of the Tweed! On this head the private records of the Middlesex and London Sheriffs' jail would form the best illustra tion; and it is almost needless to repeat that in senseless barbarity our boasted law finds no parallel upon earth.

10. With regard to the Insolvency Court, as by all classes of the community (systematic rogues and swindlers excepted) it is already looked on with abhorrence and disgust, to dwell on its defects would be a mere waste of time. Considering the natural results of the wise plan devised in the enlightened age of Edward III., the establishment of this Court, as population and commerce increased, became unavoidable. Our prisons were all crowded, and afforded not sufficient accommodation. At length it was acknowledged that to confine so many people without any real criminal charge, and for not doing what they could not do, had attendant inconveniences which every year increased. And what was the remedy? a Court, of which the doors are closed against every applicant whom, on its own ostensible principles, it ought to relieve; for to obtain a hearing and judgement without the command of of ready money is impracticable,—a Court moreover which, professing to release debtors who render a fair statement of their circumstances, yet subjects all applicants, without variation or exception, to a long detention in prison, sufficient to alienate every connection, to bring ruin on their families, and break irretrievably all habits of industry, and which, though intensely painful to every honourable mind, is only laughed at by the swindler, a Court whose boasted severity against fraud consists merely in protracting the term of that identical punishment which the law already inflicts on individuals who are pronounced worthy of honourable acquittal!-a Court whose judgements, instead of being formed on evidence respecting the moral character and motives of the insolvent, hinge in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred on senseless technical formalities,-a Court, finally, through whose ordeal the most unprincipled debtors every week escape with impunity, but where to predict how long an applicant may be kept waiting is impossible; for though the term of imprisonment appointed by our wise law is six weeks, yet on an average we believe that six months may be considered as the time required for "working" insolvency cases, and the slightest de

fect in technical form (which rogues always guard against) will, without any imputation of fraud, produce a dismissal of a petition.

11. Though last not least comes the never-failing objection to this as to all national and beneficent measures,-the Peers are against it; they will not pass the Bill, and therefore, in the opinion of the faction, it ought not to be passed. But are the House of Lords, as an integral part of the British Constitution, fairly represented by the Tory clique? Because the majority of the British peerage happen to be weak or wicked, or both, is this an adequate reason for abandoning any praiseworthy purpose? On the contrary, common sense and experience equally demonstrate that, where sufficient energy and perseverance are displayed by the people and their representatives, a sound measure will always be carried in spite of the barriers which ignorance, party spirit and low cunning have raised against it.

If it be granted that no man deserves confidence as a judge unless he brings to his task a competent knowledge of the subject and entire disinterestedness, it follows that on the Attorney-General's Bill the majority of Peers are incapacitated from judging. Their ignorance of the matter is profound, their prejudices are wounded, and their selfish interests apparently compromised. From individuals so circumstanced can the truth then be expected? No; they plead vehement anxiety for the protection of trade and commerce, as at other times they parade their unquenchable fervour in support of the English Protestant Church! "But," say their adherents, "if ancestral property is to be placed under the power of cre"ditors, where would be the stability of that order from "whose legislative wisdom and firmness' we derive such ad"vantages?" At present we shall not pause to consider how much of wisdom can with truth be imputed to the Tory clique, or how far a stability which depends on the non-payment of debts is entitled to respect: on the contrary, we shall content ourselves with putting the plain question, Wherefore should English lords not be contented with such laws in regard to property as have been, and now are, binding on the peerage of Scotland, where landed properties, unless when guarded by entail, are always liable to judicial proceedings? If the no

bility and gentry of Scotland contrive to maintain their dignified character, and contentedly exist under such merciless infliction as that of having their estates rendered liable for debts, what, we ask, are the national peculiarities of our English aristocracy on which they found their claims to exemption, and on account of which their ancestral honour becomes so lamentably brittle?

But there exists another and far more important cause for the obdurate opposition of Conservative Lords to abolition of arrest for debt. Liberty is a natural inherent right, to which all the gold, silver and diamonds on earth are as dust and ashes in comparison. The deprivation of this right often frustrates, though it cannot annihilate, the cherished motives of a whole previous existence. The prisoner survives to behold time, the "stuff whereof life is made," misapplied against his will, and in his inmost heart he cherishes the bitter consciousness that, without having committed any crime, he is thus deprived of property which once gone all the powers of all the generations of man cannot restore, and to which the pretended losses of his creditor are in comparison but a cipher. The latter boldly pleads in self-defence that he has only exercised that venerable English law, to the operation of which he is himself equally liable. Mark the results: a prisoner for debt, who calmly and tranquilly submits to a sacrifice like this, may be a despicable knave, yet he is precisely the servile and venal tool which a depraved oligarchy would wish every subject of Britain to be, so long as that venality and servility can be rendered available for certain purposes. And in most instances the arresting creditor is no better: one quietly barters his liberty, the other coolly deprives a fellowcreature of that most precious of rights. Will either of these worthies hesitate for one moment to barter his political principles? or rather, is it possible to suppose that either has any principle or actuating motive but that of grovelling sordid subserviency to mammon? The short-sighted policy of the Tories will induce them to stickle hard for the continuance of imprisonment for debt, as one mode of subverting those principles which they cordially detest and would gladly eradicate from the minds of the people.

In the preceding eleven sections we are tolerably confident

that no clause has been set down which will not bear the strictest investigation. Within a brief space we have shown, first, that arrest for debt is an outrage on the principles of the Constitution; secondly, that by detaining 15,000 persons constantly imprisoned, and depriving 30,000 more of their usual support and protection, it propagates and fosters crime and demoralization; thirdly, that instead of supporting, it materially injures our mercantile interests; fourthly, that the system is an outrage on universally acknowledged principles of religion, justice and common sense, and without a parallel in any other country upon earth.

ARTICLE IV.

Transportation and Colonization, or the causes of the comparative failure of the Transportation System in the Australian Colonies, with suggestions for ensuring its future efficiency in subserviency to extensive Colonization. By JOHN DUNMORE LANG, D.D. Principal of the Australian College, and Senior Minister of the Church of Scotland in New South Wales. London: 1837.

EVERYBODY knows that the vast territory of Australia is distinguished by the most grotesque variations of the customary phænomena of nature; nettles and lilies grow to twenty feet in height, palm trees sprout like celery, trees are there with the leaves twisted out of the ordinary position, but none of them bear eatable fruit; marsupial quadrupeds and birds without wings scour the plains; the swans are, of course, black; horned bats, vampires, or flying foxes, migrate across the Indian seas; it is said that the native dogs can neither bark nor swim, and no other species of quadruped found there is to be seen in any known part of the globe. The Austral negroes, scantily sprinkled over the land, enjoy the smallest possible share of the characteristics of the human race; and the very seasons in that clime deviate from the ordinary succession of

fertilizing showers and ripening suns, into long uncertain periods of cold and heat, drought and inundation. These peculiarities have been observed on the narrow rim of that islandcontinent which discovery and enterprize have made our own; and the imagination may fill up the wide untraversed interior with wonders, as yet unrecorded by man; with vast inland seas, peopled by strange monsters, and known only to savage tribes hitherto without a place in the catalogue of mankind. But whatever diversion or dismay these unwonted phanomena in the animal and vegetable kingdoms may afford to the naturalist, there is scarcely a more absorbing inquiry to the student of Man's wonderful history than that which concerns the future destinies of these prodigious regions, now first laid open to the axe of the pioneer and to the certain march of our race. This is futurity which lies before us; these are promised lands: and if we are saddened at times by the wrestling and striving of the crowd about us, by the decline of noble energy and generous resolutions, by the increase of artificial wants, and by the too unscrupulous use of all means to satisfy them, let us look out across the globe to those tracts-as yet wider than the imagination of all mankind can covet or conceive-which are to be taken, and tilled, and dwelt in by the sons of men. For whilst we live in the hurry and the conflict of this great metropolis, we have the means of surveying from its central point the noblest empire which a nation ever called its own; and the illimitable destinies of those unborn realms, whose origin was England, are at this moment swayed by the exertions, by the institutions, and, most unhappily, by the vices of our own people.

In proportion as we entertain a deep-seated and religious conviction that Australia is one day to be the seat of a mighty nation,-in proportion as we proudly and joyfully contemplate the rise of another people of British origin,-with just so much of shame and sorrow do we reflect upon the conduct which England has held toward this magnificent possession. We have made it the sink of all our vices, we have peopled it with our crimes, we have scarcely attempted to counteract by free emigration the evil tendencies of a system of penal colonization; we have allowed the standard of morality there to sink below that of any other civilized community on the face of the earth;