conveys upon a most important subject, and the truly Christian tincture of its maxims and principles, are well calculated to enlarge the understanding and improve the heart. We beg leave particularly to recommend it to the attention of schools, in which, we conceive, a general acquaintance with the laws and constitution of the country might be cultivated with much advantage, as forming a proper preparation for the active scenes of life. Legal provisions for the security of the best temporal interests of mankind, are the result of so much collective wisdom and experience, and are so continually conversant with human affairs, that we know no study more adapted to invigorate the understanding, and at the same time to give a practical turn to its speculations. The close cohesion of its parts tends to make the mind severely argumentative, while its continual relation to the state of society and its successive revolutions, fences it in on the side of metaphysical abstraction and useless theories. What we look upon (for the reasons already mentioned) to be a most useful and interesting study at all times, we would earnestly recommend as an indispensable duty at the present crisis.

Of the merits of the work before us the public may form some judgement, when we inform them that it contains whatever is most interesting to the general reader in Blackstone, together with much useful information derived from Professor Christian, De Lolme, and various other eminent authors. Some will be ready to accuse the writer of having carried his partiality toward whatever is established too far: nor dare we say the charge is entirely unfounded. We are not disposed, however, to be severe upon him on this account. We wish to see the minds of our youth preoccupied with a strong bias in favour of our national institutions. We would wish to see them animated by a warm and generous enthusiasm, and to defer the business of detecting faults, and exposing imperfections, to a future period. Let us only be allowed to remark, that this policy should be temperately employed: lest the mind should suffer a revulsion, and pass, perhaps rather abruptly, from implicit admiration to the contrary extreme; lest, indignant at having been misled, it substitute general censure for undistinguishing applause.

We wish our author had, in common with Blackstone, expressed his disapprobation of the severity of the criminal code. The multiplicity of capital punishments we shall always consider as a reproach to the English nation, though, numerous as they are, they bear no proportion to what they would be, were the law permitted to take its course. The offences deemed capital by the common law are few; the sanguinary complexion of the criminal law, as it now stands, has arisen

from the injudicious tampering of the legislature. To us it appears evident, that the certainty of punishment will restrain offenders more than its severity; and that, when men are tempted to transgress, they do not weigh the emolument they had in view, against the penalty awarded by law, but simply the probability of detection and punishment, against that of impunity. Let the punishments be moderate, and this will be the most effectual means of rendering them certain. While nothing can exceed the trial by jury, and the dignified impartiality with which justice is administered, we are compelled to look upon the criminal code with very different emotions, and earnestly to wish it were carefully revised, and made more humane, simple, and precise.

As little can we concur with the author before us, in the defence he sets up of the donation of pensions and sinecures, where there are no pretensions of personal merit or honourable services. Standing quite aloof from party politics, we must affirm, that to whatever extent such a practice exists, exactly in the same proportion is it a source of public calamity and disgrace. To look at it, as our author does, only in a pecuniary view, is to neglect the principal consideration. It is not merely or chiefly as a waste of public money, that the granting of sinecures and pensions to the undeserving ought to be condemned; the venality and corruption it indicates and pro. duces is its worst feature, and an infallible symptom of a declining state. With these exceptions, we have accompanied the author with almost uninterrupted pleasure, and have been highly gratified with the good sense, the extensive information, and the unaffected piety he displays throughout the work. Though a firm and steady churchman himself, he manifests a truly Christian spirit toward the protestant dissenters; and is so far from looking with an evil eye on the large toleration they enjoy, that he contemplates with evident satisfaction the laws on which that toleration is founded.

Of the style of this work, it is but justice to say, that, without aspiring to any high degree of ornament, it is pure, perspicuous, and correct, well suited to the subject on which it is employed.

As a fair specimen of Mr, C.'s manner of thinking, we beg leave to lay before our readers the following just and appropriate remarks on duelling.

Deliberate duelling falls under the head of express malice; and the law of England has justly fixed the crime and punishment of murder upon both the principal and accessaries of this most unchristian practice. Nothing more is necessary with us to check this daring violation of all law, than the same firmness and integrity in the trial of duellists which so eminently distinguish an English jury on all other occasions.

Perhaps it will be asked, what are men of honour to do, if they must not appeal to the pistol and the sword? The answer is obvious: if one gentleman has offended another, he cannot give a more indisputable proof of genuine courage, than by making a frank acknowledgement of his fault, and asking forgiveness of the injured party. On the other hand, if he have received an affront, he ought freely to forgive, as he hopes to be forgiven of God. And if either of the party aggravate the matter by sending a challenge to fight, the other must not be a partaker of his sin, if he would obey God rather than man.

Still, it will be said that a military or naval man, at least, must not decline a challenge if he would maintain the character of a man of courage. But is it not insulting the loyalty and good sense of the brave defenders of our laws, to imagine that they of all men must violate them to preserve their honour; since the King has expressly forbidden any military man to send a challenge to fight a duel, upon pain of being cashiered if an officer; and of suffering corporal punishment if a non.commissioned officer, or private soldier. Nor ought any officer or soldier to upbraid another for refusing a challenge, whom his Majesty positively declares he considers as having only acted in obedience to his royal orders; and fully acquits of any disgrace that may be attached to his conduct. Besides, what necessary connection is there between the foolhardiness of one who risques the eternal perdition of his neighbour and of himself in an unlawful combat, and the patriotic bravery of him who, when duty calls, boldly engages the enemy of his king and country. -None will dispute the courage of the excellent Colonel Gardiner, who was slain at the battle of Preston Pans, in the rebellion in 1745. Yet he once refused a challenge with this dignified remark: "I fear sinning, though I do not fear fighting t." The fact is, that fighting a duel is 80 far from being a proof of a man's possessing true courage, that it is an infallible mark of his cowardice. For he is influenced by " the fear of man," whose praise herloveth more than the praise of God.'

Art IX. Anthropologia: or Dissertations on the Form and Colour of Man; with incidental Remarks. By T. Jarrold, M. D. Member of the Literary and Philosophical Society, Manchester. 4to. pp. 261. Price 17. 1s. bds. Cadell and Co. Burditt. 1808.

BEFORE we enter on the examination of this book, we

have to apologize for neglecting a former work of the same benevolent and ingenious author, which we have hitherto delayed to notice, with the intention of considering it at some future time with several other publications in a general discussion of Mr. Malthus's theory concerning population. In the mean while, we can venture to recommend it to the perusal of our readers, as a work of excellent

* ‹ See Articles of War, Sec. 7.

+See Dodridge's Life of Colonel Gardiner, an interesting piece of Biography, worthy the perusal of every officer in the army and navy.?

Dissertations on Man: being an Answer to Mr. Malthus's Essay on Population, 8vo. 10s. 6d, Same Publishers.

intention, and considerable ingenuity, though by no means of unimpeachable correctness. Dr. J. again appears before the public with an equally commendable design: to remove every unwarranted prejudice against the person of the negro.' The question, respecting the rank of the African in the crea tion, is not the less important at the present period, when the British legislature has, at length, ventured to concede to him some of the rights of humanity. For after all the attention which his cause has excited, all the exertions to alleviate his condition, all the heart-felt joy that has been felt at a prospect of his emerging from the abject state in which other men have placed him; should it be proved, that he is merely an anthropomorphous brute, or but a different species of Man, (which our self-love must immediately pronounce inferior) instead of having approved ourselves the friends of humanity, we have been insulting it, by introducing into our society an ambitious inferior, or a dangerous rival. If the Negro be of a different genus, only a well-shaped Oran Outang, we have as unquestionable a right, by the original grant of our common Maker, (Genesis ix.) to assert a property him, and render him subservient to our wants, as we have to domesticate the Horse or the Camel. If he be a collateral species of our own genus, prudence calls upon us, as we value our own superiority, to keep him in subjection; lest he serve us in the same way as in many places the Norwegian Rat has served the British. Unless we are convinced of the identity of our own species with his ;-that is, that the progeny of the Negro may in a series of years lose the parent's characteristic colour and features, and the progeny of the European assume them;-we cannot with justice and safety, it might be plausibly urged, admit him to the possession of equal rights with ourselves. Since the shortness of our lives prevents the decision of the question by direct experiments, we must endeavour to solve it, by an examination of Man in his present state. Blumenbach, in his Fragments, disproves the idea that Negroes are inferior in mental abilities and reason; and Dr. J. in the work before us undertakes to prove, not only that the difference, in form and colour, is the Consequence of extraneous causes, but that their form and colour are in many respects even superior to our own.

10

We wish it were in our power to compliment Dr. Jarrold on the perspicuity and philosophical strictness of his reasonings; qualifications so necessary in a subject of such intricacy, and which he occasionally displays to considerable extent. But we are too frequently obliged to apply to him the very accusation he preferred himself, on a former occasion, against the celebrated writer whom he opposed. The research of

the philosophier extracting truth from doubtful evidence does not appear; in the place of it, I fancy I am reading the speech of a pleader, who is endeavouring to say all that is favourable of his friends, and all that is discreditable of his antagonists.' (Dissert. p. 120.) Dr. J. is thoroughly convinced of the justice and importance of the cause he is pleading, and so will the greater number of his readers be; but few, we apprehend, will think either his demonstrations of the positions which he judges necessary in order to establish it, sufficiently cogent; or the inferences, which he draws from facts, so strictly deducible from them, as they ought to be in a professedly argumentative work. In its present state, there is so much vagueness and inaccuracy which may be confuted or exposed by any one who undertakes to answer him, that we fear he has rather put arms into the hands of his opponents, than reduced them to submission. If he is vanquished, (to continue a figure too familiar in the present state of the world,) it will not be by an attack on his centre, but by harrassing his outposts, and cutting off his detached parties. The justice of these remarks will appear from the subsequent extracts; and we mention them, not to prepossess any of our readers against the performance, but lest they should be induced, by a disappointment in their expectations of correctness and perfection in parts of it, to condemn the whole; and because we are persuaded, that if Dr. J. had bestowed that care and judgement in digesting his materials and compressing his arguments, which the public has a right to expect from his abilities, his work, though less in size, would have been far superior in classical merit.

In the Introductory Section, after a few observations on the utility of the study of man, Dr. J. mentions the aim of his dissertation to examine, independently of the light afforded by revelation on the subject, whether the existing difference of the individuals of the human race be specific, or merely owing to circumstances. He then commences his consideration of one of the principal bypotheses to the contrary, that of Gradation, as advanced more particularly by Mr. White, in his Account of the regular Gradation, &c.;' and continues it through the first part of his work. This doctrine, as he observes, has at all times been made an excuse for the imposition of slavery; the aboriginal inhabitants of America were branded as an inferior race of beings, enslaved, and in fact exterminated; the calumny has since been transferred to the unhappy African, who succeeded to their bonds. What else, indeed, could have given the conquerors of antiquity the semblance of justice in their conduct toward foreign nations, but attaching the idea of inferiority as men to their general appellation of barbarians? The Phoenician, probably, would