1,160 to 720 338,000 cwt. to 266,000 cwt. 6,484,000 lbs. to Madeira, from Spanish, from Raw sugar has declined from The decrease in the amount of the duties, with the decrease in the quantities consumed. The duty on rum has fallen from L.297,700 2,414,000 lbs. has kept pace to L.16,500 Brandy, from Geneva, from Or from a revenue of L.4,069,600 to L.3,250,900 -being a loss of L.818,700 a year, by the increase of duties on the above mentioned articles! It is surely impossible that Ministers can be permitted to continue this felo de se system. Is it not absolutely monstrous to attempt to deprive a whole people, by means of exorbitant duties, of many of the most indispensable of the necessaries, and of almost all the comforts of life, on the stale and stupid pretence of keeping up the revenue, when it is as clear as the sun at noonday, that the revenue would be greatly increased by their reduction! It was justly observed by Mr Spring Rice, in one of the debates in the present session, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was the most efficient ally of Captain Rock! Indeed, there can be no question, that the extraordinary privations which the late unparalleled increase of taxation has occasioned in Ireland, have been one of the main causes of the bellum servile now raging in that unfortunate country. And, for what has Mr Vansittart allied himself to Captain Rock? For what have the Irish people been deprived of so many comforts and necessaries? Had the revenue been increased, it would have been some compensation, though a paltry and wretched one, for these priva tions. But the scourge of taxation has had no such effect-it has driven the people to despair, and urged them to commit the most unheard of atrocities; but it has not been able to squeeze a single additional shilling out of their empty pockets! It is truly stated by the Reverend Mr Chichester, in his excellent phamplet on the Irish Distillery Laws, that the calamities of civilized warfare are in general inferior to those produced by the prevalence of smuggling in Ireland.' But the excess of taxation in this country seems to be in a fair way of producing the same disastrous effects that have resulted from it among our neighbours. It has already deprived the people of many comforts, and caused a considerable reduction of the revenue, and it has given a proportionable degree of encouragement to the smuggler. For the last twelve months, scarcely a week has elapsed in which a conflict has not taken place between parties of smugglers and the soldiers and sailors employed in the preventive service. Some of these conflicts have been very serious. It was stated in the Kentish papers of November last, that above 400 country people, assisting in the unloading of a smuggling lugger, were attacked by a party of military, who, after a brisk engagement, in which one of their party and eleven of the smugglers are stated to have been killed, were obliged to retire to the barracks! Rencounters of the same disgraceful description are occasionally taking place all along the coast; and the baneful practice of illicit distillation, the smuggling of salt, and the adulteration of tea, are now, as we have already shown, carried to an unprecedented extent. But, however much we may deplore the prevalence of this illegal and ruinous traffic, it is abundantly certain that Ministers will be disappointed in their attempts to put it down by the infliction of heavy punishments on those who are tempted to engage in it. High duties have made smuggling popular in other countries, and, if maintained, they will also make it popular in England. We have no desire to extenuate the guilt of those who endeavour to defraud the revenue, and to injure the fair trader; but it is idle to expect that the bulk of society will ever be brought to consider that those who furnish them with cheap tea, gin, brandy, &c. are guilty of any very heinous offence! Every one sees that it is those who dig the pitfall, and not those who have the misfortune to stumble into it, who are really responsible for all the mischief that may ensue. There are,' says Montesquieu, instances where a tax is seventeen times the worth of the article taxed. (Our salt tax is not seventeen, but THIRTY times the worth of the salt). A tax so excessive must occasion frauds, which cannot be corrected by mere confiscations. Government is then driven to have recourse to extravagant pains and per ⚫ties, such as should only be inflicted on the greatest crimes. All 'proportion of punishment is done away; and men who can hardly be considered as culpable, are punished as atrocious 'criminals.'* To create, by means of high duties, an overwhelming temptation to indulge in crimes, and then to punish men for indulging in it, is a proceeding wholly and completely subversive of every principle of justice. It revolts the natural feelings of the people, and teaches them to feel an interest, in the worst characters-for such smugglers generally are-to espouse their cause, and to avenge their wrongs. A punishment which is not proportioned to the offence, and which does not carry the sanction of society along with it, can never be productive of any good effect. The true way to put down smuggling, is to render it unprofitable-to diminish the temptation to engage in it; and this is to be done, not by surrounding the coasts with cordons of troops, by the multiplication of oaths and bonds, and making the country the theatre of ferocious and bloody contests in the field, or of perjury and chicanery in the courts of law, but simply and exclusively by reducing the duties on the smuggled commodities! It is this, and this only, that will put an end to smuggling. Whenever the profits of the fair trader become nearly equal to those of the smuggler, the latter will be forced to abandon his hazardous profession. But so long as the high duties are kept up-that is, so long as a high bounty is held out to encourage the adventurous, the needy, and the profligate to continue their career, an army of excise-officers, backed by all the severity of the Revenue laws, will be insufficient to hinder them. ART. IX. Dello Stato Fisico del Suolo de Roma. Memoria per servire d'illustrazione alla Carta Geognostica di questa citta. Di G. BROCCHI. Con due tavole in rame. Con un Discorso sulla condizione dell' aria di Roma negli antichi tempi. Roma, 1820. 8vo. pp. 281. TH HE author before us is well known to our geological readers, as an ardent cultivator of a science much indebted to his exertions, and one who has greatly contributed to establish the reputation of Italy in that branch of natural history. On a former occasion, we took an opportunity of reviewing his work on the geology of a very interesting part of that country; of that, namely, which presents the singular phenomena of marine de * Esprit des Loix, liv. 13. cap. 8. posites at high elevations, intermixed with others of terrestrial origin, and with volcanic substances. The present Essay, as far as the geological part of the work is concerned, contains little else than a repetition of the appearances described in his Subappenine Geology, applied to the illustration of the topography of Rome. It requires therefore no particular notice; as we have, in the article to which we have just referred, said every thing which the subject seemed to require. We purpose, at present, to offer a few remarks on his discourse respecting the condition of the air of Rome in ancient times; without, however, thinking it necessary to subscribe to all his opinions. The subject of Malaria, in general, is interesting, not merely to medical readers, but involves a question which concerns every one; not only those whom curiosity or idleness may lead to visit Italy, or whom commerce or military service drive to the poisonous regions of the globe, but those also who sit quietly at home, and hug themselves in a fancied security from its attacks. Few of our general readers know that all the Fevers, properly so called, which mysterious Nature has provided for the partial depopulation of this globe, for checking, as it would appear, the too rapid increase of mankind, are divided into two classes; sometimes rather distinguishable by their causes than their effects. One of these appears to be produced by certain changes in the animal economy, which, while they derange the subject itself, compel it to generate a volatile and unknown substance, that may be communicated to other subjects; reproducing similar diseases ad infinitum. This unknown matter is contagion; and its produce are the various contagious fevers. The other class of fevers puts on a far greater diversity of aspect; but these are not contagious, inasmuch as they cannot be communicated from one individual to another. Numerically considered, the diseases of this class far exceed those of the former; and, considered as to their destructive effects, the ravages which they commit on health and life, surpass those of the contagious fevers in a very great degree. These are the diseases which form the peculiar scourge of hot climates; which interfere with the pursuits of commerce, and aggravate the ravages of war; often also defeating the best laid plans of politicians and leaders of armies. As the invisible exciting cause of contagious fevers is a substance generated by the human body, so, that of the latter class is an equally invisible and diffusible substance, produced apparently from vegetating soils, under peculiar circumstances of heat and moisture. But as this matter is not intercommunicable from one person to another, so, neither can it be detained and preserved in dead matter, as is the substance that excites the fevers of the first class. To suffer from it, it is absolutely necessary that the human body should be exposed to its influence where it is produced; nor does it appear, that, even in this its natural state, it can easily be wafted very far through the atmosphere. Whatever may be the nature of this obscure and invisible material, it is the essential ingredient of that which the Italians call Malaria; being the marsh miasma of medical writers. Although the matter of contagion is a chemical compound, which may be preserved for a great length of time unchanged; and although it is known, from the effects of various chemical agents, that it is decomposed with great facility, no method of subjecting it to chemical analysis has yet been devised. It has been conceived, on the contrary, that the miasma, or poisonous matter of Malaria, might be examined; it has even been imagined that its nature had been detected; but we are decidedly of opinion, that no more progress has been made towards the solution of this problem, than of the other. We do not intend to enter at any length into the details of opinions and trials which have produced no results; but as physicians are always extren.ely ready to make hypotheses, and to catch at every current novelty of the day, so, in turn, azote, carbonic acid, hydrogen, carburetted hydrogen, and sulfuretted hydrogen, have been considered as forming the matter of miasma. It is true enough that some or all of these substances are produced by the same soils that generate these fevers; but it is equally certain, that the diseases abound in many places where these gases cannot be detected; and that, in many, where they are palpably generated in great quantity, such disorders are utterly unknown; while they are not excited by those gases when generated in our laboratories. As it had also been conceived that the miasma might consist of putrid animal and vegetable matters diffused in a moist atmosphere, Signor Brocchi here gives a detail of some experiments which he made with this view; by collecting the atmospheric water, or dews, and examining them by the usual chemical means. The result of these experiments, as of all others which had been made before, was nothing; and we still continue utterly ignorant of the nature of this pestilential sub stance. The fevers generated by contagion, though they differ in severity, do not offer any very great discordances of character. If to mild and severe ones we add the contagious dysenteries, we include all the disorders produced by this peculiar substance, admitting the plague to be of a distinct nature. But it is a very curious and important fact, that the vegetable miasma produces a great diversity of ailments; some of them so little resembling others, that, were it not that we can trace |