the present day

-are necessarily taken without respect to birth or rank, from among those qualified to carry on the public affairs intrusted to them; and, in fact, the majority of the members of these colleges do not by birth, belong to the class of nobility. All state affairs are considered, all state measures resolved upon, all final decisions in law and in legislation determined upon in these colleges. The steady impartial administration of law, even where government is a party, as in state prosecutions, is undeniable. The law may be faulty, but its administration is good. Their power extends even to the appointment to all offices under government, with a considerable tendency to impartiality, and preference of merit or long service for if the crown were to exert its theoretically absolute power by appointing any other candidate, or in public affairs adopting any other measure than the one recommended by the college under which the office or business stands, there would be an alarm, an outcry, a stoppage in the ordinary course of public affairs. This check has grown in the course of two centuries into a power altogether effective; and public opinion has its influence, although not directly by a representative system, upon all the acts of government. Cabinet orders issuing from the kingly power direct, and without the intervention of the ministers and college to which the business belongs, are unheard of, and the monarchy which juridically and in theory is the most unlimited and legitimately absolute of any in Europe, is practically moved by a machinery more democratic, that is, less exclusively in the

alone of the community, than

hands of one class that of our own. This is the key to the singular phenomenon, that, under a total want of political freedom, Denmark is in advance of many countries which enjoy it, in her liberal and enlightened institutions. Arrangements for the general education of the people were commenced nearly a century ago— normal schools for educating schoolmasters, and training them to the art of teaching, have been long established - the punishment of death has been abolished nearly thirty years the administration of justice has been improved by an effective system of superintendence and revision by the superior courts of all the proceedings and decisions of the inferior, whether appealed from or not by the private parties - an improvement much wanted in our courts and the institution of parish courts of arbitration in which all civil actions must be entered, and in which arbiters decide between parties in the first instance, is the greatest improvement which any modern nation has made in its ancient social machinery. But it seems to be with nations as with individuals - it is not what is done for people, but what people do for themselves, that acts upon their character and condition. From being altogether passive, and having no voice in their own affairs, the Danish people with all those fine institutions of their government, are in the same state nearly as in 1660. In the practice of the useful arts, in activity, industry, and well being, they are two centuries behind those nations, with

sume.

whom, in numbers and natural advantages of soil, climate, and situation, they may be fairly compared, the Scotch, the Dutch, or the Belgian people. The trade and industry of this city so advantageously situated for being one of the great emporiums of the world, is confined to the supplying its own inhabitants with the foreign articles they conThere is nothing to be called commerce in the place. Copenhagen has more palaces in her streets and squares, than ships in her harbour. The extreme state of pupillage in which this people is kept, not only extinguishes all industry, and activity, but from the host of functionaries who must be employed where a government attempts to do every thing, and regulates and provides in matters which a people can best manage for themselves, it consumes all their capital, and leaves them nothing to be active and industrious with. The population of Denmark is 1,223,807 individuals, of whom 6960 individuals are civil functionaries supporting by their salaries 23,058 persons in their families; 4424 are priests, supporting 21,125 persons; 933 are military officers, supporting 2850 persons; 190 are naval officers, supporting 747 persons; 6987 are non-commissioned officers and soldiers, supporting 3088 persons in their families 1867 are navy sailors, supporting 4169 persons; and 43,576 individuals are paupers supported by poor-rate, and 1470 are slaves, or condemned convicts, also supported by the public, the value of their labour not maintaining them. The total number thus supported by a public of 1,223,807

;

individuals, is 121,444 persons; or every 10 individuals have to support 1, who is not engaged in productive industry, but is a public functionary, or a pauper living upon their productive industry. There is one clergyman to every 2766ths of the population; one public civil functionary to every 176. If to these perpetual drains upon the earnings of the industrious in the middle and lower classes be added the enormous waste of the capital and time of the country, in palaces, gardens, shows, military duties, and such objects as reproduce nothing, it is not extraordinary that the people are sunk in poverty and sloth, although occupying the richest soil and most advantageous situation in the north of Europe.

Drammen, May. I embarked on a Friday morning, in the Norwegian steam vessel, the Prindz Carl, and felt at home under the Norwegian flag, among this kind and sincere people. On the following Sunday I was landed on the side of the fiord leading to Christiania and Drammen, at a large salt-work called Walloc near Tunsberg. This immense work was erected and carried on by the Danish government, at a regular yearly loss. It. appears to have been a kind of disease in this government, engendered no doubt by the practice of interfering in every branch of industry with its regulations, to embark on its own account and risk in every sort of scheme and business; and saltworks, glass-works, colour-works, mines, potteries, founderies, the Iceland trade, were all carried on for government account, by functionaries who made

a living by their employments, and always with a direct loss to the state, besides the incalculable indirect loss of preventing the industry and capital of its own subjects from being employed. On the separation of Norway and Denmark, the Norwegian Storthing very wisely ordered all these concerns to be sold, retaining only the silver mine of Kongsberg which from want of a purchaser could not be got rid of, and has of late turned out very productive. When these government establishments fell into the hands of private parties, they became very profitable concerns, as all the dead stock of machinery and buildings which were of the best description, were sold for a trifle compared to the cost; and economy and good management were alone wanting. This saltwork is one of those concerns. The process and machinery are very curious. Two windmills pump up the sea-water into cisterns in which it is saturated with Liverpool rock-salt. From these cisterns the saturated solution is pumped up into troughs about 40 feet above the level of the ground, which deliver it among fascines of brush wood through which it trickles into reservoirs below. The evaporation of the water descending, drop by drop, through the brushwood for such a space, concentrates the solution, so that fuel is only required for the crystallisation of the salt, and all the boiling away of the superfluous water, which is the most expensive part of the process of obtaining salt from sea-water, is spared. This plan of evaporation, is, I believe, adopted with advantage in other works