while there is a drop of British blood flowing in British veins, or a spark of British liberty alive in the British heart, we trust that we shall rather part with any thing than with that right which we possess of vindicating the oppressed and reproving the oppressor, and of maintaining the cause of humanity, of justice, and of truth, against falsehood, cruelty, and the most revolting tyranny. Happy are we to bear testimony to the unsullied integrity which Major Cartwright has evinced in the most critical and unpropitious times. But adversity was never able to break his spirit nor prosperity to relax his exertions, His present work is warmed in every page with the glow of patriotism; and the most earnest wish of his heart seems to be to promote the happiness and secure the independence of his country. In the present perilous period, when we are menaced with destruction by the most formidable enemy with whom we ever had to contend, the thoughts of every man who is interested in the political welfare of his country must be turned to those measures of defence which are necessary to secure our independence, and to preserve us from the overwhelming domination of France. În a period of so much danger, and against an enemy of so much power, so inexhaustibly rich in resources and in wiles, it is necessary to rouse all the physical and moral powers of the country into action, that we may maintain the conflict with all our strength, with all our heart, and all our mind, and rather die like free men than live like slaves. There are no persons in the country, endued with the faculty of reflection, who do not seem to be convinced of this; and the difference between us does not seem so much to relate to the end at which we ought to aim, as to the means by which it is to be obtained. Some think that the only safety of the country is in a standing army; and that every other species of force will be found nugatory, or at least only of very subordinate service in the moment of invasion. Others place great reliance on the volunteer corps, and think that they will act not only as useful auxiliaries to the troops of the line, but will of themselves be sufficient to repel any attack that may be made, or to defeat any host that may land upon our shores. Major Cartwright does not coincide in either of these opinions. He seems to think a standing army more dangerous to ourselves than to the enemy; nor does he entertain a very favourable opinion of the defence which in the hour of danger we are likely to derive from the exertions of the volunteer corps. What he proposes as the surest bulwark of our civil liberties and our national independence, against insurrection at home and invasion from abroad, is the restora

tion of the old posse comitatus, the county power, or Saxon militia, to its antient extent and vigour of exertion. What is called the posse comitatus, or power of the county, was in antient times the sole militia of the land; and, as Major Cartwright thinks, the best which it ever experienced. This power, as the great and good Sir William Jones, the enlightened friend of freedom and of man, who proposed its re-establishment, expressed it, includes the whole civil state from the duke to the peasant.' This posse comitatus was a power originally confided to all for the protection of every individual. It was intended not only to put down rebellion, but to repel invasion; to repress any attack on the subject or on the government either from within or from without. Thus in antient times every individual was a sort of frank pledge or security for his neighbour. The system of responsibility which it established was unlimited and universal. The householders,' as Rapin says, were responsible for their families, the tithing for the householders, the hundred for the tithings, and the county for the hundreds.' And though the county power has degenerated so much from its original principles and its primary intention, yet this responsibility is even at present acknowledged in the English law. For if any individual sustain any loss from any riot or insurrection, he may seek reparation from the hundred in which it happens. If the county power were at present put on its antient footing, no serious tumult could ever happen, and no riot be long continued; for that power, with a sort of omnipotent energy would be every where present to keep the peace. It is now about six and twenty years ago, when the disgraceful riots, which so long raged uncontrouled in the very heart of the metropolis, induced the late Sir William Jones, while he lamented the disuse of this power, earnestly to recommend its restoration. In antient times, as we see by the statute of Edward the first, s. 2. c. 6. every man 'was sworn to armour' according to the quantity of his lands and goods. The whole kingdom was put in a sort of military array, which proudly threatened to chastise the insolence of every oppressor. Sir William Jones, in his Inquiry into the Legal Mode of suppressing Riots, with a constitutional Plan of future Defence,' has proved from the most undoubted legal authorities that arms-bearing is the important duty of every Englishman. And he accordingly proposed that, since the musquet and the bayonet are found by experience to be the most effectual arms, all persons, who constitute the power of a county, should be completely. skilled in the use of them;

Ge

and that since the only safe and certain mode of using them with effect was by acting in a body, the whole civil state should be made acquainted with the platoon exercise, and learn it in companies.' It is perhaps needless to remark that the county power was the original institution of the immortal Alfred, by which he finally succeeded in repressing the incursions of the Danes, and in giving to the country a degree of internal and external security, which it had never enjoyed before, and perhaps greater than it has ever since enjoyed. Major Cartwright proposes that all householders paying taxes should be bound to provide themselves with arms according to the original principles of the posse comitatus, and that those persons who were prevented by age or other impediments from employing them themselves, should delegate the office to others. Mr. Pitt calculated the number of householders, paying taxes, at eight hundred thousand. In addition to these Major Cartwright proposes to furnish arms at the public expence for four hundred thousand more; to be chosen by ballot from the untaxed part of the community between the ages of 15 and 60; and their arms to be committed to the care of the tax-bearers, and to be kept by the persons of principal distinction in the parish. Thus would be amassed an army of 1,200,000 men,spread over eve ry part of the country, which the Major proposes to divide into eight military districts, and to have a proper depôt for ammunition, &c. established in each. Thus the enemy, in whatever quarter he might land; or in however great a diversity of points, would find a force not only ready to oppose him, but, whatever might be the perfection of his discipline or the skill of his officers, to wear him out by a continued succession of attacks, conducted by fresh forces, and thus in a short time to waste his energy, reduce bis strength, and overpower him by numbers. For numbers capable of an indefinite increase, possessed of courage and of arms, animated with the love of liberty and the glow of patriotism, however imperfect might be their discipline, must soon annihilate any invading enemy, who from the nature of things could not receive continual accessions of force to supply the continual decrease. This was the way in which the French gained so many victories in the early perieds of the revolution. They overpowered skill by numbers; and they exhausted the strength of their more disciplined adversaries by the unceasing energy of tumultuous attacks. One of the advantages of the scheme proposed by Alajor Cartwright would be, that it would enable us to send

the larger part of the regular army to attack the enemy in. his most vulnerable points. If fifty thousand British could have been spared to make a diversion either in Italy or in Holland during the last campaign against France, it is probable that the battle of Austerlitz would never have been fought, or would have been attended with a very different result. Naples would not have been engulphed in the vor-tex of French ambition; and the family of Buonaparte would not at this moment have occupied so many of the thrones of Europe. We should not at the same time be obliged to rely so entirely as we now do, upon our navy, or trust our security to the perilous uncertainty of the winds and waves. Even if our enemy were to become superior by sea, and our wooden walls, in which we now place our confidence and make our boasts, should no more avail, we should still present a wall of iron upon our coast, bristled with the bayonet and the spear, bidding defiance to his legions, and menacing every foe with destruction that should dare to land. And, as the contest would be between freemen and slaves, between men who were fighting for their hearths and altars, for their property and every thing most dear, and a disciplined banditti of plunderers, fighting only to obey the capricious mandates of a tyrant, the superiority which we should derive from moral causes as well as from physical strength would be so great, that it could not be long ere our villages rung with the shouts of victory, and our shores were reddened with the blood and covered with the carcases of the vanquished foe.

For the more minute details of Major Cartwright's plan, we must refer our readers to the book itself; and shall conclude with saying that in the present æra of peril and dismay, when we are threatened with a foreign domination, it is absolutely necessary that the whole physical and moral strength of the country should be embattled against the enemy; and, of all the plans of arms-bearing, that which the great Alfred invented, which Edward the first sanctioned, and which the late Sir W. Jones and so many other good and wise men have recommended and approved, appears to us the most cheap, constitutional, and efficacious that can be adopted.

ART. XIV.-Remarks on the Husbandry and Internal Com merce of Bengal. 8vo. Calcutta, 1804; and London reprinted, 1806. Black and Parry.

AMONG the multifarious modern publications on husbandry, it is not a little pleasing to meet with a work replete with sound taste, good sense, and respectable science, on the agricultural state of the British dominions in India. We turned with anxious curiosity to learn some particulars of a country which, we hope, through the means of the English language and civilization will one day or other shed a lustre on the whole Eastern world in arts, in sciences, and in virtues; and the work before us conveys, with much elegance and fidelity, a very clear idea of the general aspect of Bengal, its climate, soil, and inhabitants; population: husbandry; tenures of occupants revenues, &c. profits of husban-dry, cattle, &c; internal commerce, grain, piece-goods, salt-petre, and other objects of exportation. The immortal labours of Sir William Jones and the Asiatic Society have done much towards instructing the world in every thing relative to the ancient and modern state of Hindostan; but the present publication makes us still more intimately acquainted with the nature of the soil, its products, the me thods of labour, and consequently with the domestic economy of the inhabitants of the banks of the Ganges.

The first aspect of Bengal (says this writer) suggests for this kingdom the designation of a champaign country. The elevated tracts, which it does contain, are considered to be only an excep tion to the general uniformity: and the inundation, which annually takes place in the regions watered by the numerous mouths of the Ganges, seems the consequence of a gradual descent. The princi pal stream of the Ganges, losing its sanctity after sending a hallowed branch (the Bhagirat❜bí or Kásimbazar river) towards the sea, inundates, in its subsequent progress, the tracts through which it flows. Rice, which is luxuriant in the tract of inundation, thrives in all the southern districts; but, in the ascent of the Ganges, it is observed gradually to yield the first place in husbandry to wheat and barley. The mulberry unlimited in the middle provinces, shows a better defined physical division where it meets the culture of the poppy, which is peculiar to the northern and western provinces. Sugar and indigo are common to the whole champain, and so are coarse cloths; coarse, at least, when contrasted with the more delicate fabrics of the tract subject to the annual inundation. In the opinion of the Hindus, the resort of the antelope sanctifies the countries graced by his presence. This seems more connected with physical observation than with popular prejudice. The wide and opes