we may hereafter more pointedly recur to them. The labours of the Committee have brought together much valuable information on the subject; and on these, and all the other topics to which they have addressed themselves, we must confess we have seldom seen the duties of a parliamentary investigation discharged with greater ability, greater zeal, or greater honesty. Nor is this all. A clearer, a more intelligent, testimony than that delivered by the individuals intrusted by their countrymen to tell the tale of their grievances, has seldom been given by any class of persons; and we scarcely know where the lover of philosophy, and the friend of his species, could turn with greater advantage to found his principles of government on the solid basis of experience, than to the Minutes of Evidence on the Canadian Report.

Notwithstanding the anxiety which we have seen displayed by a reverend divine, to prevent the examination which has been instituted, we think that that good shepherd (or rather the provider of good shepherds) did for once mistake the interests of the great Canadian flock, in deprecating that examination. The British parliament have had some experience in slighting the petitions from their colonies; and petitions signed by eightyseven thousand aggrieved individuals-backed by the sympathy of the whole colony-and the evidence given in the examination can hardly now be treated with contempt. As far as ecclesiastical grievances are concerned, it is said, indeed, that the church relies on the bench of bishops for its protection. If the church consult its own interest-and it is not always backward in this-the bench of bishops will disappoint their ecclesiastical brethren of Canada. It is surely enough, that there should be "Clergy Reserves" in the colony, to oppose its physical improvement. Let the church beware how they plant "Clergy Reserves" in the House of Lords here, as stumblingblocks in the way of the moral advancement of a whole people. An exasperated suitor is not the most easy to deal with; and, unless we wish to lose the possession of the colony altogether, we must attend to the sensible advice of Mr. Stephen :

'It is impossible to suppose the Canadians dread your power. It is not easy to believe that the abstract duty of loyalty, as distinguished from the sentiment of loyalty, can be very strongly felt. The right of rejecting European dominion has been so often asserted in North and South America, that revolt can scarcely be esteemed in those continents as criminal or disgraceful. Neither does it seem to me that the sense of national pride and importance is in your favour. It cannot be regarded as an enviable distinction to remain the only dependent portion of the New World. Your dominion rests upon the

habit of subjection; upon the ancient affection felt by the colonists for their mother country; upon their confidence in your justice, and upon their persuasion that they have a direct interest in maintaining the connection. I fear that all these bonds of union, and especially the sense of interest, will be greatly weakened, if you persist in excluding them from all control of the navigation of the St. Lawrence. But even if all these ties remain, they are not the surest supports of empire.'-p. 245.

ART. XI. Mémoires de Vidocq, Chef de la Police de Surété, jusqu' en 1827; aujourdhui proprietaire et fabricant de Papiers à Saint Mandé. Tom. 1, 2, et 3. Paris. 1829. 8vo.

THE manner in which these Memoirs have been received all

over Europe, indicates that they possess a variety of attractions: the fact is, they are as amusing as a romance, and have the credit of being true. They have for us another sort of value. We pretend not to be Howards; yet we visit prisons (in the way of amateurs be it understood); and this book has an interest cognate with that of a prison visit. The author was a noted prison-breaker: he then became the most celebrated thief-taker that the world has known even in this its old age of coercion and of crime. The conversations of such a man cannot fail to be instructive. If we would have a clean town, we must hold discourse with scavengers. As he himself truly says, crime has a world of its own, its principles, its virtues, and its vices. Vidocq was the tyrant, the law-giver, and the spy, of this society in Paris,-the head-quarters of mischief. He is moreover a shrewd and intelligent man, and we recommend all persons who are interested in the reform of criminals and the suppression of crime, to take up these volumes, if they can forgive the author for being very entertaining. Those benevolent individuals who would regulate the world after the best possible methods, may learn that there may be instruction in a pleasant work, in a book of an agreeable style, and written in a light, and sometimes even in a picturesque manner. No one expects a thieftaker to be a model of a man, nor his book to be a rule of literature, and therefore blemishes may be found in these Memoirs, and holes picked even in the police-officer's own coat. A book has been written, for example, called "Vidocq Devoilé," in which the Chef de Brigade de Surété is accused of every crime under heaven; we have the satisfaction, however, of communicating to all the admirers of Vidocq ipsissimus, that there are numerous reasons for believing the author of the exposure to be a mere cheat himself. Whether Vidocq be all he represents

himself or not, is a minor question; he may be allowed, as in private vanity bound, to paint himself en beau provided he tells the truth of his subjects. If the surgeon himself, who may be suspected of Burkism, writes an admirable Treatise of Morbid Anatomy, we will hold him a Bailey, if not in morals, yet in medicine. These Memoirs are, in fact, the morbid anatomy of crime; but then how dexterously does the surgeon detect the peculiarities of his monstrosities; how nicely does he handle the part affected; how ably does he conduct an operation; how brilliantly does he picture the various stages of disease. Vidocq was, in truth, born for a great man: he was a soldier in the revolutionary armies: an accident threw him out of the ranks, or in that great lottery he might have drawn a prize which would have placed his name on a European pedestal, earlier and higher than he has now done in an inferior walk for though Vidocq is, or rather was, but a police-officer; though he has been condemned to the galleys; though there is scarcely an assembly of rogues to which he has not in some way or other been attached; still no one will deny, who reads these Memoirs, and who knows the reputation of Vidocq, that in France his name is destined for immortal remembrance.

England is colonial in spirit: we colonize even our criminals: we found nations with the rubbish of our civilization: the rejected stone of our buildings becomes the corner block of some distant structure. We relegate our vice to New South Wales; but France has its interior settlements of convicts, its Brest, its Toulon, and its other bagnes. We were, a short time ago, indebted to Mr. Cunningham for giving an instructive account of our antipodial house of correction; let us be grateful also to Vidocq who has let us into the mysteries of these domestic Infernos.

But Vidocq not only describes, he dissertates: he not only interests the man by his narrations of hair-breadth escapes, his fertility of invention, his courage, and his talent, but also the legislator, by his remarks upon crime, and his opinions on punishment. Many of his ideas are good: it is, however, on his experience that we would dwell: he tells us what he has seen, and we learn the nature of the human heart under circumstances of peculiar difficulty: we learn the manner and ways of criminals, the stimulants to crime and its preventives, we learn too the operation of a particular police; and at this moment, when a reform of our own police is on the tapis, and not before it is time, the work of Vidocq may be turned to special advantage. It is not yet finished: three volumes alone are completed: before Vidocq records his official exploits, he considers it neces

sary to let the world know the species of preparation he submitted to. He then shews the manner of his introduction to the police, and describes his vigorous noviciate in its service: the third volume abounds in anecdotes of his exertions when flourishing in his mature excellence. The remaining volumes are to be occupied with an exposition of all the different kinds of French police: they may be more instructive than those already printed, but they will surely not be so full of curious matter as the three livraisons before us. We will shew by a single example the character of Vidocq's prison-scenes: our readers will decide whether they are more striking as interesting dramatic pictures, or as philosophical exhibitions of the working of the mind of man. They are Newgate lessons it is true; but man is man though society has shut him down under her iron gates. Besides, in the present state of things, a very considerable part of the population is in the interior of the building the most important edifice in every town is the palace of the prisoner. We are, in short, divided into the ins and outs: the culprits are his "majesty's opposition" to the bills after they are past. They carry on the operations of the Whigs. Let us learn then of what these "patriots of the soil," the weeds of society, are made. Few men could write more curious reminiscences than the ordinary. We observe that one of the most distinguished wits of Paris has thought the last days of one condemned to death, worthy of his pen: it is a mark of the progress of civilization when attention is turned this way. In old times the criminal was turned into gaol to rot, happy if he could forget himself as completely as he was forgotten by others: circumstances are changed: sympathy is turned into the recesses of the prison; in London she assumes the garb of Mrs. Fry in Paris, as is fit, of a sentimental young poet. We must do, however, M. Hugo the justice to say, that his work is likely to be as beneficial as it is brilliant: it is not very like real life, but it strongly interests the imagination. It does that which poetry so rarely does, it gilds the truth it serves as a stimulant to good. The merit of M. Hugo is a still further claim on the part of Vidocq: very sure we are, that Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné, would never have been written had not the author perused the former parts of the Memoirs of Vidocq with delight. But let us now turn to our author's "Last Day of a Condemned," for he now has tried his hand at a last day—and, be it observed, the part of the Memoirs from which we have collected the history of the last days of Raoul and Court, has been published if not written since M. Hugo's popular little horror. It is a great deal more true to nature: perhaps it is not, therefore,

more attractive: it contains no visits from roseate children: no nice examinations of dungeon inscriptions: no ecstatic visions of religious consolations: it is all plain Newgate-nevertheless it is excellent in its way.

Vidocq has recorded numerous exploits performed by himself; the one we are alluding to is not one of the most striking, as regards his cat-like power of prehension, but it is the example which most of all gives us to understand the turns and windings of a malefactor's mind; it shows us on what crime depends; how far men are born to it, and that when they are taken from the little atmosphere of circumstances that surrounds them, what changed beings they are. Raoul and Court are murderers. Vidocq may be considered the chief instrument employed in bringing them to the scaffold. Yet, knowing this, the culprits deemed, that he was their best friend; chiefly, we believe, because they saw him only in their prison; such is the power of solitariness-such social animals are we it was a mistake in Byron to suppose that the bitterest enemies would, in the chaos of an overwhelmed earth, have remembered their enmity; they would have embraced and commenced a system of chumming.

The scale on which Vidocq writes renders it impossible that in our space we should give even one historiette entire; we can, therefore, only present our readers with detached scenes from the single narrative we produce as an example of his manner. These scenes we shall connect as well as we can, by a few descriptive paragraphs.

Here then begins the history of the last days of two assassins who were guillotined at Versailles, for attacking on the king's high-way one Fontaine, a butcher: the story is told by Vidocq, their apprehender, a man to whom sir Richard Birnie or his man Townsend is less than nothing; albeit, the former has risen from being a saddler in the Haymarket to the chief magistrature of London: Vidocq was once a baker, then a soldier, a convict, a police officer, and now finally a paper-manufacturer. Thus ends his eventful history.

A butcher going to a fair was attacked on the road near Corbeil, by two individuals whom he had joined on the road; although knocked down repeatedly, and stabbed in a great number of places, he was not completely killed; he was able to give some description of the highwaymen, and ultimately recovered. When he was found, the utmost attention was paid to the minute circumstances attending his condition, and all the evidence that could be, was collected from the appearance of the struggle. The butcher's name was Fontaine; he had received eight-and-twenty wounds, Near where he was lying,