in which it was effected. Don't tell me, sir, what Giles told 'you.' Her evidence would have amounted to this. That in consequence of something that she heard,' she went early on the Sunday morning to the kitchen of the mill; found the floor and hearth covered with blood, and was directed to wash them; and that, in consequence of something that she afterwards heard, she prepared a sack; and although she would not have been allowed to state as evidence what she knew only by hearsay, that the remains of Kleinschrot had been thrown into a ravine, she might have indicated the place where they were to be found. Their discovery-this evidence as to the state of the kitchen the morning after Kleinschrot's disappearance-the terms on which he was known to have lived with his family, and their avowed desire for his death-would have afforded strong grounds for suspecting that he had died unfairly, and that some of his household had effected his death, and that the others had a guilty knowledge of it. But they would not have enabled a jury to convict any individual as either principal or accessary. We have heard with pleasure, that this highly interesting work is likely to be translated by a Lady, who has already given the public sufficient proofs of her competency for the task. Having gone over the same field, we venture to offer two suggestions. One is, that a selection from Feuerbach's narratives is likely to be more interesting to the English public than a translation of the whole. The whole consists of about thirteen hundred closely printed pages; and though it is diversified with great skill, yet the constant recurrence of crime, detection, and punishment; the oftenrepeated pictures of diseased imaginations, unrestrained desires, furious passions, or brutal insensibility, produce at length a fatiguing excitement. The reader is taken into a new world, in which all is grotesque and horrible. The strange figures by whom he is surrounded are influenced by feelings which never passed through his mind, and impelled by motives of which he scarcely knows the existence. His attention is roused by the novelty of the scene, and rewarded by the light thrown on the darkest portion of human nature. The secrets of the prisonhouse are opened to him. But at length he wishes to escape from its vaults, and to breathe the purer air of ordinary life. There are, however, students, and we ourselves are among the number, who regret that Feuerbach did not execute his purpose of adding to his work; but for the majority it is already too long. And, secondly, we believe that even as to the narratives which may be selected, it would be advisable to use considerable liberty of retrenchment. Feuerbach has the true German love of detail, repetition, and disquisition. He tells a story in the words of one witness, he repeats it in those of a second and of a third, he re-states it as confessed by the prisoner, he recapitulates it in his own person, he goes over it again while examining the grounds of the verdict, and recurs to it when he considers the justice of the sentence. He traces up minute facts with a conscientiousness to which no error appears unimportant. All this gives a reality which would be wanting if the superfluous parts were omitted; but it gives that reality at the expense of a prolixity which is probably agreeable to the patient Professors of Giessen and Heidelberg, but would be intolerable in London or Paris. We are not without some fear that we may have wearied our readers by our detailed relation of the Thomashof and Schwartz-muhle tragedies; and yet we have compressed into thirty pages what fills, in the original, one hundred and sixty. Again, many of Feuerbach's general disquisitions-such as those on the nature of evidence, on the kinds and degrees of mental disease and of mental weakness, which render a criminal judicially irresponsible, and on the influence of passion-are of high philosophical merit. They are profound, and in many parts original; and his demonstrations, to use a technical word, of the characters which he dissects for the reader's instruction, show a knowledge of the morbid anatomy of the human mind almost approaching that of Shakspeare. But here, again, the national indifference to conciseness shows itself. When he is proving or illustrating a general principle, he leaves no link to be supplied by the reader. When he is describing an individual, he omits no portion of his character. When, at the conclusion of a trial, he reviews the dramatis persona, he elaborates the moral and intellectual portrait of an ordinary ruffian with as much delicacy and force as if he were painting a Catiline or a Borgia. He ascertains the immediate and remote causes which produced the state of mind in which a half-witted idiot killed her mistress, as if he were accounting for the assassination of Cæsar by Brutus, or the execution of Charles by Cromwell. The remedies, of course, are excision and condensation, and in some cases, as incident to these, re-arrangement. As we know that the proposed translator, if she apply them at all, will apply them skilfully, we hope that she will apply them boldly. We trust that she will incur the labour and responsibility of retouching the work of a great artist, since it is the only means of enabling him to please and to instruct a new and dissimilar public. ART. III-A Treatise on the Principles and Practical Influence of Taxation and the Funding System. By J. R. M'CULLOCH, Esq. 8vo. London. 1845. THIS It need hardly be said that a writer, at once so deeply versed in scientific deductions, and so thoroughly conversant with statistical details, is peculiarly qualified to treat such a subject as Taxation; in which conclusions drawn from abstract premises and general principles continually demand the correction of practical knowledge. And the reader of the work before us, if he meets with no great amount of absolute novelty-if he is somewhat disappointed in finding that so much deep study and careful observation have suggested to so able and experienced a writer but little in the way of practical amendment-will nevertheless derive great advantage from having the confused notions apt to be entertained of the incidence of taxation,-that is, the relative pressure of public burdens on different portions of the community, rectified and elucidated. He will be able to deduce from these pages a view, more than ordinarily clear and satisfactory, of the daily working of the great economical machine of society; and thus, and thus only, will be enabled to judge of the disturbances introduced by Taxation, and to ascertain in what manner, and by what parties, these disturbances are felt. Of a work of this description, it would be in vain to attempt to exhibit any thing like a complete survey. The general reader would not thank us for such an attempt, however carefully executed; and they who are disposed to study the subject in all its extent, will themselves have recourse to the author's reasonings and deductions. Perhaps the best course that we can take, is to endeavour to condense Mr M'Culloch's views on that which will be the most interesting portion of the subject to most of r our readers-the manner in which taxation affects the labouring classes-that is, the great majority of the nation. The views which this part of the enquiry will disclose, will be a sufficient inducement to the real students of the science to examine the rest for themselves. The condition of these classes has more and more attracted the attention of all serious observers, until it has become the great question of the day. This is a fact for which we have abundant evidence, even in the quackery and false sentiment daily expended on the subject; but well may it become a matter of deep concern to those who are far above the temptation to all vulgar displays, if Mr M'Culloch's belief be well founded, that their situation is growing gradually worse. Though there has,' says he, been a vast increase of production, and of wealth and comforts, among the upper classes engaged in business during the last twenty or thirty years, and a considerable diminution of taxation, the condition of the work'people during that period has certainly not been in any degree improved, but has rather, we incline to think, been sensibly ' deteriorated.' This opinion of our author we believe to be new, and it is connected with some prophecies of evil which he has lately promulgated, with reference to the extension of the manufacturing system. Perhaps, indeed, it would not be easy altogether to reconcile in Mr M'Culloch the theorist with the statistician. In some of his previous statistical enquiries, he seems, if we recollect rightly, to have proved, that, during a period in which the population of England has doubled, its agricultural produce, chiefly for the use of man, has quadrupled; and this although, in the interval, England has become an importing instead of an exporting country; from which it follows, that an Englishman at this day eats twice as much as his ancestor eighty years ago,—a fact difficult to digest in itself; more difficult still, when we are informed that for thirty years the condition of the great bulk of the people has been falling off. We confess, however, to much distrust of all such proofs; and certainly there are not wanting serious reasons for the more gloomy inference. One is noticed by Mr M'Culloch-namely, that the habit of early marriage was in great measure introduced by the extraordinarily sudden extension of the demand for manufacturing labour, after the discoveries of Watt and Arkwright; and, like most habits, has remained in force after the cause which produced it had lost much of its efficacy, and the demand for labour become less pressing. The children called into existence by Watt and Arkwright are now grown up, and ask for employment; and though the demand for their services is still great, it is not so strong as that which was originally occasioned. Another cause, perhaps, of an overrapid increase of population, is, that the comparative uncertainty of manufacturing labour has a tendency to produce on wages the well-known effect which great gains and great hazard have on profits. There is a disposition on the part of the labourer to bid too low, from an exaggerated expectation of the permanence of the employment. But whether these speculations be true or false, it is not the less the most important office of an English statesman to watch over the welfare of this vast and helpless body; and he who utterly disbelieves in any power possessed by the higher classes, or by individuals, to alter and improve, by human effort, the economical arrangements of society, may nevertheless allow that the state has a minor but still serviceable function to perform; by shifting the burdens which it imposes, so as to make them rest with greater weight on the shoulders of those who, it is conceded on all hands, have made much greater advances of late years in material prosperity than the great mass of the people. It is a common opinion, that, under the system of indirect taxation which prevails amongst ourselves, the poorer classes contribute in reality much more to the revenue, in proportion to their means, than the richer. The taxes on tea, soap, and sugar alone-articles of which any ordinary labourer consumes, or ought to consume, nearly as much as the wealthiest inhabitant of the country-amount to nearly a fifth of its whole public income. To these must be added the enormously productive duties on beer, spirits, and tobacco-the luxuries, whatever moralists may urge respecting them, of the poor. It is necessary, further, to take into consideration the effect of the corn and sugar duties, in raising the price of these articles. to the extent of a large additional tax paid to the producers, and to which labouring men contribute per head nearly as much as the capitalist and the landlord; also the duty on sea-borne coal, and possibly other items which do not figure in the annual Budget of the State. We are not aware that any Statistician has endeavoured to show how large a proportion of the earnings of a labouring family, say at twenty shillings per week, goes in the shape of duties on commodities; but we should imagine that it very far exceeds the proportion contributed by the possessor of L.1000 per annum in landed or funded property. Such is the first appearance which the facts present; yet Dr Adam Smith was of opinion, that in reality the labouring classes 'contribute nothing of consequence to the public revenue;' and |