quencies committed by them in the exercise of their functions: but these officers cannot be brought to trial without the consent of the States-General.

This court exercises a similar jurisdiction over the other higher functionaries, and gives sentence in all cases in which the Sovereign, the members of his family, or the government, are parties. It animadverts likewise on the conduct of the inferior courts, and on the adherence of the judges to the established form of procedure.

No judge, of whatever court, can be removed from office, unless a judicial sentence be passed on him, or unless he resign voluntarily. The administration of criminal law is committed to the provincial courts, or to the courts which may be subsequently established for that purpose.

• Finances.-The imposition of taxes is vested in the Sovereign, acting in concert with the States-General. The superintendance of the mint is committed to a special Board, the members of which are nominated by the Prince out of three candidates proposed by the States-General. The existing taxes shall be maintained until new arrangements are made.

Armed Force. In addition to the regular army and navy, a national militia shall be formed; of which, in time of peace, the fifth shall be annually discharged, to be replaced, if possible, by volunteers, but otherwise by lot from among the unmarried citizens, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two. This militia shall assemble generally in time of peace for a month, or thereabouts, to be drilled.

City-Guards shall be established in all the towns, according to the old practice, for the maintenance of tranquillity at home, and, in war, for defensive service against the enemy. In war, shall likewise be enrolled a land-sturm, consisting of country-volunteers, together with those of the towns.

Care of the Dykes. This superintendence forms one of the most essential objects of the solicitude of government, and is intrusted to a particular administration directed by the Sovereign. Their inspection extends to all dykes, rivers, sluices, and buildings near the water, which are at the charge of the state; and in a certain degree to the dykes, rivers, sluices, and buildings kept up by, individuals, or local bodies. In the latter case, their province is more particularly to guard against injury to the public from any of the works in question. This Board is likewise charged with the superintendence of the roads and bridges maintained by government.

Religion. The religion of the Sovereign is that of the reformed church.

The ministers of the reformed church are confirmed in their respective salaries, whether paid by government or by local funds of the church or parish. A similar confirmation is hereby given to the salaries lately granted to the ministers in other forms of worship; and provision shall be made for those sects which have as yet received no salaries from government, or such as were inadequate.

The Sovereign is intitled to exercise over all forms of worship the superintendence required by the public interest; and he has besides a direct

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a direct authority to inspect the arrangements of those religious.communities who enjoy any revenue from government.'

The advocates of liberty can scarcely fail to regret the almost unqualified ascendancy given by this constitution to the executive power. King William was called in his day King of Holland, and Stadtholder of England; and with equal truth it may be said that the present ruler of the Netherlands possesses, under the modest title of " Prince," a more extensive range of prerogative than our laws assign to our monarch. The exclusive command of the army and navy, with the appointment to most of the civil offices, and the complete controul of the clergy, are potent instruments in the hands of an hereditary governor. On the other side, it is but fair to admit that the antient Constitution of the Dutch was extremely defective, and was made to answer the purpose of government only by the good sense and moderation of the inhabitants. That the same qualities will tend to correct any deficiency in the present institutions must be the wish of all who are aware that a period of tranquillity is absolutely necessary to that afflicted and oppressed country. Let us hope, also, that the increased intimacy of connection between the Netherlands and England will have the effect of shewing the government of the latter, that a resolute maintenance of popular rights has no connection with secret wishes for the success of a hostile nation, but may be strictly compatible with a most cordial union of the members of a state, whenever their independence is threatened from abroad. This feeling, natural as it is to Englishmen, and evidently as it is the duty of all nations, was not adequately cherished in Holland; where the opposing parties were accustomed, with little. scruple as to national respectability, to look for the means of preponderance from the interference of their foreign supporters.

ART. X. Essai sur le Diagnostic de la Gale, &c.; i. e. An Essay on the Diagnostics of the Itch, the Causes of it, and the practical medical Inferences to be deduced from correct Views of this Disease. By J. C. GALÉS, M.D. 4to. Paris. 1812. Im. ported by De Boffe. Price 5s.

WE E were not a little surprized to receive a quarto pamphlet, consisting of above 50 closely printed pages, on the subject of the Itch; and, after having perused it, we certainly think that the information which it contains might advantageously have been put into a smaller compass; yet we confess that we have not read it without some interest. That part of it which is the most deAPP. REV. Vol. LXXV. Kk serving

serving of attention is the account of the insect which has been supposed by some writers to occasion the disease, and which M. GALES describes with much minuteness. It appears that Moufet was the first naturalist who mentions the animalcules which breed in the human skin: but that it was in a letter from Cestoni to Redi, and published in the works of the latter, that the animal which is imagined to produce the itch was, for the first time, observed and described with an accuracy almost equal to that of the modern entomologists.' The insect was said to be of the genus acarus; and Cestoni positively asserts that it is the true source of the disease. This letter of Cestoni seems, however, to have fallen into complete oblivion, and to have had little or no influence on the opinions of his successors. Yet the idea that the itch is caused by a peculiar insect was adopted by Linné, and the animal was arranged by him in the class of aptera and the genus acarus. De Geer afterward described the animal with considerable detail; and it was also noticed by Fabricius, Latreille, and others: yet still some uncertainty prevailed on the subject; both because the descriptions of the different naturalists did not entirely agree, and because some of the more intelligent medical writers, although they could not doubt that an insect had been found in the vesicle of the itch, did not consider it as the cause of the complaint, but rather supposed that the state of the skin produced by the disease afforded a convenient lodgment in which the insect might deposit its eggs. M. GALES was resolved, if possible, to ascertain the real fact, with respect both to the existence and the nature of the animal and to its power of generating the malady. He therefore employed a microscope of considerable power; and, examining a small quantity of the fluid obtained from the vesicle of the itch, he easily perceived the animalcules, and was able to observe distinctly their motions and their particular organs. He subjoins a magnified figure of the insect, which is very similar to the mite in cheese.

Of the existence of this insect, as M. GALÉS describes it, we apprehend that no doubt can remain: the general tenor of his pamphlet leads us to regard him as a man of veracity; and we cannot suppose that the whole of what he says is a fiction. It is not, however, quite so certain whether this creature be the cause or the consequence of the disease: yet the author states several circumstances which are strongly in favour of the former opinion, and relates an experiment performed on himself which tends materially to establish it. Having confined a few of the animals by a small glass on a part of his hand, he soon began to perceive the sensation of itching, and in a few hours the actual vesicles were formed. The experiment was indeed scarcely

scarcely carried sufficiently far; and it was not prosecuted long enough entirely to decide the point. Probably, from its disgusting nature, it is not likely soon to be repeated.

Some remarks in different parts of this tract would induce us to suspect that the itch is a more common disease in France than in England, and that the treatment of it is there less understood. The author enlarges very particularly on the means of cure; and his remarks, being probably the result of experience, are worth attention. He supposes that external applications are the only means of removing the disease, and that it may be effected by different substances; yet that sulphur is the remedy which, in the greatest degree, unites safety with certainty.

ART. XI. Reflexions, &c.; i. e. Reflections of M. BERGASSE, formerly a Member of the Assemblée Constituante, on the Constitutional Act passed by the Senate after the Removal of Bonaparte. 8vo. Paris. 1814.

THIS pamphlet, one of the first that appeared after the counter

revolution, is composed with much zeal for the cause of royalty, but without a due consideration of the prudence and management which are necessary in a time of convulsion. The author enlarges on the inconsistency of the Senate in presuming to condemn the conduct of the tyrant whom they had been so long instrumental in upholding. There are,' he says, in the Senate several men of great merit, who, had they lived in better times, would have acted an useful part for their country: but I most strongly condemn those who have taken the lead in deciding the determinations of that public body. We have no right to vilify a fallen enemy, particularly a man at whose hands, like the members of the Senate, we have accepted favours, and have earned them by constituting ourselves the apologist of his crimes; still less to disavow in secret his violence, if in public we have made it the subject of encomium.'-M. BERGASSE proceeds in the same style to term the act against Bonaparte an act of self-accusation on the part of the Senate:' but the point, which calls forth his loudest animadversions, is the conduct of the Senate in making the recall of the Bourbons in some measure conditional on the acceptance of the Constitutional Act. Has Louis XVIII.,' he adds, need of the Senate to be constituted king of France? Has not royalty always been hereditary among us? Is not this going almost as far as to say that the Convention had the power to pass a capital sentence on Louis XVI., and to declare that they were intitled to pronounce the termination of the dynasty of the Bourbons as kings of France?'

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Another argument of an equally cogent nature applies to the vigilance of the Senate, in converting into hereditary possessions those dignities and incomes of which they had only a temporary tenure. Do not these incomes,' asks M. BERGASSE, belong to the public; and can the Senate appropriate permanently to itself that of which it was merely the depositary? It is curious to see them thus self-constituted the nobility and even the prime nobility of the kingdom. What must be the feelings of the Rohans, Montmorencys, and other antient families, on being associated with the men who once held the language of sturdy republicanism?'-The pamphlet concludes with an encomium on the king's extensive reading and judgment, and with an argument on a very different topic, but which few reflecting men will be disposed to contest; viz. that the overthrow of Bonaparte was owing not to the exertions of any government or class of men, but to his own infatuation in the Russian campaign.

In condemning the tenor of this tract, we are actuated less by a total disapprobation of the writer's principles than by a distrust of his prudence. No person doubts that the majority of the Senate were participators, to a considerable degree, in the criminality of Bonaparte's measures; or that men of honour would rather have chosen to resign and live in poverty, than bear a share in such dreadful responsibility: but the rule of conduct, for a sovereign returning after a convulsion of twentyfive years, must be an adherence less to the abstract principles of honour, and even of justice, than to that course which will have the effect of producing the smallest public discontent or mischief. Only a few months since, the Senators, like the Marshals and other great officers, influenced considerable parties; and an opposition to their wishes, on the occurrence of the late crisis, might have excited dissensions in which it would have been no difficult matter to induce the surviving part of the old soldiers to take the side of their late Emperor. The issue of such a conflict, among a nation so easily deceived as the French, no man can pretend to foresee; so that little doubt remained of the expediency of making a considerable concession for the attainment of tranquillity. In our own history, a sacrifice of a similar kind was necessary at the Restoration; and the republicans, who were employed by Charles II., proved by no means the worst servants of the Crown.

ART.