meeting, and sexton's houses, 6 dollars; the poor rate is put down at 6 dollars; road-work at 23 dollars; posting-work with travellers at 12 dollars. There is a list besides of twenty-one items of parish salaries or burdens; among which are salaries to the midwife, vaccinator, district doctor, and parish writer; and these are not voluntary or subscription payments, but functionaries appointed by government, and settled in each parish, draw these taxes in salary. There is besides, support of a prison, and daily pay to the representative in the diet.

According to the best information I could get, the medium value of a hemman of land is 4200 dollars, or 350l.; the medium extent of arable land 27 tunlands, or about 33 acres; and the medium number of persons living on it 28, which gives the number employed, or supported by husbandry, 1,836,688 persons. The number of peasants, who are proprietors of the land they live on, is reckoned 147,971, and of those on land not their own, 1,688,717. Of labourers in husbandry, there are 470,091 holding land and houses under proprietors, and working daily, or at certain seasons, in payment of rent, and 277,466 servants in husbandry living in the house with their employers. The total number supported by, or employed in, trade, mines, manufactures, including seamen, is reckoned 70,000, or with their wives and children, 160,000 persons. The whole number supported by the public is, of clerical functionaries, including schoolmasters, and church servants, as well as priests, 7709; of civil functionaries, 9485; of military, 48,930; and the wives

and children are reckoned about 103,800 persons, making a total of 170,000 persons nearly, living by public function; or about 6 per cent. more than the whole population living by trade and manufactures.

It is to be observed that many of these statements, although proceeding from the most eminent and best informed persons in Swedish statistics, can, from the very nature of the subjects, only be considered as approximations, or proportions of parts to a whole, not as exact accounts; but they approach nearer to exactness, and have less of mere unsupported guess in them, than similar statistical returns from other countries. In Sweden, there is a department of government for drawing up statistical tables, called the table department. Tables on every point respecting the population, property, crops, capital, in short, embracing every matter of statistical interest either to government or to the political economist, are made out in each parish by the clergyman and the parish writer a distinct functionary from the parish clerk or sexton; and a table commission at Stockholm is constantly employed in generalising these local returns, and reducing them to tables. This establishment has existed in Sweden since 1748; but within this century it has attained greater correctness, and a wider sweep of subjects, than any similar institution in other countries. It could only attain such perfection in a population ridden upon by priests and functionaries, until no sense of property is left in them. In any other country, if a public functionary were to ask how much you sow, how much

T

you reap, what is your capital, what your profits, the inquirer and his commission would be turned out of doors for his impertinence. It is difficult with us to get even ordinary returns of the numbers in a family, and still more of the ages. It is thought, and perhaps very wisely, by our common people, that it is an impertinent intrusion or interference in their family matters, with which government has nothing to do, and ought to have no access to; and that if they open their doors to government inquirers in such concerns, it might lead to a system of intermeddling and inquisition. Here, people are trained to obedience, and in that class, to consider nothing their own but what is left to them by the clergy and government, to whom, in the first place, their labour, time, and property must belong.

A country in this state wants the very foundation upon which civil liberty must stand - a sense of independence and property among the people. In the present social condition of this people, a free constitution or liberal institutions would have no basis to rest upon, no support below; and powerful bodies of privileged classes, viz. nobles and proprietors of privileged lands, clergy, public functionaries, and corporation-men, have a direct interest in things as they are, and in resisting with their constitutional and predominant weight in the legislature, every improvement. It is almost ridiculous to hear of the constitutional rights and liberties of a people, whose time, labour, and property, are not their own, in the sense in which these are enjoyed by free people; but are at the disposal, and for the

benefit of classes, corporations, and public functionaries. The constitution and the civil rights of the nation mean here the right of corporate bodies to meet in a legislative assembly without reference to the mass of the community, on whom they prey.

It is a discouraging and humiliating reflection, that the general diffusion of education and religious knowledge, which so many good and enlightened men are so anxiously wishing and striving for among us, has been attained, perhaps, to the very utmost practicable extent in this country, in which all can read, almost all write, and no individual is without religious instruction, and a competent knowledge of the truths of Christianity and yet with such unsatisfactory results on the moral and civil condition of the people. This enigma strikes the traveller in every view of the present condition, civil, political, or economical, of the Swedish nation: how is it to be solved? The very wide diffusion of reading, writing, and religious instruction, cannot be questioned. The numerous clergy, and the obligation by law on every adult person to be able to read the Scriptures, and give proof of Christian knowledge, before being admitted to the communion table, and of having taken the communion before being admitted to marry, or exercise any act of majority, assure us, that reading and the principles of religion are taught to every individual: we have, besides, the testimony of statistical writers to the fact, that not one person in 1000 of the adult population is unable to read; and the 80 newspapers, the 20 periodical publications, the booksellers' shops in

such petty towns, as with us, either in England or Scotland, would certainly not afford a living in that line, place beyond all doubt the fact, that the Swedes are an educated and reading people. As little can we doubt the statistical returns, which establish the great amount of crime in this nation. It appears to me, that the solution of this enigma must be looked for in the great pressure of the upper privileged classes upon the time, labour, and property of the lower; in the servile condition, in a word, of the mass of the population. Their low civil condition-- their state of restriction and pupillage, in all that relates to the free use and enjoyment of their industry and property - works out a low moral condition, which even religious knowledge and education cannot elevate. If this suggestion be correct, it brings out, in a clear light, the true value of reform in civil institutions, and of giving every man in a community his just and natural political rights, where these have been invaded and appropriated by fictitious divisions, classes, and social arrangements of darker ages, as the only foundations for a truly religious and moral. condition of society: it shows the intimate connection between morals and politics, and that the principles which are called liberal or radical are closely united with the cause of religion and morality, and their influences upon human conduct; and that the many pious and good men, who boast themselves conservative in all existing establishments, and opposed to the principle of reform, are involved in a contradiction, are upholding social