'perstitious and priest-ridden as in the darkest ages,' of which some curious instances are given. They submit to the undefined law of blasphemy, with its penalty of death or chains for life; an inquisition-law, working in the hands of a State 'church as strongly as in Spain or Portugal in a Roman Catholic church.' Education alone, such as it is, is unable to raise their condition. Under the Under the pressure that exists upon industry, property, liberty, free opinion, and free-will, edu'cation is but a source of amusement, or of speculation in 'science, without influence on private morals or public affairs.' When, therefore, to their imperfect civil rights, on which Mr Laing chiefly insists, we add their low physical condition, and also the absence of all real and active interest in the doctrines and obligations of religion, we may perceive the true causes of the low moral condition of the Swedish people. We may thence be justified in enlarging the conclusions to which Mr Laing has arrived, and saying, that improvement in morals must, if it take place at all, flow from the improvement not only of the civil, but of the physical, religious, and intellectual condition of the people. It is to this connected and simultaneous advance, that we must look for any great and permanent results. Very justly does Mr Laing say, that the connexion between morals and politics is close and intimate. 'The cause' of the amelioration of the physical condition of the labouring classes, and of ' reform in church and state, is the cause of morality all the world ' over.'

6

We can afford but little space for some of the remaining topics of interest scattered through Mr Laing's pages. The ordinary Diet meets every five years. It consists of the four Chambers of the Nobility, the Clergy, the Burgesses, and the Peasantry. Every measure is adopted or rejected by a plurality of Chambers. The popular branch of this constitution is considered so completely a nullity-an expensive one also, as the representatives are paid -that it has been found necessary to fine the districts neglecting to send members. The government is entirely in the hands of the nobility and clergy, ruling through the king. This is in harmony with the designs of those who, in placing a French Marshal on the throne of the Vasas, sought to secure an instrument most capable of aiding them in carrying on the government according to their own views. In matters of economical administration, his Swedish Majesty has not been inattentive to the welfare of his people. But the policy of his reign has been altogether anti-liberal. Being unacquainted with the Swedish language, his means of acquiring a knowledge of what is passing in his kingdom, are necessarily imperfect. This circumstance

places him in the hands of those around him, whose advice does not appear to be always either the most constitutional or the most discreet. An edict recently issued for the emancipation of the Jews, created great discontent and disaffection. It was regarded as a proof of a desire to govern by a power beyond the law. The executive is also engaged in an unwise and ineffectual opposition to the press and the spirit of the times. By the ground-law' of the constitution, the press is free; but a censorship, granted for a temporary emergency in 1812, has, contrary to good faith, been retained. This has armed the government with the power to suppress obnoxious papers; the sole result -except that of increased irritation on one side, and loss of effectual authority on the other-being, that the suppressed paper reappears the next day under a slightly altered name. The TwentyFifth Aftonblad (evening sheet) indicates by its name the number of times it has been suppressed. In two recent instances of collision between the government and individuals—the cases of M. Crusenstolpe and Captain Lindenberg, the particulars of which, as given by Mr Laing, are curious-the executive got rid of the matter amidst an outbreak of justly provoked unpopularity, and at the cost of ungraceful concessions.

The subjects touched upon as most characteristic of the capital, are the calm lake scenery of wooded slopes and green glades, in the midst of which Stockholm is situated; the beauty and taste of the public buildings; the tinsel style of decoration in the private houses; the want of large and handsome shops, indicating the absence of wealth; the gradual decrease of the population, and the poverty of the lower classes. The restrictions on internal trade cause it to be dependent on Finland for its supplies; although the peasantry in the immediate neighbourhood are starving for want of markets. The evils of this repressive system are most conspicuous in the province of Dalecarlia, the vales' of the Oster and Vester Dal. Remote, and without the stimulus arising from unrestricted trade and communication, these dale-men retain the mode of living and dress of past centuries. The costume of the Dalecarlian is the same as that in which his forefathers marched with Gustavus Vasa on his memorable enterprise. Their habits and tastes remaining stationary, their standard of sufficiency has not been raised by new wants. Consequently, they multiply without forethought, and subdivide their lands, and deteriorate like the Irish. Agreeably contrasted with this is the condition of the inhabitants of the Angermannland district, bordering on Lapland.

The people of these two countries, North and South Angermannland, seem to unite, on a small scale, all the advantages of a manufacturing

and agricultural population more fully than any district I ever saw. The land is all in sinall estates, in the possession of the peasantry. The men do the farm business; the women are driving a not less profitable branch of industry. There is full employment at the loom or in spinning for old and young of the female sex. Servants are no burden. About the houses, and inside, there is all the cleanliness and neatness of a thriving manufacturing, and the abundance of an agricultural, population. The table linen, laid down even for your glass of milk and piece of bread, is always clean; the beds and sheets are always nice and white. Every body is well clad; for their manufacturing is like their farming, for their own use in the first place, and the surplus only, as a secondary object, for sale; and, from the number of little nick-nacks in their houses, such as good tables and chairs, window-curtains and blinds-which no hut is without-clocks, fine bedding, papered rooms, and a few books, it is evident that they lay out their earnings on their comforts, and that they are not on a low scale of social well-being, but on as high a scale as such of our artisans as have a clear view of constant living by their trades. This is Sweden. It is here, in the northern provinces, that what a country may justly be proud of is realised.'-(P. 192.)

The state of this district as to crime, as exhibited in the tables above referred to, is remarkable. Notwithstanding the favourable circumstances in which its inhabitants seem to be placed, the average amount of crime among them, is not much less than in the more central agricultural districts of Sweden. It appears also that, of the total number of crimes in 1831, one in every six arose from drunkenness.*

During his coasting voyage up the Gulf of Bothnia, to UmeaLapmark, the province next to Angermannland towards the north, Mr Laing remarked the comfort and cleanliness of the small towns which he visited. At Umea, a town of only 1100 inhabitants, he found two booksellers' shops, with a good stock of books, some of them English. From thence he struck into the interior, among the thinly-scattered settlers in the deep and gloomy pine forests; a race of people content to encounter the hardships of that lonely life, in order to escape from the influence of some of the bad laws and exactions of the rest of Sweden. In spots, distant many miles from any other habitation, they set up their log-house; clear their patch of ground; display much skill in their thrifty agricultural management; contrive to keep a family by the aid of fishing, snaring ptarmigan, and using bark-meal; and pay their taxes by the manufacture of tar, potash, and saltpetre. Even amidst this hard struggle for the means of existence, the education of their children is not neglected. They attain gradually

Forsell-Province of Hernosand.

a certain degree of comfort. Mr Laing passed some days in the house of one of these peasants, at a settlement that had grown into a dozen houses. Being engaged one morning early in fishing, he came 'unexpectedly upon a party of six or eight men, 'women, and young people, gathered in a snug hollow of the ' river bank, which only an angler would have thought of visiting at so early an hour. One man, with his hat off, was reading the 'Bible to the others, and just concluding and shutting the book. They seemed in a little confusion until they saw that I was fish❝ing, and taking no notice of them.'-(P. 178.) They were a party of Læseren-readers; a numerous and increasing religious sect, which the clergy are attempting to put down. Here are the seeds of religious liberty.

The regeneration of Sweden, her restoration to the rank of a moral nation, will probably be effected by a virtuous labouring population influencing a priesthood and upper class; the former too far removed by corporate and political rights from the condition of the flocks they should instruct; the latter dissolute, idle, dependent on court favour, and independent of moral character or public opinion.'-(P. 180.)

Neither are there wanting the seeds of civil liberty, and of a better order and distribution of social arrangements and political power. There is a class in Sweden, neither peasants, nor burgesses, nor clergy, nor nobles. They are called the people of condition; that is, people who 'in office, trade, professions, or ' other employments, have acquired money, and purchased estates 'for their families. They are the only class in the social body both educated and independent, and own one-fifth of the whole 'property of the country. In number they nearly equal those classes represented in the three Chambers of the nobility, clergy, and burgesses; yet they are not represented at all. • In propor

tion to their intelligence, station, and stake in the community, this middle class is the worst off of any. They cannot, upon an 'equal footing, put their own sons into any of the employments, civil or military, which are in the hands of a needy nobility;" and in the clerical profession, or in trade as merchants, they have to encounter the competition of classes armed with all the advantages of their incorporation. It is from this class chiefly that petitions to the Diet for reform have emanated. It is they who contribute the best support to the enlightened and free press of Sweden. Among them is formed what best deserves to be called public opinion. Comparing their country, such as they see her at present, poor, powerless, priest-ridden, without political force or moral consideration-the sport and prey of weak and effete privileged classes, themselves at the feet of Russia-the slave of slaves; comparing this with Sweden under the best of her Va

sas-Sweden rousing herself to the struggle of national independence-Sweden arming for liberty of conscience, and winning it for Europe; it is this enlightened and independent class which, looking on this picture and on that,' must feel most keenly the humiliating contrast. It is they who, bending a regardful eye on the free, just, reasonable, equal laws of their fellow-subjects in Norway, must become doubly sensible of the injustice and unreasonableness of their own institutions; which shut them out from a due participation in the honours and emoluments of the public service and of private enterprise. It is this class, therefore, that must form the basis on which a better social structure must eventually rest. While they are increasing in numbers and wealth, property to the amount of eight millions of dollars, or one-ninth of the whole, has passed out of the hands of the nobility within the last thirteen years. The laws, the habits, and modes of thinking, which, drawn from darker ages, and formed on false models, have distorted and enfeebled the great mass of society, must, in Sweden as elsewhere, impede the advance of a more equal and reasonable state of things. But in Sweden, as elsewhere, these trammels will by degrees be removed. The elements of the old and new order of society, will gather gradually to the proportions in which their conflict is inevitable. There is already too much of liberty in Sweden to allow this progress to be arrested. A free press is teaching the people what to look to and what to demand, and Norway is illustrating before their eyes the lessons of freedom. In the one country they see a king uniting with a portion of his subjects to maintain institutions injurious to all the rest; in the other, the same king is known only in the exercise of a just prerogative over a free and flourishing people. In the one country, privileged classes, independent of public opinion, holding up false standards of morality, and erroneous estimates of what is really noble and worthy of esteem among men, corrupt by the authority of vicious example, and oppress by the preponderance of unjust power: in the other, equal laws are a guarantee against oppression -equal privileges encourage no other rule of right than the truest and the highest. On the one hand, they feel the evils of a vitiated currency, a restricted trade and commerce, a wide-spread and increasing poverty; on the other, they see a generally diffused wellbeing, and contentment, the resources of the country unfolded, the blessings of good government distributed throughout the whole community. In Sweden, social life is either unsatisfying by its frivolity, or repulsive by its dissipation; in Norway, a healthful current of cheerfulness, intelligence, and hearty enjoyment, runs through every class of society. In the one country there are the extremes of assumption and servility; in the other, a manly frank