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of which, is a positive act of aggression; for wherever feeling exists, be it in the freeman, the slave, or the brute beast, there will also be found a co-existent right to legal protection. Lastly, the immediate good, real or imaginary, of a breach of right, may, or rather must be, followed by a train of evils, and the officious intermediing of the law has ever had the most unfortunate effect upon human affairs.

To apply these principles practically to Mr. Hall's plan of investing Par. liament with the power of compelling a man to cut down his own trees, an expedient which might indeed be attended with some benefit were not its cost too great, let us proceed to the natural se. quel, taking for examples, those demands which have been actually made, and that even by those who suppose themselves the advocates of liberty:-a compulsory division of farms, that no man shall have the power to let or hold beyond a certain number of acres;-regulation of the sale of all necessaries of life, so that one man shall not forestall, or take the advantage of another;-a fixed or maximum price-legal limitation of the wages of labour, and of the property of the rich, restricting income to a certain amount: the favourite plan of Paine, and of many of his disciples;-legal restraints on thinking and believing!

A considerable portion of these natural illegalities has already appeared in the shape of laws, however absurd and inefficient; the remainder is enthusiastically and periodically called for by wellmeaning individuals, whose attachment to the end, blinds them to the irregularity and fatal consequence of the means, and equally to the most glaring proofs of past experience. Amongst these advocates of liberty, there is not at this moment a more favourite dogma than that the farmer, the butcher, and the baker, not to forget the publican, and the exhibitor of public spectacles, ought, in all wellregulated society, to be restrained by peculiar laws, which it is not necessary to extend to other occupations. And why? Because the former of these grow or deal in the necessaries of life, between which and all other commodities there is supposed to subsist a difference, absosolutely requiring a different species of legislation; which is precisely to generalize upon the extreine case: it is to authorize the magistrate to pull a man's house down providently, and before the fire has really happened. In the cases

of fire, famine, and invasion, no doubt expedience is right; but whilst corn can be purchased with money, there exists no essential difference between corn and other commodities, nor the smallest necessity for any difference in respect of legal restraint: nor ought a man to be blamed for hoarding corn, but in come mon with him who hoards money. The farmer has the same right to extend his concerns, his influence, and, in all probability, power of effectually serving his country, as the man of any other occupation; and granting he enhance price with one hand, he reduces it with the other, by the superior produce which results from great means and superior skill. Nor have the following two things ever been proved-First, that fundamental right ever ought to be invaded, but flagrante necessitate; secondly, that legal regulation and restraint, in defiance of right, have been generally successful. The truth is, price will ever be ultimately regulated by actual plenty or scarcity, and not by laws, however numerous; and in the ordinary course of affairs, we are bound by the obligations of justice and right, to await the natural result.

The law of the maximum was experi rimented upon by the antimonopolists, antiforestallers, and antiregraters, of revolutionary France: with what successneed not be repeated. The experiment has since been revived in New South' Wales, with the success of nearly break. ing all the farmers, and starving the colony. The legislator however, or rather executor of the law, was very properly, and it may be hoped timeously, stopped in his career of regulation. We now and then punish a forestaller here, in terrorem: the term, I presume, implies an early man. Would it not be an improvement upon the act against such, to tack a ryder to it, ordaining, that no man of that class should leave his bed on a market morning before a certain hour. As to legal restraints on thinking and believing, we are compelled to believe, by act of parliament; and forbidden, on pain of death, to deal with the devil; besides, I believe, being subject to the penalty of twenty pounds for every time we omit going to church on the sabbath day. Why, what are our informers about, to neglect a proffered fortune of easier attainment than even by the lottery? In regard to belief indeed, we have one set of men in our times, who are the loudest against compulsive creeds, with surely the least reason on their side;

for

for although they are determined not to believe the by thein presumed extra vagant things, so strictly enjoined, they are equally determined to believe others to the full as extravagant. But, say they, do not we go to the fountain-head; aud, is not ours the true interpretation? -Unanswerable logic.

To narrow these questions to the utmost, expedience will generally be found in the end, to reside with liberty and right. Mr. Hall, on reflection, will, no doubt, be convinced, that if the interest of proprietors will not induce them to cut down their own trees, the nation is bound to sustain whatever may be the consequent loss, it being no more within the province of law, to forbid their hoarding or wasting of timber, than their hoarding or wasting of money. There is an especial reason too, why no restaints en property should be demanded, since such ever have the effect of arousing the jealousy of the rich, and disinclining them to just and necessary reform, however certain cries may have been indulged as a stalking horse. The agrarian principles of many reformers, have given but too much colour to the stupid and erroneous notion, that equality in the vocabulary of liberty, implied an equali. zation of property, instead of an equality of respective rights.

POLITICO-ECONOMICUS.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

SIR,

HA

AVING observed some remarks on asthma in a late number of your excellent Magazine, I beg to inform the author that he has the thanks of a fellow sufferer for his communication; it is impossible for an asthmatic to forget his sufferings, however fortunate he may have been in obtaining a cure. It ap pears that the stramonium offers the usual mitigation of an opiate, or narcotic, in the convulsive state of the disorder. Your correspondent informs us,in general terms, that he has not felt the horrors of the attack for many months. His history shews that he has been the victim of vexation of mind as well as of body, and I am led to conjecture, that he is contented with the abatement of his distress, and the soothing of the acute feelings of the complaint. Many asthmatics find the same effect from smoaking tobacco. I have had recommended to me the smoaking of hops. The humulus or hop is known to possess a soporific quality; and the gentleman who strongly advised

me to use it, had experienced an antispasmodic or anodyne property, both during the fit and under the nervous depression which he had been accustomed to feel in the intervals. I did not adopt his advice, because I observed that ný friend had an indolent habit, and resigned himself to the practice of smoaking this plant and tobacco, to the neglect of active pursuits; and that if pain was absent from its influence, apathy and general weakness were too predominant to excite my emulation in the use of his remedies. The relief from smoaking these substances may be derived from the carbonated vapour, in some instances, where the lungs may be excited too much by a pu rer air. In other cases, the narcotic impregnation may be useful in subduing the acute sensibility of the nerves of the lungs, while some asthmatics may have present relief from these courses separate or combined, there are others who have had no benefit whatever; and as I am informed, have grown worse under the use of smoaking narcotic herbs. Persons who have long suffered a disorder, hear much of the complaint, and receive inuch popular advice-this had been my case for fifteen years. In this period, I consulted more than twice the number of medical men than are enumerated by your correspondent Verax. I have consumed as much gum ammoniac, asafetida, æther, and opium, &c. &c. as would have set up an apothecary of great prac tice my complaint came in winter and spring with great force, and I was visited by it at other seasons, from changes of weather, fatigue, or imprudence in eating or drinking. I have no right to complain that my medical friends followed the same track, for I presume they had no other path to persue, in attempting the relief which they sincerely desired to afford.

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But I wanted more than the removal of symptoms, and I expected in vain some directions upon principle, that might serve to protect me against returns, and to alter the frame so far, that it might become less susceptible of the various causes of asthma. In the year 1805, I perused an Inquiry into disordered Respiration and Asthma," by Dr. Robert Bree. Your correspondent Verax gives a tribute to the attention and manners of this physician, which in the absence of all personal acquaintance with him, I am not able to confirm, but I gratefully acknowledge the information I have de rived from his treatise on asthma. His

reasoning

reasoning first opened my views on the many influences that occasion the disease; and by considering his remarks on the third species of asthma, I observed a wide field for noxious causes, producing convulsive affections, and amongst these

asthma.

I soon found that a confirmed sympa thy prevailed between the stomach and Jungs, and I experienced that a vigilant attention to diet was answered by a proportionate advantage to my health. It was known that indigestion attended fits of asthma, but I now learnt to my conviction, that all irritations of the digestive organs may occasion attacks of asthma. My medical friend in the country became, about this period, assiduous in applying the principles of this book, and satisfied me more and more, that to mitigate convulsive asthma is not to cure it, and that the means of relief to one patient cannot be certainly reckoned upon as means of comfort to another; and this uncertainty resulted from the nature of the complaint, as it was caused by different states in various habits of body. My case has afforded an example of this fact, for I do not recollect that I had gained longer absences of the disorder from any thing I had used during fifteen years, and though I had frequently relief in the fit, a future attack was not treated with success by the same means as gave this relief. When I began to turn the habit of my body by diet, medicine, and modes of life, I first perceived amendment. This advantage was made use of in pursuing additional and more effectual means to secure it. It was thus that I gradually experienced a renovation of the power of the stomach, and of my lungs, and became capable of all active exertions that my duties in life required. I cannot believe, Mr. Editor, that I should have arrived at this benefit if I had contented myself with relieving the suffering of my nervous and miserable state of body, and with this conclusion on the use of narcotics in asthma, I am, &c. AGRICOLA.

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of deferring, putting off from time to tine. In its more extended meaning, it involves the criminality of delaying the performance of an incumbent duty, or an indispensable obligation, until it is either too late to do it properly, or too late to perform it at all; therefore, procrastination is conversant about the active duties incident to a state of society.

The best method of explaining any particular vice, is by contrasting it with its opposite virtue. Promptness is the excellent virtue, directly opposed to the disgraceful vice of procrastination. Promptness consists in the immediate discharge of any duty or obligation.

The cause of procrastination is comprised in these terms-the love of present ease, which is opposed to exertion or employment. When the exercise of mind or body, or of both, is obligatory, mankind, with but few exceptions, prefer a state of rest to that of activity; hence the common phrase, "I would do it if I were not obliged, but I hate compulsion." This is absurd; for one of the principal reasons why we should perform our duties is, because they are compulsory. All the business of life is carried on by multiplied exertions; which, in most cases, being difficult or offensive, delay first, then neglect, and lastly, failure result.

Habit, forgetfulness, immoral principles, and false estimation of time, are the constituents which form the love of present ease.

It is to be remarked that those persons who indulge themselves, by delaying to perform their duties; for instance, those who habituate themselves not to rise from their beds till an hour after the appointed time for rising, or who neglect auswering their correspondents till within a few minutes of the closing of the mail, by gradual habit lay the foundation for delaying the performance of the most important duties of life.

There are many, who are not only willing, but desirous, to perform all the obligations properly required of them, whose memories are so weak, that while they are discharging one duty, they forget those which are to follow. These are the most excusable kind of procrastinators; but they are not altogether pardonable, as there exists a remedy, which if used with perseverance, will effect a

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"Never mind;" "I care not." Such procrastinators are perhaps incorrigible, and must be given over to their voluntary malady.

The sanguine and the listless, make a false estimation of time. They are not absolutely averse to discharge their duties, but, they defer them from minutes to hours, from hours to days, from days to weeks, from weeks to months, from months to seasons, and from seasons to years, consoling themselves by repeating, "Tis time enough yet:" till all their allotted portion of time has expired, and left their duties, not only unfinished, but unattempted.

"Tis time enough yet," is a sluggard's motto, not less absurd than untrue. Considering wisely, there was never yet time enough for any thing. Time, the greatest gift of Heaven and nature, is held by a tenure so precarious and eva

nescent, that no one knows how large or small his share is decreed to be. He is therefore a spendthrift, who but wastes

a moment.

A man who possessed only an uncertain and decreasing income, is deemed a madman if he squander it away on toys and unsubstantial trifles, instead of turn ing it to interest and accumulation.

The consequences of procrastination, embrace all the intermediate stages of human ill, included between slight inconvenience, and total destruction, Through it, children have been chastised, and people of all ages have incurred losses and privations. By procrastination, merchants have lost bargains; mechanics have lost employment; and the laborer has lost subsistence. By it statesmen have lost places; competitors have lost rewards; fathers have lost sons; and mothers have ruined daughters. Procrastination has lost the lover his mistress, and has involved thousands in the disgrace of violated promises and broken vows. In short, by procrastination, generals have failed of victory; and kings have lost thrones!

Finally, the remedy is to be declared. Let the person who is addicted to this shameful propensity, solemnly resolve, at all times to perform his duties before he gratifies his love of present ease; and let him not only resolve, but act, by discharging instantly what he may have to do.

Effectual aid for the eradication of this defect of character, will be obtained from reflecting on the uncertain duration of human existence; and by well weigh

ing the infallible consequences of procrastination. Let us all revolve in our minds, the desire we feel that others should perform their duties to us, from which we will learn how essential the prompt discharge of ours is to them. By acting on these principles, the wise and virtuous will be saved from the dangers and dishonour of a vicious procrasti nation.

For the Monthly Magazine. OBSERVATIONS and SPECULATIONS, by a FRENCHMAN, on the ADVANTAGEOUS SITUATION of EGYPT, as a STAPLE or CENTRE for the TRADE of all NATIONS; with a BRIEF ENUMERATION of the PRINCIPAL COMMODITIES that pass through EGYPT on their Way to

EUROPE.

(Concluded from vol. 29, p. 519.) SENNA. The leares procured from

with

a tree of the genus of cassia (cas sia lanceolata), growing in the neigh bouring countries of Upper Egypt, Senna, and Nubia, on uncultivated and dry hills, or ground into which the water of the Nile does not penetrate. There are two species of this tree, one sharp pointed leaves, and another with leaves more roundedi and shaped at the top somewhat like a lancet; in other respects they are much the same, and their purgative powers seem to be nearly equal. The shells, supposed to be as efficacious as the leaves, and by some even preferred on account of their greater mildness, are the hulls or capsules of the seeds of both sorts of senna; they generally contain grains of this seed, though commonly such as have not attained to full maturity. We are informed by Mr. Delile of an aprignum, indigenous in the same places as the senna, with the leaves of which it is very frequently mixed; luckily however that substitution is immaterial, as the leaves of the aprignum are likewise of a laxative nature. The quantity of senna carried from Upper Egypt to Bulac and Cairo, and from theuce exported to every part of Europe, is immense; while Persia, and the Asiatic provinces of the Ottoman empire, have likewise a share. The yearly exportation to Europe is valued at 30,000l. and on the whole, this article constitutes & very profitable branch of Egyptian trade.

Tamarinds. The caravans from Nubia carry the fruit of the tamarind trees in round cakes: this tree, the flowers of which resemble those others bearing pods, grows spontaneously without requiring

auy

any cultivation, to a great height in all the fertile and watered countries of Nubia and Abyssinia; and in the gardens of Cairo and Rosetta, it may be seen in the most beautiful perfection. Europe receives almost as large a quantity of tamarinds as of senna. The druggists of Marseilles have a particular method of preparing them, by which their purgative power is increased, and themselves rendered less harsh and grating to the taste, than in the unprepared state. A considerable portion of them is consumed in Egpyt, where the inhabitants frequently use them as a cooling medicine in fevers, and similar diseases, mixed with common sugar or syrup, to sweeten them.

Gum Arabic is the concrete juice distilling from a species of mimosa, growing in Upper Egypt, and the interior countries of Africa. Some trees of this species grow near Cairo, and the caravans bring considerable quantities of this drug to that place: Marseilles alone used formerly to receive from Alexandria as much of this gum as was valued at 15,000l. every year.

Gum Gedda differs but little from that just described, and is the similar produce of a tree of the same kind: it is brought from Nubia by the caravans, and also from Arabia by the way of Suez. The quantity annually carried to Marscilles used to be worth 20,000l.

Turkish Gum, is, like the above-mentioned, a native of the nether parts of Africa, and is supposed to be produced by the very same tree that furnishes the common gum Arabic, from which it little differs, except in size and transpa

rency.

Capal Gum, is exactly the same substance as that called in the Levant trade Sandarach. This resin, generally used in Persia as wax, is obtained from a kind of thya, (named thya aphilla by Mr. Desfout, in his Flora Atlantica), growing in Arabia and the south of Persia. The European merchants buy large quantities of it at the markets of Cairo. I am in possession of several pieces, each not less than two inches in bulk, in some of which insects are enclosed, and among others a fretting worm.

Ammoniac, or Gum Amoniac, a resinous gum, is procured by cutting a certain species of ferula growing spontaneously in the deserts of Libya, in Arabia, and in the eastern and southern parts of Persia. It is brought partly by land to Cairo, and partly by sea to Suez.

Galbanum, a resinous gum, extracted from a plant of galbanum called the bubon, which bears its fruit in clusters, and grows without any cultivation in the southern parts of Egypt, as also in Arabia and Persia. It is brought to Cairo by the Red Sea. European dealers used formerly to receive great quantities of this drug at Marseilles, and some of the harbours of Italy.

Bdellium, a resinous gum of a reddish brown colour, comes from the southern parts of Persia, and from India, and may be had in abundance at Bagdad and Cairo.

Asufadita, the concrete sap of the root of a plant of the genus ferula, growing in Persia, Candahar, and the northern parts of Indostan; it is car ried but in small quantities to Cairo, passing through Mascate, Mecca, and Suez. The yearly importation at Marseilles, by the way of Alexandria, used to be worth 2001.

Gum Sagapenum. This gum, of a resinous substance, very much resembles asafoedita, and is also the sap of a plant of the genus ferula, growing in Arabia and in the southern and eastern parts of Persia: the sagapenum is more frequently found at Bagdad than Cairo, and comes to us by the way of Alexandria. The merchants of that place send small quantities of it to Marseilles, and some of the Italian sea-ports.

Sarcocof, or Flesh Gum, is said to be produced by a plant, or rather a shrub growing in the southern parts of Persia, and in Ethiopia and Arabia. Greater quantities of it are to be procured at Bagdad than at Cairo.

Incense, frankincense. This perfume, used in religious ceremonies both by the moderns and the ancients, constitutes now, as in former times, a very prominent article of the trade of Egypt. It is carried from Arabia and the eastern coast of Africa to Suez, and from thence to Cairo, from which city it is dispersed through all the provinces of the Ottoman empire, and every part of Europe. Livorno, Trieste, and Venice, used to import considerable quantities, and the portion received at Marseilles, partly in the shape of concrete drops, and partly in powder, amounted every year to about 10,000l.

Myrrh, This resinous aromatic substance comes with the caravans that arrive at Cairo from the interior parts of Africa: a great deal is consumed in

Turkey,

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