poacher, the whole face of the country had become one cheerful scene of villas, villages, cottages, allotments, gardens, and pleasure grounds; giving every where practical evidence, if of the decline of pride, of the growth of prosperity; if of the gradual decrease of aristocratic influence; of the infinite increase of private happiness; and that, not only among the now oppressed classes, but also among the aristocracy themselves.

Finally, let us refer the question of this so much dreaded minute division of property to the decision of that equal justice, which, flowing from good-will to all, has been shown to be the visibly revealed will of God: let us ask the reason which God has given us, what must be the verdict of that sacred tribunal. Let us suppose the privileged orders to bring forward proof incontestable that, without the law of primogeniture, and the auxiliary power of taxing the labouring classes for the maintenance of the younger children of the aristocracy, the subdivision of property among their own children, and grandchildren, and great grandchildren must, at last, reduce the descendants of the present privileged classes, to the ultimate necessity of losing caste, by earning their own subsistence. Would eternal justice, sitting in the judgment seat, pronounce such arguments unanswerable, and issue a decree, that the labouring classes must forego every cherished hope of amelioration, and continue to labour sixteen

hours out of the four and twenty, be poorly fed, insufficiently clothed, and without education ; that, by means of their hard earnings, and sore privations, they might be enabled to keep up a sufficient fund to maintain in idleness, luxury, and often splendour, all but one child, of each family, of each generation, of the now privileged class; for the great and important purpose of preserving one pure specimen of each such family, as long as the world lasts, not only safe from the very apprehension of want, but from the contaminations of industry, either in their own persons, or those of their collateral branches, and, therefore entitled to despise, mortify, laugh at, and avoid, as they would contagion, every one who is, or whose forefathers ever were, of the slightest use to society. Alas! how often has this wicked, this heartless, this thoroughly contemptible assumption of false superiority by injustice, and idleness, (absurd, and worse than baseless as its pretensions are) being vested by forced false associations, with power to render the latter days-days set apart for days of rest-days of absolute bitterness to the venerable gray-haired man, (venerable from his years, though wanting in moral courage to brave prejudice,) who had spent the vigour of his youth, in active, honest, honorable usefulness ; and looked forward, through many a weary struggle, to those very days in which he now feels himself rejected, as the goal of all his hopes! If,

however, all such persons would but ask themselves the question, by whom are they rejected? and not, in their turn, fall into the worthless weakness of neglecting those they think they have left behind, they might yet awake from folly's influence, and be happy. Shall it then be judged a recommendation of the law of primogeniture, or an argument for its abolition, that the general tendency of maintaining that law is to preserve, in all its fruitfulness of evil, this, among so many sources of artificial suffering? Surely then, more need not be said to convince every honest mind, not only that the laws of entail and primogeniture, which now make injustice compulsory, ought to be abolished; but that, in their room, there should be laws established, making justice compulsory: such as, or at least, on the principle of the following:

First, that no settlement or legal trick of any • kind should be permitted to screen any portion of a man's property, under any circumstances, from creditors to whom it is in common honesty due. And, secondly, that on the death of a father, whatever property remains, after the payment of every just debt, and a comfortable provision (for life only) for his widow, should belong (of right, without will or process) equally to all his children, male or female.

Such a return to the simplicity of natural justice would be attended by yet another distinct advan

tage, as it could not fail, by annihilating the principal pretexts for litigation, to prove a colossal stride towards the effectual reform of those purposely created intricacies, and ruinously excessive expenses, which at present render the law, instead of the friend of the widow and the orphan, and the protector of the rights of the poor, a mere instrument of oppression in the hands of the rich, of robbery in the hands of the unprincipled, or of malice in the hands of any man who, being by some quibble of the said law entitled to throw the costs on the disputed estate, determines (with his eyes wide open) to give the lawyers on both sides, time and opportunity (inclination they always have) to divide the property among themselves, before he will admit the (always well-known to be) just claim of his opponent.

CHAPTER XIV.

ON THE

COLLATERAL BENEFITS OF A PROPERTY

TAX, OR THE ADVANTAGES OF CONSTITUTING THE TAX-VOTING CLASS THE TAX-PAYING CLASS.

"The advance of civilization has already put a stop to plunder by force; it remains for the march of intellect to devise a check for plunder by stratagem."-Dilemmas of Pride.

THIS check is our great national want. Property, as distinct from industry, ever has been, and, even under a reformed parliament, still is the maker of laws, the deviser of budgets, the voter of subsidies,-in short, the tier-up of public burdens; property, therefore, must be charged with the carrying of those burdens: nothing less can ever inspire it with a sufficiently feeling and careful appreciation of their weight.

In our reformed parliament we have, no doubt, many honest individuals, and we shall in time, it may be fairly presumed, have many more. But, speaking of property as a body, all its prejudices, as well as all its misconceived notions of its own