find an amusing parallel passage at page 21, where, speaking of the opponents of the game-laws in the daily papers, he adds, 'most of whom, if not all, have, in all probability, suffered from punishment rightly inflicted by the laws they are for that reason so sedulous to condemn.' We hardly know whether it would be more candid to ascribe these passages to the unfairness of partisanship or to supernatural ignorance. They will probably suggest to the mind of the reader some rather grotesque images: such, for example, as that of Sydney Smith and the honourable member for Durham, working side by side in the hulks, with their hair cropped to pattern; or of Dr. Bowring and the Editor of the Times, cheek by jowl in the stocks. Indeed, if the success of Mr. Berkeley's maiden attempt should encourage him to defend some other system of monopoly and wrong on the same principle, we may expect the gratifying information, that the public conduct of Dr. Wardlaw on the church question, of Earl Fitzwilliam on the corn-laws, and of Mr. Sturge on the subject of war, is to be accounted for by the fact that the first had had his nose slit for holding forth in a conventicle; that the second had been transported for a desperate affray with the coast guard; and that the third had lost both his legs at the siege of Salamanca.

The last, and (if comparison in such a case is allowable) the worst defence of the protection of game, which Mr. Berkeley attempts, is that that system is not injurious to the farmer. We imagine that our author must at some time have learned by experience the danger of proving too much, and he has certainly made good use of the lesson in citing from the Aylesbury News, the statement of a writer subscribing himself a tenant farmer, which is expressed in the following words :A farmer may keep a hundred sheep with less expence than a hundred hares.' But the honorable gentleman attempts something more than a refutation of this certainly exaggerated statement, and in doing so unfortunately falls into a greater extravagance. He adduces the case of a man who, by the way, had rented under his family all his life,' and who declared shortly before his death (probably shortly after the failure of his recollection) that though he had been in the constant habit of making complaints against the game, on account of the allowances made him, he held himself a considerable gainer instead of loser by the hare and pheasant.

It would be easy to multiply instances supplied by the daily press, in proof of the almost incredible injury inflicted upon the farmer by the protection, and consequent increase of the breed of game. But on this subject it is due to Mr. Bright, the' highly respected member for Durham, rather to direct attention

to the facts and principles brought forward in his late masterly address to the House of Commons, in moving for a select committee to enquire into the operation of the Game Laws.

We have long observed with great admiration the straightforward and dauntless career of Mr. Bright, in connection with the free trade agitation both within and without the walls of Parliament. In the honest devotion of his great talents to the cause which he has more particularly espoused, we find something which nearly approximates to a justification of his neglect of some other topics, which we deem more important than even free trade, and, even philosophically speaking, first in order in the catalogue of legislative reforms. Mr. Bright has, however, won our admiration by a public aggression against another enormous evil, beside his grand object it is true, but not so far beside it as to excite our jealousy or damage his consistency. Had Mr. Bright addressed himself either to wrangling on the currency question, or to fisticuffs with poor Colonel Sibthorp about railways, we should have been painfully disappointed, that his efforts should have withheld from the question of questions, the reform of the representative system. The operation of the Game Laws, however, is so nearly connected, as an aggravation, with the ravaging mischiefs of the Corn Laws, that, as we have said, his appearance in that field need excite no jealousy in the minds of Parliamentary reformers, and reflects in no way on his own consistency.

Mr. Bright's address to the House on his motion for a committee to enquire into the tendency of the Game Laws, was a masterpiece of business-talent, research, and statesman-like skill. It was listened to with marked attention, and complimented with repeated and general cheering from all parts of the House. But, stranger still, it drew forth the blandest compliments from the ministry, and especially from Sir James Graham. Thus has it ever been throughout the annals of despotism, whether bearing the name of priestcraft in religion, or of toryism in politics. Whenever he has to deal with a man whose integrity is impregnable, and whose moral courage is such as not to be abashed by the coarseness of vituperation, and the insolence of scorn, the thorough-bred tory, unlike the thorough-bred dog, 'runs cunning,' and seeks to wheedle through some possible weakness, the man whom he has neither the power to daunt, nor the wealth to buy.

In the case of Mr. Bright, however, the last man who should have been selected on this forlorn hope, was Sir James Graham - the unblushing apostate-the government spy. Surely the ministry could not suppose that their man of all work was so little known to Mr. Bright, that the

latter could mistake the slime of his compliments for that enamel with which rising merit is adorned by the praises of long tried and venerated virtue! Young as Mr. Bright is, he is too old a bird to be caught by the ministry, if Sir James Graham is the only disposable chaff they can offer him. Mr. Bright is not yet so nauseated with the honourable applause of his country, as to 'sate himself in that celestial bed,' and then 'prey on the garbage' of the treasury benches.

The honourable member for Durham has shown himself perfectly master of his subject. His statistical statements are of the most striking and convincing kind. One farmer has made out to him an account which shows a clear loss through the havoc occasioned by game, of no less than £204 per annum. He has brought forward instances in Buckinghamshire in which one fourth of the entire crops was consumed by this species of depredation. He adduces another case in Hampshire, in which a loss of £50 a year is annually incurred on the produce of a single field; and another, the case of a respectable farmer in Sterling, who, on a farm of 85 acres, suffers a loss of £50 annually by game; while another occupier in Cheshire, after stating that on one estate three hundred brace of rabbits are weekly destroyed, beside a large amount of hares, adds, it is computed that two hares will eat as much as one sheep.' While in Sussex, a gentlemen, whose name was mentioned, makes the following statement:-'I have divided my land into the most damaged side, and the best side. On the best side about 18 acres produced 327 bushels; whilst on the other side about fourteen acres and three roods produced only 53 bushels. The damage computed by a competent valuer is £129 11s., for which I have not received one farthing compensation. Mr. Bright further states that he has not adduced one in a hundred of the cases on which he has written incontestable evidence, the whole of which he is prepared to produce before the committee for which he moved.

The honourable member has further detailed the immense proportion of criminal prosecutions which has reference to offences against the game laws, proving from unquestionable returns that the convictions for these particular offences in the year 1843 amounted to no less frightful a number than 4,529, and exposes, with great boldness, the horribly unjust and tyrannical conduct of game-preserving and clerical magistrates, under these laws.

Mr. Bright has only moved for a select committee, and he has obtained it. The willingness of the Government to accede to his request pretty clearly indicates their confidence of his defeat. It is now for Mr. Bright to fortify the high ground he has been

permitted to take, and either to compel the legislature to a tardy and reluctant act of humanity and justice, or else to convince the country that nominal investigations of the imperial parliament, like the trial by jury in Ireland, are 'a mockery, a delusion, and a snare.'

We have left ourselves no room to comment upon the literary character of the honourable Grantley Berkeley's pamphlet. It is inaccurate, and, indeed, illiterate to the last degree. Some of the sentences it contains are altogether false in construction, and only fit for the criticism of school boys. Thus, for example, he says (p. 70):-'Now there are two ways of ceasing to preserve game, either the one just stated, or because the proprietor, from some personal consideration, &c.' And again (p. 20): 'I do not mean to say that men have never been induced to poach through want, but I assert that it is very rarely the case. Men have thrust their hands through windows in the street that they might be sent to prison, instead of starve; and the occurrence of one fact is about equal to the other.'

Indeed the whole performance sets the critic and the poacher at about equal defiance. It will perhaps suffice to state, that within these few pages the word surface is fourteen times used as an adjective, and once as an adverb!

The late Mr. Sydney Smith, in one of his characteristic letters to the Morning Chronicle' confessed that while he had enjoyed the advantages of a brilliant classical education, he had never been taught to write. In reading the literary productions of our aristocracy, it is humiliating to observe how few of them can adopt the first admission, and how many must plead guilty to the second, in a sense far different from that intended by the writer.

Art. VII.-1. The 35th Geo. III., c. 21., entitled An Act for the better Education of Persons professing the Popish or Roman Catholic Religion.'

2. The 40th Geo. III., c. 85, entitled An Act for the better Government of the Seminary established at Maynooth, for the Education of Persons professing the Popish or Roman Catholic Religion, and for amending the Laws now in force respecting the said Seminary.'

3, The 48th Geo. III., c. 145, entitled An Act to amend two Acts passed in Ireland, for the better Education of Persons professing the Popish or Roman Catholic Religion, and for the better Government of the Seminary Established at Maynooth for the Education of such Persons, so far as relates to the Purchase of Lands and compounding Suits.' THERE are some crises in the affairs of human society, the im portance of which it is impossible to magnify or overrate; and

the position in which this nation is now placed, by the unexpected and astounding proposition of the Prime Minister, in reference to popery in Ireland, is one of precisely this character. The nation is suddenly called upon to choose between two rival systems of church establishment,-between a dominant protestant establishment, on the one hand, and what is in principle the establishment and endowment of all religions, on the other. As the advocates of a free and independent church, we protest against both of these systems; but if either be more opposed to scripture and right reason than the other, we hold it to be that which the nation is now called upon to adopt. We need, therefore, make no apology for entering at once upon the earnest investigation of this subject.

We view the proposition to increase the grant to the college at Maynooth, to the extent, it is supposed, of twenty or thirty thousand pounds, and to keep the buildings of that college in repair, under the superintendence of the Board of Works, as only part of a system, which must, in a short time, end in the endowment by the state of the Roman catholic church in Ireland. It seems that the tottering protestant establishment of that country must, if possible, be sustained; not for the benefit which it confers upon the community, nor for the truth which it inculcates, but that the tithes may be preserved, and the livings be maintained, for the benefit of the aristocracy, whose perquisites they are. The pretence of maintaining the Irish establishment, because it teaches the truth, is now virtually abandoned; for the legislature is called upon to provide means that the effect of that truth may be counteracted,--that priests may be multiplied and educated, and sent forth, to teach what our public formularies have designated as 'damnable heresies.' Let not the advocates of the Irish establishment henceforth say, that it is maintained for its apostolic doctrine, or its evangelical ministers; for the fact will be palpable henceforth, that not the truth, but the tithes are its stability,-not the gospel, but the livings, are its foundation. We have heard much of political dissenters,' in these modern days; we now know what a 'political churchman' is. A staunch supporter of the church as by law established, he cares but little about its doctrines; a protestant in name, he takes the haters of protestantism at home under his patronage, and abroad, abandons Tahiti to the Propaganda. Thank God! we have some few faithful to his truth, so far, at least, as the latitudinarianism of our statesmen is concerned-even in the establishment; some who, with the Rev. Edward Bickersteth, are willing to declare, that if the state cannot uphold principle, and the truth of God must be