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perts); 5. The commissaries reported; 6. The municipal council deliberated, and sent the opinion to the sub-prefet, and he to the prefet; 7. The prefet applied to the minister of the interior; 8. He to his Imperial Majesty, giving an opinion on the case; 9. His Imperial Majesty affixed his signature, and the paper went to the Conseil d'Etat, section de l'intérieur; 10. The president of the section of the interior appointed a rapporteur; 11. The latter explained the business to his section; 12. The business was called up in due time before the Conseil d'Etat, a decision obtained, and sent back to the secretary of state, who sent it to the minister of the interior, who sent it to the prefet, who sent it to the sub-prefet, who sent it to the mayor, who gave permission for the bridge over the brook to be repaired-Any mistake in point of form, the omission of a stamp or other irregularity in any of these proceedings, made it necessary to begin the whole process anew. Of all the authorities consulted, not one knew any thing about the matter, except the mayor and municipal council; and the whole might as well have been left to these local authorities. The proceeds of the octrois of towns, or municipal duties, although levied expressly for local purposes, were always remitted to Paris; and the money necessary to defray local expenses sent back again from Paris, where no proper check could exist on either receipts or disbursements. When Holland belonged to Bonaparte, it was necessary to send to Paris, before a dyke, the state of which threatened the whole country with submersion, could be repaired.

This omnipresent administration of despotism, we are sorry to say, has been preserved entire under the restored dynasty; and the people are so fashioned to it, that they scarcely suspect its existence, while in fact shackled in many respects beyond what they were under the old monarchy. Many a worthy bourgeois de Paris, going to St. Cloud or Versailles with his family, thinks it necessary at this day to provide himself with a passport; and in fact any body without one is liable to be arrested by the first gendarme or agent de police he meets; and, if not sent to prison, he is indebted for the favour to their forbearance, and to his own ready acknowledgement of their authority. Industry is far more free in France than it was of old; and that is almost the only instance of freedom resulting from a revolution which has produced so much equality in the mode of subjection.

The consequence of the system of centralization is, that the time of a French secretary of state is so entirely taken up with details, that he has none to give to the general direction of affairs; and the number not only of his clerks, but of his but reaus is so great, that he scarcely knows them all, their proper

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functions, or indeed his own ;-and all this is to enable him to do so imperfectly for the people, what they might do so much better for themselves. The following remark of Mr Necker shows that these evils were established and felt even in his time. • En ramenant à Paris tous les fils de l'administration,' (said he in his Memoire sur les Administrations Provinciales,) 'il se trouve que c'est dans le lieu où l'on ne sait que par des rapports 'éloignés, où l'on ne croit qu'à ceux d'un seul homme, où l'on ' n'a jamais le temps d'approfondir, qu'on est obligé de diriger et de discouter toutes les parties d'exécution appartenantes à 500 millions d'impositions, subdivisés de mille manieres, par les formes, les espéces, et les usages.'

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There is at Paris a small set of speculative politicians called doctrinaires, and sometimes niais (noodles), by those who mean to speak of them civilly; for the champions of the two great parties which divide the State give them much harsher names. These politicians object to a system of election founded solely on a certain rate of property, which, be it high or low, gives electors all of one sort-and exhibits a narrow line drawn as it were through the nation, excluding, either in direct terins or otherwise, all who do not come exactly under it. Instead of this, they would prefer a system of elections classing together similar interests, and giving to each cluster its special representation. We incline decidedly to their opinion; and the difficulties in the way of realizing it would be no reason for despairing of success, with a people less impatient and less prejudiced. Without entering here upon the practical means of attaining this end, we shall only say, that a good system of municipal administration appears the first step requisite. Some permanency of property is equally essential: For the entire dispersion of families has not only an immoral but impolitic tendency. The father of a family, with a moderate landed property, and several sons, is obliged to send them to seek their fortune, and remains alone in his latter days, with the melancholy prospect of his house and fields being sold to strangers the moment he is dead, and the proceed's divided among impatient co-heirs, to whom it will afford but a momentary assistance.. The main incitement to a country life is thus destroyed, while there can be no permanent connexion between the class of electors and that of candidates. The latter accordingly are found mostly at Paris, and the former in their villages; so that the idea of personal choice, or attachment, is utterly excluded.

By the present French code, the father of a family may dispose of one half of his property by will, if he leaves only one child-of one-third, if he leaves two-of one-fourth, if he leaves

a greater number; the remainder being divided equally among the children. This arrangement seems to reconcile the natural claims of younger children, and the political claim of the eldest son; for the former cannot be left destitute, and the latter may preserve the family estate from partition, if he is enabled, by the father's using this limited power of testation in his favour, by the fortune of his wife, or other personal means, to pay off the portions of his brothers and sisters. The inhabitants of the left side of the Loire, accustomed to the Roman law, which favoured the eldest son, generally contrive in this way to preserve the family estate; while those on the right side of that river (pays coutumier), do not avail themselves of the provisions of the law. The feelings of parents, which must usually be averse to any difference between their children, are entitled to respect, and political considerations are of little avail against the claims of nature; yet as protection is not due to property on its own account, or for the benefit or pleasure of those alone who possess it, but for the advantage of society at large, the legislature might, with perfect propriety, make the provisions of the code obligatory instead of permissive. The right of property was emphatically denominated political by Montesquieu, meaning that it is not purely personal: At the same time, as a law at variance with public feelings and opinions can rarely be carried into effect, the adoption of sounder views must perhaps be left to time, and a dispassionate consideration of the subject.

It appears to us that the final establishment of a good government in France now depends upon the people themselves, rather than upon any new laws and institutions which might be imposed upon them. If they really wish for the permanent establishment of civil liberty, they must consent to the sacrifices necessary to obtain it;-and, above all, they must wait in patience for the gradual ripening of those institutions, and the development of those habits, interests, and feelings in the body of the nation, by which alone either the value of the present system, or the necessity or safety of any farther changes in it, can be ascertained.

ART. II. Classificazione Delle Rocce secondo i piu, Celebri Autori. Per servire allo studio della Geologia. Milano, 1814. Duodecimo. 350 pp.

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N our 45th Number, we took occasion to examine a work on the classification of Rocks from the pen of Mr Pinkerton, and to point out the insufficiency of the author for the task which

he had undertaken. It is scarcely necessary to inform our geological readers of the oblivion into which that work has deservedly fallen. The ardour with which this particular branch of science has since been cultivated, had led us to hope, that the blank in this most indispensable part of its elementary knowledge would, ere this, have been supplied by some one of those who are now ardently pressing forward in this course in Britain. Nothing however has yet been done in this country; and it is chiefly with a view to excite the industry of those who may be possessed of the information required for such a work, that we are induced to notice the present compilation,

It may perhaps appear extraordinary to our readers, that while our presses have groaned under the Systems of Mineralogy which have been produced in such rapid succession for the last few years, no arrangement of Rocks has been formed, except the abortive production above mentioned. This dearth, or rather, absence of such works, is, however, not difficult of explanation. Excepting the collection of Essays which stands at the head of this article, and some others of no greater moment, which it is unnecessary to mention, no systems of this nature have been published from which our makers of books could have borrowed their materials: And these Essays are not of a nature to admit either of being reconcocted or garbled by the compilers whose motto isnil dictum quod non dictum prius.' There are not, on this subject, the Lectures of Werner, nor the System of Haüy, into which the manufacturer of a voluminous work may dig for his materials:he must have recourse to the great mine of Nature—a mine closed to those homines trium literarum,' whose talents are limited to the art of pouring out of one phial into another, and who, when they have transposed a few specimens from the top to the bottom of a cabinet, imagine that they have made wonderful progress in science. Let us but see one tolerable arrangement of rocks, and we venture to predict, that no long time will elapse before similar works will swarm around us; from the bulk of two or three 8vo volumes, to that of the minikin productions of Mr Mawe.

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The present work contains the Essays of Brongniart, De la Métherie, Tondi (published by Lucas), and Brochant,-names well known to our geological readers; together with an appendix on volcanic rocks, comprising the schemes of Dolomieu, Thomson, Haiiy, and Faujas de St Fond. We shall attend principally to the four first authors, who have treated that part of the subject which is the most general and important: of the latter Essays, a brief notice will suffice. Of these four,

the two first have adopted an arrangement founded on Mineralogical principles, or on the mineral characters of the rocks, whether simple or compound: while the two latter have arranged the rocks which they describe, according to the order or the analogies which they hold in nature towards each other, and to the general structure of the earth; thus adopting a Geological, instead of a mineralogical principle of arrangement. Each system has its advantages, and each has its inconveniences; and as we are of opinion that the whole question of present utility and future improvement hinges upon the choice which is here open to us, we shall take the liberty of examining this part of the subject in some detail.

Our readers who are conversant with the works of these several authors, will not be surprised to learn that Brongniart alone has given the reasons for preferring a mineralogical to a geological method. These are detailed at some length in his prefatory observations. De la Métherie propounds his arrangement without defending it; and the other two, though not with equal vigour, follow, as is usual with the pupils of that school, in the infallible track which leads from Freyberg through all the obscure regions of nature. If we shall be found to coincide with them in the principle of arrangement, it is not because, like them, we have drank of the ions Caballinus;' but because we approve of the principle which the sagacity, rather than the philosophy, of Werner, has led him to adopt. To that sagacity, to his persevering industry and accuracy in minutiæ, we are always ready to render justice; but we must be permitted to express our doubts of his capacity for generalization, or for those wide views without which no man ever emerged from the haberdashery of experiment or observation. It has been said, that Si Dominus Deus non fecisset Papam infallibilem, Dominus Deus non fuisset discretus;' and the same maxim appeared for some time to be adopted by the pupils of this celebrated school. But Jack and Martin have begun to cut off the epaulettes; and we trust, in no long time, to see the reformation established on the more solid basis of extended observation and cautious generalization.

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Rocks, says Brongniart, may be considered under two different views; first, according to their composition, that is, according to the nature, the quantity (or proportion), and the disposition of the substance of which they are formed; secondly, according to their position, or to the places which they occupy in the structure of the globe, and the analogies or relations which they bear to each other. From these considerations there result two principles of classification; and we shall proceed to consider,' &c. &c. The arguments for and against the two principles of arrangement are then brief

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