much as it ought: the necessity to subsist, on the contrary, will equally act upon the species, and compel men, for their mere maintenance in their own rank of life, to make a sufficient economy, where the class of professedly unproductive consumers, clergymen, lawyers, money-changers, players, physicians, and above all, those who live upon taxation, do not eat up the entire superfluity of the community.

The sum, then, of this dispute seems to be, that nations may, independently of all controulable circumstance, produce faster than they can consume certain particular articles: that the great staples which by the peculiarities of soil and climate nature has assigned to a nation, may be worked up more rapidly than is necessary to gratify the actual wants of the species; but that this evil is immeasurably increased by a vicious distribution of wealth and power, by absurd taxation, and by commercial restraints: that in either of these cases, increasing artificially natural expenditure serves only to increase the evil: and that lastly, the safest, the best, nay the only efficient remedy, is to reduce to its minimum the obstructions which arise out of false combinations; and, in imitation of the bees, to expel from the political hive all those drones who insist upon living on the public industry.

M.

AN ACCOUNT OF A NEW RELIGIOUS SECT

DISCOVERED IN INDIA.

In the second Report of the Calcutta Committee of the Church Missionary Society, there is an Account of a new Religious Sect in India, called the SAUDS; they are said to bear a great resemblance to Quakers. The following are some particulars respecting them :

"In March, 1816, I went with two gentlemen from Futtehgurh, on the invitation of the principal persons of the Saud sect, to witness an assemblage of them, for the purpose of religious worship, in the city of Furrukhabad, the general meeting of the sect being that year in that city. The assembly took place within the court-yard (Daulan) of a large house. The number of men, women, and children, were considerable: we were received with great attention, and chairs were placed for us in front of the Deurhee, or hall. After some time, when the place was quite full of people, the worship commenced. It consisted solely in the chanting of a hymn, this being the only mode of public worship used by the Sauds. At subsequent periods I made particular enquiries relative to the religious opinions and practices of this sect, and was frequently visited by Bhuwanee Dos, the principal person of the sect, in the city of Furrukhabad. The following is the substance of the account given by Bhuwanee Dos, of the origin of this sect:

"About the Sumbut year 1600, or 177 years ago, a person named Beer,bh,an, inhabitant of Beej,basur, near Narnoul, in the province of

Delhi, received a miraculous communication from Ooda Dos, teaching him the particulars of the religion now professed by the Sauds-Ooda Dos, at the same time, gave to Beer,bh,an, marks by which he might know him on his re-appearance: 1st. That whatever he foretold should happen. 2d. That no shadow should be cast from his figure. 3d. That he would tell him his thoughts. 4th. That he would be suspended between heaven and earth. 5th. That he would bring the dead to life. Bhuwanee Dos presented me with a copy of the Pot,hee, or religious book of the Sauds, written in a kind of verse, in the Tenth Hindee dialect, and he fully explained to me the leading points of their religion. The Sauds utterly reject and abhor all kinds of idolatry, and the Ganges is considered by them with no greater veneration than by Christians, although the converts are made chiefly, if not entirely, from among the Hindoos, whom they resemble in outward appearance. Their name for God is Stutgur; and Saud, the appellation of the sect, means-servant of God. They are pure deists, and their form of worship is most simple, as I have already stated. They resemble the Quakers, in their customs, in a remarkable degree. Ornaments and gay apparel of every kind are strictly prohibited; their dress is always white. They never make any obeisance or sulam. They will not take an oath, and they are exempted in a Court of Justice; their asseveration, as that of the Quakers, being considered equivalent. The Sauds profess to abstain from all luxuries, such as tobacco, paun, opium, and wine. They never have nauches, or dancing. All attack on men or beast is forbidden; but, in self-defence, resistance is allowable. Industry is strongly enjoined. The Sauds, like the Quakers, take great care of their poor and infirm people. To receive assistance out of the punt, or tribe, would be reckoned disgraceful, and render the offender liable to excommunication. All parade of worship is forbidden. Secret prayer is commended; alms should be unostentatious; they are not to be done that they should be seen of men. The due regulation of the tongue is a principal duty. The chief seats of the Saud sect, are Delhi, Agra, Jypoor, and Furrukhabad, but there are several of the sect scattered over the country. An annual meeting takes place at one or other of the cities above-mentioned, at which the concerns of the sect are settled. The Magistrate of Furrukhabad informed me that he had found the Sauds an orderly and well-conducted people; they are chiefly engaged in trade. Bhuwanee Dos was anxious to become ac quainted with the Christian religion, and I gave him some copies of the New Testament, in Persian and Hindoostanee, which, he said, he had read and shewn to his people, and much approved. I had no copy of the Old Testament in any language which he understood well; but as he expressed a strong desire to know the account of the creation as given in it, I explained it to him from an Arabic version, of which he knew a little. I promised to procure him a Persian or Hindoostanee Old Testament, if possible. I am of opinion that the Sauds are a very interesting people, and that an intelligent and zealous missionary would find great facility in communicating with them."

AN ACCOUNT OF THE REVOLUTION OF NAPLES

DURING THE YEARS 1798, 1799.

[The present state of commotion at Naples invites us to extract from a manuscript historical Work, the following narrative of the vicissitudes of that kingdom during the years 1798 and 1799.]

SINCE the first years of the French Revolution, the French and English interference in the affairs of independent kingdoms gave rise to the calamitous diffidence with which, thenceforth, the Neapolitans, as well as other nations, have regarded their princes, and believed them bound in a conspiracy against the liberty and national independence of their own subjects. Bonaparte having usurped the right of dictatorship over Europe, his conquerors divided it among themselves, in order to rule all the smaller states, and planned the present international law, which is now driving populous countries to insurrections so unforeseen as to excite the apprehension of a renewal of the abuse of force, and the contempt of justice. Those who come after us, will, in like manner, be blinded by their own errors, while, in the full confidence of wisdom, they wonder at those of their forefathers. History, while it teaches us to pity or despise mankind, unhappily seems to be incapable of practically warning us in the regulation of our own conduct; for we repent only after experience, and constantly act according to existing passions. Nevertheless as those princes are still living, who with their ministers and subjects were overwhelmed in the vortex of past convulsions, and as it seems that, in spite of the expedients resorted to by the European rulers, those convulsions are on the eve of returning, it may not be altogether useless to account for their miseries, and to retrace their folly, although a just sense of its horrors and ridicule should be awakened only in the speculative part of mankind.

The House of Austria had scarcely sent one of its daughters to be the wife of a Bourbon possessor of the throne of Naples, before the young Queen, in contradiction to the law of the family, demanded, and obtained, the privilege of assisting at the Council of State. Ferdinand IV., like most of his race, justified the remark of the ancient poet, who, presaging the calamities of his country, exclaimed, that the posterity of Hugh Capet had neither the strength to do, nor to prohibit, evil.* The Queen feared the King's ancient counsellors, despised her subjects, was hated by them, and encircled herself with foreign favourites from all nations, who regarded the state as their prey. They organized a body of lawyers, to hunt out all the lands which might appertain to the crown by virtue of the affinity between the new Bourbons, and those who had reigned in the thirteenth * Dante, Purgat. Canto. 2.

century at Naples. The deeds of royal grants had been lost through the lapse of ages, and the public archives had been burnt in times of insurrection and warfare; so that many communities and families were obliged to make restitution of property after a possession of four or five centuries. The court secretly appropriated the stock deposited by private persons in the bank; but the value of paper currency having fallen into depreciation by the stoppage of cash payments, they projected its replacement by the sale of the lands of religious houses recently suppressed. The estates of the Jesuits in Sicily, during the first year of the royal administration, produced one hundred and fifty thousand crowns; in the second, seventy thousand; and in the third, forty thousand: and they were sold according to a valuation founded upon the last rental; yet the price of corn was during the same time continually increasing. Even these supplies likewise were squandered by the court; and they still continued the secret fabrication of bank notes which their brokers realized at any price. Another of the governments now existing in Italy, by becoming a principal in the practice of stock-jobbing, is bringing about a general bankruptcy of its subjects. At length (which,.if Italy ever obtains a better system of laws, will never be believed unless the documents are preserved,) they made the King sign an edict, by which, while it inculcated "the necessity of a reformation of public morals, and the enforcement of the sumptuary laws of their forefathers," his subjects were desired" to bring their plate into the public treasury," and received bank-notes in exchange.

At the same time, another daughter of Maria Theresa, in consequence of similar acts of dilapidation, (with which she was, however, less justly chargeable) and with the same total absence of all shame in the counsellors of Louis XVI. was exposed to the scandal of a public trial in France, and became the suspected accomplice of a swindler, together with a libertine cardinal, a mountebank such as Cogliostro, and a profligate female favourite. The people judged not by what was the fact, but by what the world said of it; and their opinions, which in a season of tranquillity may be despised, are nevertheless formidable on the eve of commotions, when it is by the multitude that all things are accomplished. The contempt of the royal family perhaps accelerated the Revolution; and as soon as the people came to believe that they might find revenge in carnage for the misfortunes into which the depravation of the great had plunged them, they assisted at the death of their King, sacrificed by Robespierre in violation of a law which Robespierre himself had made; and the Queen was delivered up to the same executioner. Grief and terror excited in the queen of Naples the desire of avenging her sister. In several of her subjects she dreaded so

many rebels. Her chief favourite, an Englishman, named Acton, became prime-minister, and governed her by irritating and flattering all her passions. He terrified her with the exaggeration of plots and conspiracies, which were never legally punished, either because the proofs could not be obtained, or from a design to keep up terror in the princes and in the nation. Many individuals were imprisoned, and some of them condemned, upon the evidence of secret depositions. Courtiers with their bankers, spies, lawyers, false witnesses, and auctioneers, divided the produce of confiscations. The persecution ceased, because the chief of the inquisition, whose name was Vanni, a gloomy fanatic, in an excess of humiliation occasioned by the insults of Acton, was assailed by remorse, and put an end to his life, after having written with his own hand a letter, in which he warned his colleagues of the perfidy of the court, and the dangers of political inquisitors.

The other branch of the Bourbons reigning in Spain, having withdrawn from the coalition, advised his brother to preserve a strict neutrality, and never to listen to the English. The trade of the two Sicilies, although merely a trade with the countries which supplied that kingdom with manufactures, was compensated by the exportation of oil and grain to Provence, a country which, being afterwards unable to obtain those commodities from its neighbours, carried on that branch of commerce with the ships of the Levant. The Queen opened Naples to the speculations of the English. Meanwhile, hatred of the French, on account of their massacres and their irreligion, was all powerful with the people; and the better educated classes feared the ravages of foreign armies. The nation still continued attached to the memory of Charles III., the wisest of its sovereigns; and the veneration for the father excited compassion for the son, whose misfortunes were ascribed to Acton. Upon the news of Nelson's victory at Aboukir, Naples entered boldly into the coalition against France. The Austrian ministry was then unable to guess, and perhaps has not yet well understood, why the army of Naples commenced hostilities five months before the Allies. The Queen persuaded Ferdinand that, in case he occupied the Papal territories without the assistance of the other powers, he should have the right to keep them. Pius VI. was then on the eve of expiring in the prisons of the Directory, and the cardinals were dispersed. Even before the fall of Pius, and the Peace of Campo Formio, Acton had solicited for Naples the half of the states of the Church.* Those who were best ac

* "Le Roi de Naples m'a même déjà fait faire des propositions. Mais sa Majesté ne voudroit avoir rien moins que la Marche d'Ancône."-Bonaparte's Letter to the Directory from Milan, May 26, 1797. And in a subsequent Letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, September 13, 1797.-" Vous trouverez ci-joint la Let