The very coachman of the stuhl wagen, after conversing a moment with his master, returned to his team, tied the legs of the poor creatures as they stood, and then with a sharp knife cut their jugular veins through and through on the right side, having previously reined them up sharp to the left, so that, before starting, we could see three of the team, which consisted of four superb bays when we started, level with the soil and dead; the near wheeler only holding out on his forelegs.

"We shoved off at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, and after having twice been driven into creeks on the Holstein shore by bad weather, we arrived about two next morning safely on board the Torch, which immediately got under weigh for England. After my story had been told to the Captain, I left my preserver and his sisters in his hands, and I need scarcely say that they had as hearty a welcome as the worthy old soul could give them, and dived into the midshipman's birth for a morsel of comfort, where, in a twinkling, I was far into the secrets of a pork pie."

"A pork pie!" said Aaron Bang. "A pork pie!" said Paul Gelid. "Why do you know," said Mr Wagtail" I-why, I never in all my life saw a pork pie."

"My dear Pepperpot," chimed in Gelid, << we both forget. Don't you remember the day we dined with the Admiral at the Pen, in July last?"

“Lord, man, it had a pudding in its belly!'

"Oh, now I remember," said Wagtail.

Bang laughed outright, and I could not help making a hole in my manners also, even prepared as I was for my jest by my sable crony Pegtop.

Aaron looked at me with one of his quizzical grins; "Cringle, my darling, do you keep these Logs still ?"

"Why," continued Gelid, "Lord love you, Wagtail, not remember that calipeever, so crisp in the broiling?"

"C No,"
," said Wagtail, "really I do

not."

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"I do, my dear sir, invariably." What," struck in little Wagtail, "the deuce, for instance, shall I, and Paul, and Aaron there, all be embalmed or preserved" (" Say pickled," quoth the latter) "in these said logs of yours?" This was too absurd, and I could not answer my allies for laughing. Gelid had been swaying himself backwards and forwards, half asleep, on the hind legs of his chair all this while, puffing away at a cigar.

"Ah!" said he half asleep, and but partly overhearing what was going on; "Ah, Tom, my dear, you don't say that we shall all be handed down to our poster"-a long yawn—

66

to our poster"-another yawn— when Bang, watching his opportunity as he sat opposite, gently touched one of the fore-legs of the balanced chair with his toe, while he finished Gelid's sentence by interjecting, 'iors,' as the Conch fell back and floundered over on his stern. His tormentor drawling out in wicked mimicry

"Yes, dear Gelid, so sure as you have been landed down on your posteriors now, ah, you shall be handed down to your posterity hereafter, by that pestilent little scamp Cringle. Ah, Tom, I know you-Paul, Paul, it will be paulo post futurum, with you, my lad."

Here we were interrupted by my steward's entering with his tallow face. "Dinner on the table, sir." We adjourned accordingly.

"We shall take the balance of the log to-morrow, Tom, eh?" said el Señor Bang.

vious, as an honest man, he should not agree to pay a rent which should leave him unable to liquidate a claim that was anterior to such an obligation.

Now, in point of fact, is any land subject to tithe, which either does not, or might not yield a rent? We believe not. We believe, that in the United Empire none such could be truly specified. And, if this be so, is it not clear to demonstration, that tithe is not considered, either by landlords or tenants, an impost which overburdens the land? Since, if they did so consider it, they could not demand, or submit, to a rent, with out acting, at the same time, with cruelty, impolicy, and injustice.

When a farmer is about to make an offer for land, he considers the various claims to which it is subject, and which must be satisfied before it can make him any return; and he either will not, or ought not, to make any offer which does not leave him a profit in the concern, after all previous charges have been paid. Now, if it do leave him this profit, he may be glad of his bargain; and, if it do not, he has no one to blame but himself.

quish the land. But, if they resolve to hold the land, let them adhere to the conditions. These are no harder now than they were at first. And the tenants of any of these proprietors might, with as much colour of justice, withhold from them their rents, as they withhold from the ministers of religion the funds allocated for their maintenance, and secured to them by the very instruments by which the right of exacting these rents was created.

It should, then, be constantly held in mind, that tithe is a lien upon land which precedes rent; which was created before rent was paid; for which a due allowance was made in the various arrangements between landlord and tenant; and which, therefore, without any hardship, may, and by common equity ought to be satisfied, before any rent should be exacted.

But the proprietor, he who holds the land in fee, is not he a sufferer by the exaction of tithes ? Certainly not. He is possessed of the land either by grant or purchase. If by the former, tithe was expressly reserved; so that THAT portion of the produce never was his. If by the latter, the amount of tithe was taken into account in estimating the value of the land, and the purchase-money was only an equivalent for its value diminished by that amount, so that in neither case can the proprietor be said to be aggrieved.

If, indeed, a tyrannical government were to force upon an honest and patriotic gentleman a property of three or four thousand a-year, upon condition of his paying tithes, we think he would have much reason to complain. But when he accepts the grant gladly upon such conditions, we rather think it a little unreasonable in his successors, whose rights are all derived from him, to set up any claim to hold the land without complying with these conditions. If they are discontented with the conditions, let them relin

It will, however, be said, that, although neither landlords nor tenants have reason to complain of tithes, the public at large may have reason so to complain; in as much as tithes are paid by the consumer. This is the new form which the question has assumed, and which has been given to it by the late David Ricardo. It deserves, and it shall receive an attentive consideration.

Ricardo's notion respecting tithes is a kind of corollary deduced from his theory of rent. To understand the former, therefore, it will be necessary to state the latter.

The cause of rent he asserts to be the varying fertility of different soils. And rent itself he defines to be the difference between the produce of the same amount of capital, when employed upon inferior and superior land. It will, he says, be the same thing to a cultivator to invest a smaller capital in the cultivation of productive ground, and pay a certain rent, as to invest a larger capital in the cultivation of ground for which he may pay no rent, but which is less productive.

If Ricardo had contented himself with stating this as a fact, without proceeding to assign it as a cause, or to make it the foundation of a theory, it would be all very well. It might even serve to illustrate the law according to which rent varies. But it is sur

prising, that it should have escaped his penetration, that rent would exist if there was no difference in the fertility of land, provided only its extent was limited: and that it is that, as compared with the wants of mankind, and not its varying fertility, that is the cause of rent, which, although it may be in many instances measured, yet is never occasioned by that difference of productiveness to which by him it is solely attributed. But upon this subject we cannot do better than lay before the reader the clear and conclusive observations of Colonel Thomson. In his tract, entitled, "The True Theory of Rent," he thus writes-" In this account, the matters of fact stated in the outset are entirely and absolutely true. The fallacy lies in assuming to be the cause, what in reality is only a consequence. Proof spirit sells for a certain price, and more diluted spirits sell for inferior prices till they come to that which is worth no more than water; therefore, the reason why proof spirit sells for a high price is, that there are weaker spirits which are selling for a lower; and if there had happened to have been no weaker spirits, the proof spirit would not have sold at all. This is a specimen of the kind of fallacy involved. There is precisely the same nullity of proof, that what is quite true with respect to the concomitant circumstances when they happen to exist, is therefore the essential and inseparable cause, without which the principal phenomenon could not have taken place. When it happens, or even if it always happens, that there exist soils of various degrees of productiveness down to that which does no more than replace the expense of cultivation with the necessary profit, and that men are moreover acquainted with the art of forcing increased crops, by the application of more capital-all that is stated with respect to the rent being equal to the difference between the highest and the lowest returns, is as necessarily and undeniably true as any thing that has been stated with respect to proof spirit. But all this is no manner of evidence that these circumstances are the causes of the principal phenomenon, and that it could not have existed without them,-in one case more than in the

other. In both cases this kind of conclusion is a pure fallacy, a simple non causa pro causa.' On the truth or falsehood of this hang the merits of the whole of what is called the Ricardo Theory of Rent, and the consequences derived from it."

In point of fact, the inferior soils, instead of being the cause why rent increases, are rather causes why it is limited in its amount. The only effect of their non-existence in any given case would be, to cause the rent of the superior qualities of land to be higher. They are brought into cultivation for the purpose of reducing the monopoly price, which would be obtained by the cultivation of better land, if there were no other competitors in the market.

"The value of corn," says Ricardo, "is regulated by the quantity of labour bestowed on its production on that quality of land, or with that portion of capital which pays no rent." Principles of Political Economy.-P. 62.

"The value of corn," observes Colonel Thomson, "is not regulated. by this; but does itself regulate the quality of land and the portion of capital, that can be brought into action with a profit. The inverted proposition, as given above, amounts to saying, that the price of corn is regulated by the cost for which it can be produced, on the best quality of land, or with the least portion of capital that can be brought into activity, with a living profit at the going price; or, in other words, that the price is regulated by the price, which is reasoning in a circle."

"Again," Ricardo says, "nothing is more common than to hear of the advantages which the land possesses over every other source of useful produce, on account of the surplus which it yields in the form of rent. Yet when the land is most abundant, most productive, and most fertile, it yields no rent; and it is only when its powers decay, and less is yielded in return for labour, that a share of the original produce of the more fertile portion is set apart for rent."

Upon this, Colonel Thomson remarks." Among the properties here assigned as the causes of no rent, the property of abundance, or of unappropriated land not having begun to be scarce, is the only effective one.