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than the propriety of encouraging the execution of public works: and your committee fully coincide in the opinion, that there is every reason in justice and policy for extending, in that country, the public aid for such purposes, in a degree that does not admit of comparison with the consideration that would be the guide for other parts of the United Kingdom." Of this Committee the late and present Chancellors of the Exchequer were both members.

But notwithstanding this advice, and coming from such a quarter,-founded on the representation of the officers and commissioners of the Board of Works appointed by the Government, and strengthened by the evidence of the most intelligent persons of all parties, Ireland still remains in the state we have described.

We have shown that £2,423,608 12s. 3d.* have been granted by Government for inland navigation, and roads to Scotland and Canada; and to Ireland, during the same space of time, £21,023! That £4,500,000 have been placed in the hands of commissioners for loans in aid of Public Works in the United Kingdom, of which the share allotted to Ireland has been £200,000. And this is all that has been done for Ireland since the Union, to promote that great object, with the exception of the small funds under the management of the present Board of Workst.

The insular position of Ireland in the Atlantic, facing on the south and west France, Spain, Portugal, the West Indies and America, the wealth of her fisheries on the north and west, and England on her east, to which she has been united by means of steam navigation as by a bridge; her fine rivers, inland lakes, large population, and the wealth that lies hidden in her bosom, all point her out as a country which requires

* Grants for Caledonian canal since 1803
Highland roads and bridges.......
military

Navigation in Canada, &c., since 1826........

£953,638 28. Od.
250,752 2 0

241,918 8

3

977,300 0 0

£2,423,608 12 3

+ Whatever cause Ireland may have to complain of the parsimony of England, to foreign powers this country has been sufficiently liberal. From 1793 to 1821 the loans and subsidies to foreign powers, of which nothing has been repaid, amounted to £77,751,944; and from 1821 to the present period, to £56,694,571, amounting to the enormous total of £153,868,470. Beside this sum, the twenty millions paid for negro emancipation appears trifling. Well might Mr. O'Connell exclaim, "Would that the Irish were blacks!" The Irish people might, in the like sense, exclaim, "Would that we were aliens!"

nothing but the fostering care of a paternal Government to become eminently prosperous. It only requires the aid of the Government to do that which all Governments of ancient and nearly all of modern times have considered it their duty to do, -to open great leading lines of communication by means of roads and canals in Ireland. This will lead to the reclaiming of waste lands; the first by affording means of conveying to them the materials necessary for reclamation, and the second by the drainage they will accomplish. This has been, as we have shown, recommended by all parties, and by none more strongly than by the Head of the Board of Public Works, Colonel Burgoyne.

Where would you apply the Government money, he was asked by the Select Committee we have alluded to. His answer was: "In opening very extensive uncultivated districts: "I would provide one main thoroughfare of communication at "the expense of Government; and for opening less extensive "districts, I would give the moiety grants as at present; for "those occasions they work very well."

We trust that Government will adopt this wise counsel; and we hope soon to see in Ireland, by such assistance, labour employed,-industry promoted,—and

"Long canals and deepen'd rivers join

Each part to each, and with the circling main

The whole enliven'd isle."*

* Thomson.

ARTICLE V.

Plan of the English Historical Society. 1836. Venerabilis Bedae Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. Ad fidem codicum manuscriptorum recensuit Josephus Stevenson. Londini. Sumptibus Societatis. MDCCCXXXVIII. In a late number of this Review we took occasion to touch (slightly, we confess) upon the system of education pursued in the German universities, as contrasted with our own. The scope of our inquiry forbade our then entering into any detail; our business was rather with the mode of education in general, than with the peculiar management of any particular branch. The nature of our argument also led us to cast what, at first sight, may appear to be a slur upon the results attained by the German system. We trust, however, that those who have followed us in our career have little reason to accuse us of an overweening and arrogant habit of praising institutions merely because they are English; on the other hand, that they will acquit us of the pedantic coxcombry of praising institutions because they are not English. It is our especial object to point out that which is praiseworthy both here and elsewhere; to support that which is good in the forms of our own and foreign lands, and to attack only that which we believe to be mischievous and degrading to national morals, whether it be found at home or abroad. If, in this endeavour, we ruffle the prejudices of those who would rather be led than think for themselves,-if, owning no party, we prove so unfortunate as to find opponents among the men of all parties,-if, finally, we earn the reputation, a sorry one, of being the best intentioned men in the world, and nothing else— we shall take refuge in the proud boast of the Titan,-exÒV ἐκὼν ἥμαρτον, οὐκ ἀρνήσομαι.—We have sinned intentionally, and do not mean to deny it.

We appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober; from our countrymen, too busy with matters of fleeting and very secondary interest, to our countrymen when they shall have learnt to look for no greatness but what is founded in the moral developement of all classes of our fellow men; from partisans squabbling for sectarian interests, to citizens intent

upon awakening and directing all our national energies to national ends. It was never our intention to deny, that in many branches of learning the Germans were infinitely superior to ourselves; our object was merely to warn our readers against too hasty a condemnation of the English University system, and, if possible, to strike out a balance of truth from between two conflicting parties, each of which appeared, in its zeal, likely to outstrip the bounds of justice. In the prosecution of this object we shall continue our inquiry into one particular branch of learned pursuit at home and abroad.

The peculiar eminence of our German contemporaries in all that comes under the description of learning and research, may be explained without resorting to any hypothesis of a difference in the character of German and English mind. That this exists we shall assuredly not deny, any more than we shall deny the difference in our physical conformation, a difference as apparent now as it was to Tacitus eighteen hundred years ago. But different circumstances and a different direction will, in process of time, produce what is at least equivalent to an original diversity; and these circumstances have existed in ample degree in Germany.

In that vast collection of various nations and kingdoms whose interests are divided, if not hostile, society presents an aspect very unlike ours. There has been no such fusion of classes as the insular position and manufacturing genius of England have given birth to. Here the gigantic power of steam has battered down the barriers between caste and caste, and the sons of the cotton-spinner or the hardware-man meet as equals the scions of the proudest baronial houses. The floor of the House of Commons levels the distinctions of rank; and for those with whom rank was not hereditary, the floor of the House of Commons may lay the foundations of nobility. Moreover, the younger sons of lordly families are Commoners in England, and primogeniture, which retains the coronet for one, allows of no minute subdivision of estates. Primogenitura facit appanagium is true enough, but appanage is not here of a nature to remove the receiver from amongst the great class which makes the strength and solidity of England. Nor is it to be forgotten that our aristocracy, in some respects the most clear-seeing of the world, have never failed to call

up into their own ranks those whose talents and commanding position might have made them dangerous leaders of a hostile force. From the highest therefore to the lowest there is one unbroken chain; nor can the point be ascertained where this class begins and that ends: set aside the ermined baron and the proletarian, and all the rest is Middle Class,-a name and a thing known here alone.

In Germany these things are very different. An eternal and almost impassable barrier rises between man and man: nobility, heritable without primogeniture, floods thirty petty courts with titled aspirants for place and pension; as many sons and daughters, so many multiplications of the paternal coronet, so many equal claimants of the paternal wealth, till rank, and the means of supporting it, bear miserable proportion to one another. Hence the army and the host of places which a German court has to dispense become, in most states of the confederation, the sole resort of an impoverished aristocracy, who look with jealous eyes upon all interlopers from the ranks of the non-noble. Nor is it common in Germany for the aristocracy to recruit among the wealthy of the mercantile class: a wary tradesman will look twice ere he render himself liable to feed a regiment of hungry barons, his cousins by marriage; and in some states a mésalliance is fatal to the blood.

The states of the confederation are sovereign, and diplomacy is as much an adjunct of sovereignty as a brigade of guards. Hence thirty ministries, thirty corps diplomatiques, in which alone the noble and non-noble meet. But we who, if not born statesmen, (a title which the Germans generally refuse to us who have not regularly learnt state-craft,) are at least born politicians, see nothing strange in a country gentleman or successful manufacturer becoming a minister: practical sense, habits of business, political predilections (if not political principles,) sucked in with the air we breathe, are our education for public life; nor is any excluded whose weight or talent on the hustings or in the House, can fight his way to the uneasy height of office. Not so in Germany: statecraft there is a profession, statesmen are a class. Here and there, it is true, we find privy-councillors in the universities, and ministers selected from the distinguished names of

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