nually withdrawn from the capital. But it was laid up for this very purpose, and we can afford to allow for it. Let 5s. a week be taken for the four dead months of the year; those who are conversant with the labourer's cottage, will know that 5s. in addition to his usual wages, will place him in comparative opulence; and suppose this draft to be continued during ten years, the capital has only lost £40. From that time the children contribute their share: the family ceases to be a growing burthen; and there remains a stock towards setting forward the children in life, or to supply some of the numerous wants of increasing years.

But how are the savings to be placed out and secured? Here, indeed, we are at a stand: there is at present no way; and here, we believe, that the assistance of the legislature might be more usefully employed, than in almost any branch of our internal economy. In a small district, or a single village, an individual might effect something; he might vest a certain sum in the hands of trustees, as a security to his poorer neighbours; and by devoting a few hours in every week or month to receiving their small savings, he might render them most effectual service without the smallest risk to himself, by allowing them 4 per cent. for their little capital. But though we throw out this hint to the very few who might find such a plan practicable, we are aware that the concern is of much too large a size to be managed without the regularity of habits of business, or the authority of a public guarantee. Mr. Malthus has recommended county banks; Mr. Whitbread a national bank, the remittances to be made through the agency of the Post-office. In our idea, either plan would be extremely desirable, but the former is most simple and intelligible; and neither the magnitude nor details of the business would present any material obstacle in the way of its execution. Let there be an establishment in every county town, in some counties more than one might be advisable, under public security: or let even a local bank already established be guaranteed to the amount of the deposits of the poor, government requiring security from the banker, as in the case of the receivers of the county taxes. Let this establishment, both for the sake of notoriety, and to avoid the expensive journies of the poor, have its agents in every considerable place, who should be directed to receive weekly, or at farthest monthly, even the smallest sums, and remit them at stated periods to the county establishment, just as is now done by the local collectors of taxes. Let every poor man yearly, or half-yearly, receive a statement of his account with his interest. No addition need be made to the number of public servants; every village has its tax collector, and its agents to assurance offices, either of whom might become the local managers of such a concern, at a small per centage on whatever sums they received and disbursed. Proper、

persons

persons might be easily discovered to whom this would be no inconvenient addition to their regular employments; and after all, the risk would be nothing in comparison with that which is every day hazarded in gathering the taxes; because we are not so sanguine as to suppose, that the amount contributed would ever be so large. The expense, in fact, would be almost confined to the salaries of the clerks to the county establishment; and as there is no reason why the public should lose, the interest might be fixed a little lower than the usual rate, and the overplus, if any, repaid to the stockholder by occasional bonuses. In this case, government would afford nothing beyond the security of their guarantee; and the poor man would have good cause to be satisfied, if he could obtain without risk even 4 per cent. for his money. But the security of the capital is absolutely indispensable; and the insecurity of it according to any mode at present possessed by the poor of employing their savings, is one great reason why so little is at present saved. Probably too, Mr. Whitbread's restrictions would be adopted; confining the sum which any individual might bring to account annually, to £20 as a maximum; and limiting, the utmost amount of any individual's stock to £200. There are, we are convinced, no difficulties in the details of the plan, which a person, accustomed to the business of many offices in the exchequer, might not arrange with a few days' attention.

But it will be said, that this plan for diminishing the dependence upon the rates, and encouraging the frugality of the labouring classes, might be very feasible, if we were legislating for a golden age; but that the carelessness and bad habits of the poor are insuperable, and all hopes of their foresight visionary. To this sweeping argument against all improvement we will oppose facts. In the first place, the existence of friendly societies. These are the associations of frugality and forethought against the uncertainties of human life; and every weekly contribution paid to them is a deduction from present enjoyment for the sake of future security. These also strongly illustrate the readiness of the poor to embrace any plan, of which they can understand the safety and the advantage. It is scarcely twenty years since they received the sanction of government through the bill introduced by Mr. Rose, and their members now amount to the number of 900,000. There are other associations, and very useful ones, known to many of our readers under the title of Penny clubs, to which the children of the very poorest class contribute their weekly mite, and are repaid in clothing at the end of the year. In some places there are weekly contributions for purchasing bibles, or for charitable purposes, which in the whole amount to sums that might astonish an abstract calculator. Servants are also in the habit of leaving a part of their wages

in their masters' hands, and receiving only the interest. Every where, even without facilities, something is absolutely saved now; enough certainly to encourage a philanthropist to create those facilities. But it would be necessary to make the system generally understood, by distributing short and clear calculations, explaining to the poor the advantage offered them, and the means in their power-to take, in short, as much pains in this great concern, as every private adventurer takes, to give his medicine or his assuranceoffice publicity, and not half so much as a lottery contractor employs to encourage a taste for gaming. Towards this object of explaining the design, the clergy might do much, the Tract Societies might lend their aid; the agents would do something: and though it is probable that very little business might be transacted in the first years of the institution, far too little to satisfy the philanthropic enthusiast, we have no doubt that by encouragement and perseverance the habit of saving might be made to take root, and the fruit it bore would ensure its future cultivation. One legislative provision, however, would be indispensable: no man should be excluded from occasional relief from his parish whilst he had a little stock remaining in the bank. Whether he should be relieved in that case, merely on account of the size of his family, might be a just subject for consideration: but both humanity and policy coincide in requiring that an accident or temporary illness which may deprive a man, for a season, of the power of working, should not deprive him of the harvest of former laborious years; but should be assisted, as it now is, by that public which he industriously serves. It would probably be best in the end to make all influence of a national bank upon the poor rate preventive, rather than positive. The same spirit and the same habits which induced a man to lay by his £50 or £100 would equally incline him to remain independent of parish officers, and enable him, generally, to continue so: but all interference on their part with the capital should be studiously discouraged, and the grand axiom 'Laissez-nous faire' prevail throughout the whole design and execution. No person likes to have the manner in which he shall better his condition or employ his property dictated to him; and he that has least is most jealous of that little. On this account any compulsory measure to engage the poor in benefit societies, or to enforce their subscription to assurance-offices, would have the inevitable effect of destroying all the good those associations have hitherto done, or may be expected to do. Again, no one likes to give the controul of his property to another, or believes that any one can manage it better than he who has the principal interest in its security. Invitum qui servat, idem facit occidenti.' This is not new in the history of human nature; neither should we think

it necessary to repeat such indisputable truths, if the grand object of Count de Salis's pamphlet did not aim at placing the management of benefit societies under legislative influence; with a scheme for appointing clerks, and trustees, and inspectors of them, by Act of Parliament, and involving in the business the minister of the parish, the magistrates of the county, and even the Secretary of State. It is a far less evil that occasional mischief should arise from the deficiency or mal-administration of the funds (a rare oc currence now, we believe, since the subject has been more genes rally understood) than that the interference of government should be exerted or even suspected. The mere idea of it would effectually subvert the system.

The plan which we have ventured to recommend, could only be effected by those to whose hands the reins of government are entrusted. If the experiment were tried at first through the medium of county banks, neither capital nor credit would be risked. But it must be admitted that some project which may enable the poor to save, seems to be a natural addition to the instruction which teaches them the virtues of prudence and foresight: and arithmetical skill will never be so usefully employed, as in calculating the produce of their own earnings. The man who can afford to lay by 20s. per week, has no difficulty in making his advantage of it: the members of the learned professions, who are in the habit of delaying the acquisition of man's best delight, well-ordered home,' till they have secured some provisional support for a family, have their reward in the security of their future days, and every possible facility placed within their power. And why should not the same facilities be afforded to the labourer, who can only save his weekly shilling? Why should not the virtue be pointed out to him of providing for the probable exigencies of a family, before he incurs the expense of one? and why should it be out of his power to attain the comfort of feeling that, in cases of inevitable distress or times of unusual pressure, he has a resource in the accumulated produce of his own industry, more independent than parochial support, (which, however, is fairly due to him,) and more certain than the operation of private charity? That the occasion is worthy of the interference even of those who have so many weighty cares upon their minds, must be evident at the first sight of our labouring population; especially when it is considered, that in addition to the positive advantages arising to the poor, whom we profess to have principally in view, collateral benefits would be derived from the plan by no means immaterial. Every person who had vested his savings in the public fund would have a stake in the security of the country, proportioned not merely to the sum total of those savings, but to the value of that sum to himself; and would be deterred

from

from compassing the disturbance of his native land, by a personal motive added to the influence of duty. He would feel the importance of public peace and public credit with that strong conviction which individual interest never fails to inspire. We foresee the objections of those who would be jealous of the support thus obtained to the ruling powers; but be it remembered, that he who possesses property in a country, is not interested in the stability of the administration for the time being, but in the perpetual stability of universal order and good government; and whoever has a mind that is not touched by this harmony and concord, this unison among the members of one common country,

Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;

Let no such man be trusted.

ART. VIII.-The Paradise of Coquettes, a Poem in Nine Parts. London. 1814. 8vo. pp. 256.

THE horizon which the anonymous author of this light and playful' epic has chosen is somewhat circumscribed. Instead of endeavouring, as he well might do, to gain a height commanding Όσσον δ' περοειδες ανης ίδεν οφθαλμοισιν

Ήμενος εν σκοπιῃ λεύσσων επι οίνοπα πόντον.

he contents himself with as much as may be seen from any given balcony in Grosvenor-square.

6

In the long, but by no means tedious preface which ushers in the poem, he has done his best to conciliate the suffrages of his readers by a well managed appeal to the foible which renders the hero and the saint as vulnerable as the school girl. But we are not disposed to quarrel with his blandishments, which, to say the least of them, are bestowed with more delicacy and discrimination thau was practised in the age of folios, when the sçavans en us,' even the most savage of them, did not scruple to address whoever chanced to look into their volumes, as an 'erudite and studious reader.' He has also made it the vehicle of an attack upon his fellow competitors for public favour, the severity of which is not diminished by his strict adherence to the parliamentary etiquette, by which a speaker is authorized to employ any imaginable appellation for the purpose of denoting an opponent, except his christian and surname, and to impute as much delinquency to him as may be found convenient, provided he is decorously termed 'the honourable member.'

Thus our author appears to criticise all his contemporaries, yet names no one except by innuendo. And with every demonstra