1831.] The police and civil institutions of Spain are full of the grossest corruptions, abuses, and follies; and thus is one of the finest countries in Europe degraded to the useless condition of an uncultivated garden. Thus we have concisely and roughly digested the summary of our intelligent American traveller, who, unlike many of his unnatural countrymen, deems it an honour to be descended from such an industrious hard-working, enterprising, and inventing Adam as John Bull-an Adam that made his own Paradise. REVIEW.-Cottage Allotments for the Poor. The first part of the work enters into such copious details concerning the interior of Spain in all its various bearings, as to give perfect conviction of its diseased and ruinous state in all civil and political respects. If the country has not been revolutionized, the cause has been 431 be enabled to earn by persevering labour an adequate sum for the support of his family, instead of wasting his energies upon unprofitable work."-pp. 3, 4. The persons selected for the advantage of the allotments, were men competent to spade labour, of the best character and largest families. The conditions were, that they were to cultivate the land by manual labour alone; not to plant potatoes, unless the ground were first properly manured; and that half the land only be cultivated with potatoes in any one year, and no crop lotment.-p. 7. to occupy more than one half the al Within three months after comof allotments was seventy eight; the mencement of the system, the number aggregate number of the occupiers and their families four hundred and fifty; and the total of acres thus divided, no more than fifteen. The results were these: "The whole of the rent was paid at the pier expressed himself satisfied with the protime appointed, and every individual occuduce which he had obtained. The occupiers were not called upon to state the amount of the benefit derived from the land; but some of them voluntarily admitted that the produce of twenty rods of ground more than doubled their rent, leaving the remaining twenty planted with potatoes out of the question, and consequently clear gain. As this statement was fully borne out by other facts which have come to the knowledge of the committee, it may be confidently asserted that the actual profit to the parties con cerned was at the rate of from 10l. to 127. per acre; but assuming, for the sake of correctness, that it did not exceed the lesser sum, 150%. has been acquired by the seventyeight allotment holders, which they would otherwise not have enjoyed.”—p. 10. that this profit is only a transfer from Thus far his Lordship. It is evident the farmer to the labourer; but that, if it diminishes the poor's rates to the amount of the profit, then Peter pays Paul. With regard to certain parishes of given amounts of population, then it may follow that one Peter pays one, two, or more Pauls, as the case may be. Mr. Montague Burgoyne also advocates the system of allotments, and calls it," that which, of all modes of relief, would be most acceptable to the poor man, the most conducive to industry, and the abatement of the poor's rates.' p. vii. 432 REVIEW. he says In proof of this, Burgoyne on Charity Schools. Joseph Pitt, esq. M.P., Steward of the borough of Malmesbury, procured an act of enclosure of 500 acres, which belonged to the corporation. They were allotted to 250, families. All has been cultivated by spade husbandry. The consequence has been that the poor's rate has been gradually reduced, and the comfort of the inhabitants increased. The Bishop of Bath and Wells, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Suffield, Lord Nugent, and several other advocates for ameliorating the condition of the poor, have made experiments of the same nature, and in no one instance have they failed." It would be strange, indeed, if they did; for if we reckon each family to consist of five persons, and each adult to require, according to the lowest estimate in political economy, sixpence per day, or nine pounds per annum, it will be seen that each adult ought to receive nine pounds a year, together with the saving, through a lesser sum than 97. being sufficient for the sup. port of infant children. If we take a present day-labourer's income, with the same family of a wife and four children, at 9s. per week; the utmost which he can annually earn will be only 231. 88. the amount of 52 weeks multiplied by 9 shillings. But now to a table, which will demonstrate our position, under the dubious assumption that the gross profits of the allotments proportionally exceed those under the common farming system: Now, if we divide 11,250l. by 1250, the number of persons, the quotient is precisely 9. each per annum; and to a family of five persons, of course 451.; i. e. 5 x 9=45. This total of 11,250l. is subject of course to a deduction of 21. per acre rent, and tithes and taxes; so that, even at our sanguine estimate, the poor man gains only 401.; still that is a good income beyond 231. 8s., and moreover one added to his other earnings, by labour elsewhere for farmers, (say 157. more,) his income will then be 551., or 111. per head in a family of five. But let us take the same 500 acres, and suppose it let to a farmer at 21. per [May, acre also. The usual mode of estimating the profits of a farm (and it is more than is always made) is by the gross value of the proceeds being three times the amount of the rent; one-third for the landlord, the other for tythes, taxes, labour, &c., the last for the farmer's profit. But the full sum of all the proceeds would be only 30007. Divide that sum by 250 (the number of families), the quotient will be only 127. per ann. for each family, instead of 401. Can we then wonder at the enormous increase of poor rates? On the other hand, we are to consider, that it being impracticable to raise artificial manure for arable land, it requires the aid of sheeping and turniping once in four years. Of course to prevent the land being beggared down, only three fourths of the whole allotment should be under cultivation at once. We now proceed to Mr. Burgoyne's proposed amelioration in our charity schools. With these we heartily coincide, and could confirm a partial ́exemplification of the reform, as to a girl's school, supported by the benevolence of a highly accomplished and superior lady. We shall, however, let Mr. Burgoyne speak for himself. "It is not uncommon to observe boys and girls of the age of fourteen, on quitting charity schools, well instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic, sometimes in history and mathematics; the boys competent for the situation of a clerk, a writing-master, or an engrosser; the girls qualified for governesses or upper servants: but unfortunately, the market is overstocked with these superior qualifications? and, when they are called for, one is chosen, and forty-nine are disappointed. What is the consequence of the disappointment? Perhaps, idleness and vice. The unfortunate young persons have aspired too high. Happy would it have been for the boys, if they had had more use of the plough, the spade, the awl, and the needle, and less of the pen. The situation of the females is still more to be deplored; unaccustomed to works of labour, and the menial offices of housewifery, they are unwilling to apply their hands to such low employments; they expect higher situations, and finding them not, they at last fall a prey to vice and misery."-p. 18. Accordingly, Mr. Burgoyne proposes the following improvements in the tuition: "That they be taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, but that half the school .1831.] REVIEW. Channing on Unitarian Christianity. hours be spent in works of labour and industry; the boys to mend their own clothes and shoes-clean knives and shoes-to use the needle and hammer, as well as the penalso to be employed in out-of-door work, such as digging, gardening, hedging and ditching, and ploughing, when an opportunity offers. "That the girls be employed in needlework, washing and ironing, mending their own clothes, in the business of a dairy, and in such practices of housewifery as may fit and recommend them to good services." P. 24. p. Mr. Burgoyne, in xi. admits that the political economist deprecates the increase of population, as a sure result of the allotment system; and says that as soon as "the 15,000,000 of acres are enclosed, cultivated, and made productive, he [the political economist] shall have full permission to preach the necessity of emigration." Now, although we admit that the allotment system is an improvement when discreetly exercised, we know that the story of hens laying golden eggs" is not a matter of history, but of fable. Ireland is of itself, in our opinion, a testimony of the folly of encouraging an indefinite population, by saddling it upon the land. Our own statement of the favourable side of the question is too exaggerated to bear experimental proof. The measure, as in action in Ireland, has produced most enormous sacrifices from the poor (viz. renting land at sl. an acre! and so forth); and thus by not allowing farmers, professionally so called, to have profit enough to form an intermediate rank, has divided the people only into extortionate landlords and suffering paupers. No revenue can be derived, as in England, from such a population, because there is no consumption of exciseable articles, as is general throughout this country with all ranks. Farmers would be extirpated, and he who imagines that to live among lots of paupers is a blessing to himself, and a benefit to the country, talks inconsiderately. It is a positive absurdity to suppose that the residence of a man, wife, and family, on an acre of potatoe ground, places him in the garden of Eden. It is plain, from an excellent statement in the Naturalist's Journal, that he is much better off than he would otherwise be, and may by pruGENT. MAG. May, 1831. 433 dence save a small capital, which he may improve; but from hence cannot be inferred realization of the story about the woman and her milkpail, which, in her ecstatics, she kicked down. No one with his eyes open can look at Ireland and not see the perilous prospect; and no one who is acquainted with statistics can be ignorant, that in those countries alone where territory far exceeds population, can agricultural labour be made a remunerative trade. Encourage emigration and adopt the allotments also, say we. Objections to Unitarian Christianity_considered, by William Henry Channing, D.D. IN the work before us, there is a display of temper rather commendable and amiable, but evidently proceeding from self-satisfaction in the infallibility of the dogmata of the Unitarians; an infallibility, as they presume, which enables them to treat all opponents with pity only. Fortunately they have here placed the leading dogmata in such conspicuous positions, that we can level a philosophical rifle at them, and see whether they are bullet proof. The first dogma (adduced p. 4) is this: "We maintain that Christ and God are distinct beings; two beings, not one and the same being." Το They found this dogma upon the observation that it is ridiculous to suppose (and they say that we do suppose it), that God would take vengeance upon himself for the sins of man. this we reply, that impartition is not necessarily inconsistent with unity, for it ensues with many bodies, which are not decomposable, and yet retain their properties. We say that Christ was only a distinct being from God in his human form. Now Death has no existence whatever, it is only the priva tive of life, and (with trembling be it spoken) the Almighty could not take vengeance upon himself; could not commit suicide. However, it so is, that the will and acts of the Almighty cannot be made cognizable to man, but through material intermedia.Christ, therefore, became man; and, so far as the material part was concerned, died; but with the evident intention only, as God, of raising himself again, in final confirmation of his doctrine. We maintain, also, the physical 434 REVIEW. Channing on Unitarian Christianity. possibility of the Trinity. The grub, the caterpillar, and the butterfly, one and the same being, make an actual trinity in unity, co-existent; but, because it is composed of matter, it is as such subject to mutation, and insusceptible of simultaneous action in its three several modes of being. Even, however, in its material state, had it so pleased the Creator, it might have easily displayed all its three characters at once. The Unitarians allegate further, that if God the Son be identified with God the Father, as one and the same being, the former is made, as it were, a great pneumatic machine, which conceutrated all deity, and when he came upon earth, left the universe an hausted receiver; and because such a circumstance could not possibly happen, they infer that Christ and God must be distinct beings. But if common atmospheric air proves that both concentrated locality and self-expansive ubiquity may co-exist, how can such an union of properties necessarily imply distinctuess of being. [May, Atonement can possibly be infinite. cannot be admitted for a moment as made by pure Deity. If Christ died, as man, it was only to show that he could not die, as God. Evil cannot also be infinite; because under such an assumption, it would be possible to infer that the whole universe, nay God himself, might be without good. As to the Fall, at which Unitarians sneer, it is positively capable of analogous proof. It is historically true, that when Pitcairn's Island was visited in 1814, there were forty-six inhabitants under Patriarch Adams, and not a germ of discord or vice in the place; but that, before 1819, after a fellow named Young had discovered the art of distil ex-ling spirits from the tea-root, precisely the same results ensued as are said in the bible to have been consequent upon the fall. As to the biblical narrative of that event, Dr. Wheeler lays it down as a postulate in theology, that the plain, literal, and grammatical sense of scripture be considered, not only as the true, but the only true sense in revealed history, unless it shall appear, that parabolical or allegorical interpretation was intended by the historian, from some absurdity or contradiction in supposing the literal only to prevail. Now we do not interpret the Fall according to the letter ;* in the æra of Moses it was a legitimate part of history to narrate incident in a figurative manner; and the Mythe is not necessarily to be deemed a fable, but a parabolical description of some real event or events; and although it may be, if literally interpreted, erroneous, it is still not the mere vagary or unauthorised fiction of a poetical fancy. He who knows that the serpent was elevated by Moses (Numb. xxi. 8) as a symbol of present life; and is also acquainted with the Ophites or serpent worship; the Naag King; the Sathanas of India; and the miraculous properties ascribed to trees by the Sabæans; and reflects upon the object of Moses, and his symbolic meaning of the serpent, as the present life, and the tree which had the power of conferring immortality, as eternal life, may not only see the materials which formed the account of the Fall, but They say further, that Christ, as God the Son, must necessarily have had a beginning. Now this again we deny. Volition must precede action, but they are both coetaneous as to creation or birth. We have no room to be diffuse, and have avoided Scripture; for if we can thus find in the doctrine of the Trinity no other phenomena than what are known to exist in natural philosophy, we ask by what authority is belief in the Trinity stigmatised as (in p. 5) "irrational and antiscriptural?" What are the laws of natural philosophy but those of Providence? and in reasoning by analogy from those laws, we affirm that the Unitarians ground their superficial unphilosophical positions upon principles such as time, locality, number, birth, death, &c. which can have no manuer of relation to deity. They do not judge of that by its indispensable attributes. They use measurement to ascertain weight; they illustrate chemistry by arithmetic. We In pp. 7-9, they say that we talk nonsense if we call the sacrifice of Christ, suffering only as man, an infinite atonement for infinite sin. admit the indiscretion, and believe that it has been committed; indiscretion, we say, because nothing created Theologic. Lectures, i. 118. + See Tuffnell and Lewis's translat. of Muller's Dorians, i. pref. v. 1831.] REVIEW.-Trial of the Unitarians. imagine the meaning of the parabolical illustration. A literal construction of a story, which insults the Almighty by representing him as walking in the garden in the cool of the day, is, to say nothing of the profaneness, utterly inadmissible. We therefore think that Moses' account of the Fall is not a picture, but a hieroglyph; like the Apocalypse, many parts of Ezekiel, Ďaniel, and the other prophets, and our Lord's parables. It matters not, that raree-show men among religionists think that they do God service by spoiling the Bible, through literalizing its fine hieroglyphs, and degrading beautiful allegories into Chinese dragons. Philosophers hold such persons to be only mountebanks. The Unitarians complain further (p. 17) that their theory has been called 66 a half-way house to infidelity," and that travellers are recommended not to stop there because the liquors are dangerously adulterated. We rather conceive the real case to be this. A man knows that he may walk from London to its antipodes (Australia) as safely as a fly on the ceiling. The Unitarians having elevated a huge mimic globe, invite him to walk round it in the same manner as he could the earth, and promise him equal safety; "No," says the man, "I won't. I shall fall off and break my neck." Having from conscientious motives uniformly vindicated Trinitarianism, and seen our very phrases quoted in this pamphlet, we have felt called upon to state such a scanty portion of our reasons, as was suited to our limits. The Unitarians are not ladies, who expect it as a compliment due to the sex, that we should say "black is white." Therefore we solemnly declare, once for all,* with an audible voice, and from our hearts-that we prefer the Holy Baptismal Trinity, of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, to the ridiculous Unitarian Duality of a mere King and Prince of Wales-a steamcarriage which they think is to carry them on as speedily as a Liverpool railwayer. With regard to the charges laid against the Unitarians by Calvinists and other crazy people, concerning moral preaching, future punishments, and their (the Unitarian) representa We expect to be insulted. Wherever the Unitarians cannot command, they insult. 435 tion of the Almighty as a paternal and benevolent being, we shall only say that we know the low taste of such assailants. It is the same taste as that of the vulgar for murder-stories and dying speeches. We must, however, do that taste the justice to own, that we consider it an evidence of the Fall; for most certainly our first parents had no taste for murder stories; and the hideousness of the Fall is most conspicuously exhibited among the ferocious vulgar often, as conspicuously as it was in Cain himself. As to Dr. Channing, the author, his writing is that of a well bred, well tempered man; but the Unitarians, although they are insufferably arrogant, are not in general ignorant or vulgar men. They think that they have discovered the philosopher's stone; and accordingly give themselves airs. The Trial of the Unitarians, for a libel on the Christian Religion; post 8vo. pp. 312. THE Unitarians have often tried themselves, and accordingly have given in a verdict of honourable acquittal; but that others have not done so is manifest. That, however, is of no moment; for the modern fashion is, in matters of politics and religion, to take no notice whatever of confutation, but to persist in the repetition of the errors: e. g. in political bustles, it is a known fact, that the grossest calumnies respecting private persons, however false and denied, are nevertheless reiterated. The motive is obvious. The purposes of the party would be defeated, if the objections were admitted. Every man who regards his own safety should, however, feel a warm and honourable indignation at such flagrant proceedings. We cannot, unwilling as we are to wound the feelings of any persons, do otherwise upon questions of principle than act with consistency and integrity; and more especially in this instance, where denial of the Divinity of Christ may be reasonably presumed to induce proselytes to commit the sin against the Holy Ghost.+ Every philosopher knows, that man cannot understand his own nature, much more that of Deity, and that predication upon that subject is gratuitously assumptive. Every Christian also knows, that to add to or diminish from the + We speak seriously.—Rev. |