venture to affirm, one half of the lands of Bengal would, ere this, have become the property of Englishmen, and the natives would have been strangers on their own soil. * But perhaps we mistake Mr Colebrooke's idea, and will not pursue this topic further. Should that prove the case, the permanent settlement, by the sale of lands to supply deficiency of revenue, seems to provide for the introduction of more enterprizing, and more affluent proprietors, into the landed system. The purchasers usually consist of wealthy natives, who have acquired their fortunes by commerce their habits of industry, their enterprize and their capital, under the encouragement held forth by a permanent assessment, may, it is hoped, be advantageously employed in rural

concerns.

The second proposition is the encouragement of agriculture, in facilitating exportation, by lowering the rates of freight, and the duties on Bengal sugar in England. The length to which we have carried our analysis of this important and valuable publication, prevents us from entering on a subject so much perplexed by jarring interests; and obliges us to conclude by repeating our warm general approbation of the contents of this work.

ART. III. The Stranger in Ireland; or, a Tour in the Southern and Western Parts of that Country in the Year 1805. By John Carr, Esq. of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple; Author of a Northern Summer, or Travels round the Baltic; the Stranger in France, &c. &c.

WE were glad to see a tour through Ireland by Mr Carr; for though a hasty traveller, and an incorrect writer, we judged, from his former publications, that he had talents for observation, and for lively description. We expected that he would throw new lights upon the state of Ireland; that country, for which, as Lord Chesterfield said, God has done so much and man so little.' The union has certainly created a demand for a statistical, economical, moral and political view of Ireland, with a clear explanation of the causes which have, for nearly three centuries, impeded its progress in civilization; and a statement of such remedies as sound policy and practical humanity suggest for its improvement.

Spenfer,

* It is difficult to defcribe the aftonishment with which foreigners learn this act of magnanimity in the British Legislature. Several perfons of diftinction in France could not conceal the impreffion produced by mentioning it.

Spenfer, who was fecretary to one of the lord lieutenants in the reign of Elizabeth, and Sir John Davies, who was attorney-general and speaker of the House of Commons in Ireland in the reign of James the I., have left full and able accounts of the ftate of that country in their times. The Irish were then a nation of wandering thepherds, and feudal freebooters. The English pale extended but to a few counties immediately round Dublin; all without were excluded from the benefit of the English laws and protection. On the confines of the pale, and in the English marches, a continual warfare was carried on between the natives and the settlers; but in these petty contests there was little of that chivalrous spirit which diftinguished our Scottish borderers. Neither in profe or verfe could the hiftory of these marauders be told with grace or dignity. Spenfer, however, gives an entertaining account of their fepts and clans, their Brehon laws, their Boolies, their Cofbeerings, their Stucas, their long mantles, and their faffron-coloured linen. The methods which he proposed for the civilization of the Irish, were the abrogation of the Brehon, and the adoption of the Englifh laws; the difperfing English foldiers and fettlers over the country to overawe the rebellious, and to induce the well-difpofed to imitate examples of better modes of life : He recommended alfo the establishing of garrifons and magazines for corn, and the building of villages, and country fchools near every parish church for the inftruction of the common people.

Sir John Davies, who wrote but a few years after Spenfer died, gives a fimilar account of the country, but adds, in his Progrefs through the Waftes and wildeft Parts of the Kingdom,' and in his Hiftory of the fettlement in Ulfter, an interefting view of the efforts made to accelerate the progrefs of civilization, and the fuccefs with which thefe judicious attempts were attended. The right claimed by the foldiers, to take at will, from the peafantry, man's meat, and horfe's meat, and even money; the damnable custom (as Sir John juftly ftyles it) of coin and livery, a customwhich, eftablished in hell, as it was in Ireland, would have overturned the kingdom of Beelzebub,' was abolished. The pernicious customs of taniftry and gavel-kind, by which the defcent of property was rendered uncertain, and its fubdivifion an encouragement to idlenefs, were now broken through. The lands were fet, and their descent established according to the actual English law. The Brehon laws were altogether abrogated, and fomething like a rational and equal adminiftration of juftice commenced. The number of judges of aflize were increafed, and they went regular circuits through the kingdom; whereas the circuits, in former times, went but round about the pale, like the circle of the cynofura about the pole. Trials by jury were inftituted; but Sir John

obferves,

obferves, that many of the poor people were very unwilling to be fworn of the juries, left, if they condemned any man, his friends, in revenge, fhould rob, or burn, or kill them for it; the like mifchief having happened to divers jurors fince the laft feffion holden there.'

Sir John Davies, who fhews himself a true friend to Ireland, made efforts, in this Progrefs, to inquire into the state of the church lands and benefices; but my lords the bishops were not well pleased that laymen should intermeddle with these things, and did ever anfwer, Let us alone with that business. Take you no care of that.' The churches were miferably out of repair: fuch as were got up for presentation only thatched; and, fays Sir John, the poor vicars that came to our camp were most ragged, ignorant creatures, not worthy the meanest of their livings, thought those were many of them but of 40s. per annum.' The non-refidence of the proteftant bishops was much complained of; and a proverb is quoted, which was frequently in the mouth of one of the greatest of these prelates, That an Irish priest is no better than a milch cow.'

Davies, as well as the great Bacon, had fagacity enough to predict, that unlefs measures of liberal policy were adopted for the government of the country, Ireland civil would become more dangerous than Ireland favage.' What Davies could, he did; and what he could not effect, he fuggefted. He obtained amnefties for the offences of the rebels who returned to their allegiance'; remiffion of old debts and quit-rents due to the crown: he obliterated, as far as poffible, the remembrance of antient feuds and party diftinctions; reftrained the exceffes of the foldiery; and, befides establishing a regular administration of justice, did his utmost to obtain fome education for the poor of the country.

Of the progress of civilization in Ireland after his time, and of the steps by which it was retarded or advanced, we have no diftinct view. There have, indeed, appeared voluminous pamphlets, profeffing to treat of the state of that country; but these relate chiefly to party queftions. Arthur Young's Tour has been much and defervedly applauded as a faithful and lively picture of that kingdom when he faw it; but that was nearly thirty years ago. Much remains to be learned; and we therefore opened with eagerness a new tour through Ireland, which we hoped would reprefent to us Ireland as it was, and as it is. But, alas! we were miserably disappointed. We found Mr Carr's quarto, a book of stale jefts, and fulfome compliments. All the old ftories of bulls and blunders, which, as we are informed, have for years past been regularly brought forward for the recreation of every new lord-lieutenant and his fecretary, are here collected for the edification of

the

the public. The Stranger in Ireland was, it seems, upon his arrival, bountifully fupplied, by the hofpitable Hibernians, with all the good things in which that convivial nation abounds. With a little more tafte and judgment, he might have arranged thefe fo as to afford agreeable entertainment to his readers; but, to fave himself the trouble of thought or arrangement, he has emptied and overwhelmed us with his common-place book. For one beauty this work is indeed eminently distinguished, for the beauty of contraft; that fpecies of contraft, which refults from want of order, where grave and gay, just and abfurd, fine and vulgar, fublime and ludicrous, fucceed each other, so as to create in the highest degree the pleasure of unexpectedness. This pleasure, indeed, gradually abates as we proceed; for we are at length taught to expect the recurrence of these ftrange figures, which come round and round again like the pictures in a Savoyard's magic-lantern; whilft the fame tone of at fhow-man, kept up inceffantly, muft at laft weary the most enduring ear. Let no impatient reader of this volume refort to the index in hopes of fkipping with celerity and advantage. The table of contents will rather mislead than direct; it will entice him on, and leave him disappointed and provoked. The knack of giving good heads to chapters has been carried to a high and treacherous state of perfection. We are often cheated into reading a ftupid chapter, as we are entrapped in the newspapers by the beginning of fome paragraph, apparently about Newton or Buffon,-about fome new difcovery in optics, or natural history, which proves in the end nothing more than a lottery advertisement. Our Author's table of contents may be most inviting to the large tribe of anecdote-mongers and defultory readers; but furely, numerous as they are, their tafte fhould not have been exclufively confulted, to the utter neglect of the interefts of purchafers, who set some little value upon their money or their time. Befides being disappointed in the folid contents, we were dif gufted with the manner of this book. It is worse written than of Mr Carr's former tours. The ftyle is both careless and affected, trivial and inflated; his fine fentences are fometimes without meaning, and often without grammar; and his high-flown defcriptions, which are neither profe nor poetry, frequently terminate in ftriking instances of the bathos. For example, take the following account of his arrival at Killarney.

any

The evening, fhrouded in black clouds charged with rain, rapidly fet in; the wind roared; and only the light-blue fmoke of the cabia relieved the univerfally deep embrowned fterility of the fcene. In thefe and most other diftricts the milk of sheep is used.

His description of Mucross-Abbey is not inferior.

The graceful ruins of Mucross-Abbey on our right, half embosomed

in

in a group of luxuriant and stately trees, influenced, as foon as seen, the bridles of our horfes.'

It is a pity that our tourist, before he began to describe Killarney, had not attended to the monition of a celebrated author, who thus writeth:

I have at length feen what I have long wifhed to see,—this wondrous lake! To attempt to describe it, would require the ablest of the antient poets, or of modern poets; wherefore I fhall never attempt it. ›*

Though we regret, that Mr Carr did not attend to this diffuafive paragraph, yet we do not accufe him of being ignorant of the merits of the performance in which it is contained; for his style frequently reminds us of the manner of the author to whom it is attributed, the celebrated George Falkener. In his peculiar ufe of pronouns, in his heterogeneous anecdotes, and in his mode of dragging into a fentence a multitude of words and ideas foreign to the principal purpose, Mr Carr is not inferior to this great original; the refemblance of ftyle is indeed fo ftriking, that we fhould almoft fufpect him of ftudied imitation. We fhall felect a few parallel paffages.

MR CARR fays,

I cannot help gratifying my readers in this stage of our tour with the refult of an active and anxious inquiry, which I made of the existence of a custom in fome parts of Ireland, equally cruel and impolitic, &c. It is with real pleasure that I have it in my power, upon the authority of feveral gentlemen of great refpectability refiding in various parts of Ireland, to ftate, that at this day the custom of ploughing and harrowing by the horse's tail does not exift. Long fince, it fhocked the humanity and excited the interference of the legiflature; for I find that, in the year 1634, when Lord Strafford was lord-deputy, an act was paffed againft this cruel ufage.'

MR FALKENER said before him,

The Irish formerly ploughed by the tail with bullocks. But upon Dr Swift's voyage to the Houynhams being publifhed, and his faying fo much in praife of horfes, this barbarous, horrid, atrocious, fhocking, deteftable, cruel, nefarious cuftom, was abolished by act of Parliament. See an abridgment of the Irish ftatues, sold by me in Parliament Street. '

CARR

informs us, 'that Ceres bears a strong affinity to the Irish word Cuirim, or Cairim, to fow or plant; and that Treabtalamh, a plougher of the earth, is not unlike Triptolemus.'

FALKENER

*The Epifle to Gorges Edmond Howard, Efq., with notes by George Falkener, Efq., was the production of Huffey Burgh Jephfon, and fome other wits, during the adminiftration of Lord Townfend in Ireland.