events have proved it to be, and a glut in labour is not that foe to consumption, and parent of starvation, which it has so long been proved to be by the state of Ireland. The consumption of silks would be very greatly diminished, and we are pretty sure that their price would be considerably raised.

The other classes buy of the English manufacturers with dear corn, manufactures, and labour; they could only buy of foreign ones with certain raw articles and gold. A large quantity of corn, manufactures, and labour, which is now exchanged for silks, would be left without a market, and this would have its effect on prices. Other nations could not take the whole value of their silks in raw produce; and we should have to pay a heavy balance of trade against us in gold. Every one must see, that if the whole of our silk-manufacturers were in a moment sent out of the country without being replaced by others; and if we should buy our silks abroad with raw produce and gold, a much smaller quantity of corn, shambles meat, merchandise, and manufactures, would be consumed. What the silk-manufacturers consume of these could not be exchanged for other articles to send abroad to buy silks with, for it could not be made use of. A man will only buy as much of a commodity as he needs, whatever excess of it there may be in the market. If the manufacturers remain in the country to consume the corn, &c., still if they be idle, they can give nothing in exchange, and the loss must be even greater to the producers. It cannot be denied, even by Mr Huskisson, that the foreign manufacturers-poor as they are, and limited as they would be to the taking of such goods only in exchange as leave us the smallest profits, and of some that we cannot part with without injury-would be infinitely worse customers to the other classes, than our own manufacturers; and it is demonstrable that this would greatly diminish the ability of the other classes for buying silks. It is equally demonstrable, that if the other classes should have to maintain our own manufacturers gratuitously, their ability for such buying would be diminished still farther. We are convinced, that if the Englishman should charge double the prices of the foreigner, his silks would be the cheapest to the VOL. XIX.

community as a whole, if the foreigner should take nothing in payment save raw produce or gold. If Mr Huskisson's doctrine be true, it must inevitably be true likewise, that if we should buy the whole of our manufactures of every description abroad, our manufacturers at home would still employ their capital and labour as fully and profitably as usual. If it be true, touching the part, it must be true touching the whole.

The Right Honourable Gentleman says, that as the new colonial system has not been attacked in Parliament, he will say nothing in defence of it. Here again no benefit can be boasted of; on the contrary, this system is producing evil.

Mr Huskisson, to have made an efficient defence, ought to have said, "We repealed the laws against combinations, and behold how the nation has profited from it!-We altered the navigation laws, and behold how it has increased your shipping!-We gave you a new colonial system, and behold how it has increased your trade! We admitted foreign manufactures, and behold how it has caused your manufacturers to prosper!-We opened your silk trade, and behold how this trade flourishes from it!"The very best that he can plead is— My new system has operated much like the old one, and it has been nearly as beneficial!

We wrangle not for names and forms; but, if changes are not to benefit us, why give us any? If foreign manufactures ought to be excluded, exclude them as effectually as you can-if they ought to be admitted, remove all restrictions. We care not for inoperative changes, although we think them somewhat worse than worthless; but we do care for those that have operation. We attach small importance to the opening of a trade that cannot be competed with, but the opening of one that can be undersold is another matter. It is not merely against the changes that Mr Huskisson has already made, but it is likewise against the additional ones that are to be made, that we protest. We look at his system as a whole, and withstand it as a whole.

The trade in corn is to be made free-the new protecting duties on manufactures are at the first opportu3 Q

nity to be abolished-and we are, as soon as possible, to be flogged, sweated, and starved down, by Mr Huskisson and his foreign assistants, to the level of other nations in prices, manner of living, and everything. Our conviction is, that this system will soon end in the ruin and dismemberment of the empire-that it will soon make us a second-rate nation, and compress all our territory into this one island that we inhabit.

Mr Canning states, that the Tory has always been the Liberal, and the Whig the Bigot, on matters of trade. Mr Canning must know that there is some difference between our old commercial treaties and the new system. He must know that there is some difference between the Whiggism of today and that of past times. He must know that the principles which he and his colleagues are acting upon have been for many years advocated by the Whigs, as part and parcel of Whiggism, and opposed by the Tories.

If we have spoken with some asperity, we will point to Mr Canning's speech in our justification; we detest obligations; and our maxim is, to repay liberally all favours. We have, we trust, shown that Mr Huskisson is not the man that his colleague represents him to be; and that, although he may be able to "soar" infinitely higher than ourselves, he does not always see things as he ought, when he "looks down" upon them. And now we will ask, why all this wrath, and swaggering, and blustering, on the part of Ministers? Why cannot they now, as formerly, bear a little opposition? Why cannot Englishmen at present, as in other times, defend

their laws and institutions, without being branded and called factious by their rulers? The men who are angered by a little abuse—who are thrown into hysterics by the prick of a sarcasm-are not, we think, fitted in all things for being the Ministers of England. What! is our very national character to be changed? Are we to be stripped of every good old English feeling and privilege? Are we no longer to be suffered to scatter hard words around us in our splenetic moments, and think ourselves wiser than our governors in our vain ones? Are we no longer to be permitted to grumble, and growl, and complain, and call men in office fools, and fancy that they are ruining us? Are we to be compelled to eat our roast beef without the mustard of politics; and to discuss our home-brewed, without spicing it with sedition? Must we never more, when the fit is on us, flourish our staff, and knock a man down here and there, as has been the custom time immemorial of the less philosophical part of our countrymen? Away with this puling, sickly, canting, pettish, ricketty, political dandyism, and let us return to the habits of our fathers! We will complain, and oppose, and attack, and kick up a squabble whenever it suits

us!

Let Ministers show the front of Englishmen let them court a little sturdy opposition; it sharpens the wit, braces the understanding, and prevents both them and Parliament from doing very many foolish things. Let them essay to catch a little of the stern, high, and haughty spirit of Pitt, and not labour to sink themselves to that most contemptible of all situations-the being without enemies!

SIR,

I FEEL myself called upon by the concluding paragraph in your late review of the Remains and Memoirs of the Rev. C. Wolfe," to give you, without delay, the evidence you request as to his claims to the authorship of the lines on the Burial of Sir John Moore, upon which you bestow such just commendation.

As I believe your Magazine was the first periodical work in which they appeared, and as another poem (by some mistake ascribed to the same author) was published in a subsequent Number, I conceive that you are fully entitled to the fullest satisfaction I can give upon the subject.

Allow me, sir, however, before I proceed, to offer you my thankful acknowledgments for the cordial and liberal spirit of criticism with which you have reviewed the Remains of my valued and lamented friend. I cannot but feel gratified that you so justly appreciate his literary and religious character, and that you also notice so kindly the manner in which I have attempted to perform the duty allotted to me, in presenting before the public a faithful sketch of his life, and select specimens of his well-directed ge

nius.

From the general tenor of your observations, I cannot indeed mistake the spirit in which you require more explicit proof that he was the author of the popular lines to which I have given a place amongst his poems. I certainly hoped that I had so circumstantially detailed the origin of the poem, and the way by which it first got into circulation, and that I had supplied the corrections, (which I stated to be from his own manuscript,) in such a manner as plainly to intimate that I was writing from my own actual knowledge of the true author. As the claim which had been advanced for Lord Byron was immediately withdrawn, and all other claims had shrunk away soon after the publication of the unequivocal statements of Dr Miller, and J. S. Taylor, Esq., and the testimony of many other highly-respectable names, I thought it unnecessary to enter into any particular detail of evidence. It did not, indeed, occur to

me to state Mr Wolfe's own declaration of himself as the author, in which omission I may probably have been wrong; however, I have now, sir, the happiness to give the very proof you prescribe, by assuring you that Mr Wolfe did actually declare to me, that the poem on the Burial of Sir John Moore (now printed among his Remains) was his own composition. He wrote it out for me very soon after it was completed, expressly avowing himself the author. I can also testify, that he made the same declaration to many acquaintances in College, among whom I have authority, at this moment, to name the Rev. C. Dickinson, (Chaplain of the Female Orphan-House,) one of his most intimate friends. I beg leave, in conclusion, to refer to an extract of a letter from the Rev. S. O. Sullivan, (Chaplain to the R. H. Mil. School, Phoenix Park,) which appears in the last volume (No. 10) of the Annual Biography and Obituary (pages 78 and 79), in which he states (what I had heard him more than once mention) that the poem alluded to was commenced one evening in his company, by Mr Wolfe-that the occasion which gave rise to it was a pássage which he had just read aloud for him from the Edinburgh Annual Register, and that the first and last stan

zas

were actually composed in the course of the same evening, and were recited for him by the author before he had committed them to paper. The other stanzas he completed within a very short time after. I presume it would be tedious and unnecessary to accumulate additional proofs, and that enough has been adduced to remove every remaining doubt from your mind upon the validity of Mr Wolfe's claims as the author of the poem in question. I shall not therefore, sir, trespass further upon your pages, than to thank you most sincerely for your kind offer to insert this letter in your widelycirculated and popular Magazine.

I have the honour to be, your obliged and faithful servant,

JOHN A. RUSSELL.
28, Holles Street, Dublin,
March 11, 1826.