without one solitary exception, for his own private judgment, and manifesting that judgment by giving the preference to Ramsey. As to the fact that till after the establishment of the Academy, the arts were languishing in the extreme, and all the other maudlin drivel in the passage, hear what Mr. Shee says it must be acknowledged that our greatest painters have not been the fruit of this tree; Reynolds, West, Barry, Hogarth, Wilson, Gainsborough, were ripe in fame and merit, before it was planted among us"-has the Academy done more, has it done so much, as supply the place of these men? And what is true of this is equally true of all like establishmentsand we were about to prove this and to apply it, but the proof is offered by Mr. Shee, and after what we have written the application may be made by the reader," if we look abroad to the old masters, we find the most eminent amongst them were those who flourished antecedent to such establishments."

We now take leave of this subject in the words of one whose sincerity, whose love, and whose knowledge of art, admit of no question, and whose testimony must be above suspicion ;* who ridiculed "the absurdity, not to say mean adulation, of magnifying its accidental casual connection with patronage, into something staminal and essential to its growth, and perfection. No, no, base time-servers! it may answer your sinister views to say so, but nothing can be more irreconcileable with fact; art appeared in Greece and Italy with so much splendour, only because the public of Greece and Italy had the feeling, wisdom, and love of virtue, to discover the peculiar extension and facility of its application to purposes the most interesting and valuableIn fashionable language, this mass of employment, this commerce of mutual considerations and advantages has been called patronage; a term the most impertinent and ill-applied, as is abundantly evident in the history of the art, where unhappily we too often find its vigour and growth stunted and liable to blight when the great and their patronage come unluckily to interfere and tamper with it."

* Barry.

ART. XVI.-Causes and Cure of the present Distress. Ridgway. 1830.

W HEN some people protest there is a distress, and others that there is not a distress, the natural solution of the difficulty is, that some are distressed and others are in no distress at all. And it seems to be capable of proof, that such a distress as this, is all that this distressful world is capable of. To demand that before the existence of distress was admitted, it should be proved that the king upon the throne was suffering extremity for want of nourishing food, or an archbishop was confined to his room by the consequences of a long course of oatmealporridge, would be manifestly outrageous and absurd. And by parity of reasoning, dukes, earls, viscounts, and so on to any extent down the ladder of honour in the Red Book, may by possibility be in no state of suffering, and still there may be "a distress" in the only sense in which in the nature of things it can exist. To demand therefore that a distress shall be uni versal, is like demanding that there shall be held to be no plague unless every body has died of it. And to doubt or demur as to the existence of the evil upon such a ground, would be as unreasonable in one case as in the other.

Next to the plea of the non-universality of the distress, comes the plea of its being temporary; founded on the fact that a distress, like an ague, has its periods of intermission and exacerbation. The mere `connection of human affairs with the seasons of the year, with seed-time and harvest, with fair weather and foul, with passable roads and impassable, with fine working weather and weather when no man can work, is enough to establish a variation in the feeling of distress, a frying-pan and fire kind of difference, which may be easily represented by the interested, as a reason for postponing or omitting the consideration of the mischief. As has been stated, most probably with accurate knowledge of the fact, by Mr. Sadler, it is as impossible that the return of spring should not bring with it a degree of comparative relief, as that it should not produce a single bud or blade of grass. By the time, therefore, that the present article has a chance of being before the public, the cry will very probably have been raised, that the distress is over. If so, all that can be said is, that it will be ready for the next. Long live

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the Sultan Mahmoud,' said the marrying owl, for there will be 'no want of ruined villages.' If our rural Sultans continue in their present mind, there will be no fear of wanting a distress to write about. Whether they will continue in that mind, is not so certain; for they, like other men, are held to be able to take

their fingers out of the fire when they feel that they are burnt. The only hope is, that they may make the discovery and act upon it, before their neighbours digits are roasted to a cinder.

One way of knowing whether there is a distress, is to find out whether proper steps are taken for making one. Suppose then, that the country, by conquest or otherwise, had fallen into the hands of rulers possessed of irresistible power, who for the gratification of political jealousy or some unassigned motive, were bent on raising up the greatest practicable quantity of distress within the limits of their dominion. And do not let it be supposed, that they are vulgar mischief-makers, whose ideas of evil are limited to brute and mechanical violence; but people of some cunning in their vocation, able to foresee the dangers connected with making themselves the direct distributors of suffering, and to calculate the vast advantage of persuading one man to inflict it on another.

Suppose then such rulers, acting by the instigation of the devil, as the lawyers say who know,-or any other instigation that may suit; and ask whether a committee in Pandemonium could favour them with a better recipe than this :

Sell A and his fellow-craftsmen a monopoly of some specified thing in which they deal; with an understanding, that all they gain, will be taken from somebody else twice, first by the taking an equal quantity of custom from some other trader, and secondly by taking from the consumer the difference between the dear article and the cheap. But sell, not give it; and let the price paid, be an engagement to support the government as being the fountain of the good. As the thing sold must have a name, call it protection. Do the same to B, C, D, and all the trades and letters in the alphabet; in fact keep open shop, where every man may buy a portion of the public loss, whose adherence is worth having. Let every body gain from every body; with an understanding that the losses of the latter every body, shall in each particular case be double the profits of the first. And let all this be done with pure paternal kindness; demanding at the same time filial respect and gratitude, for the favours on all conferred. Use every body as Izaak Walton does his frog,'as though you loved him.' See that there be none in the

land, to whom this claim for gratitude does not extend. Let every man have his share in the obligation; let there be no individual that has not the same cause for thankfulness, that his lot is cast under a government of so much benevolence and equal-handedness.

To be particular, for blessings in the heap are undervalued, -let the grace and favour be in a peculiar manner applied to

bread. It is the staff of life; it is what all human beings are equally concerned in; spare, then, no pains, that as regards this, the system may be complete. If your machine turns upon any thing like a representation principle, let it be settled that none shall be your representatives that do not deal in corn. The effect will be found prodigious, in producing the security desired. It is not matter of theory, but practice, that nothing binds a representative to a given course, like dealing in the thing on which he is to legislate. Make all your representatives corn-dealers; it is the sure way to make them know how to legislate on corn. In these ways you may do much ; but it is possible to do more, and a great genius never thinks any thing done, as long as there is any thing left to do.

Be clear upon taxation. Blunders on this head have been the cause of much unintentional diminution of evil, and the loss of much power for inflicting more. It is a perplexed subject; and if you are clear upon it, you may be quite sure your opponents will not, which is an advantage. Taxation is, or ought to be, in the main, the taking money from the people for your own use. It is therefore one of the pleasantest ways of causing a distress; but it requires to be well managed. There are three sorts of persons on whom the effects must be calculated, besides the enjoyer. First there are those out of whose pockets the tax is finally paid. That, you will say, is simple. Next, there are the operatives, or those who live by the demand for labour. And here you are to be aware,-though there is no use in saying much about it, and indeed you would not persuade many of the fact if you were to try,-that this is a class from which it is almost impossible to get money by taxation. You may gain from them during the period that intervenes between laying a tax, and their being able to recover the amount in wages from their employers; and there may even be a portion which they never recover, and which will consequently be gained from themselves. But by far the greatest part of the tax will be ultimately taken from their employers. You may therefore get up a portion of distress among the working classes in this way; but not so large a portion as might be supposed. And you must recollect that the employers, the people who have wherewith to pay, are your milch cows, and must not be pressed too hard. You will ever bear in mind, that your object is not to destroy people, but to keep up a distress. Another use too, which may be made of your knowledge upon this point, is that if you happen at any time to be particularly hard pushed, you may throw a few taxes to the operatives; on beer for instance,-they are fond of beer. The operatives will be as glad

of this, as if it was all given to them; but you will remember, that with the exception of a small portion which they pocket while the masters are bringing down their wages, the real bonus is to the masters, and to the growers of the stuff that beer is made of; who are a set much more able to be grateful than the other, and will be grateful to you accordingly. You will see how useful this may be made, if ever you should be in the situation of the monkey who is obliged to drop first one part of his load and then another, for the sake of escaping with what may finally be left.

But this is comparatively child's play. You are to remember that the great effects, the results in a broad style, are not to be produced by the pimping process of what can be taken from a man directly; but that the point of art, is so to lay your tax, that for every shilling taken directly, twenty shall be lost by the consequences. Voilà le sublime du métier. The first kind is a bare taking, which every novice is capable of; but this marks the artist, and leads the successful practitioner to distinction in his line. Note also, that in this way you get at that slippery class which evaded you before. You may in fact screw them to almost any extent you like. There is positively no limit to it, so long as there is a fragment of foreign trade which it is possible to cut off for the benefit of somebody at home; and the best of all is, that the operatives will never find you out. On the contrary, you may have any of them at your back you please, by talking to them of the protection you afford their own particular trade. They will be your best friends, your staunchest allies; only you must try to keep them in good humour about corn. They have all such a habit of using corn, that they are apt to forget that if they are to have their own particular monopoly, the corn growers must have theirs. But they will be accessible to reason on this head. 'Live and let 'live,'-'What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,'Beautifully compact system of government,'-' Up corn, up 'horn,' Land and trade must wax and wane together,'-and similar collections from the wisdom of antiquity, will be enough to keep them in the right road. But never forget that the protection of the land-owners is the principal point; because it is the most difficult. Every inch you lose in any other quarter, is always felt there; for it is manifestly impossible that protection there should long go on, if other people begin to grumble at the privation of their own. The ship-owners are a powerful race, and can make a great noise; but the difficulty is to keep them from breaking out into a cry for free trade in every thing but ships. Be very civil to the ship-owners; as long as they