ticular, that they may not have attended to the fact that, each faculty having a double set of organs-one in each hemisphere of the brain, the injuries may not have extended to both, and the faculty may therefore have operated by the side that remained sound. In a matter so plain, we really do not think it necessary to go very minutely or elaborately to work. A man's head, according to the Phrenologists, is embossed all over with the protuberant organs of his different faculties-and other people admit, that it exhibits the organs of at least four such faculties. If, in a common boxing-match, he gets a closer on the eyes, it requires no nice medical skill to know that the sight will be injured, or that a good blow on the ear will make him deaf for a longer or shorter time. Accordingly, from the beginning of time, these effects have been universally known to follow from these injuries. But blows light at least as often on other parts of the head as on the eye or ear. They must light, therefore, according to the Phrenologists, on the organ of some other faculties;-and the question is, how-if the phrenological system were true-it could at this time of day be doubted, whether other specific faculties were injured by such blows -or how there should possibly be any need, and still less any difficulty, in producing evidence of that plain proposition? So far from being a matter of rare occurrence, or as to which there could be any room for cavilling about cases in point-it is obvious that cases in point must have been occurring every day, in the sight of almost every man in existence. To say nothing of battles--and the hacking of troopers' heads with sabres and broad swords-there is not a Wake or Fair in Ireland, at which cases of injury on all the thirty-six bumps may not be obtained in multitudes: And yet nobody has ever observed the disturbance of any special faculty, but those of seeing and hearing -nor have either patients or lookers-on been the least aware of any difference in the mental effects of the blows, according to the quarter of the head on which they descended. If they struck the eye or ear, to be sure, the man grew blind or deaf. But if they fell any where else, he merely reeled, or fell, or vomited; but was conscious of no cessation in the functions of any particular mental power or propensity. A soldier shot or struck on the eyes, may cry out, I am dark for life! my precious eye-sight!-But if hit hard on the organ of Veneration, is never heard to exclaim, There! my religion is clean gone! "I care nothing now for God, or the Captain. A tender father wounded on the organ of Philoprogenitiveness, feels no sudden disregard for his children. A miser, well banged on the organ of Acquisitiveness, does not instantly become careless of his money bags; nor is a coward, whose large bump of Cautious ness has been half beaten in by ruffians, in any degree cured of his timidity. The double sets of organs are of very little consequence in the argument. Though a man has two eyes, he knows very well when one of them is knocked out; and a man deaf on one side, is perfectly conscious of a defect in his hearing. Something analogous, therefore, should at all events take place, when one member of a phrenological pair is disabled; and it should be just as common to hear a friend complaining, that he had not been able to reason on the left side, or to make a joke with the right, the whole winter, as it now is to hear him say, that he cannot smell with the right nostril, or see with the left * eye. But besides that, in very many cases, the injuries extend to parts of both hemispheres, it happens that there is a range of very conspicuous faculties at their conjunction, the organs of which, though nominally double, are quite contiguous, and therefore substantially single; so that every injury must necessarily affect the whole. Of this class are the two Individualities, Comparison, Benevolence, Veneration, Firmness, and Love of Offspring; while the double organs of Locality, Causality, Time, and Imitation, though not absolutely in contact, are yet so near each other, as to make it very unlikely that they should not both be involved in any misfortune that befel either. It is obvious, too, that these, as occupying the front, top, and centre of the head, are more liable to blows and accidents than any of the others; and as the casualties, to which we have referred, are of so very common occurrence, the tests which we would apply could never be wanting, even if they alone had the means of supplying them. As to the cases in which large parts of the brain have been actually destroyed or removed, and from all places of the head, without the perceptible loss of any particular faculty, we cannot see that any answer either is or can be made to them-and conceive that they settle, by redundant evidence, a question which can no longer be considered as doubtful. Here, however, is a specimen of the facts which are pressed into the service of Phrenology. * It is rather remarkable, that our Phrenologists take no notice of this duplication of the organs, when treating of the vigour which the faculties may receive from their morbid excitement. Yet it would perplex that argument, if otherwise available to them, far more than the present. If the faculty of Destructiveness is excited by a local inflammation above one ear, while that on the other side is not so affected, what will be the condition of the mental faculty? Will it have fits of morbid manifestation and remission, as the party brings one or the other organ into play? Or will it compromise the matter by a permanent half excitement ? A man was brought into an hospital, who had received a considerable injury of the head, but from which he ultimately recovered. When he became convalescent, he spoke a langnage which no one about him could comprehend. However, a Welsh milk-woman came one day into the ward, and immediately understood what he said. It appeared that this poor fellow was a Welshman, and had been from his native country about thirty years. In the course of that period, he had entirely forgotten his native tongue, and acquired the English language. But when he recovered from his accident, he forgot the language he had been so recently in the habit of speaking, and acquired the knowledge of that which he had originally acquired and lost! Such a fact as this is totally inexplicable on any principle except that of the existence of organs by which the faculties are manifested; for it could not be the mind itself which was affected, and its faculties impaired by the fever, or which recovered long lost knowledge, by the influence of this disease.' pp. 395. We shall not attempt certainly to explain this, and some similar cases, which seem respectably attested. But we must say, that we find it much easier to let them pass for the present as inexplicable, than to acquiesce in the phrenological solution. It will be remembered, that they have now left us no organ of Memory, and therefore the injury in question must have affected some part of the organ of Language-to which the recollection of words is committed, on their present scheme. This organ, to be sure, is situated behind the eye-and we have no hint that the Welshman's eyes were affected. But let that pass-The phenomenon is explained by supposing that a part of the organ of language was injured-and that the effects of this injury were, 1st, to destroy for the time that part of the machinery which served for the recollection of English words-and, 2d, to restore to a serviceable state that part which had been originally used for recollecting Welsh ones, but had long been so much rusted and decayed, as to be quite unfit for service. These are not metaphors employed to assist our conception of an obscure fact, or to give a sort of coherence to a strange statement. They are alleged by the Phrenologists as serious and literal truths, affording a plain and satisfactory explanation of a very extraordinary occurrence. It is difficult for any one else to be serious in speaking of such an explanation. For it substantially amounts to this, that there is an actual part or portion of the brain, whose function it is to suggest Welsh words and their meaning-and another to suggest English words-and that, by a knock on the head, one of these organs (for they are separate organs to all intents and purposes) may be made incapable of working-and the other re-enabled to work, after a long period of incapacity. If there be any truth in this, the 36 organs should be multiplied, VOL. XLIV. NO. 88. X not by hundreds but thousands. There must be an actual material polyglott in every man's head—a separate ' volume in the brain' for every language that he learns-and a reserve, of course, of blank ones for every language he is capable of learning-nay, there must be a distinct line, of a few actual fibres, for every separate word-and not for every word only, but for every thing and idea of every sort-for all, in short, that may be either learned or forgotten! An old musician, by a lucky blow on the head, may have the sealed volume thrown open, where tunes, forgotten since infancy, are fairly pricked down-a mathematician may stumble on his lost equations-a gourmand recover his perished ragouts! For every separate conception, in short, of which the mind is capable, we have only to assume that there is a certain material receptacle in the brain, and all the phenomena of thought are explained in the simplest and most satisfactory manner-taking care always to assume, at the same time, just such accidents and changes in those material organs as will exactly account for the phenomena in question! 6 We must absolutely end here, we find;-though there is much goodly matter behind. There is a great deal about the modes of activity of the organs,' which we confess passes our understanding; and we must bear the same testimony to the dissertations on the Harmony of the Faculties, and the practical applications of the science, to the treatment of Insanity, and to Criminal Legislation. But we must hurry away at once from all these seductions; and leave the book and the science at length to their fate. We have already given more attention to them, than many of our readers will probably approve, or indeed than we ourselves think they deserve-though probably not enough to have avoided some errors, and many imperfections, in our hasty statement. We have left room enough, we dare say, for cavil and misrepresentation, on the part of those who think these the best weapons of controversy. It is not, however, to them that we address ourselves-and we care nothing at all for their hostility. We have no objections to Phrenology, as an amusement for idle people, and as a means, perhaps, of tempting them into a taste for reflection; and to those good ends this free exposition of its fallacy is likely, we think, to contribute. But the dogmatism and arrogance of its advocates were really beginning to be tiresome-and the folly had lasted rather too long. It would no doubt have declined of itself in no very long time; and in supposing that we may have now done something to accelerate its cessation, we are probably vainly arrogating to ourselves an honour that will belong entirely to the progress of reason-or the fortunate distraction of some newer delusion. ART. II. MR JACOB's Report on the Trade in Corn, and on the Agriculture of the North of Europe. Printed by order of the House of Commons 14th March 1826, IN N whatever point of view the question with respect to the Abolition or modification of the existing Corn Laws may be considered-whether as affecting the interests of the landlords and farmers, or those of the manufacturing, mercantile, and monied classes-it must be allowed to be one of the very highest importance. And as it is obvious, as well from the proceedings that took place last Session in the House of Commons, as from those that have since taken place out of doors, that this great question must speedily be agitated in Parliament, we make no apology for again endeavouring to excite the public to an attentive consideration of its merits. We do not certainly think that it is in itself a difficult question; but it is one with respect to which the greatest misapprehensions are universally entertained. The deceitful statements and declamatory harangues of the agricultural orators on the one hand, and the intemperate invectives of many of their opponents on the other, have given rise to the most erroneous and contradictory opinions with respect to the practical bearing and real operation of the existing Corn Laws, and the effects that would follow from their repeal; and have rendered a patient investigation of facts, and a recurrence to first principles, indispensable to clear away the obscurity in which the question has been studiously involved, and to enable us to arrive at a sound conclusion with respect to it. In order to simplify our investigation, we shall begin by endeavouring to estimate the total annual consumption of the dif ferent kinds of grain in the British empire; and, having done this, we shall next endeavour to ascertain the quantity of grain that would most probably be imported into Great Britain in ordinary years, and the price at which it could be sold in the event of the ports being thrown open. If we succeed in determining these points with tolerable accuracy, it will be easy to deduce from them an estimate of the effect that a repeal of the Corn Laws would have in reducing the price of raw produce, and in throwing inferior land out of tillage. The facts of the case being thus brought before the reader, we shall next apply ourselves to unfold the consequences which they involve, and to exhibit the principles that ought to be kept in view, in abo |