ART. XVII. The Poor-laws, and their Bearing on Society. By ERIC GUSTAF GEiger.

GEIGER is the celebrated Professor of History at the University of Upsala, and has in this work presented to the world a "Series of Political and Historical Essays" on the Poor-laws, especially of Sweden. The translation is by E. B. Hale Lewin.

Poor-laws is not a title of a book that will prove very attractive, especially to English readers, who have had so many surfeits of every thing that can be offered on the subject, at least as bearing upon society in this country. But a foreigner may invest the theme with what will arrest; while the condition and treatment of the poor in other states may exhibit interesting novelties.

But these Essays take a wider range, and exhibit a more general ability than will be expected upon the mere term Poor-laws; for the Professor not only gives us historical and disquisitional views of the origin and progress of the mode of maintaining the poor in Sweden, with suggestions of what their treatment should be, but he goes back to early times, and travels far from his own country, in order that he might be able at the outset to produce a history of the Poor. Accordingly, we have a summary of the institution and laws of slavery, including those of Greece and Rome; and also of the influences and modifications attendant upon the invasion of the barbarians, the masterly sketch tracing the effects produced by the church and feudalism on the condition of the needy and helpless, until society had acquiesced in, and been forced to adopt those general notions, towards the poor, of Christian morality, which characterize the European nations in our times. The passages which we are about to quote will indicate the great value of these Essays. The first may be advantageously consulted along with portions not only of the preceding paper on international law, but that on classic mythology. It is by no means flattering to the humanity of man.

"Man is a late idea in history. Immediately without the antique family is the stranger, the same as enemy; immediately without the antique state, the barbarian, the same as outlaw; wherefore also the Roman accounted slavery as a right belonging to jus gentium. But slavery affects not merely the conquered stranger or the foreign foe. It is domestic in the family, where the husband long possesses the wife he has bought or captured and the children he has begotten, by the same right with the slaves he has acquired or bred. Slavery becomes domestic in the state, and increases in severity in proportion; as not only the family as such, but the state, that is to say, the privileged class as such, has the mass under it as a slave. We have spoken of antiquity, as though a sort of provision for the poor existed there also. This seems opposed to that position of experience, that provision for the poor was first introduced into society as the slaves became free; which has indeed generally been the case. Provision for the poor as a public concern is least discernible in the despotic slave-state; where, owing to the absence of the principle of liberty, its opposite, slavery, does not either present itself in sharp outline, but is softened just by reason of its universality, and treated so to speak as the

child of the house. The care begins in the republican slave-state, where, as liberty is corrupted and destroyed, the sovereign people at last fall back upon the poor-house. Thus it is that in imperial Rome, populus Romanus is dependent upon charity; for whatever worthlessness might be concealed under that name, it retained the title of its bankrupt nobility, and in this capacity received its free bread, which properly belonged to Roman citizens, not at all to foreigners and slaves, of which the overplus number on occasions of threatening scarcity were always without mercy driven out of Rome. That slavery in republics is harder than under despotisms, may indeed be alleged from the example of Rome. The greatest economist of republican Rome, the elder Cato, enforced, as a rule of economy, the expediency of getting rid of old slaves, to avoid the burden of their maintenance. Roman emperors were milder than Roman aristocrats. There was in the Tiber an island, the island of Esculapius, on which the sick and infirm slaves were exposed, and suffered to die under the protection of Esculapius. The Emperor Claudius pronounced such slaves free. Afterwards the masters killed them; which the Emperor was also obliged to prohibit. Of a being without God, without kindred, without country, without law, all which the slave is, according to the strict Roman notion, the very misery is not human."

The definition of gentility, observes the Professor, by the Roman jurists, was this-" birth have those only whose ancestors have never served any one." Hence it follows, "that neither the freed man nor his issue could ever become gentle. This idea, prevalent in the North American republics, arising out of the slave states, according to which, slave blood, in even the extremest branch, contaminates, and remains with its ignominy indelible, is Roman."

Here follows the account of the Poor Law of classical Rome:

"Bread and the spectacle of the gladiators (panem et circences) the populace of Rome demanded of their emperor. It was what the best omitted not to grant, and what the severest durst not refuse. The distribution of free bread or of corn gratis to the people was restricted at first by Augustus, but rose again even in his time; so that such a distribution took place to two hundred thousand persons. Tiberius, who by the abolition of the Comitia blotted out the last semblance of the people's political influence -Tiberius, who sternly refused in the Senate to continue the beneficence of Augustus towards a representative of the noble Hortensian family, sunk with many children in the extreme of destitution, saying, 'If every sort of beggar were to come here and ask for money for his children's sake, it were impossible that each should be satisfied, but the state would be sacrificed-Tiberius, whose tyranny otherwise defied every thing, durst not defy the indignation of the people in the theatres on the occasion of an omitted distribution of corn. He gave more than Augustus. A ticket of tin entitled the bearer to his portion at these distributions. Such tickets were given out first for a month, then for a quarter, afterwards for life: finally, they went by will or inheritance. This was Rome's relief of the poor. Moreover, all Rome enjoyed the benefit of a reduced price of corn, the deficit was covered by the state treasury. Trajan instituted separate free bread for five thousand children, and caused their names to be engraved

on plates of copper. Encouraged by him, such institutions sprang up in many Italian cities; his friend, the Younger Pliny, founded one himself, at his own expence. Hadrian and the Antonines increased the number of these institutions of relief. Antoninus Pius revived an establishment of Augustus for discounting; whence the poor were allowed to borrow at the rate of 4 per cent. A later Emperor founded an establishment for the purchase of shares in property for the poor, and the loans to be gradually paid off. Commodus, son of the virtuous Marcus Aurelius, so unlike his father, instituted a great corn warehouse in Rome, to provide against the scarcity which sometimes arose when the Egyptian corn-fleet failed to arrive. Septimus Severus extended this warehousing to many years' advance, according to Rome's estimated yearly want; and from this estimate one is led to conclude that the distributions which were made gratis amounted to six hundred thousand persons, though a good deal of corn distributed as wages seems to be here included."

In the history of the Poor-law of Sweden there are to be found a number of curious relicts and illustrations of the old usages of Scandinavian society, and which furnished elements that were incorporated at a remote period into the municipal institutions and unwritten laws of England. The subject of the Essays as regards the author's own country, even at this day, has its interesting and informing points. We quote a passage which treats of the only crimes which in the ancient laws of Sweden were inexpiable, that is, which could not be expiated with fines. Says the Professor,

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"Such were attended with the forfeiture of honour, which was civil death, of which physical death might be a consequence, although capital punishment in the spirit of the old laws is permitted rather than enjoined. The principle of life for life was adopted subsequently, from the Mosaic law. The punishment of death was, moreover, not recognized by our old laws for other crimes than those which involved loss of honour. The honourless was branded with the name niding'; and 'nidingsverk' implies in the laws the grossest crimes against personal safety, which were connected with treachery, such as murder committed in places consecrated to peace, in the church, the assize-court, or within a dwelling; killing a sleeping man, or one incapable of self-defence, or one's own master, or him with whom one had shared meat and drink, or a woman, for she shall go protected to meetings and mass, though never so much war be waged among the men' (says our West Gothic law); killing any one with cruelty, or in a torturing manner; bearing arms against one's own country; embarking in an armed vessel, and becoming a pirate, which last specified crimes indicate the introduction of Christian morality. All these were inexpiable by fines. In general those crimes were regarded as most worthy of punishment which were committed in a deceitful and cowardly manner, wherefore also the thief was punished either with death or slavery. All bodily punishment belonged to slavery, which had no rights. To beat a person as a slave'-' to possess no more rights than the scourged handmaid' or female house slave, are therefore expressions which the old laws employ."

In these ancient usages and laws relative to forfeiture of honour may be

discovered some of the characteristic features of chivalrous times and feudal observances. It is quite clear then that Professor Geiger's Essays are neither barren of interest, nor unworthy, as specimens of historical compression and graphical illustration, of his chair. The poor are made a rich theme in his hands.

ART. XVIII.—A Treatise on the Grammar of the Greek New Testament Dialect. By the REV. T. S. GREEN. Bagster.

THIS work was undertaken, at the request of the late Rev. H. J. Rose, of King's College; its professed object being to show that a ground for a strict system of literal interpretation, based on the established principles and ascertained rules of the Greek language, is supplied by the dialect of the New Testament, and to afford a guide to such interpretation. It is a work which displays an extensive familiarity with the language of Greece, and with the authors who have written in its various dialects; and it abounds with illustrations applied to, as well as drawn from, texts of the New Testament. The Treatise is also necessarily calculated, and not without a direct design, to assist the advanced pupil in his study of the Greek language generally. With regard to the Parts of Speech, and the usual subjects of a grammar, there will be found some novelty of arrangement, but especially a series of comments and scholastic arguments, which, if not always convincing, are ingenious and difficult to be met.

In any short notice, or without an acquaintance with the literature of the New Testament as minute, and also a scholarship as exact, as what Mr. Green has exemplified, it is impossible to criticize the Treatise properly. Instead therefore of making the attempt we quote a passage from the Introduction, and another from the First Chapter, that the author's views and purpose may be in some measure gathered from himself.

He says that the standard of comparison which he proposes to institute with regard to the language of the New Testament, "is that presented by the Attic writers, including those, as Aristotle, who, though strictly without the Attic pale, may, as immediately bordering upon it, be considered for the present purpose within it. *** The result of such an investigation as the proposed one, will be that the dialect of the New Testament will be found to differ from classic purity not so much in solecistic variation as in defect: there will be a discovery not so much of departure from established rules, as of inelegancies more easily felt than described; and there will be missed a portion of the minute and vivid picturing of the modifications of thought in written language which characterizes the speech of that wonderful people, in the disappearance of some pointed and refined variation of expression and form of construction, and in an imperfect use of that exquisite array of particles which, when their force is duly felt, give to the dead page almost the life and impressiveness of human utterance." The other passage to be quoted refers to the dialect termed by Grammarians Common:

"Its staple was of Attic structure, but it differed from that variety of the language in several main points: it was divested of certain forms espeVOL. II. (1842.) No. I.

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cially Attic, such as might be termed provincialisms, if the idea of vulgarity were not associated with the word: it employed certain words, where the speech of Athens would with the same meaning, have substituted others, either quite distinct, or differing from them in some point of structure; it admitted some forms or words belonging to other dialects; or which, though of ancient use, had for a time disappeared, at least in Attic Greek. * The Common dialect, technically so called, was that of the courts of the Seleucidæ and the Legidæ, of the schools of Alexandria and Tarsus, of the educated Roman, of Philo, Polybius, Plutarch, Origen, Chrysostom.

"Such was the form of the language, which the first preachers of the Gospel found the medium of the civilized world, and which they would necessarily employ in historical and hortatory writings, unless they had in view solely their countrymen in Judea. But they came to its use imbued with a native idiom differing very widely from that of their adopted language, and which must, in a greater or less degree, give a colouring to their writings."

We ought to state that among the miscellaneous topics of the Treatise, a distinct notice is assigned to the style of the Apocalypse.

ART. XIX.-Creoleana; or, Social and Domestic Scenes and Incidents in Barbadoes, in the Days of Yore. By J. W. ORDErson.

MR. ORDERSON has been long a resident in Barbadoes, and therefore has had ample opportunities to become acquainted with the scenes and incidents belonging to this interesting colony ;-with the habits of the people, white and black; with the anecdotes current in, or characteristic of, the island; with the progress and prospects of the community; and with the vicissitudes and calamities which have befallen this portion of the West Indies, even from the Days of Yore down to the most recent changes and The nature of the small publication will be more clearly understood on reading the author's account of its matter and plan. With regard to the contents, he "conscientiously affirms, that his materials are all (with the exception of one incident) drawn from facts, which are as closely adhered to as the nature of the subject would admit: but the events, he must add, are not narrated in strict chronological order."

events.

The narrative begins with a graphic account of the awful visitations and sufferings to which the island was subjected between 1772 and 1780, when burnings, sterility, scarcity, disease, devastating insects, and even an atmosphere loaded with pestilence overtook the colony in combined array or with consecutive terrors and destruction. These calamities with much that is pleasing, prosperous, amusing, and curious, are unaffectedly detailed, letting the reader into the inward life as well as the prominent features of the history of the island. We must find room for an anecdote concerning Prince William Henry, afterwards the sailor-king, when he was yet a bluejacket, and as reckless and mischievous as any Waterford of the day. appears, however, that he sometimes paid dear for his whistle.

It

Rachel Polgreen, an emancipated negress, had taken to the business of tavern, or innkeeper; of course in a humble way, but not the less likely