consequently the condition of paupers has been improved; better workhouses, better food, and better clothing, have been provided this must have caused an increase of expenditure; but who will say that it is a proof of the deterioration of the country? Now the two last items will go far to account for the 1 million of increase; and where is the formidable symptom of the national ruin in the increase of poor rates?,

Mr. Hall alludes to what he calls a portentous increase of crimes, which he says has glutted our prisons with malefactors. Does he forget that prisons have no vegetative power whereby they can expand in proportion as they are crammed, and that, however lamentable, it is a general truth that the number of criminals is multiplied by an increase of wealth and population? Does he know that from the days of the benevolent Howard, until very recently, no addition had been made to receive the crimi nals of a nation doubled in population; and that he pointed out the mischiefs resulting, in his time, from crowded prisons? Is it a period when most extensive and substantial reforms in this obvious cause of the increase of crimes have been effected that Mr. Hall chooses to taunt his country with an evil which they are actively engaged in remedying? A patriot would rather point, exultingly, to the good that had been done as an inducement to perseverance; but Mr. Hall had foretold the ruin of his country, and it is not ruined. The country must not put his pamphlet out of countenance.

The power to pay increased taxes is a proof of increased national wealth. The more liberal provision for the poor is a proof of increased power and liberality; and the cessation of commercial distress is an earnest of the passing away of the agricultural. The progress made in prison discipline, which has effected, in some instances, a diminution in the proportion of criminals recommitted from 20 in the hundred to 3 per cent., is a proof of national improvement; and all this in the teeth of Mr. Hall's pamphlet. England, poor England, has most of all that constitutes wealth--she has most intellect,-— literary, scientific, mechanical:--she has most capital,money, machinery, manufactures, and natural products:-she has most integrity,-look to the low rate of interest of her immense debt:-she has most humanity,-look to her contributions, dispersed like the dew of Heaven, when calamity overtakes her fellow men; look to her sacrifices, pecuniary and commercial, to rescue Europe from the crime, and Africa from the scourge, of the detestable slave trade: she has most religionlook at the glorious sum of 100,000l. voluntarily contributed annually to diffuse the sacred Scriptures :-she has surely her share of military and naval glory, may she long draw on her rich stores

of renown, and by her equity and moderation still overcome her enemies. She is the freest among the free, for of America, which alone could rival her, be it remembered that a large part of her population are slaves, having no rights, degraded to the level of cattle, and that this is permitted in a federal union of boasted freemen.

¡England is free, and her freedom has grown with her growth and strengthened with her strength: she is therefore naturally free, and she is more free than she was thirty years ago.

These are our reasons for thinking Mr. Hall ought to take shame to himself for clinging to a false prediction, which Divine Providence has enabled his country to refute. If he still glories in his prophetical foresight, we cannot but designate him as one of those "who glory in their shame.”

ART. XVII-A Retrospect of the First Ten Years of the Protestant Mission to China (now, in Connexion with the Malay, denominated the Ultra-Ganges Missions), accompanied with miscellaneous Remarks on the Literature, History, and Mythology of China. By William Milne. Malacca, at the AngloChinese Press, 1820. 8vo. pp. 376.

WE have heard so much of late years of the journals of Roman Catholic Missionaries, and, particularly, thanks to Mr. Southey, of the Jesuits in South America, that we took up, with some interest, the present narrative of a modern Protestant Mission, embracing a sphere of operation at the least as important as the Abipones of a Dobrizhoffer, or any other halfexplored horde of either hemisphere. We confess, however, that we have been disappointed in the character of much of the information contained in Mr. Milne's volume. It is, in truth, a long, and often a very heavy, detail of the unimportant as well as important events which have befallen the Protestant Chinese Missionaries, with their wives and children, during ten years, and might, so far as the public are concerned, be very advantageously condensed into one-fourth or fifth part of its present dimensions. The benevolent author has a most grievous habit of writing dissertations where it was only necessary to relate facts, as well as of relating facts which are often of as little value to the public as some of his dissertations; yet, with these somewhat severe introductory remarks still wet on our paper, we must not fail to

add, what affords some excuse for the tediousness of many of Mr. Milne's details, that his work is intended chiefly for the use of those persons who are, or may be in future, employed in the Ultra-Ganges Missions, to whom much of what is very dry and tame to an ordinary reader, especially in Europe, may be very useful and necessary. It may be well also, as a matter of his tory, to have this minute account of the early proceedings of an establishment, which, in future ages, may perhaps be referred to as an early germ of Ultra-Ganges Christianity. The unborn historiographers of China, and the Malayan Archipelago, will have to thank Mr. Milne for a narrative, which, though it may now appear disproportionately long and minute, will fill a chasm in their histories, which the antiquaries of Europe would gladly find supplied in our own. With what interest should we now peruse an authentic and detailed account of the first ten, or first hundred years of Christianity in Great Britain: though even in this case we could dispense with some of the particulars which the Ultra-Ganges annalist has thought it necessary to record,→ particulars very proper doubtless to be noticed on the minutebooks of the mission, or to be discussed as matters of business at the scene of action, but quite unworthy to figure at full length in print for the edification of general society.

To all persons, however, who are interested, either practically or speculatively, in missionary exertions, the present volume will afford much valuable information; and even for readers who have little taste for this species of intelligence, a class with whom we by no means wish to symbolize, Mr. Milne communicates many particulars which deserve their perusal and attention. We could wish, because it would powerfully tend to promote the public interest in religious missions, that missionaries would more generally endeavour to secure a perusal of their publications among persons of general literature, by enriching them with communications of universal interest to the reading part of the community. Much indeed has been done in this way; and we could easily show that geography, history, philology, the science of antiquities, and miscellaneous literature, are under obligations of the very highest class to Christian missionaries; and never more so than at the present moment, when in every quarter of the globe are to be found among the agents of benevolence persons of enlarged and philosophical minds, who have diligently surveyed and reported on the countries they have visited, and added as much to the stock of universal knowledge as to the diffusion of Christian principles. We believe that it is from the purest motives that still more has not been effected in this department; and we can well feel with Mr. Burke, in his panegyric on Howard, how far more sublime is the moral taste

that actuates a faithful agent of benevolence than the gratification of a mere scientific or literary predilection. Still we think, that our missionaries, without in any way debasing their higher tastes, or diminishing their religious usefulness, might devote a share of attention to points of very subordinate importance to them, but which would greatly interest and instruct many readers who do not generally trouble themselves with missionary narratives. No human mind can for many years together profitably devote itself, with close attention, for seventeen or eighteen hours every day, to one given subject; there must be a certain degree of change in its habits of thought; both body and mind require some intervals of relaxation and variety of employment. Without, therefore, any sacrifice as respects his great object, an intelligent and industrious missionary may do much for the promotion of science and the general interests of human nature. Located, perhaps, in a region almost unknown to his countrymen, or the literati of Europe, he may, in his walks and recreations, almost without effort, collect, in the course of years, a variety of important facts in geology, meteorology, botany, and geography; he may amass a fund of thermometrical, barometrical, magnetical, and other scientific observations; he may note the phenomena of winds, and tides, and currents; in short, he may incidentally confer upon science such benefits as will command general attention and respect to his communication. It is superfluous to add how much benefit he may render to man as man, and apart from, though not unconnected with, his higher and spiritual destinies, by introducing the arts of civilized life; by naturalizing useful vegetables and animals; by improving the agriculture and rude manufactures of a country; and by convincing both his civilized neighbours at home, and the immediate objects of his benevolent labours, that a missionary, while he is devoted supremely to his immediate vocation as a spiritual instructor, is not necessarily destitute of any taste or quality that can adorn, or ameliorate, or exalt the ordinary condition of humanity.

Mr. Milne begins his work with showing that Christianity is suited to, and intended for, all nations; and proceeds to epitomize the efforts of former ages to diffuse its benefits. He states that the first attempts to extend the Gospel to China were made by the Nestorians, who, from the fifth century, when that sect arose, to the end of the seventh century, penetrated through the various countries eastward of Constantinople, as far as Tartary, where they spread their doctrines and formed Christian societies. They arrived in China about the end of the seventh century, and established churches; from which period little is known of them for nearly five hundred years. In the thirteenth century they are stated by Mosheim to have had a flourishing church in the

North of China, where it still continued to exist in the beginning of the fifteenth century, after Christianity had been nearly extinguished in Tartary. During the course of the fifteenth and the early part of the sixteenth centuries, Nestorianism is thought to have entirely died away in China.

Mr. Milne states, what appears somewhat remarkable, that though, according to Mosheim and other ecclesiastical historians, Christianity had existed in China, in the Nestorian form, for more than eight hundred years, no authentic Chinese record that our author had been able to discover, notices the circumstance of its introduction, or alludes to the efforts, doctrines, sufferings, or extinction of its votaries; nor, with the exception of one stone tablet, mentioned by some Romish missionaries, could Mr. Milne learn that any Christian monument, or inscription, or any vestiges of ecclesiastical edifices, had been noticed by any Chinese writer. Besides which, no part of the Nestorian doctrines or ceremonies appears, according to our author, to have mingled with the pagan systems of China. These circumstances are the more singular, as the Chinese writers notice every other foreign sect which has entered their country; and particularly several which prevailed at the very period at which, according to Mosheim and other historians, the Nestorians were a flourishing community in China.

The Church of Rome, which, with all its enormities, has made at different periods truly zealous efforts for the conversion of the heathen, directed its attention in the thirteenth century to this country. An embassy, composed chiefly of ecclesiastics, was sent from Pope Nicholas IV. to the Emperor of the Tartars; their principal object being Tartary; though it is said that they erected some churches also in China. In the year 1307, the Gospel had made such progress in this country, that Pope Clement V. elevated Cambalu, which some think means Peking, into an archbishoprick. At the commencement of the seventeenth century, numbers of Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, and Capuchins, entered China, from which period there were considerable accessions of native converts. Some of the Romish missionaries in this country have been eminent models of zeal, patience, and Christian piety; though unhappily all were not of this character. To the western fictions and fopperies of the Romish church, began to be added many of oriental growth; divisions were introduced into these infant societies, and commissioners were despatched from Rome, armed with pompous powers, to hear and determine controversies, which they only exasperated by their interference; all which circumstances greatly impeded the extension of pure Christianity among the

natives.

Of late years the Romish missionaries have been violently