Englishman, she ordered her negroes to seize her liege lord and master, and give him a good flogging, which they did with great glee and a cat-o'-nine tails.

When this was done, the wife, knowing that they could not live together on any amicable terms after this violent breach of prerogative, went to the different stores, and took up what goods she could on credit; which, as they were both known to be people of property, she did to a considerable amount, and separated from him.

• As soon as this was known, the store-keepers came upon the husband for the debts, which he refused to pay; and they immediately commenced actions to recover them.

My countryman, thinking he was equal to any American, or the whole of the store-keepers put together; and resolved that his wife should not be his superior, in this instance, of making him pay her debts, went to an intimate acquaintance of his, who was deputy-sheriff of the county, and deposited with him fifteen hundred dollars, the whole of his individual property, and went into the bounds; (so they call a prison for debtors;) he then conformed to the American law, which clears a debtor on taking an oath that he has given up the whole of his property to his creditors. This done, our ingenious Yorkshireman laughed at the store-keepers, whom he had foiled, exulted over his wife who had failed in making him pay her debts; and then went with a smiling, victorious countenance to his friend, to receive back his fifteen hundred dollars.

A Yorkshireman is generally said to be equal in shrewdness and cunning to any other man: and his keenness has become proverbial, in the expression "A Yorkshire bite ;" and this person thought himself on a footing with any in his native county,-but he was inferior to the American; who laughed in his face when he asked for the money; denied having any belonging to him; and set him at defiance.

Flogged by his wife's negroes, by her orders, with a cat-o'nine tails, and she exulting over him, made responsible for her debts, that she had purposely contracted, confined in a prison on that account, declaring himself insolvent, defrauded of the whole of his property by an acquaintance, in his endeavours to resist the payment of debts to bona fide creditors, - he became a ruined man; and the whole of the circumstances becoming known, he was obliged to leave the county, and now keeps a school in some distant part from the scene of action.'

The above anecdote of the well-punished villainy of a Yorkshire emigrant is accompanied by several others of extreme folly: but what does all this prove against the character of the Americans? Were any man to write the biography of the worst individuals in the Newgate Calendar, in order to deter foreigners from settling in England, we apprehend that he would act as impartially as the writer of the present pamphlet. The only few inferences to be drawn from the examples given by Mr. S. of the bad conduct of Yorkshire emigrants are, that prudence and integrity are as necessary to ensure success and respectability in the New as in the Old World; that

clever rogues, who expect to obtain an open field for their ingenuity in the United States, will find other rogues still more clever who have gone there before them; and that the advantages of wealth are best secured by honest industry. Still, those who intend to emigrate might do well to read the present pamphlet; because we have writers on the other side who are equally partial, and have described the advantages of emigration, but have concealed all the numerous evils which new settlers must unavoidably endure.

Art. 21. America and the British Colonies. An Abstract of all the most useful Information relating to the United States of America and the British Colonies of Canada, the Cape of Good Hope, New South Wales, and Van Diemen's Island. Exhibiting at one View the comparative Advantages and Disadvantages each Country offers for Emigration. Collected from the most Valuable and recent Publications. To which are added, a few Notes and Observations. By William Kingdom, jun. 8vo. pp. 360. 10s. 6d. Boards. Whittaker. 1820. This volume being merely a compilation from works which have already passed under our notice, we have only to give our opinion how far the compiler has been judicious or impartial in his selections. The first 107 pages relate to the United States and to Canada; thence to p. 228. the book is occupied with an account of the Cape of Good Hope: from p. 228. to p. 314. we are supplied with descriptions of our colonies in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Island; and the remainder of the volume contains observations on the advantages and disadvantages which each of these countries offers to the emigrant.

Mr. Kingdom is evidently disposed to recommend emigration to the British colonies, in preference to the United States: but we do not find his accounts of these States so selected as to give án erroneous representation; though they are defective, compared with the accounts of our own colonies. He tells us that the principal disadvantage in America is that of the emigrant being obliged to purchase the land he intends for a settlement, which in our own colonies he obtains free.' (P. 320.) This difference, however, is only nominal, for we are informed at p. 329. that the British colonist is expected to pay a rent for his land:

There can be but one chief method of inducing emigrants to settle in the British colonies, and that is, by rendering colonization there more advantageous than it is in the United States. His Majesty's government, however, appears to have overlooked this circumstance, or it would not compel the settler to the payment of a rent for his land, more particularly such an one as two pounds for every hundred acres, as will be seen in the circular letter relative to the Cape of Good Hope. It is true that it is never to exceed this sum, but it is probable it will in most cases equal it.

The purchase of an acre of land in America is, at the money price, one dollar sixty-four cents, or seven shillings and fourpence halfpenny: the interest of this, at five per cent., is not quite four-pence halfpenny, being the rent of an acre of land in America. Now, at the rate of two pounds for every hundred

acres,

acres, each acre will be four-pence three farthings; consequently the rent of a farm at the Cape of Good Hope will be higher than one in the United States; and the circumstance of procuring land for nothing, which has ever been held up as the grand inducement for emigrating to the British colonies, is entirely set aside. Allowing the spot fixed upon at the Cape for British settlers to be the most fertile in the colony, and that the perseverance, skill, and industry of these settlers, render them far superior to the Dutch inhabitants; still it may be necessary to ask, will the English settler pay willingly a rent of four-pence three farthings per acre, when his Dutch neighbour pays less than one farthing? and would it be possible to collect at this moment from the Dutch settlers a rent of even one penny per acre? It is apprehended that any one at all conversant with this colony would give a negative to both these questions.'

6

It farther appears that labourers, who go out to the Cape, have little chance of bettering their condition. An emigrant taking with him ten able-bodied men, at his own expence, may procure a large grant of land; and the labourers so carried out bind or sell themselves for a number of years, without any limitation by the government. It is therefore more than probable (says Mr. Kingdom) that many of these labourers may be induced, either through ignorance or distress, to bind themselves to the servitude of ten, twenty, or even a greater number of years, with no other recompence than subsistence; thus creating a species of slavery." (P. 330.) The consequence, we are informed, is that these labourers desert their masters, and join the Caffres or Bosjemen, or unite with others to commit depredations on the colonists. Even at the expiration of his service, the labouring emigrant will be little better off (we are told) than he was in England, and may probably, for the remainder of his life, be unable to rise above the rank of a common labourer.'

Mr. K. informs his readers that one of the great advantages which America possesses over the British colonies, arises from the security which English debtors obtain in the United States whereas in our own Colonies proceedings may be instituted against To give our colonies them as soon as they set foot on shore. some chance of here competing with the United States, he recommends a measure, the justice and policy of which appear to us very dubious; namely, to exempt settlers from any legal proceedings arising from their debts for eight or ten years!' We think that he might with equal propriety have added thousands to the end of each of these terms; for surely it would be a mockery of justice to tell a creditor to wait quietly ten years, and then to his debtor with all vigilance into the interior of Africa or pursue New Holland. This would, we conceive, be as profitable labour as that which is described in the homely language of some of our northern counties; "getting butter out of a dog's throat.' "The land of promise" to emigrants, according to Mr. K., is Van Diemen's Island.

Van Diemen's Island. - This island, with the single exception tage of one-third of the inhabitants being convicts, has no disadvan

tage worthy of notice. Here are neither droughts nor inundations, and the natives are even more timid than those at Port Jackson, as well as fewer in number. It possesses the same advantages, in a commercial point of view, as New South Wales. The harbours are not only numerous but good; that of Hobart Town, in particular, is supposed to be equal to any in the world; and, above all, the climate is excellent, being nearly upon a par with that of the south of France, the snow seldom remaining in the vallies more than a few hours: it is indeed probable that it would be found even superior to that of New South Wales for the production of fine-woolled sheep, which, if Mr. Wentworth's calculation be correct, afford the most promising object for speculation.'

A more detailed description is given in the body of the volume. The circumstance of every third man being a professed rogue, though it is here passed over in one line, would for the present deter many respectable persons from choosing this island for their abode. Indeed, we have recently seen a melancholy description of the vice and depravity of manners which prevail in that settlement; though it is no more than we might expect from so large a portion of the population being convicts.

This work may be recommended as comprizing, in a short compass, much useful information respecting those British colonies to which the streams of emigration from the United Kingdoms may be expected to flow: but it is proper to notice that, according to the news-papers, application against it as a piracy has been made in the Court of Chancery, and the profits have been ordered to be detained on behalf of the proprietors of a former publication from which it has copiously borrowed.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Art. 22. A Letter to Lieutenant Gavin Young, of the Bengal Infantry, in Refutation of his Opinions on some Questions of general Grammar. By M. Lumsden, Professor in the College of Fort-William. 8vo. pp. 56. Printed at Calcutta.

Lieutenant Young published some time ago an ingenious though not very temperate volume, intitled Observations on the Opinions of several Writers concerning Historical, Political, and Metaphysical Questions. In this miscellaneous work is contained a View of the Theory of Particles, so drawn up as to call in question certain chapters of Professor Lumsden's Persian grammar: who therefore undertakes, in the work before us, a vindication of the attacked sections; endeavouring to shew that, admitting the theory of Horne Tooke to be just, and that particles always originate in significant terms, yet it does not follow that they ought to be interchangeable, and strictly equivalent, with the words whence they are allowed to spring. Thus, suppose from to signify beginning, still the phrase "beginning from Adam" may nevertheless not be tautological.

We demur, however, to the accepted assertion that from means beginning. Beginning is an abstract word, which must itself be a metaphor derived from the name of some sensible ob

ject;

ject; and we suspect this object to be the dug, or breast, of mammalian animals. In collateral Gothic dialects, we find fromme mutter used for a good mother, and frommes kind for a thriving child; and the verb frommen used for to yield, to afford, to produce.

The Latin preposition de is etymologically connected with dare but of the Persian az we know not well where to seek the

root: probably in to be born, to bring forth.

On the whole, the points here in discussion are not very important to the theory of language in general, or even to the reputation of the Persian grammar so extensively criticized.

SINGLE SERMON S.

Art. 23. Preached at the Cathedral Church of Durham, before the Lord Bishop of Durham and the Judges of Assize, August 10. 1819. By Francis Haggitt, D.D. 8vo. pp. 27. Rodwell and Martin. 1819.

An Assize-sermon is preached by the chaplain of the Sheriff, and before the Judges and the magistrates of the county. When such a discourse, therefore, delivered under such authority, and before such an auditory, forcibly recommends a serious attention to the state of the prisons, and the adoption of those improvements to which the public regard has been called by the exertions of the Society whose report we noticed in January last, as well as by the excellent publication of Mr. Buxton, (M. R., vol.lxxxvi. pp. 39. and 332.) we consider that no inconsiderable step is made in the progress of those principles which are likely to produce so desirable a reform. Dr. Haggitt eloquently points out the necessity, in order to diminish that most crying evil of the present day, juvenile delinquency, of dividing the old from the young, and the hardened convict from the novice in crime; - of employing the whole in profitable labour;-and of diffusing religious instruction among them, but more particularly among the young. It is so clear that no harm can possibly arise from the adoption of these suggestions, and that some good must inevitably result from them, that, though individuals may doubt whether the State will be benefited to the extent anticipated by the recommenders of the system, every person surely will be inclined to support it for the sake of the palpable advantages to which nobody can be blind.

Art. 24. Preached in the Parish Church of St. George the Martyr, Queen Square, February 21. 1819, for the Benefit of the Fever Institution: containing an Account of its Nature, Origin, and Progress. To which are added, Rules to be observed in the Apartments of Persons infected with Contagious Fever; and the Process of Fumigation for the Purpose of preventing Contagion. By the Rev. John Hewlett, B.D. 8vo. 1s. 6d. Rivingtons.

Mr. Hewlett informs us that this is the first appeal in behalf of the Fever Institution that has been made from the pulpit,'

and