for the ring. By the way, that wipe about the Brazilians was capital, Confess, O thrice-badgered bellwether of Mahomet! that you have been dab bling in the fun yourself. Do not be afraid that we shall blame you for it, for it would show a symptom of rea

son.

After this castigation, our pamphlet eer goes off to jollify himself with a dram of political economy, taken neat. He and we part company, and we go back to look for metal more attractive We shall find it in his 56th page, &c. Depend upon it, reader, it is worth your notice.

"Unfortunately there is a set of individuals in this world who are very desirous of gaining property without working for it. They have what they consider enough to speculate on,' but loss to them is annihilation. These people used to speculate in the funds; these people may endeavour to ruin themselves in the mines; and did neither stocks nor mines exist, they would operate on hops, as they have done, or in colonial produce, as they are doing. Is the wisdom of our Imperial Parliament to devise plans for the preservation of these financial suicides? Are we to commit the great blunder of despotic states, and legislate for the individual? Are we, like the Eastern Caliph, to forbid any bread being made in Bagdat, because one wretch, in one of the suburbs, has sold a poisonous compound for the staff of life?

"In these pages we can but glance at the principles of legislation, and of the esprit de loix give but the most spiritual essence-but without further inquiring whether folly is subject-matter for the legislature, and whether by the law of England fraud is sufficiently punishable, we may as well examine a little into the won, derful stories of profit and loss which daily meet our ear. We promise our readers some instruction; it may be, some amusement.

"If any of our readers will take the trouble of walking to a place now very much in fashion, the City, not the City of London, but a space of ground consisting of about 400 square yards, and covered with counting-houses and alleys, the City par eminence, the xar' sox City; if when there he will further take the trouble of being introduced to one of the individuals by whom the business carried on in the City is chiefly transacted, and ask him what has been doing in the 400 square yards, covered with countinghouses and alleys, for the last ten years,

he will be answered immediately, why, making money, to be sure, what else the manufactory of millions is not a thing of an hour, although we do it pretty quickly in the nineteenth century. Our friend will also discover that the profits which have accrued by managing the American mines in the market are not of an extraordinary nature, that they have not exceeded, nay, not equalled, the sums which have been made for the last ten

years by other speculations, and by managing other undertakings, and he will learn that Mexican mines and Colombian

pearl fisheries have only succeeded to

Mexican bonds and Colombian loans. When he has listened to the sublime accounts of the stupendous fortunes which have been made for the last ten years within the 400 square yards, he will na turally ask himself the reason why so little sensation has been excited out of the ground covered with counting-houses and alleys, by all this accumulation of wealth and manufactory of millions? Why it was not till the mines were introduced that any other persons but the lodgers in the alleys and renters of the counting-houses participated in the profit or the plunder?

"Good reader! kind and curious gentleman! who have thrown off your evil habit of lounging to walk into the city!' we will tell you. There was something invidious in the character of a stock-jobber, there was something disreputable in the character of a loan-monger, there was something, in short, in watching the turn of the market, that would never have suited Upper Brook Street or Grosvenor Square. The game was thus confined to a set, much to their dislike, who wished to see the money-market more frequented and more patronised by the West End,' than the apparition of an occasional marquess, or a jobbing honourable, would imply.

"When the mines were brought forward, the opportunity seemed at hand: there was nothing invidious in the character of a mine-jobber, there was nothing ungenteel in watching the turn of a mine-market; it was compared to purchasing an estate, and was called patronising infant liberty and liberal principles, and there was something gorgeous and aristocratical in the idea of succeeding to the possessions of the Valencianas and the Reglas. The new speculations were 'published not for the Jews only, but for the Gentiles also,' and the West End rushed to anticipate the spoil.

"Then began the game. We heard of Lord Knows-Who lounging upon

'Change, of Sir Frederick Fashion's Colombian curricle, and of the Hon. Mr

condescending to become a Director of the New Company.' The mines were la chose; they were the sujet at concerts, conversaziones, and clubs. The University' looked with that supercilious yet anxious air which its members, chiefly young barristers and alternate evening lecturers,' are so conversant with, on the mining article in the Courier; the Union' was suspiciously acquainted with how shares left off,' and scandalous stories were told of puffing and panting members gaining Pall Mall East with the latest intelligence; and the hebdomadal assemblée of the Athenæum' diversified their usual topics of conversation, strictures on modern literature, and their own execrable wines, by an occasional inquiry' after the state of the market.'

"Then it was that the diners out, and such small deer, those human frivolities who, when comedies were written, were immortalized under the names of Hint, and Plume, and Flutter, did their duty. A mining story was as regularly expect ed with the second glass of Johannisberg, as a dissertation on the operatic legalities, or the latest piece of scandal served up with the sauce piquante of modern exaggeration, and jewelled beauty listened, if not to tales of Africa,' at least 'to golden joys.'

"In the course of a very short time a whisper was about town, that the Earl of Grosvenor was a great holder of American mining shares. Exaggeration echoed the whisper, and soon the noble peer had gained a plum.' With a hundred thousand pounds the Rubicon is passed by modern tattlers, and each day doubled the peer's profits.

"Then Mr Adam, the king's counsel, (rash man!) had it in his power to realise 250,000%. on his shares, and would not.

"We had the misfortune once of being in the Court of King's Bench. We remember being seated near this learned gentleman, and while we were admiring the acuteness and erudition with which he argued a very knotty point of law, we saw marked on his brief, ten guineas. Now we did marvel that this individual, who considered that a quarter of a million was but the commencement of his profits, that this lord of Mexico should, for some rascal counters, sit in a horrible close court, refer to digests, learn indices by rote, and in short-hand and with a bad pen make learned notes on unintelligible evidence. We left the theatre of his arguments and actions; we met

one whose step is better known in Bond Street than Cornhill, but who now, with an eye beaming with exultation, was returning from his morning walk into the city. He was full of the gorgeous fortune of Sir William Adams, Knt., late oculist extraordinary to his majesty. The chevalier, it seems, with a financial prescience, which would entitle him to the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, if Mr Robinson ever cease giving those annual Arabian Night entertainments, in common parlance called budgets, had purchased in the outset a large quantity of the Mexican mining shares. But, unlike Lord Grosvenor, or the rash but fortunate Mr Adam, Sir William had condescended to realize a profit of L. 180,000 on a very trifling quantity,' determined, come what come may,' either to become the richest individual in Europe, or to retire on the respectable independence of L.8000 per annum. The tale was passing strange, but who in the nineteenth century will play the Pyr

rhonist?

"But, as half London has said, but if there have been these great profits, there must have been equally great losses. The dilemma is not good, or rather it is nought. An original holder of these shares might have sold them at a profit of L.100 per share, and yet might have sold them cheap. We have not created this objection merely to destroy.it; we have ourselves heard it made some dozen times by people of education and of the world.

"But Lord Grosvenor arrives in town, and, actuated by the purest and most honourable motives, or, perhaps, apprehending legislative interference, and imagining that on account of his awful wealth he might become the first victim of an ostracism, was desirous of informing the public, through the medium of the noble possessor of the woolsack, "THAT HE NEVER HAD HELD OR BEEN INTERESTED IN A SINGLE SHARE OF THE AMERICAN MINING COMPANIES!!!"

"The rumours increasing, Lord Grosvenor felt it his duty in his place in Parliament, to inform the public, that HE

HAD NOT HELD OR BEEN INTERESTED IN A SINGLE SHARE IN THE AMERICAN MINING COMPANIES, and took the opportunity of delivering some very statesmanlike observations on the subject.

"In the meantime Mr Adam was calling on his friends, for the purpose of informing them that the reports which were afloat, as to the immense sums which he had made by speculating in the

"Now here are three stories, which have created an extraordinary sensation in this good metropolis; here are three individuals who were supposed to have participated more than any others in the immense profit which was said to have been made by speculating in the shares of the American mines. Of these three

stories we find every one to be false; of these three individuals, we find that two never possessed a share, and that the third never sold one; and, consequently, that these three individuals, who, to have had it in their power to realize the profits which it is said they were enabled to do, must have possessed among them nearly the majority of the mining shares, never made a gain of one single sous.

"If then these stories are true, we have the satisfaction of knowing, that of the number of mining shares which were in existence, a considerable number, perhaps a moiety, were not producing any ' ruinous consequences.'

"If these stories are false, we may, perhaps, doubt whether the ruinous consequences' ever resulted.

"But are these all the tales, if not as entertaining, quite as miraculous, as the Milesian, with which our country has been gorged, alas! not to satiety? Oh no! Is there not the clerk of the eminent banking-house,' who, when Christmas approached, and was supposed by his kind masters to be anticipating for his faithful services an increase of salary, and indulging in the paradise of an additional ten pounds per annum, humbly, most humbly, informed his employers, that he was under the necessity, with exceeding sorrow, (he had nothing to complain of,) of retiring from their service, for, (his friends had been so kind,) unfortunately, he had been induced to realize the mining shares which had been originally allotted to him, and had been so unfortunate as to have the fortune, (his friends had been so very kind,) of realizing L.60,000!!! Oh, brave clerk! oh, most eminent banking-house! What must be the masters of such a servant? such a miniature millionaire !

"Now, reader! this story is not like my Lord Grosvenor's; it arises not from an unnoticed report and from common conversational amplification--this story is not like the fortunes of Mr Adam, and arising from a mistake-this story is not like the one of Sir William Adam, and partly founded on fact-no! no! this story is from beginning to end an unalloyed, unsophisticated, pure, and anexistence not in the shape of an on dit, it aggerated fabrication. It came into exwas not engendered by rumour and pampered by exaggeration, but it burst into being with all its noxious qualities about it, a complete, a perfect, an intentional lie!

"Yet these are the stories which are the subject of interest in every quarter of the metropolis, we may say in every part of this country-that have been repeated by newspapers, that have disturbed the quiet of domestic circles, that have disgusted men with their honourable and arduous employments, and, finally, credited as material and veracious consequences, become subject-matter for legislation, for laws, which, if put in force, will tend to enervate, perhaps to destroy, the energies of this country, and we shall see the prosperity of Great Britain, and of a whole hemisphere, sacrificed to Fear which is founded on Falsehood.

"The truth is, that for a couple of days all the country were buying shares in the American mines. There was no reason for the excessive demand, and a fearful re-action might have taken place, but Avarice preserved us from the misery which Insanity might have produced.. Waiting for further profits, the world missed those which already were unreasonable, and the losses which were incurred by a very few simpletons, who bought at the highest, are, we sincerely believe, all the ruinous consequences' which have resulted from the great depreciation in prices' so much talked of and so much wondered at."

late

Is not that pleasant and graphic?a famous story-teller, by the word of a quill-driver. Why does he not send us articles for our Magazine? A man of his taste must know that writing a pamphlet is throwing away time, for nobody reads it. Writing for us is well employing time, for everybody reads us. He has done a great deal of good by exposing the futility of these stories, which are so current in the Eastern and Western worlds of London. The stories of my Lord Grosvenor, or

Mr Adam, or Sir William Adams, will not pass muster any more.

From the book to the bookseller is an easy transition. There is an immen sity of good sound pluck in John Murray's publishing the tirade against the Quarterly. How their Reviewer will take it, we know not; neither do we care. The imprint of Albemarle Street will, we should think, appear there the unkindest cut of all. Would Constable publish a pamphlet against the balaamitical essays of the Edinburgh! We doubt it; for we remember how he wrote a most indignant letter to Sir

R. Philipps for having dared to hint a word of dispraise against that somnolent miscellany in his muddy Magazine; which letter, by the way, Sir Pythagoras printed. If Constable has a mind to print a pamphlet of the kind alluded to, we can furnish him with one at five minutes' notice. We shall prove, to his satisfaction, that the Reviewer of Theodric is an ass, and the Reviewer of the Chancery Court a rogue. If that will not satisfy him, we shall turn our hands to the whole of his contributors, en masse. The hint may be worth his notice.

W. G. M.

MR MARTIN'S "Bear-baiting" bill has been thrown out by the House of Commons; and, looking to some of the details of it, perhaps no other result could be expected; but, inclined as I am to think, that, in principle, it must eventually succeed, I have been sorry to see it so decidedly opposed by many individuals whose opinions I feel a high respect for. The arguments (in the short discussion which took place in Parliament) used by those who support the existing system, were not new. Their main reliance seemed to be on what they called a " partial justice" in Mr Martin and his friends-that they attacked the vices of the poor, while those of the rich were to remain unmolested; and to this was appended an attempt at comparison between the practice of torturing animals in corners for gain, and those active, manly diversions, which we have been used to recognize as the "sports of the chase." Now, if I spoke merely as the advocate of the poor, my first request should be for leave to discharge my clients entirely of all that interest in baseness

and brutality, with which some of their friends seem so anxious to endow them. I desire that the poor should have their due; but, in getting this exclusive right and title to the bear-bait, they get a great deal more than their due. Enough, even of a man's right, is as good as satiety. This solicitude to preserve the privilege of the poor, (where it happens to be a privilege kicked out, eo nomine, by everybody else,) is no more than an old song played on a new key-a new version of the ever-blessed apothegm of "the Billington" and "the Bull;" upon which I may perhaps presently have a word. But the fact, if we are to argue upon facts, is not as the friends of the poor are so good as to state it. It is not the poorer classes who either have, exclusively, or desire to have, their "bull." On the contrary, at least a large proportion of the money which supports the "dog" and "monkey" fighting, and encourages the horse-chaunters, minor pugilists, brothel-keepers, and other miscreants who trade in it, comes from the pockets of persons who certainly, as to

means, cannot be ranked among the lower classes of society; and who frequently, from their birth and fortune, (if not from their taste and worthi ness,) are qualified, and entitled, to move among the higher.

Now, how far the desiring to make particular diversions the particular property of particular classes, may be the readiest course to maintain good understanding and good feeling throughout a community, this is a question which I will not stop just now to try, because I must absolutely have a word with that famous dictum of "The Billington, and the Bull;" premising, that I take it to be a sentence as free from anything like reasonable meaning or deduction, as the most peremptorily turned Irish antithesis that ever Catholic orator imposed upon an audience by.

"The higher orders have their Billington," are the words; " and why should not the lower orders have their Bull?" That is as much as to say, it is a justification of one person to commit a murder, because another chooses to hear a song?" The higher orders have their Billington, and why should not the lower orders have their Bull?" -If I were to say, "The people in St James's blow their noses, why should not the people in St Giles's set their houses on fire?" would not my proposition, bating the alliteration, be just as logical as that of Mr Windham? Certainly, if it is to be contended that every man has a right to his "taste," both these sentences become axioms, and we repeal the whole statute-book immediately. But, is it worthy to talk of the "taste" of the lower classes, in a matter where that taste happens to be scandalous to decency and humanity, when we punish, by law, any "taste" they may feel for the act of carrying a gun-shoot them if they have a taste" for walking through a park or a plantation-and even make their" taste" for washing their bodies in the main ocean corrigible, by an action of trespass from the lord of the manor, who has a right of soil in the barren sand, between high and low water-mark, over which they pass?

If I question the right of any man, and it is a point on which I will have a word again before I conclude,-to answer Mr Martin's bill by a sweeping charge of cruelty and stupidity against the whole working population of the VOL. XVII.

country, still less can I admit any value in the parallel attempted to be set up between such sports as hunting and shooting, and the ignoble, sedentary barbarities which we desire to be relieved from. The understanding may be puzzled by sophistry; but I ask whether the heart of every man does not acknowledge a broad distinction between the practices?-Where is the fox-hunter-although he hunted a fox to death every day through the season-would consent to cut a fox into quarters, after catching it alive? Though he preserves the breed wild in his woods, avowedly for no other purpose than that of destroying them, will he throw out the cub which has been petted in his house to be worried by dogs in the court-yard, for his amusement? There is some difference between cutting a man down (even though it should be done rather needlessly) in the heat of battle, and murdering him, in cold blood, two days after he has been made a prisoner.

Nine-tenths of the quality of every act of violence depend upon the relative conditions of the thing that strikes, and the thing that suffers; and there is a disposition common to our nature

so long as we will only give nature her fair play-to spare those objects with which we are familiar, and those which lie, confessedly, at our mercy. A gentleman may follow his pheasant in the field, but what would be said of one who had a taste for shooting the same bird in a poultry-yard ?—If a partridge be wounded, and escapes, true, the bird suffers; but that suffering forms no part of the fowler's intention. He meant to kill his game; by accident, he has only wounded it, and it is left to die probably in great misery. But would there be no difference between this chance, and his going out daily to wound birds for sport, or to roast them alive (having taken them) for a wager, before a slow fire?-If the distinction between these two acts be no more than imaginary, then half the distinctions we act upon daily are little else; and yet they are very valuable distinctions, and we should be much worse off than we are if we went to work without them.

The old woman who sets a "killing trap" to catch her mice, lest she should be tempted to liberate them after having taken them alive, compasses precisely the same end (as far as the ex4 I