their own responsibility, and inflicted the censorial brand on persons guilty of any of a certain class of offences, which were not, and could not, be made the subject of legal redress. Thus an unprincipled patron who broke faith with his client, and a master who treated his slave with cruelty, were altogether overlooked by the statutes; but the censors had it in their power to censure and even punish such conduct. The chief of the offences which belonged to this class were excessive harshness or extravagant indulgence in a parent towards his children; the vexatious persecution of an innocent wife; the neglect of parents; selfishness between brothers; drinking bouts; seduction or abandonment of the young; omission of sacred rites and honours due to the dead. But that which the censors made a select subject of hostility, at the time when a love of ancient simplicity superseded a disposition to yield to the temptation of refinements, was the offence of luxury. The most celebrated stories of censorian rigour are connected with the efforts of those officers to bring to punishment the men of high rank who made themselves obnoxious to the charge of luxury. Celibacy, when proved to have been adopted without just reason, but from caprice alone, was branded as a voluntary withholding on the part of the bachelors of the regular supply of citizens. Invalid marriages which were traceable to an opposite motive, were branded in the same way. The exposing of children came under the same objection, and was liable to be branded in like manner, unless when the child happened to be deformed. The censors struck off the list of his order the name of any plebeian who, having been a husbandman, befook himself to a retail trade or handicraft. Again, if a man allowed his vineyard to run wild, he was immediately deprived of his property, and removed from his tribe.

The nature of the duties of the censors, as holding the admiastration of the public revenue, was to establish tolls and excise cuties in towns that were subject to the republic; they also fixed the price at which the farmers of the salt-marshes were to sell salt fa Rome itself, and in the districts and market towns inhabited by Roman citizens. They had likewise the care of farming the customs, and negotiating the contracts for public works; but the direct taxes were fixed by the senate alone, who exclusively had the authority of making drafts on the treasury. It would appear that the power of granting taxes never was pretended to by the democracy, even in their most palmy days. In proceeding to comment on this great subject, the unhappy Niebuhr discovers all the force of that disastrous influence which his subserviency to a despotic monarchy preserved over the freedom of his judgment. A general assembly, he observes, though it consist of thousands, is still no more than the representative of a nation; and if such a body refuses at any time to supply the government with the means of preserving the state, it oversteps the bounds within which authority and freedom, the state and the nation, may exercise a mutual control on each

other. This is the acme of ultra-conservatism, and, like most of the theories on which the partisans of despotism defend their doctrines, it involves an absurdity. It is either good or bad policy to confine to the house of representatives in a given country the power of ordering the supplies for the service of the executive department. If the appropriation of such a right be an evil, it should never be sanctioned by a wise state. But the conservatives admit the necessity of the arrangement, and yet they pretend that the power ought not to be exercised. Is it possible that so important a privilege should be placed in the hands of the Commons as a precious bauble under lock and key, never to see the light-never to be employed for any practical purpose? Surely these conservatives have had in their eyes the ingenious example of the renowned Vicar of Wakefield, who very liberally bestowed a gold guinea on each of his daughters, strictly enjoining them, however, on no account to attempt to change the coin. Professor Niebuhr declared that the exercise of the power of refusing the supplies by an assembly of popular representatives, is a declaration of war, and one of the two powers must succumb: usurpation or revolution, he then says, is at hand.

- The professor seems extremely anxious to have it well understood, that in the best Roman times the imposition of taxes had nothing whatever to do with the will of the people. He says there is scarcely an instance in which the legislature interfered in any project for the levying of a tax, with the single exception of the case of the duty of five per cent. on manumissions. The property tax was altogether left to the direction of the censors, who at various periods laid heavy burdens on bachelors, and made orphans liable to the ordinary taxes. Another set of censors placed taxes on women's clothes and ornaments. There were, indeed, few censorships which, by their edicts, did not vary the burdens of the people, if they did not increase them:

"The financial calculations and the keeping the register were the business of notaries: these were freedmen, and formed a company, which was assuredly of an older date than the censorship: the mere writing was probably performed chiefly by the public slaves, whom we find spoken of as in the service of the censors; they were however wanted to keep order, and to execute various commissions.

"There is certainly no reason for supposing that the entries were made less skilfully or more negligently than at the present day: pieces of land which changed their owners might be measured, and subtracted or added in the tax-registers, just as the same thing is done now. With regard to the greatest part of the taxable land, however the arrangement in the state terrier might be preserved with far more ease and certainty, if the plots belonging to the plebians, whether by assignment, or by purchase at sales by the quaestors, formed separate estates, which could not be transferred to new owners except in parcels bearing a definite proportion to the whole, measured by the duodecimal scale; and unless such a restriction

had existed, there manifestly could have been no foundation for the agrarian controversia de modo. Besides, wherever the Roman institutions were retained at the beginning of the middle ages, and Italy had not become a Lombard company, the practice of alienating such proportional parts of an estate continued: nay, even down to the present day, a measure of land has been preserved in the neighbourhood of Rome and in Latium, which derives both its nature and name from the ancient terrier. The pezza is the ancient juger; the rubbio of seven pezze is the plebeian ploughland of seven jagers: the word itself evidently comes from rubrum, the title in the terrier, so called because the name of the estate was written in red ink; and under it was registered the name of the proprietor, and the changes that took place in the ownership. It is exceedingly interesting to catch a glimpse of the every-day transactions of antiquity; and therefore I will here remark, that the business of the witnesses at sales was to prove that the purchaser was really the person whose name was entered in the roll of the citizens, either under the head of his tribe or as 'an ærarian for a mere outlying citizen could not purchase landed property any more than a foreigner: it was necessary that the name of every proprietor registered under a rubic in the terriers, which were drawn up according to the regions, should be found in the roll of the citizens. Hence if any of them incurred the extreme diminutio capitis, by surrendering his franchise, his name was also erased from under the rubic. If he took the advantage of his right of exiling himself to avoid judgment, and a sentence of outlawry passed on him, his piece of land undoubtedly became forfeit to the state: if he did so from any other cause, the land was left open."-pp. 403-406.

The war of the elements, which, as we have already seen, so severely visited the Roman empire towards the close of the third century from the building of the city, continued in an aggravated form through the first half of the succeeding one. Very early in the latter century the wells and streams were dried up; the cattle and the very fruits of the earth decayed prematurely. In 355 a terrible winter supervened, when the river Tiber became choked up with ice; the snow covered the ground several feet, and crushed down the roofs of houses with its weight; and cattle and vegetation were utterly destroyed by the intensity of the cold. This unnatural condition of the weather was a consequence, according to Niebuhr, of internal convulsions in the earth: the rise of the waters of the Alban lake, for instance, occurred from the stoppage of some subterraneous outlets. A plan of breaking a tunnel through the wall of lava, which was the cause of obstruction, was resorted to. The execution of this project was attended by immense difficulties: the lava which was worked through was as hard as iron, yet a passage was excavated through it three feet and a half broad, and six thousand feet long, and of sufficient depth to enable a man standing up to conceal his head below the level of the common surface. This winter, which darkens by its calamities the bright page of early Roman history, was followed by a very unhealthy summer; the Romans saw that nothing was to save them but an appeal to the

Gods. The Sibylline books were applied to-a time of general sacrifice was appointed-and during seven days every citizen gave hospitable entertainment, according to his means, at sacrificial banquets. The stranger was received with hospitality-universal kindness and charity prevailed-the prison doors were unlocked-and even the slaves, who bore chains as a part of their regular costume, walked forth in freedom. The annals of the period relate, that during the continuance of these ceremonies no theft or act of disorder was committed.

The diseases which so extensively promoted the mischiefs produced by the severe weather, appear to have been marked by eruptions on the skin; the exact description, however, justifies the opinion that the three principal eruptive diseases were analogous to the itch, measles, and small pox of modern times.

The spirit in which the work of Niebuhr is written, and the power and learning with which it is executed, will be found too sufficiently displayed in the foregoing pages to allow us to extend this article to a greater length. Whilst we admire the immense abilities, and the unwearied industry of the author, we cannot but deeply lament the laxity of moral principle which has led him to turn the subject of ancient history into an instrument for propagating the most baneful discouragements to the cultivation of constitutional doctrines. In the patricians of Rome, Niebuhr merely contemplates the living aristocracy of Europe, and in apologising for and defending the one, he is merely striving to vindicate the other. The feelings of every sound Englishman must revolt against many of the principles which the author seems anxious to cherish; and this is one reason why we think that this otherwise admirable history of Rome will meet with but little popularity in this country. We speak of Niebuhr with feelings of melancholy regret, since his untimely death, which took place only three months before the publication of this volume, has necessarily deprived us of the chance of the work being completed. It is fortunate, however, that amongst the author's manuscripts, there has been found a continuous history of the dictatorship of Publilius, to the beginning of the first Punic war. This, together with the corrections made in the latter part of the original second volume, which embrace the period from the promulgation of the Sicinian laws to the dictatorship of Publilius, are now in the hands of Savigny, and will be speedily published.

ART. V.-The Existing Monopoly, an Inadequate Protection of the Authorized Version of Scripture. Four Letters to the Right Hon. and Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of London; with Specimens of the Intentional, and other Departures from the Authorised Standard. To which is added, a Postscript, containing the "Complaints" of a London Committee of Ministers ou the Subject; the Reply of the Universities; and a Report on the Importance of the Alterations made. By THOMAS CURTIS, of Grove House, Islington-Secretary to the Committee. 8vo. pp. 115. London: Effingham Wilson. 1833.

In this comparatively brief pamphlet we find the exposition of one of the most singular deceptions to which the world has yet been exposed. The imposture is nothing short of a downright falsification of the texts of Scripture. Need we add a syllable more to rouse the attention of the thinking community?

For the proper development of the true history of the circumstances which have led to the detection and exposure of these errors, it will be convenient to follow the order of the narrative which is to be found in the work before us.

It appears that the Rev. Mr. Curtis's attention was first called to the subject of the errors in the Bible by the accidental discovery of various discrepancies which occurred in the copies which were read in his family. He found it a good method of securing attention amongst them to cause each of the family and of his pupils to read a verse or two in succession, and scarcely a day passed without his witnessing, between the text in the modern University Bibles, and in those which had been for a long time in his possession, a very alarming amount of variance.

Previously, however, to this discovery, Mr. Curtis had very strong reason to be discontented with the plan of publication on which the Scriptures had been settled by the government. He says, that the office of King's Printer (which includes the exclusive privilege of printing the Bible) was given as a bonne bouche to Mr. Reeves, a barrister, and he, not being acquainted with the necessary art, actually farmed out to the highest bidder, at a certain rate per annum, his right (!) to the printing of God's word, as well as the Book of Common Prayer. The printers, whom Mr. Curtis personally knew, were men of quite a second order in their trade; they employed their own workmen and stationer; they were altogether uncontrolled in the preparation of the sacred book, and one of the consequences, which sprung either from their carelessness or ignorance, was the obliteration of one of the most striking peculiarities of the authorized version, namely, the mode of printing some of the divine names.

But this was not the whole of Mr. Curtis's preliminary information. He obtained the knowledge of another singular fact, which