden of only £300,000,000; and, meanwhile, a simultaneous process should be going forward, which the high price of the funds would fairly sustain, of transmuting the entire mass of the three per cents into £100,000,000 of a new seven per cent stock; that stock being declared permanent by parliament for fourteen or even twenty-one years, and paying its dividends quarterly. The result would be, besides the simplification of our funded system, an annual relief to the extent of the difference between the £14,000,000, which the three per cents now pay annually, and the £7,000,000 a-year, which would be the dividends on the new seven per cent stock. This would be purchased, indeed, by the pressure of the intervening process, necessary to clear away a part of the public obligation, and enable government all along to offer its creditors an option of receiving their claims in money to the full amount, if they chose to take them so. But we feel persuaded, that they would have no interest in doing this, from the lowering interest of capital, and the prices of stock in the market; as proved to be the case when the Navy Fives were converted into Fours, with a small bonus attached to the bargain; or when the Fours were changed subsequently into Three and Halfs, without any bonus whatsoever. With regard to the other funds, we would change them, by large annual instalments upon equally fair terms, into terminable annuities, as proposed, we believe, by Sir Henry Parnell. Our author has not offered a more correct averment in his two volumes, than when he declares that, to lessen the debt would do no less good to the poor, than can be expected from the most successful institutions, which benevolent men have ever established in their favour.' A continuance of peace must of course be considered essential to any plan which involves extensive monetary changes. In conclusion, we have sincere pleasure in recommending the labours of Mr. Eisdell to the good graces of our readers. They form a solid publication, full of important contents, such as will be despised by none save the idle and superficial. He would have rendered his work more generally attractive, we think, had his style undergone some compression,-and more useful, also, had his summaries been rather more frequent than they are, throughout from a thousand to eleven hundred closely printed pages. An index would be a vast improvement to a new edition, which we trust awaits the Industry of Nations.' Never was there a treatise published, we should say, so free from disagreeable dogmatism; although political economy presents many points which might well provoke a devotee to the science to assume the airs of an augur, and settle hotly contested differences of opinion, by flights through the heavens of imagination. The author has favoured us with the fruits of great diligence, extensive study, well-digested arguments, and various practical conclusions, not the less valuable in being as free from pedantry as they are from all bitterness either of spirit or partisanship. THE ECLECTIC REVIEW FOR OCTOBER, 1839. Art. I. Lives of Eminent British Statesmen. By JOHN FORSTER, Esq., of the Inner Temple. SIR JOHN ELIOT. Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia. Longman. London: 1839. AMONGST the most beautiful fictions of all antiquity was that which described Anchises in Hades, as pointing out to his son the future heroes of the Roman empire: Devenere locos lætos et amœna vireta Fortunatorum nemorum, sedesque beatas :- History, however, and still more biography, seems to realize what Virgil only feigned. Through their means, we hold sweet converse with the mighty dead; and gather instruction or admonition from the examples of the departed. The publication, now before us, has introduced us to the noblest British worthies of the seventeenth century. We wander up and down, through the Elysian fields of faithful narrative, with Eliot, and Pym, and Hampden; while from afar are beheld Laud, and Strafford, and Cromwell, or the guilty monarch himself, all reaping the bitter harvest their own hands had sown, Ausi omnes immane nefas, ausoque potiti ! We propose commencing a short series of portraits, to begin with no less a person than the renowned knight of Cornwall, Sir John Eliot, a pure and perfect patriot,-a pattern beyond price VOL. VI. DD to his own age,-as well as a subject for admiration to the latest posterity. - He was born at his paternal seat of Port Eliot, on the 20th of April, 1590, with a temper naturally so ardent, as to need considerable restraint; which nevertheless was little thought of in the house of his father, a hearty, easy, hospitable country-gentleman. The result, therefore, will excite no surprise, when we hear that passion, rather than reason, usurped a dominion over his mind; until an incident, in his seventeenth or eighteenth year, brought him at once to his senses. A neighbour, named Moyle, had reported to the parent of the youth, some of those extravagances into which the latter had fallen. Excessive irritation ensued, on the part of the culprit towards the informant. He rushed to his house, and remonstrated against tale-telling: words begat words, until they ended in a downright quarrel; and Eliot, having drawn his sword, slightly wounded Moyle, through a thrust at his side. He fled immediately; but repentance forthwith overtook him. Upon the testimony of a daughter of the injured party, he soon detested the fact, and became as remarkable for his private deportment, in every view of it, as for his 'public conduct.' His apology is yet in existence. It was accompanied, and followed by every acknowledgment, both public and private, in his power. It led to an unbroken friendship between the two disputants; and to the unsullied reformation of the culpable one. His biographer justly observes, that the anecdote thus related, assumes more than ordinary interest, as describing the line drawn between his passing youth and coming manhood.' The event startled him into the most complete vigilance and command over his own mind. An apparition of murder had crossed his path, and horrified his wilfulness into serenity. From that hour, he was another man: nor need we here do more than mention the slanders of Archdeacon Echard, and a certain living author of a work entitled Commentaries upon History.' They roundly charge the great patriot with the basest treachery and homicide which would have been believed to the present moment, had not the publication of the original papers scattered the accusation into thin air. Had Eliot been a royalist, or an aristocrat, he might have treacherously stabbed' half a dozen friends, and all would have been covered with the mantle of chivalry, or the generous ebullitions of intoxication. But because he was on the side of the many against the usurpations of the few ;--because he dared to arrest the sceptre from crushing the subject,--and that too amidst sacrifices and virtues which seldom have been suffered, or attained;—therefore an archdeacon must blot his memory if he can, and conservatism give currency to atrocious misstatements, although known and proved to be such, within the compass of a single season in London. It is stated, that immediately after this affair, young Eliot left his home for the University of Oxford, where he was entered, as a gentleman commoner, at Exeter College in Michaelmas term, 1607. After three years, a strong desire to become acquainted with jurisprudence, induced him to leave Alma Mater, for one of the inns of court, in the metropolis. Although without an academical degree, he had neither wasted his time, nor failed to cultivate many sympathies with a body of men calling themselves the country party. A seat in parliament, whenever opportunity might offer, floated before his imagination: but to complete his education, it was necessary that he should pass some considerable interval on the continent. Here he fell in with the handsome George Villiers, with whom he travelled, and grew intimate; little dreaming then of their future destiny. On his return home, he married happily, and had two sons by his lady, whom he soon lost. His fellow-traveller had now mounted into unmerited fortune and fame, as the successor of Somerset in the graces of King James. Amongst other honours showered upon the new favorite, was that of Lord High Admiral of England, with the privilege of appointing vice-admirals in the several counties. It followed therefore as almost a matter of course, that Eliot, possessing one of the largest paternal estates of any gentleman of the time, should be nominated representative of the Duke of Buckingham somewhere; and Devonshire was chosen. He was also appointed chairman of the committee of stannaries, and knighted upon the occasion. Towards the close of 1623, he took his seat for the borough of Newport: but before we contemplate him as emerging into his public and patriotic career, we must glance for a moment at the peculiar circumstances of the nation. 6 The Tudors had extended their authority far beyond that of their predecessors, who were circumscribed, and overawed by the arrogance and feudal influence of their nobles. They handed down an example, which the Stuarts seemed nothing loth to follow. Elizabeth had passed away; and when, some months before her decease, that royal virago was observed muttering to herself, in the decline of her intellect, and thrusting an old rusty 'sword through the arras of her apartment,' an affecting picture was thus represented of despotism at its wit's end, irritated into impotent fury against the changes of a noble, but approaching age, which threw its shadows before it. At first, however, they were very indistinct and tremulous. The Magna Charta of nature was felt in its full force, only by a favored few. It involved the rights of persons, property, and conscience; all of which British princes had held, and were resolved to hold, in avowed contempt. Hooker had entertained, and in the latter. books of his Ecclesiastical Polity, developed some predilections |