To conclude-We must look to it, for evil is before us.' A population already vast is rapidly increasing, but not so morality and the knowledge of religion. Political privileges are more widely bestowed; and in proportion as external checks are withdrawn, the internal should be multiplied; though liberty be given to all, few only are fit for self-government; and it will be utterly impossible to rule a free state, where the minds of the people are left in total darkness, to be illuminated at intervals only by the livid and unwholesome glare of infidelity and sedition. We must not be answered by forced and fictitious tables-by relative statements from agricultural districts; did we allow them to be true (which assuredly they are not), such documents would prove nothing; the education in cities should be five-fold better, not only because there is five-fold opportunity, but because there is, in truth, a fivefold necessity. The contagion spreads fast in thickly-crowded towns; one infidel of talent may corrupt or disturb the faith of hundreds, and prepare the soil for the labours of the Jacobin, should he not already have united in himself both these fashionable and congenial characters. These are arguments for politicians; there are higher ones for Christians. Thousands of children never hear of God, except in the profanation of his name; very few even pass through the semblance of education; they live and die like the beasts of the field, with nothing to amend, and nothing to console them. Were their labour reduced, an hour a day might be given to learning; and the studies of the week sanctified and completed by the Sabbath-schools. But, alas! in many instances these useful institutions have been lamentably perverted; they have cloaked avarice, sheltered oppression, and cherished ignorance. Examples are not wanting where the master, who has pushed the labour of Saturday even to midnight, and commanded the renewal of it at one o'clock on Monday morning, has, during his Judaical nicety of observance, driven the unhappy children to a Sunday-school! But were the whole Sabbath honestly given, it would not be enough; some portion of every day should be placed at their disposal; and if man be not, as this system would make him, a mere animal, insensate, and irresponsible, the public is bound by duty as well as interest, to demand as his right, that he have both time and opportunity for the cultivation and exercise of his immortal part.

One thing is certain-the people of the manufacturing districts, old and young, male and female, are determined that they will never be quiet until parliament grants them a ten-hours bill. How long is their cry to be trifled with? During this unhappy agitation, we can hope for nothing but suspicion, hostility, and

discontent

discontent throughout the manufacturing districts; a total annihilation of all friendliness and confidence between employer and employed; and something, perhaps, far worse in periods, which may soon come, of suspended labour and commercial revulsion. The masters, residing at a distance from the immediate scene of the evil, know but little either of the condition or the temper of their men-they should fathom them more deeply than through the meagre experience which is acquired by a visit to the countinghouse, or a walk through the mill. Sir Robert Peel was a millowner, and continued incredulous till the alarm of contagion arose, and he felt it his duty to watch things with his own eyes; he saw, though late, the abominations of the system, declared his conviction, and applied a remedy.

We may have failed to stamp upon the minds of our readers the conviction that is so deeply impressed upon our own; we may have failed to set clearly before them the moral, political, and religious aspects of this mighty question; we may have failed to show that a change is necessary for the security and improvement of our wealth; but we have, at least, explained that it is a provision of mercy. By this, then, let the legislature determine their counsels; let this be their pillar of cloud by day, and of fire by night; for surely it will never be found that the government of God is at variance with his laws; and that the same Omniscience, which gave a commandment to do judgment and love mercy,' will visit his willing and obedient servants with calamity and ruin. Rather let us believe that no blessing can accompany those riches which are produced in suffering and crime, but that eventual mischief must descend on a system which afflicts so large a portion of our race, and demands every hour of that life, and almost every energy of that soul, whereof a portion should be given to the pursuit of those noble ends, for which Providence endued man with understanding, and promised him immortality. Great and small, we have a common and an only hope; and it is by that common and only hope that we implore our legislators to have mercy on the children.*

We are sorry that Mr. Wing's book, entitled 'Evils of the Factory System,' did not come into our possession before we began this article. The copy sent to us, just as we are concluding it, is indeed an incomplete one; but we have read enough to satisfy us that, had it been on our desk, it would have saved us a great deal of trouble in analyzing the Parliamentary Reports and Evidence on the subject-and supplied us, moreover, with many interesting facts gathered by the personal industry of this intelligent Surgeon in his recent examination of the manufacturing districts. As a lucid summary of the whole case, we anticipate a thankful reception for his work.

ART.

ART. VIII.-Posthumous Memoirs of His Own Time.

By Sir

N. W. Wraxall, Bart., author of Memoirs of My Own Time.' 3 vols. London. 1836.

THIS

HIS is a continuation of a work which we reviewed in 1815, and the observations we then felt it our duty to make on the general style and character of Sir Nathaniel Wraxall's memoirs, are equally applicable to the present volumes. We shall, therefore, take the liberty of repeating them.

It is with great concern we feel ourselves obliged to say, that we 'think the worthy Baronet has most egregiously mistaken the amount 'both of his resources in the way of historical information, and of his ability to give interest and consistency to the facts with which he has happened to have some acquaintance. He has little to tell, and that little he tells badly. What he advances on his own evidence is generally not worth knowing; and what he gives on the authority of others he generally contrives to render suspicious, either by his manner of relating, or by not quoting his authority when he might, or by quoting authority which is notoriously incredible.

'We perceive that Sir Nathaniel is one of those people who have a very vigorous appetite for, and a good digestion of the marvellous, and 'whose belief, in any fact, is strong in the inverse ratio of the evidence. 'Anything supernatural, or even highly improbable, he swallows with 'great alacrity; but a trite and ordinary event is altogether suspicious in his eyes, if he has not some strange, little, out-of-the-way and in'sufficient cause to assign for it.

'But we must say, that of all the anecdote-tellers we have ever met, we entertain generally, and in the abstract, the greatest suspicion of 'Sir Nathaniel. He seems to be a patient listener but a most inaccu' rate recollector of what he hears; and as far as we have been able ' ourselves to examine his stories, we have found almost every one of ' them liable to charges either of gross inaccuracy or of absolute mis'take.'-Quarterly Review, vol. xiii. pp. 193-208.

To this general description, we added some particular instances, which proved, beyond all doubt, that even in matters of which he professed to have a personal knowledge, Wraxall's memory was very inaccurate-such as his assertion, that he had heard from the Duke of Dorset an anecdote relative to an event,' which did not occur till after the duke's death; and his other assertion, that he met Mr. Pitt in 1783 at Antwerp,' where Mr. Pitt never had been. There were many other and more important errors and inaccuracies exposed, but we particularly notice such as these, because they relate to matters stated on Sir Nathaniel's own personal knowledge, and which, being disproved, impeach his own personal authority. When we find him so utterly unfounded in

6

things which he professes to have seen or heard with his own eyes or ears, what credit can we give to hearsay anecdotes and secondhand gossip?

6

Sir Nathaniel, moreover, affords, we believe, the solitary instance of any writer, pretending to an historical character, who has been convicted and imprisoned in Newgate for a false and scandalous libel. The approach of the trial which produced that strange result was announced in our former article. But the preliminary details of the affair-which affect so strongly the general credit of our author, deserve a short recapitulation. He had detailed in his first edition a confused and contradictory story about the Empress Catherine and the late King (then Duke) of Wirtemburg having conspired to poison that prince's first wife, Augusta of Brunswick-'if, indeed,' as he with wonderful candour adds,' she had not died a natural death.' He then proceeded to state that the Duke of Wirtemburg, when about to propose for the hand of our Princess Royal, sent an agent to England to trace this rumour and to disprove it. That agent,' said Wraxall, I personally knew, while he was here employed on the above mission. He possessed talents, spirit, zeal, and activity—all of which he exerted in the cause.'—(vol. i., p. 206.) Wraxall then goes on to affirm that—having traced the rumour to Count Woronzow, the then Russian ambassador-this agent forced from the Count (under circumstances not very creditable to his Excellency), a recognition of the Duke's innocence and of his own sovereign's guilt. Count Woronzow, who—though no longer Russian minister at the publication of this grave imputation-was still resident in England, wrote to Wraxall a flat and formal denial of every one circumstance in which his name was mentioned, and required of the historical baronet the name of the agent whom he had personally known, and of whose talents, spirit, and zeal, he had retained and recorded so accurate a recollection.' To this Wraxall replied, that he had really forgotten the agent's name.' Against so treacherous a memory, Count Woronzow thought he could have no adequate redress but from an open appeal, in the most public form, to the world at large, and he accordingly vindicated his honour by summoning Sir Nathaniel Wraxall to answer for his assertion in the Court of King's Bench. The result was that the obliviscor-reminiscor-memini-recordor' was convicted, in May, 1816, of a libel, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment, and a fine of 500l., of which sentence he obtained a remission (after three months' confinement), in the ensuing August.

This affair is exceedingly important as to its effect on Wraxall's character for veracity-for here was a case in which he stated that he had personally known a certain agent, and had a

strong

strong recollection of his individual claims to respect and confidence as well he might, for this part of the transaction was of no earlier date than 1796 or 1797-when Sir Nathaniel was in the vigour of his faculties; yet, when questioned within a month or two from the publication of his libel, he was unable to recollect so much as the name of the spirited and zealous diplomatist, whom he had known so well, and on whose authority he had published the slander. Falsus in uno falsus in omni-would be too strict a rule to apply to historical compilations, when the author is forced to borrow from a variety of sources; but it is indisputably valid against one who pretends to speak on his own personal authority. The result therefore of this strange affair-which was undecided when we wrote our former article-is a corroboration of the suspicions which we then, on a variety of other grounds, expressed of the general credibility of Wraxall.

It is not to be wondered at that his public conviction for malice and falsehood, should have very much soured Wraxall's temper -previously, as our readers will recollect, bad enough; but it would have been a striking exception in the annals of human error, if it had had the effect of correcting him of his mendacious propensities. On the contrary, both in the introduction and at the conclusion of the present work, he vehemently and solemnly insists on his veracity and impartiality, and boldly asserts that he was persecuted and punished for nothing but his strict adherence to truth. To truth! although he had, in the second edition of his first publication, retracted and expunged the foregoing, and several other notorious falsehoods. Such a pretence to martyrdom for the sake of truth, after he had confessed himself guilty of the falsehood, required even stronger nerves than those of Wraxall, and accordingly, he carefully abstained from advancing it during his life, and prudently took measures that it should not appear till after his death-when-however his posthumous fame might be affected by it--he personally would be exempted from the pain and odium which he rightly judged must have ensued from so extravagant and so impudent an assertion-and, moreover, a probable repetition of the punishment it deserved.

Every one remembers Dr. Johnson's vigorous denunciation of the mean and cowardly malice of Bolingbroke's posthumous publications, and we are obliged to say, that they bear too strong an applicability to this case of Wraxall, who has, in the same spirit, left behind him a tissue of imputations and calumnies, which he dared not-as indeed he admits-have published during his life.

In the introduction to this publication, he boasts that the fearless truth of the former volumes had procured for their author a host

of