1815.] Dishonest Practices of Drivers of Teams. exercise, which may yet be enjoyed without the accompaniment of needlessly worrying harmless animals. By means, however, of literary occupations, the health of the mind may be promoted, and the understanding improved; a recommendation not possessed by any of the amusements before enumerated: and although this is best effected by books of history, voyages, and travels, moral and religious essays, and didactic publications, yet instruction, blended with amusement, may also be obtained from the lighter reading of novels, &c. judiciously selected, by means of which instruction may be reaped by many, who would shun the perusal of any of the graver books above-mentioned. But where an author finds amusement in the daily occupation of composing or compiling books of information in religion, morality, or any of the useful arts and sciences, or where a musical professor, or amateur, finds it his delight to compose sacred music, in preference to that of a light secular nature,-he there, instead of burying, or making an ill use of the talent entrusted to him, employs it to the best advantage, and thus happily combines a duty with a pleasure, which is the highest sanction the latter can possess. In conformity with this way of thinking was the practice of the eminently pious Dr. Horne; who, in the preface to his Commentary on the Psalms, thus expresses himself:-" And now, could the author flatter himself that any one would take half the pleasure in reading the following exposition, which he hath taken in writing it, he would not fear the loss of his labour. The employment detached him from the bustle and hurry of life, the din of politics, and the noise of folly; vanity and vexation flew away for a season, care and disquietude came not near his dwelling. He arose, fresh as the morning, to his task; the silence of the night invited him to pursue it; and he can truly say that food and rest were not preferred before it. Every psalm improved infinitely upon his acquaintance with it, and no one gave him uneasiness but the last; for then he grieved that his work was done. Happier hours than those which have been spent on these meditations on the songs of Sion, he never expects to see in this world. Very pleasantly did they pass, and moved swiftly along; for when thus engaged, he counted no time. They are gone, but have left a relish and a fragrance upon the mind, and the remembrance of them is sweet."-Few, indeed, 507 have it more in their power to attain this happy faculty of combining duty with amusement than a clergyman, who finds, in the composition of sermons for his parish church, or religious tracts for his flock, a pleasure rather than a task. Finally, under this head, it may be observed, that a person who amuses himself for an hour or two with his pen and ink, painting or drawing apparatus, &c. is at the end of that time in posses sion of something he was not before. If, amongst the several amusements before enumerated, I have not noticed the great resources of practical music, and of the fine arts, as painting, drawing, &c. it is because they combine the exercise of mental faculties with manual dexterity, and thus partake of the character of intellectual, and may be classed with literary amusements. M. DISHONEST PRACTICES of DRIVERS of TEAMS. To the Editor of the New Monthly Magazine. AS your valuable miscellany is in such PROPOSED IMPROVEMENTS in WAGGONS. WHEN I have been travelling, and have met on the roads those ponderous and terrific broad-wheel waggons dragging on with creeping pace from all parts of the country to London, it has often struck me that they were a disgrace to us as a commercial and active, but still more so as a mechanical and ingenious, 508 Improvement in Waggons-Conversion of Hindoos. [Jan. 1, people. While our coaches and machi- moted. I would recommend this at tempt to the consideration of some of your mechanical readers. I think it might be accomplished, and be so completely under management, that it might be applied to stage-coaches. I have no doubt, that, if this plan of using lighter horses on the road were adopted, farmers would begin to breed and use themselves, likewise, coach-horses, instead of their heavy, sleepy, cart breed, now in use. Here would be another saving, to the country at large; for the same number of horses used in agricul ture, of greater speed and activity, would plough equally well a much greater quantity of ground in the same time, and with the same keep and attendance. We all know how very material a point this is in catching seasons. This breed of horses would certainly be much more saleable than the cart kind, as they would answer so many more purposes, and, in case of emergency, mount our cavalry. I am, &c. Nov. 16, 1814. VIATOR. CONVERSION of the HINDOOS. IN your number for October I have read with attention the letters of Chris tianus, J. S. &c. Having also read Dr. Buchanan's Researches, and most of his opponents, I have not the shadow of a doubt that much may be done in coverting the Hindoos if conducted with judgment. In matters of diet, distinct ness of casts and prejudices of that kind, it would be unwise to interfere; for as they are points of small moment to the Christian, though not so the Hindoo, it will be better to leave the removal of them to time, and not attempt too great a change in manners and habits at first. They will not long be well instructed Christians before they will, of them selves, discover the vanity and folly of such distinctions. The grand point to be attained, is to provide for the Bramins and others, who, on their conver sion, lose all their privileges and emoluments. The letter of Kolhoff and Horst from Tanjore, giving an account of their being obliged to leave a newly converted Bramin to the care of a distant church, from the want of means of providing for him in any way, sufficiently shews that fund is required to provide for the converts, in the first place. Might not, then, an establishment be formed near every great town and British settlement, consisting of several hundred acres of waste land, for the express purpose of providing for those who are converted, and for educating the children of Chris 1815.] Comparative Merits of Potatoes and Wheat. tians, and particularly for supporting and educating the children of half-cast? These are so very numerous, that in a few years we should have our settlements surrounded by hundreds of strongly attached and most highly useful natives. Let there be an hospital in each settlement to receive any child that may be brought to it; and in times of scarcity there would be hundreds. I would also propose that a premium should be given to the Bramins for every widow whom they could rescue from the funeral pile, and should bring to these establishments, thousands of lives would soon be saved, and Christians added to the number. Let the lands of these establishments be managed as farms, and the cultivation directed by Europeans, and carried on by the converts using English implements. They would soon be able to support themselves with the produce, and have much to dispose of also. Tennant says that there are prodigious tracts of country lying waste throughout the whole of our Indian possessions: let these tracts be given to the missionaries, and the cultivation of potatoes, among other things, be particularly recommended, as they would often prove a substitute for rice, in years of famine. These establishments would then be public blessings to every town they were near; would tend to improve the agriculture of the country, and be the means of saving thousands and tens of thousands of human lives. Instead of the howling desert we should have smiling fields; and would not this be a blessing worthy attempting? ANTI-CHRISTIANUS. 509 bett! no subject is too high, or too low, for his comprehensive mind; with uniform talents, he discusses the endowments of an emperor, or the qualities of a potatoe. How well he has appreciated the former, and how justly he has ascertained the latter, must be apparent from his numerous panegyrics upon Buonaparte, and the paper just published upon the demerits of the latter. But, alas! Buonaparte, the great political calculator Buonaparte, the great general, the magnanimous chieftain, the hero of the Political Register, who was to share all the dangers, and all the privations of his army, has been out in his calculations, has been foiled as a commander, has deserted his fellow soldiers, and left Mr. Cobbett in the lurch. Let it now be tried whether Mr. Cobbett has not as much undervalued the potatoe, as he has overrated Buonaparte. But as the charges which he has brought against that more than inoffensive root, are of the most serious nature, and strike at its very existence, I must be excused for following him more minutely through them than most of his effusions call for. Mr. Cobbett says, "No baker who understands his own interest, who knows any thing of the material he uses, will ever make use of potatoes in making of bread, any farther than is necessary for the purposes of aiding the yeast, in the work of fermentation." Agreed-certainly no baker who knows, and honestly pursues his business, would do so, for that would be an imposition upon his customers, by selling them potatoe bread instead of wheaten bread; and if, as Mr. Cobbett says, potatoes are dearer COMPARATIVE MERITS of POTATOES and than wheat, it would be a loss of money WHEAT. To the Editor of the New Monthly Magazine. SIR, ON the appearance of Mr. Cobbett's paper upon the comparative merits of potatoes and wheat; the following observations were written and sent for publication; but being mislaid, and given up as lost, they never made their appearance in print. Having, however, been lately recovered, they are offered, (though late,) to the New Monthly Magazine, being, as the writer hopes, particularly calculated to expose that loose way in which the Political Register is accustomed to treat the most important subjects. I remain, &c. as well as of character, by substituting a more expensive material; in fact, it would be paying a premium for being reckoned a knave. Mr. Cobbett farther says, " It requires more labour, more of the productive quality of the land; it costs more to raise subsistence for a man on potatoes than in wheat." This point requires to be clearly answered-The preparatory ploughings, Sir, and the horse hoeings, with all the et cetera's, whilst the crop is growing, are for potatoes nearly equal to the labour of a summerfallow, and the quantity of manure required, little, if any thing more. Of the productive quality of the land as affecting the ensuing wheat crop, it consumes none; for the quantity of wheat after a How superior a genius is Mr. Cob- potatoc fallow is equal to that of any CLERICUS DROMONIENSIS. 510 Strictures on Cobbett's Remarks on Potatoes. other fallow; if all the labour were to end in the crop of potatoes, that would be a different case, but taking them as a fallow, the labour is not greater, and the potatoes are gained into the bargain. But even supposing the cropping with them were to be carried on, the labour, the manure, and the seed, would be diminished, but not the produce, whereas two crops of grain in succession would injure almost any land, especially if those crops are wheat. The Political Reviewer next talks with his usual flippancy of Mr. Wilberforce's bringing in a bill to encourage the growth of potatoes, and of Mr. H. Tooke opposing it, and continues in his rambling way, until he comes to state, "that it is a great bulk, a monstrous heap, that an acre produces, but not so much food as is contained in the wheat which would have grown on the same land. If this root," he continues, "had a tendency to prosperity in a country where it is generally cultivated and eaten, Ireland would surely not be so supreme in the misery of its people," and in the next sentence is an excellent joke: "It may truly be called the root of misery," Mr. Cobbett, who told you that the people of Ireland are so supreme in misery? and that this supremacy is caused by their potatoe eating? It is most heartily to be wished, Mr. Cobbett, that you could be conveyed to some country town in that kingdom, on a market day, (to Lisburn, for example, in the county of Antrim,) which on that day is always filled with comfortable, well-looking, aye, Sir, and with well dressed people from the country round, all inveterate potatoe-eaters; and that, notwithstanding your well grounded antipathy to the root, you could be induced to go to the place where potatoes are exposed to sale, and you should harangue these miserable people and endeavour to persuade them that their misery was entirely caused by the pernicious roots before them, and that every time they attempted to appease their appetites with them they were making large strides to more misery, besides assimilating themselves to hogs by feeding on them; I say, were you, Mr. Cobbett, to place yourself in that predicament, and, what is very likely, were you to be taken for a knave The writer of this could point out a field in the neighbourhood of Killough, county of Down, Ireland, that has been more than 40 years under potatoes, without their destroying the productive quality of the land, being wood now as when first planted. [Jan. 1, instead of a fool, you would probably meet with as complete a hustling as you have deserved to undergo. which attends the consumption of poMr. Cobbett objects also to the waste sins of the consumer upon the innocent tatoes. This is very hard to visit the root, which, if properly treated, affords nutriment to some useful creature in every part; bringing on with its fragments young pigs and poultry, which, in due con and fowls, no bad accompaniment time, produce a supply of eggs and bato the potatoe that Ireland, in spite of to a potatoe. In one word, it is owing its misery, rears so many brave men and handsome women, that it uses and exports so much good pork and savoury bacon. sarcasms, many of those very elegant Passing by many of Mr. Cobbett's phrases and words, of which he is so profuse, he now shall be taken up on his calculations. The average produce at which he states wheat and potatoes seems to be a fair one; wheat at S2 bushels, or four quarters; potatoes at 10 tous, potatoes above 12 times as much as that or 400 bushels; making the quantity of of wheat. This pound of wheat, to give every advantage to it, shall be converted into a pound of bread of the best quality, and so we start-Now Sir, let a man, his wife, and two or three hungry children, sit down to this pound of bread; and another man, his wife, and two or three children, with equal appetites to rence is plain; of the bread each would twelve pounds of potatoes: the infe have a mouthful, of the potatoes each would have a bellyful, with something reversionary eggs and bacon-Q. E, D. to spare for pigs and poultry, that is, for From this statement, Mr. Editor, it riority of affording a quantity of food must be apparent to most, that the supe both for man and other animals, lies on the side of the potatoes, not on the side of the wheat; and, that if it is the cause of misery, it is the misery of a full stomach, not the misery of an empty belly. SIR WILLIAM DRUMMOND'S EDIPUS JU- YOUR correspondent Aristides can- 1815.] The Edipus Judaicus—Recollections of Lectures. not convince every impartial reader of their personal identity. The virulence of the reply so fully confirms my assertions, that I shall be no more provoked to repeat them, or to sully your pages by quotations in corroboration of them. The good sense of our daily journalists dictated the suppression of any extracts from the Ecce Homo, which was as impotent an attack upon the New, as the Edipus Judaicus is upon the Old Testament, As a calm, but at the same time watchful observer of the insidious attempts of the opposers of all revealed religion, I have been amused at the blind and indiscriminate fury of Aristides, who does me the honour to attribute to me the article in the Quarterly Review which I never saw until in print, and of whose author I am now as ignorant as Aristides evidently is. That Review, however, so completely effected its object by consigning the subject to its merited contempt and oblivion, that I have only to reproach myself, as I in a former letter observed, with giving it a momentary revival by the authentic anecdote I communicated, and now no considerarion shall induce me to waste, on a forgotten subject, those animadversions for which a licentious age affords too constant a demand from the pen of Dec. 1814. CASTIGATOR. For the New Monthly Magazine. RECOLLECTIONS of the UNPUBLISHED LECTURES of an EMINENT PROFESSOR. Of the Accumulation of Stock, and the origin und nature of Interest. HOW much the division of labour, and of professions, has been promoted by the introduction of money, has been already shewn: another of its tendencies has been to increase the fund of national stock and wealth, as both Mr. Smith and Turgot have maintained. They have shewn that all manufacturing industry arises from this accumulation of stock, and that riches flow in from the advances and return which it enables the commercial interest to venture. Till the employment of gold and silver, this accumulation of stock and division of labour could not be easily attempted, from the perishable nature of all other substances used as money. In most manufactures, also, no trade could be carried on till a capital was created to enable one to advance money for the labour of others, as Mr. Turgot has observed with respect to the article of tanning. Hence a division of labour and manufacture, presupposes the accumulation of stock. Even agriculture could not be improved to any great extent without the previous accumulation of capital, which is indeed necessary to all improvement; for nothing is more true than that "money begets inoney." Hence the foundation of giving labour for stock, or the just practice of lending out on interest. Mr. Hume in his political tracts seems to be the first author who investigated the true nature of interest. Long, indeed, before, a low interest had been considered a sign of national wealth; but by Locke, Law, and Montesquieu, it was ascribed to an abundance of money. In Batavia, however, where money was plenty, interest was at 101. per cent. and in Portugal, at 61. as Hume remarks. He adds, that prices and gold had risen four times since the discovery of the West Indian mines, but that interest had not fallen. Mr. Smith agrees with Mr. Hume in his conclusions, though the one drew them from theory, and the other from facts. The term value of money is sometimes used to express the exchangeable prices for commodities: in other cases it means its value in getting interest in the market. These distinct and separate senses have often been confounded, particularly by an author who has drawn up some very laborious tables of the prices of corn, in a publication on the corn laws. High interest Mr. Hume states to arise from a great demand in borrowing. Secondly, from there being but little riches to supply this demand; and thirdly, from high profits in commerce. Low interest, on the other hand, is occasioned by the opposite of these three causes. This, in the main, is distinct and accurate. The great demand in borrowing happens, Mr. Hume says, where there are numerous proprietors of land, who live luxuriously; and this may be in part true, though subject to some limitation. With respect to the second cause, or there being but little riches to answer the demand, it may be observed, that it is not so much the absolute quantity, as the accumulation of riches in a certain number of hands that occasions high interest. Commerce, by accumulating riches, adds both to the number of lenders and borrowers; and from the habits of merchants being more saving than those of landed proprietors, by degrees a new order of society springs up, different both from the landed and commercial proprietors, and in this country |