was so far from deserving them that he merited the greatest praise, and to the nature of transactions by which so great a benefit was conferred upon the country, without any ground for a charge of rapacity or spoliation. But if the charges of improper conduct on Lord Elgin's part were groundless, the idea of sending them back to the Turks was chimerical and ridiculous. This would be awarding those admirable works the doom of destruction. The work of plunder and dilapidation was proceeding with rapid strides, and we were required again to subject the monuments that we had rescued to its influence. Of 20 statutes that decorated the western pediments of the Parthenon, only seven miserable fragments were preserved: yet this part of the building was almost perfect at the beginning of last century; now only a few worthless pieces of marble were preserved he called them worthless, not as compared with the productions of art in other countries, but in com. parison with what had been lost. They would, however, remain to animate the genius and improve the arts of this country, and to constitute in after times a sufficient answer to the speech of the honourable member, or of any one else who should use his arguments, if indeed such arguments could be supposed to be repeated, or to be heard beyond the bottle-hour in which they were made."

This powerful statement produced its due effect on the House, and the original motion of Mr Bankes was carried by a large majority. We have given a place to this transaction, partly because, in a national point of view, we regard it as if no common importance, inasmuch as from the Elgin marbles, we look for a great and visible impetus to the ardour of British artists-and partly also out of regard to the feelings of the Earl of Elgin, whose enlightened exertions to promote the cause of British art, have been, on more occasions than one, but ill rewarded by the ungrateful sneers of his country

men.

During this session, on the motion of Lord Castlereagh, the sum of 17,000l. was set apart for the erection of a monument in memory of the battle of Trafalgar a great action, which, said his lordship, had been to the fleets, exactly what Waterloo had been to the armies of France, and which therefore was well entitled to receive a similar mark of honour from the national gratitude. To this proposal, as to that which we have above described, objec tions were made by various members, on the ground of its being extravagant in the present situation of the country; but it was carried by a great majority within, and we may venture to say, approved of by an infinite majority without the House.

Mr Sheridan.

In the speech at the commencement of the session of Parliament, the regent, as we have already seen, congratulated himself and the two Houses on the prosperous condition of the nation. In regard to a very great part of the nation, however, it was early suspect ed, and it soon became quite evident, that these congratulations were at the best somewhat premature. To so great an extent indeed did this impression gain ground, that both within Parlia ment and without it a very considerable share of the public attention was ere long directed to the causes out of which the acknowledged distresses of the agricultural part of the nation had arisen, and to the remedies by which, in the opinion of various speculators, they might most probably be cured. Mr Western first brought the subject in a formal way before the Lower House, and in his speech and that of Mr Brougham's, delivered at a somewhat later period of the enquiry, a great variety of facts were brought

together, which furnished certainly no inadequate view of the nature and even of the causes of the distresses-but which failed, as was commonly sup posed, to exhibit much either of sound or of practical information respecting the methods of averting them.

The extent of the distresses among all the agricultural classes of the community was exhibited to the House in such an alarming point of view, both by the petitions which arrived daily from the most afflicted districts, and by the speeches delivered before the committee, that no attempt was made to infuse the spirit of party zeal into the discussion of the subject. The business of the committee was gone about in the calm manner of a merely scientific society, all men appearing to bring to the investigation minds influenced by no motives except those of the purest and most honourable nature; nor is it to be doubted that this circumstance alone was of considerable efficacy in soothing the spirits

of those whose sufferings might have been not unnaturally expected to render them irritable.

The distresses of the agricultural classes, as it appeared, had been rapidly on the increase for the two last years. In the county of Norfolk, (which, as was well remarked by Mr Western, may be considered as a fair average of the whole country, because, if on the one hand, its agriculture be excellent, on the other, its soil is far from being very rich,) it was said that 540 bailable writs were issued in 1814, and 670 in 1815; and during the same period the number of executions rose from 96 to 174. The rise of bailable writs and executions in Suffolk during the same period had been from 430 to 850. In Worcester, from 640 to 890. But the Isle of Ely exceeded all other districts in the increase of its distresses. Within one of its hundreds (occupying about one third of the isle) the number of arrests in 1812 and 1813 was fifty, in 1814 and 1815 two hundred and three. The number of executions had risen in like manner from seven to sixty. To these was added the fact, that at the period of the investigation in the isle and the adjoining parishes, nineteen farms were untenanted. These statements, however, were almost all derived from the proceedings of the sheriff's office, which cannot be supposed to have furnished a complete idea of the whole of the distresses. Neither could the gazettes supply this deficiency, for by a strange anomale in the laws of England, farmers are not entitled to take the benefit of the bankrupt acts unless they add some other dealings to the proper one of their profession. In various parts of the country, but above all in Cambridgeshire, the extent of the evil was rendered more fully apparent by the situation of the poor's rates. In many parishes these had increased to such an extent as completely to swallow up

the whole income of those who had anything to pay them in a word, in the heart of England, extensive districts bore every appearance of desolation and desertion which might be supposed to follow the fiercest ravages of war or pestilence. In the sister kingdom of Ireland the evil was still more extensively appalling.

These distresses of the agricultural districts, although they were brought much too early under the consideration of parliament, were not in fact greater than the distresses of other parts of the empire wherein agriculture had never formed the chief object of attention-among the silk manufacturers, for instance, in Spitalfields, and the iron and coal workers of Staffordshire and Wales. The distress was a very general one; and wherever it appeared, among labourers of the ground or manufacturers, it is certain that it had originated in the operation of the same general causes. These causes, however their minuti might be disputed, bore all of them no indistinct reference to the highly artificial state wherein our empire and all its concerns had been placed by the unexampled length and pertinacity of the war in which we had been engaged. The sufferings of the agricultural and commercial classes were connected with each other in their origin, and they acted reciprocally so as to increase each other in the sequel. The more immediate causes of all, may be considered as having arisen from changes thus produced in the exports, the imports, and the home demands of our commerce, in consequence of the alteration which took place in the system of our empire, and of the continental nations, by reason of the downfall of the power of France.

During the continuance of the last war, many things had conspired to stimulate to the highest extent the exertions of every class of the people of England. Cut off by the decrees of

Buonaparte from direct intercourse with some of the richest countries in Europe, the policy which England had adopted in revenge of this exclusion, had greatly increased the action of those many circumstances which naturally tended towards rendering her the great or rather sole entrepot of the commerce of the world. In her the whole of that colonial trade which had formerly been sufficient to enrich, not her alone, but France and Holland also, had now centered. The inventive zeal of her manufacturers had gone on from year to year augmenting and improving branches of industry, in which even before she had been without a rival. The increase of manufacturers had been attended with a perpetual increase in the demand for agricultural produce, and the events of the two years of scarcity (as they were called) lent an additional spring to the motions of those whose business it was to meet this demand. The increase which took place in the agricul tural improvements of the island, was such as had never before been equalled in any similar period of time. Invention followed invention, for economizing labour, and increasing production, till throughout no inconsiderable part of the whole empire the face of the country was entirely changed. "It may safely be said," asserted Mr Brougham," that without at all comprehending the waste lands wholly added to the productive tenantry the island, not perhaps that two blades of grass now grow where one only grew before, but certainly that five grow where four used to be; and that this kingdom, which foreigners were wont to taunt as a mere manufacturing and trading country, inhabited by a shop. keeping nation, 18, in reality, for its size, by far the greatest agricultural state in the world."

Nothing could be more unfortunate than the scheme entered into by a num

ber of English speculators in 1814, of buying up corn in the Baltic ports for the purpose of importation into England. The scheme ended in the ruin of most of those who engaged in it, and was never after all carried to a very great extent; but such as it was, it was enough to alarm the farmers, and of course, to make them bring every bushel into market. The succeeding harvest in England was a plentiful one, and in consequence the home market was glutted. The legislature, it began to be thought, should protect the farmers, by prohibiting the importation of corn below a certain price; and at last the corn bill was passed, of the policy of which we have already spoken at much length, but which certainly satisfied neither the party who demanded, nor those who condemned it. By raising the import price to a very great extent, from 63s. per quarter to 80s, it threw upon manufacturers the load of a very considerable increase in the rate of the wages of workmen; and by not having been passed sufficiently early, it had allowed time for the alarm among the farmers to sink agricultural prices below their just level. This was the history of the first of our embarrassments; it fell principally on the agriculturists, but it soon affected in a very striking manner the home demand for the produce of the manufacturing districts.

The same opening of the continental ports, which furnished the temptation out of which these misfortunes arose, acted in a manner equally unhappy upon a much larger class of speculators. Misled partly by the violence of their own cupidity, and partly, we suspect, by the false nature of the information received concerning the state of the continent, our manufacturers and merchants thought that the demand for British goods in the countries recently under the sceptre of Napoleon, would be altogether immense. Te