CRITICAL NOTICES.

Public Instruction and Moral Improvement. 8vo. Pp. 57. LondonRidgeway. 1846.

THE long-anticipated and not less eagerly-desired close of the struggle for Free Trade, (on which we most heartily congratulate our readers,) opens a very interesting field of speculation as to the topics which will for the next few years occupy and divide Parliament and the country. Many of the old party landmarks are rooted up, and no one will trouble himself to replace them. The parties which, five years ago, were so definitely marked, are now broken up and mingled together in most gratifying confusion. We begin to indulge the hope that a large body of the most intelligent and patriotic of our countrymen will henceforth throw aside the idle banners of mere party strife, and set earnestly to work in promoting the physical comfort and the moral improvement of the neglected masses by whom they are surrounded. We think we can already perceive tokens of the silent growth of a public opinion in favour of a course of legislation that shall raise the industrious classes of this country from their present unsatisfactory condition,--that shall provide sound instruction for the future generations of the young,-and shall take immediate steps for cutting off the entail of vice and crime with which bad legislation and the neglect of centuries has burthened us.

We regard the appearance of the excellent pamphlet to which we now ask the attention of our readers, as one of the satisfactory signs of the times. It proceeds, we believe, from the pen of a country gentleman, not now in Parliament, possessing large estates in one of our Northern counties, who devotes much of his time to the improvement of agriculture, to the education of the poor, to his Magisterial duties, and to the reform of our jurisprudence and the administration of justice. He possesses a very clear head as well as a humane heart, and expresses his thoughts in a smart and pointed style. We will give as many extracts from the pamphlet as will justify our commendation of it, and will probably induce our readers to desire a further acquaintance with it.

Our author dedicates his thoughts to Sir Robert Peel. He evidently does not imagine that the sun of this eminent statesman will set, because the Whigs and the abandoned and incensed Protectionists think proper just now to combine to put him out of office. There prevails, we believe, a general expectation amongst the middle classes, that as soon as the present little political game is played out, and after an interregnum of not many quarter-days, Sir Robert Peel will return to political power, and will receive the support of wise and moderate men of all parties, provided he be disposed to continue in a course of liberal and just legislation. Our author in very happy terms reminds the Premier that he has not yet settled the balance due from him to the country.

"The latter portion of the life of Augustus was necessary to efface the memory of his youth. The last act of yours, will, however laudable, scarcely avail you to the same extent. We must have something more. We cannot forget, though your party does, how long your talents protracted their existence-how long you resisted the best measures which now illustrate the statute-book."-P. 4.

The introductory appeal briefly states the author's object and wishes: "GIVE US THEN A SYSTEM OF NATIONAL EDUCATION worthy of the name, AND

CORRECT YOUR PENAL DISCIPLINE, SO THAT YOUR PRISONS MAY CEASE TO PROPAGATE CRIME.

Your sagacity and acquaintance with business will, or ought to, place you in a condition to accomplish these objects with your intrinsic resources; if not, you know where to look for sound assistance and ready co-operation from your political opponents."-P. 6.

The larger portion of the pamphlet is devoted to the subject of penal discipline, and as we have already given a portion of this No., in our notice of Mr. Kay's book, (with whose views the author of this pamphlet seems to coincide,)

to the subject of national education, we shall altogether confine our present extracts to the subject of penal discipline.

"It is perfectly notorious, that while on the one hand our Hierarchy have, for many years, opposed the introduction of a sound system of general education, the dissemination of crime, on the other hand, is going on as rapidly as if it had been the result of the most ingenious systematic contrivance, and that in the very places where proclamations are periodically made against immorality and vice, in the Sovereign's name, at every assize. Most of the prisons in the United Kingdom are little better than colleges for instruction in every sort of wickedness, although under the immediate direction of the Secretary of State and Magistrates. What is the consequence? Why, that crime is increasing with fearful rapidity! Year after year, thousands of unfortunate youths are converted to crime and impiety for want of prisons fitted to receive them, when charged with the most trifling offences, for which a few days of restraint would be a more than adequate punishment; and all this is constantly occurring in a country boasting its high moral and religious principles; where the Church is represented by twenty-nine Prelates, who sit in Parliament without uttering a syllable concerning the gigantic abuses to the continuance of which we must therefore account them as assentients."-Pp. 7—9.

Our author adduces some startling facts to prove the want of uniformity in the administration of justice in our counties, producing enormous discrepancies of punishment for the same offences, and of cost in working the judicial system. Cheshire, it seems, spends £50,000 a-year, whereas in Northumberland, by a more simple and economical administration of justice, the county charges do not exceed £7000 or £8000. In the former county, it is stated that in one prison alone 380 youths under 17 years of age were confined. We have visited, in various parts of the kingdom, hospitals, lunatic asylums, and other institutions for the reception of the wretched; but nowhere have we seen so melancholy and heart-depressing a spectacle as the room in Knutsford House of Correction in which the boy-prisoners were kept. There were to be seen brute ignorance stamped in the broadest manner on the features, redeemed only by an expression of cunning, and countenances which had not seen fourteen summers, yet the index of hardened vice and the unrestrained play of the passions. Where on earth are to be found more pitiable objects than these? If their individual history is traced, it will be found, in nearly every case, either that these boys were orphans, or, worse still, were the doomed children of drunkards, profligates and felons. Some painfully interesting facts bearing on this point are given in the Appendix, p. 39, in the Report of Mr. Sadler, an intelligent and very humane Inspector of the Police at Stockport. The mention of this officer reminds us of a statement in the pamphlet, shewing how much may be done, under the present imperfect system, by intelligent magistrates and officers in checking the stream of pollution:

"Stockport, a town of 50,000 inhabitants, furnished only 100 inmates to the Knutsford gaol; whereas Macclesfield afforded, out of a population of only 32,000, above double the number of criminals. How does this happen? Are the Macclesfield people intrinsically worse than those of Stockport in this awful proportion? Nobody believes any thing of the sort. But we may fairly ascribe the disproportion to the different systems adopted in the two boroughs.-Stockport possesses a Superintendent of Police in Mr. Sadler, who has the virtue to sacrifice official gain, by using the same efforts in preventing crime as others shew in the detection of it."-P. 12.

And now let us turn our attention to the remedies which our author suggests for the crying evils which he depicts.

"Were a Bill to pass for summary convictions for a few days, in cases of first offenders of tender years, it would clear your prisons of half their inmates, leaving you room to separate the remainder. Without such a Bill, you must be constantly adding to these costly constructions, as population increases, and crime along with it, fostered by the poisons every where spread by a paternal Government, which, with all its vigour and wisdom in other respects, is become,

as regards the moral training of its people, the by-word and opprobrium of Europe."-P. 14.

Our author gives at length the Bill which was introduced, in 1829, into the House of Commons for extending the power of summary convictions of juvenile offenders. It did not receive general support, and was withdrawn. The great difficulty which at present stands in the way of such an extension of the power wielded by our magistrates in petty and quarter sessions, is want of confidence in the judgment and humanity of some who sit on the Magisterial bench. Nor, if we look to the following passage, does our author regard this distrust as altogether uncalled for.

"Persons are put into the Commission for reasons totally remote from their intrinsic merit, which ought solely to govern such appointments; Magistrates are made for party purposes, of whom some have disgraced the bench by their ignorance of the very rudiments of parish schooling-because they had money or mills, or, like Justice Shallow, had land and beeves.' What can a youth know of laws, or rules of evidence, whereby to justify his being made the arbiter of men's destinies, or to constitute a check upon the severities of a prejudiced, cruel, and, it may be, a corrupt chairman, who, if checked in his course, will sometimes vituperate mercy by disclaiming his share of it? Men should be selected to administer the laws for other reasons than their desire of the distinction for which so few can be fitted by their education or position."-P. 28.

As a partial remedy for this evil, our author suggests (p. 29) that the Chairmen of quarter sessions should be selected from barristers known for candour, a reasonable acquaintance with their profession and the general routine of penal practice, and, above all, unconnected with local parties and prejudices. In several passages our author exposes the resolute opposition of most long-established officials (such as chairmen of the sessions, leading barristers at the same, police officers, &c.) to all plans for the reformation of penal discipline. Without attributing a corrupt motive to their opposition, it may be easily conceived that habit, the love of importance, and a jealousy of all interference with their prerogatives, may blind their eyes unconsciously to the necessity and importance of judicial reforms.

Another preventive of crime which our author strenuously recommends (p. 30), is the establishment of Asylums, to which criminals under the most mitigated form could be sent, instead of being committed, as at present, to gaol. He also urges the importance of a preventive police for the suppression of juvenile crime.

"A small sum would provide additional police sufficient to check incipient vagrancy in large towns, to look into the manner in which fatherless children were lodged, and pay more attention than is now given to the statistics relating to poor, friendless children, the offspring, and not unfrequently the unwilling instruments, of crime."-P. 31.

Here we must unwillingly stop; for we should gladly condense into a summary the various important statements contained in the documents that form the Appendix, pp. 38-57. We are particularly struck with the statements with regard to the Pentonville Prison, shewing how utterly unfounded is the popular prejudice that the separate system of confinement leads to insanity. In fact, both the mortality and the insanity are less in the prison than the common average.

The Mission of the German Catholics. By G. G. Gervinus. Translated from the German. Chapman, Brothers.

WE have already had occasion repeatedly to notice the struggle for Church Reform, of which Ronge was the first and is still the most distinguished athlete. It has hitherto been treated by religious controversialists, the followers or the opponents of the modern Luther and his associate reformers. The little tract now before us is of a class altogether different, in which the 31

VOL. II.

new German Catholic Church is examined less in its religious, than in its political and patriotic relations, and that by a German, whose name will secure immediate attention from those who would unwillingly listen to a mere religious disputant. Professor Gervinus is known to all who are but moderately instructed, as the Hallam of Germany; and his name is familiar among a more numerous body of readers as one of the seven illustrious Göttingen Professors expelled from Hanover for their patriotic protest against the despotism of its petty monarch. But, the co-sovereigns who acquiesced in that act of tyranny had nevertheless the grace to honour its victims. All have been placed in offices of distinction. Gervinus is Professor of History at Heidelberg. The spirit which led him to revolt against an act of local oppression under which he and his learned colleagues immediately suffered as members of the petty state, has since dictated this thoughtful investigation of an event fraught with consequences of the deepest significance to the whole of the "mighty Germany"

Her" of the Danube and the Northern Sea."

But this is not a passionate and popular writing, intended to stimulate the masses, who are always the first actors in a widely-spread religious reform: it is a calm investigation into the claim which this popular movement has to the sympathy, and ultimately the support, of the men of thought in Germany, among whom the author, we doubt not, expects to find many who are in a position to direct or modify the counsels of those princes whose states will probably soon become the scene of incidents which are spreading with unabated celerity. We are glad that a translation has been supplied of this little tract by a gentleman experienced in exercises of this kind, (Mr. Davison, the translator of Schlosser,) and who, we believe, has had the advantage of personal intercourse with the distinguished author, and who is thoroughly master of the subject. It is tersely and lucidly composed, with fewer obscurities than might reasonably be expected in any work, even of moral science or historical learning, from any German Professor. We have said enough, we trust, to recommend this little book to the attention of our readers, and shall content ourselves with shewing the point of view whence the Professor has contemplated this great political phenomenon. We do not presume to criticise, nor shall we make an ambitious attempt to advance any opinions of

our own.

The Mission of the German Catholics, then, according to our author, is to prepare the way for a complete re-union of the various branches of the German nation, which has for three hundred years been enfeebled by the separation of the Churches. The re-union of the Protestant and Catholic Churches, so long the fond dream of Leibnitz and many other distinguished Germans, must, he assumes, ultimately take place, of which that of the Lutheran and Calvinistic Churches, absorbed in the Evangelical Church of Prussia, is a prelude, and a step to which is the creation of this German Catholic Church, of which the most essential character is an all-embracing toleration of opinions respecting mere dogmas, "to be formed by individuals. . . . according to the various conditions of their knowledge and enlightenment; or, in other words, it acknowledges all the developments of Christianity, and must therefore tolerate all those obsolete doctrines which are the type and property of a by-gone age." The fitness of this age for this great step in civilization, the author deduces from a rapid view of the great features of mental history in Germany since the Reformation, in which Lessing and Herder, the French Revolution, and the great poets and philosophers of the last age, took part. The seed sown by all these "has taken deep root in the soil of the nation, sprung up luxuriously in a thousand alluring forms of poetry, in thousands of books of science, penetrated into the core of the religious life of the people, softened their manners, changed the character of their universities, extended the humane spirit of antiquity, which acknowledged religion and sects, but no

religious fanaticism or religious war." The Professor considers this future Church as a nobler work than either the religious movements of the 16th century, or the literary efforts of the 18th century. Among the obsolete doctrines to be so tolerated, the author specially mentions "the dread of original sin, which, like the fear of ghosts, was merely an apprehension resulting from superstition."

The author's theme and text-word being union, he contrasts this with the impulse to break a violently-imposed union which is also at this moment in active operation; and we see with regret in the enumeration of these, “the repeal in Ireland" brought in contact with the altogether heterogeneous cases of Poland, Spain, Belgium, Greece. No two of these have, in fact, any thing in common, beyond the mere fact that there is in all discontent and a desire of change. We protest against such combinations, which are by no means in the thoughtful spirit so generally found in German writers, and in Gervinus especially. But we concur with him in the conclusion that this striving after union in Germany is not an anomalous hostility to the spirit of the age; and we cordially adopt the sentiment with which he closes his little tract:

"In our Zollverein (Customs Union) we have seized upon the very first opportunity to erect this union upon the most solid basis-that of our material interests; there now presents itself the best opportunity of founding it upon the accordance of our mental cultivation, and on religious union. Whoever combines these with a firm hand; whoever succeeds thereby in uniting a willing people in the closest bonds both in their ideal and their natural interests; and whoever, moreover, has greatness of character enough to profit by favourable conjunctures in the collision of foreign politics, he has the sceptre in his hand with which he may rule the century."

H. C. R.

Scripture Proofs and Scriptural Illustrations of Unitarianism. By John Wilson.

WE owe an apology both to the author and to our readers for having allowed this valuable work to come to a third edition without giving it the honourable mention in our pages to which any publication from his pen can scarcely fail to be entitled. Mr. Wilson has attained a just distinction for the depth and minuteness of research which he has displayed, in the midst of a laborious occupation, on a subject involving a great extent and variety of reading, which might well engross the time and task the faculties of one who could devote both learning and leisure exclusively to the study.

The "Concessions of Trinitarians" is devoted to the illustration of a very remarkable feature in the controversy on this subject. As the doctrine of the Trinity can nowhere be found formally stated in any single passage of Scripture, it becomes necessary to deduce it as an inference more or less plausible, and in many cases very far-fetched and remote, and depending on a peculiar fanciful view which the individual writer takes of the relation of particular passages to the subject. The consequence of this is, that we often find the texts which are chiefly dwelt upon by one writer, disregarded or given up by another; and to such an extent has this proceeded, that there is scarcely a "proof text" in the whole Bible which has not been abandoned as untenable by eminent Trinitarian commentators. Mr. Wilson has collected specimens of this kind of concession in such number and variety, and that from orthodox writers of high name and authority, who have given their reasons for declining the use of weapons which less discerning members of their party would have put into their hands, that his volume presents a sort of magazine of Unitarian interpretations, though not a single Unitarian writer is quoted in it from beginning to end.

In the work of which the third edition, considerably enlarged and improved, is now before us, we have a more direct vindication of the same general prin