his own raising. It is, however, a justice which we owe to the name rather than the powers of this writer, to offer our readers a specimen both of his serious and his playful style :

Has he (Mr. Hughes) really reflected what it is to expatriate millions of our fellow-creatures, women too and children, who, though innocent of the guilt, must be involved in the general condemnation? Does Mr. Hughes consider only where the two populations are interwoven, that the scenes which he has so eloquently described occur?-That Rumelia is inhabited chiefly by Turks, and that "the Aga, or Turkish country gentleman," is not every where a faithful original of " The Saracen's Head," for which he has made him sit? That in the paroxysms of national anarchy, the innocent and helpless suffer, while the able and ferocious fatten on the spoil; nay, that the mass of the people suffers misery, without participating in guilt? Thus it was even in the French Revolution, when men are generally allowed to have approached nearer to the nature of demons, than at any other period in the history of the world.

Does he reflect, that it is no such easy task to root up an enormous population, and re-plant it in another quarter of the world? And that his colossus of clay could scarcely be lifted up by Minerva, and set down quietly in Anatolia ? But if it cannot be done quietly, how will he effect it? Would he have the horrors of Navarin and Tripolizza repeated, aye, and multiplied a thousand fold? Does he reflect how much more dreadful the warfare of two armed populations is, than the regulated destruction of stipendiary armies? That the soldier, who is paid to kill his fellow-creatures, at twelve kreutzers, or at fourteen-pence a day, is the least terrible of belligerent animals?

'But Mr. Hughes not only approves of this sweeping clause, this vast cathartic for a diseased country; he holds that all European nations, and we in particular, are bound to assist in administering the dose: "I do not hesitate to affirm, that the atrocities committed by the infidels against their Christian subjects ought to put them under the ban of the European confederation." Did the allied powers, during the worst scenes of the French Revolution, ever pretend to make war on the French, because their crimes put them under the ban of Europe? Did not their doctrines and conduct, as tending to revolutionize other governments, form the ground of that war? and, until this result was apprehended, were they not suffered to indulge their propensity to noyades and fusillades, and to enjoy their mechanical discoveries of the guillotine and the soupape in all peace and quietness? And is Mr. Hughes prepared to say, that the enormities of the Turkish government are likely to encourage the Caravats of Ireland ?

Suppose the Mufti (or Mahometan "Primate of all Turkey") had, in 1649, declared by a fetfah, that the cruelties which the British conquerors, under their chief Cromwell, were committing on the Irish, put them under the ban of all Islamism, and that Mahomet the Fourth, then as powerful as George the Fourth is now,

ought

ought to send a fleet of Caravels and an army of Janizzaries, not merely to assist in obtaining for the Irish what has been subsequently granted them, but to drive the savage Normans, who, six centuries before, had occupied the Saxon kingdom of England, back into Normandy how would Mr. Hughes, if writing the history of that period, speak of that Mufti's fetfah, and does he not fear lest some future Columbian Gibbon should say of his pamphlet and proposal, "Of the Greeks foolishness;" or, if Syntax be an author then read,

"Eloquentiæ satis, sapientiæ parum?"

There is no reasoning so fair as argumentum ad nationem, no rule so infallible as, "Do as you would be done by."'

Mr. Sheridan has not only thus misapprehended the meaning of Mr. Hughes, but has been unsuccessful in explaining to us what he means himself. He professes the purpose of his tract to be that of redeeming the character of England, and promoting the interests of Greece: but he is rather an equivocal advocate for Greece who selects the neutrality and indifference, with which the British ministry seem to be now contemplating her affairs, as a theme of the warmest panegyric; and the sincerity of his sympathies for the miseries and sufferings of that unhappy people may, indeed, be doubted from the levity and jocoseness with which he alludes to them. Some of these jokes seem to have been borrowed from the cast-off stock of the facetious statesman, who could extract from corporeal disease and personal infirmity a topic of parliamentary merriment and sarcasm. We would ask whether a heart, sincerely agonized by the horrors perpetrated at Scio and at Constantinople, would be sufficiently at ease to revel in playful associations, and to conjure up images which do not usually, in well disciplined minds, obtrude on the hallowed melancholy excited by such subjects? Such humour, as we here find evinced on the topic of the misery and devastation of Greece, might perhaps succeed in the circles whose injudicious applause has wrecked the hopes of many other spoiled young gentlemen, fresh from college, when they fancy themselves qualified to read lectures on politics and morality to mankind on the sole credentials of a successful declamation in Trinity chapel. We will give a short specimen of it:

It would be endless to explain the mutual relations of the Turks and Greeks, but some idea may be formed from the fact that a Turk was never capitally punished for the murder of a Greek; and that the Turks, who always go armed, did not suffer this impunity to be a brutum fulmen, but frequently shot Greeks on very slight provocation. This gentleman-like nonchalance on the subject of Greek lives was imitated by the government, and a bill,

{ ;י

which beats the most sanguinary of our game-laws, has ere now been in the Divan "read a first time," (though not "ordered to be printed,") for "the effectual extirpation of the Greeks." Many of the annoyances to which the Greeks were subject appear trivial, but they were grievous from their every-day occurrence, as the most exquisite torture is said to be a succession of mere drops of water falling on the head. Among these Turkish drops of water may be classed the prohibition of wearing a turban, or red slippers, or bright colours. Travellers laugh at the anxiety of the Greeks to escape these privations, by purchase or office; but, suppose a case of analogy; that on the Conquest the Saxons of England were for ever forbidden on pain of death to wear long coats, and that to this day, the distinction of the two races having been carefully kept up, their descendants walked about in short jackets. We at first suppose that only a boy on his admission at a public school could pine after long skirts and a falling collar, and this infliction of jackets would seem an inadequate reason for threequarters of the inhabitants of England hating the other fourth; but if each jacket was an order "payable at sight to the bearer" for cuffs and kicks ad infinitum, we should cease to wonder at the wearers being irritated.'

We have before expressed ourselves somewhat at a loss to comprehend the meaning of this pamphlet: - but we have discovered that Mr. Sheridan recommends a subscription for the relief of the Greeks, and proposes that they should have a municipal, not political, independence: in imitation, we sup pose, of the Ionian isles, and of a state of things which has produced so much satisfaction in those countries! To effect this object, forgetting his own alarm at the expatriation of the Greeks, he hints that Greeks and Turks should respectively leave the provinces in which either may happen to be the minority; the land of each to be bought on a fair valuation, and the Turks to give back their captured slaves to the Greeks. All this, of course, will take place very quietly!

We will not say much of the literary merits of this publi cation. Undesirous of checking the laudable aspirations of a young man, we will admit the plea of haste and rapidity of composition in extenuation of its blemishes and defects: but we confess that we should have been more disposed to have accorded this indulgence, had we observed in it fewer symptoms of that self-complacency which is so incurably adverse to intellectual improvement. Among these symptoms, we were not a little struck, perhaps disgusted, with the extracts inserted in the notes from the writer's old college-exercises. Judging of them as specimens of early intellectual promise, we see nothing in them that surpasses the average quality of academic declamations; and certainly nothing that can be rendered subsidiary to the high argument concerning Greece and her destinies, which is now agitated in Europe.

ART.

ART. IX. An Inquiry into the present State of the Statute and Criminal Law of England. By John Miller, Esq., of Lincoln's Inn. 8vo. pp. 332. 9s. 6d. Boards. Murray. 1822.

AM

MONG the many important questions which have within the few last years engaged the public mind, none have met with more serious consideration, or elicited more animated and interesting discussion, both in and out of parliament, than the present state of the criminal law in England. In March, 1819, a select Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to inquire into all capital offences; and in the November following the Report of that Committee was printed, accompanied by the evidence taken before them, with other valuable documents. A main feature of the Report was that in it the repeal of several statutes, by which various offences are rendered capital, was recommended, and a spirit decidedly favorable to a reformation in our criminal code was manifested. To impeach the judgment and impartiality of the Committee, however, to weaken the effect of the evidence furnished to them, and to prove that it is highly dangerous and inexpedient to attempt the projected reforms, are principal objects of the volume before us; and to that part of it in which these objects are maintained we shall direct our attention, leaving the portion which relates to the statutelaw and the law-reports at present without any remarks.

It must be observed that the Committee advised the absolute repeal of several statutes which inflict death for certain offences, amounting in number to twelve, and the commutation of the punishment of death imposed by others in fifteen cases: but, as the sentiments of Mr. Miller coincide with those of the Committee respecting four of the cases in each class, it will only be necessary for us to notice his objections to the repeal or alteration of the others. The admission that it will not endanger the venerable fabric of our laws to abrogate the statutes which declare that Egyptians, remaining in the kingdom one month, (1 and 2 Philip and Mary, c. 4.) and that persons injuring Westminster Bridge, (12 G. II. c. 29.) shall for those atrocious moral delinquencies pay the forfeit of their lives, displays a degree of liberality and merciful feeling of which we fully appreciate the value; while we regret that it was not extended to those malefactors who are found armed and disguised in a warren, &c. &c. (9 G. I. c. 22.) It is perfectly evident that the penalty of death imposed in so many cases by the latter statute, commonly called the Black Act, considering the comparatively venial nature of the offences in question, among which we may mention. that of being found armed and disguised in breaking

down

down the head or mound of a fish-pond, can only be defended on the plea of the great frequency of the crimes: but, as the rareness of them now is admitted even by Mr. M., the existence of such disproportioned punishments cannot be otherwise than a disgrace to our statute-book. The objections to the alteration of the 31 Eliz. c. 9. Taking away any maid, widow, or wife, &c., and the 4 G. 1. c. 11., Helping to the recovery of stolen goods, appear to us weak and inconclusive, but we have not space to enter into the examination of these acts more particularly. The 26 Geo. II. c. 33. (the Marriage Act), which inflicts death in five cases for altering, forging, or destroying marriage-licences, or entries, &c., requires a few more extended remarks. The punishment of death in these cases was proposed by the Committee to be commuted: but to such a plan Mr. Miller makes the following objections:

The whole of these offences, it must be remembered, may be executed in impenetrable secrecy, evince great deliberation and contrivance, and can only proceed from the basest motives of interest, malice, or revenge on the part of the perpetrators. Still further to increase their malignity, the injury inflicted on those who are the victims of them is irreparable. Most of the ills to which life is subject, whatever may be their nature or degree, can with the help of time and patience be surmounted; but the felonious act which robs a mother of her honour, and stamps indelible disgrace upon her offspring, produces the most diversified, extensive, and protracted suffering which human villainy can inflict. If any weight should be thought to be due to these considerations, it is hoped that none of the safeguards which the legislature has erected for protecting the integrity of proofs of marriage, will without long and close deliberation be destroyed.'

Mr. M. has accused the Committee, in one instance, of using rhetorical language, an error into which he appears to have fallen in the above passage: but there is a more substantial charge remaining. In vindicating the present state of our criminal code, the learned gentleman has remarked on the inconsistency displayed in the proposed alterations of it:-but, perhaps, before he hazarded this observation, it would have been judicious to have reflected whether it be not most inconsistent to suffer the offender who actually robs the mother of her honour, the daughter of her virtue, and the husband and the father of his peace of mind, to escape with entire impunity, without the slightest criminal infliction; yet at the same time to take away the life of a man who merely deprives the mother of the evidence of her honor, and leaves her sense of virtue and the purity of her character untouched. With regard to the crime of sending threatening letters, we think that considerable force appears in Mr. Miller's ob

servations.