PREFACE TO VOL. LXXXVII. PART I. AFTER having for Eighty-seven Years addressed our numerous Readers with a repetition of Thanks for their long-continued and unparalleled indulgence; -after referring them more particularly to our Prefaces for the last Thirty Years, in which our firm attachment to the best interests of our Country, our veneration for its Sovereign, and our respect for its equitable Laws, have uniformly been inculcated—we have only again to thank the many friendly Correspondents who contribute so liberally to support the credit of a Miscellany which has been honoured by the productions of men as justly famed for their virtues as for their talents. We cannot, however, close the present Address without sincerely congratulating the Country at large on the revival of Trade and Public Confidence. And this we shall do, in the words of a respectable Provincial Newspaper*; which, after enumerating several facts, demonstrating that our Commerce and Manufactures are evidently fast improving, thus spiritedly remonstrates with the Croakers: "The renewal of the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act has been decided upon by the Legislature; and the measure has again been agreed to by as large majorities, in both Houses of Parliament, as it received on its first enactment; and we apprehend also with the approbation of a majority still larger of the reflecting and considerate part of the Nation. We have not yet seen one single argument advanced (though we have heard declamation and assertion enough) which shews that it is an act for the personal advantage or benefit of the Ministers. But we have heard from Ministers themselves, from such men as the Lord Chancellor, and the Earl of Liverpool, and from Statesmen in opposition likewise, from Lord Grenville in the Upper House, and from Mr. Bankes, Mr. Elliot, and Mr. Wilberforce, in the Lower House, that the measure in question was a grand National question, and is truly justified on the grounds of National necessity. As such, all good subjects will for a time submit to a wound of such severe infliction on the Constitution. But the Constitution of a State like ours is like the individuality of a man. It subsists through numerous subordinate changes. It grows from youth to age. It may improve, or it may decay, or decay may be produced under the name of improvement. Of all Constitutions now existing, ours is at once the most antient, has been the most slow in growth, and is the best knit and compacted together; but all its parts and principles do not require to be kept in motion at once. Some are capable of being suspended for a time; and their suspension may even contribute to the preservation of the general system. We had a Constitution before the' Habeas Corpus Act existed; we retain it now that that Act is in abeyance; and we shall possess it when the Law is again put in force. It was, therefore, well said by Sir John Nicholl, in the course of the debate on this Bill, that the Habeas Corpus Act is a Law by whose operation the people are secured from the oppressions of Power; and by whose occasional suspen Felix Farley's Bristol Journal, sign sion the Crown is enabled to secure the peaceable and loyal part of the people against the machinations of the seditious and traitorous.' "The Funds, that certain criterion of public confidence and credit, are rising every day, so that a person who bought into the Funds before the meeting of Parliament, before it was known what measures Ministers would adopt for the security of the subject, and ere the financial arrangements of the year were made public, has gained more than 20 per cent. on the money invested. Let us trace, therefore, a few of the consequences of such an occurrence; and see how they bear on the great question of public prosperity. The wretches who spread sedition and treason throughout the country build all their hopes of success in their detestable projects, on the distress of the labouring classes. That distress is of course produced by want of employment. The want of employment originates in the withdrawing of capital from circulation. Every rise in the value of funded property is an additional temptation to throw it into circulation; but here is a rise of 20 per cent. Capital must therefore rapidly flow into all the channels of circulation. Credit must revive. The small farmer, whose capital has been exhausted, whose credit is nearly at an end, and who therefore has fallen behind-hand in his rent, discharged his labourers, and impoverished his fields, will now recover his credit, will be able to revive the productive powers of the land, will take the starving labourer again into employ, and eventually, by the payment of his rent, will induce his landlord, who may have emigrated to the Continent for retrenchment, to return, and live in his usual comfort and respectability at home. Hence, the home-market for manufactures must at every step grow better; and the manufacturing poor, who have become the dupes of incendiaries and traitors, must begin to see through and detest their delusions, and bless the Legislature for those wise, patriotic, and constitutional measures, which have saved the country from impoverishment, desolation, and massacre. Reverse the picture, and consider what would have been the consequence, had the Habeas Corpus Act not been suspended. Funded property would have become daily more insecure, and of course daily less valuable. Capital would have been more cautiously locked up. Credit would have vanished. Employment, both in agriculture and manufactures, would have become more rare; distress more intense, the temptations to insurrection more powerful, the efforts of the seditious writers and speechifiers more audacious, the plots and conspiracies more extensive, more consistent, more tremendous! In this down-hill course toward revolution and ruin, nothing could have stopped us but measures of the utmost energy, measures infinitely more remote than the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus is from constitutional liberty—nothing, in short, but martial law and military force, the lamentable but indispensable means of putting down open and systematic rebellion. But if, to the happy prospects we have first anticipated, Providence in its bounty, as there is every appearance of its doing, should add the blessing of a plentiful harvest; if our emigrant gentry should listen to the voice of duty and of prudence, and return to the land which they have shamefully quitted in the moment of distress; if a general feeling of indignation should overwhelm the seditious and blasphemous libellers with disgrace; and if the Government, armed with temporary powers, should employ them to the complete extirpation of Conspiracy and Treason, we may yet indulge the hope of seeing our glorious and beloved Country as great in Peace as it has been in War-an example to Nations for its enlightened patriotism, its steady considerate loyalty, its morals, its greatness, and its freedom." THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE: LONDON GAZETTE Pilot-Statesman JANUARY, 1817. Meteorological Diaries Dec. 1816, Jan. 1817,2,94 brooke. No. IV.-Church Autiquities.....14 COMPENDIUM OF COUNTY HISTORY County of Devon 25-County of Dorset.. 28 Literary Inquiries-Rev. W. Smith, &c. 33 Miss Rundall's "Symbolical Illustrations" 34 On the Pedigree & Sur-name of SHAKSPERE. 35 A Shaksperian Pedigree, from Registers, &c. 36 Cornw.-Covent. 2 Durham - Essex Exeter 2, Glouc.2 Halifax-Hants 2 Ipswich 1, Lancas. Preston-Plym. 2 Reading-Salisb. Salop-Sheffield2 Sherborne, Sussex Shrewsbury Staff,-Stamf. 2 Taunton-Tyne Wakefi.-Warw. Wolverh. Worc. 2 York3.IRELAND37 SCOTLAND 24. Jersey 2. Guern. 2. Review of New Publications. Fidelia, & Hymns; Barksdale's Nympha Li- Embellished with a perspective View of the TowER of MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD; By SYLVANUS URBAN, GENT. Printed by NICHOLS, SON, and BENTLEY, at CICERO'S HEAD, Red Lion Passage, Fleet-str. London; where all Letters to the Editor are particularly desired to be addressed, PosT-PAID [3] THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE, For JANUARY, 1817. I am not much mistaken, you will not scruple to insert the brief character of an eminent Prelate, which I transcribe from the last Number of "The British Critic." The senti ments expressed in it are congenial to the general tenor of the Gentleman's Magazine. “There are few events which could have contributed more to cheer and animate the Church, under its present circumstances, than the elevation of Dr. Marsh to the Episcopal Bench. The promotion of those, who by their worth have strengthened, and by their talent advanced, the interests of our Holy Cause, is at all times a subject of legitimate triumph; but in no case, perhaps, has this promotion been hailed with more heartfelt exultation than in the present. While the depth and variety of his knowledge, and the acuteness of his reasoning powers, entitle him to our admiration, his manly zeal and spirited exertions in defence of all that is dear to us as Churchmen and as Christians, commend him to our affection. He has maintained the Good Cause in defiance of every worldly prospect or bope. His advancement has been hardly and severely earned; it came equally unsought and unexpected; and we hail it the more auspicious, as we consider it the advancement, not of himself alone, but of the interests of that Church, in whose defence he has shewn himself so able and so intrepid a combatant. He is now called into a higher scene of action, in which we doubt not but that the same exertion, the same courage, and the same skill, will mark his career with honour; and, under the blessing of Providence, adorn it with success." The above most appropriate eulogium is copied from a Review of the Fourth Part of Bp. Marsh's "Lectares, containing à Description and systematic Arrangement of the several Branches of Divinity;" and the Reviewer then makes his remarks on "We consider the Volume before us an invaluable addition to the Prophetical department of every Theological Library. The principles of interpretation are simple, clear, and uniform; easy to be applied, and safe in their application. The ill-judged fancies of many good and pious men, in the interpretation of Hebrew Prophecy, have thrown such a veil of obscurity over the whole mass, as frequently to eonfuse the well meaning, and to stagger the timid. We know of no Treatise so admirably calculated to meet this growing evil, and to clear away the clouds and vapours which have gathered round one of the main pillars of the Christian Fabrick To any one who might feel any rising doubts as to this most important part of the evidences in favour of Christianity, we should earnestly recommend the Volume before us, as a compressed, luminous, and masterly exposition of all the difficulties which might fall under his consideration. We heartily wish that we could of our Author turned toward a subject see the strong and discriminating powers intimately connected with the one before us; we mean, to the Interpretation of the Prophecies of the New Testament. We are aware that the principles of Interpretation would be the same; but to apply them with strength and precision to that controverted subject, and to dissipate the heap of contradiction and absurdity which has been piled up by the labours of modern Trophonii, would require no less an arm than that of Bp. Marsh. "We hope and trust, that when the labours of his new station shall have begun to sit lightly upon him, the Bishop will not forget with how much anxiety every Theological Student will expect the conclusion of this series of Lectures. For the sake of the rising geueration, they should not be left unfinished; as every part is perfect, so should also be the whole." Yours, &c. A LAYMAN. Tour through various Parts of the NETHERLANDS and GERMANY in 1815. (Continued from page 486.) RAVELLERS who have a taste the present Part," The Interpretation for Antiquarian and Topogra of Prophecy." Tfor phical |