which can only be exercised by an unmarried clergy. Nor did the Church act less wisely with respect to the rate of wages. The old Dutch East Indian Company, in order to keep up the price of their spices, burned a part of those which they gathered in abundant years. The Church did the same; she consumed a part of the labour of the workmen by the multitude of her religious festivals; and the labourer then sold his remaining working days more dearly than he would have sold the whole year of labour, if he had consented to work all the year: and in the pomp of these festivals were held out to him unexpensive enjoyments, which turned his mind from more costly pleasures. The Church had nicely calculated that the labourer should gain the most and expend the least that was possible. The Catholic economists assert, that the Reformation, by suppressing ecclesiastical celibacy, has rendered powerless the different clergy which it has created; and that, by suppressing festivals, it has brought into the market that superabundance of labour which is now mistaken for a redundancy of population; for, supposing, in addition to the fifty-two Sundays, fifty-two festivals in the year, the catholic workman would only carry five days of the week into the labour market; and, as the Protestant workman carries six, whatever nation became Protestant, did, in fact, increase the general amount of its labour by one fifth. The countries in which the Reformation prevailed, could, in consequence, pay smaller wages, and undersell their rivals; thus accumulating the capital with which they afterwards founded immense factories. The manufactories of Italy and Spain were crushed. Those of Belgium lost their ancient splendour; and those of France, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, fell again into a state of languor. Another cause both of ruin and of prosperity was added to this: the Protestant workmen, whose religion is so destitute of pleasure, sought for other and dearer amusements; he consumed more, and he laboured more. At first, indeed, his wages rose, while the real value of his labour fell; for he gave a larger portion of it each day for the money he received. This was an additional fatigue to him, and soon it was no longer a profitable one, for to sustain their competition with Protestant countries, Catholic manufacturing nations, in the end, gave up their festivals, and in respect of industry became Protestant. Thus the barriers which the Catholic church wisely established against the redundancy of labour, and its consequent depreciation, have been every where broken down. Every where the workman carries the same number of days' labour into the market, and every where there

is a superabundance of working hands and a depreciation of the price which they receive, which takes from Protestant countries the advantages they enjoyed, while they alone limited the rest of the workmen to the Sunday. "Suppress," say the writers whose views we are now stating, "the rest of the Sunday, and the condition of the workmen will become intolerable, and poortaxes will shortly absorb the whole revenue of the land."

The Catholic writers, therefore, look upon the working-classes as the representatives of the slaves of former times, and consider that they cannot retain their liberty-or, at least, cannot retain it upon such terms as to make it advantageous to them-except with the help of those institutions, by means of which they first acquired it. We will not go farther in our exposition of a system which appears to us more open to objections in its practical part, than in its theory. We have wished to give to our readers a sketch of the new views which are now taken by men of indisputable merit. They acknowledge frankly that the remedies they propose can scarcely by possibility be adopted in the present state of the world; and they hardly attempt to conceal the sadness of their forebodings as to the future destiny of society.

ART. IX.-Descent of the Danube, from Ratisbon to Vienna, during the Autumn of 1827, with anecdotes and recollections, historical and legendary, of the towns, castles, monasteries, &c. upon the banks of the river, and their inhabitants and proprietors, ancient and modern. By J. R. Planché, author of "Lays and Legends of the Rhine," "Oberon," an Opera, &c. 8vo. London. 1828.

2. A Steam Voyage down the Danube, with Sketches of Hungary, Wallachia, Servia, Turkey, &c. By Michael J. Quin, Author of "A Visit to Spain." Third edition, with additions. In two volumes. Post 8vo. London. 1836.

3. Austria and the Austrians. In two volumes. Post 8vo. London. 1837.

4. Three Voyages in the Black Sea to the coast of Circassia: including descriptions of the ports, and the importance of their trade, with sketches of the manners, customs, religion, &c. of the Circassians. By the Chev. Taitbout de Marigny, Consul of his Majesty the King of the Netherlands, at Odessa. 8vo. London. 1837.

5. Travels in Circassia, Krim Tartary, &c. including a Steam Voyage down the Danube, from Vienna to Constantinople, and round the Black Sea, in 1836. By Edmund Spencer, Esq. Author of "Sketches of Germany and the Germans," &c. In two volumes. 8vo. London. 1837.

6. Report on the Commerce of the Ports of New Russia, Moldavia, and Wallachia, made to the Russian Government, in 1835, in pursuance of an investigation, undertaken by order of Count Woronzow. Translated from the original, published at Odessa, by T. F. Triebner. Post 8vo. London. 1836.

7. A Geographical, Statistical, and Commercial Account of the Russian Ports of the Black Sea, the Sea of Azoph, and the Danube; also an official Report of the European Commerce of Russia, in 1835. From the German. With a map. 8vo. London. 1837.

WE publication of Mr. Spencer's work, our literature, or

E have now before us the materials, which, until the

indeed that of any other nation, had not before acquired, for a complete description of the Danube and its borders, from its fountains in the Black Forest to the Black Sea. We are relieved also, chiefly by Mr. Spencer's assistance, from the labour of consulting numerous volumes, in order to obtain some idea of the principal ports of the Euxine; of the "wild and wondrous" scenery which characterizes its shores; of the various tribes of the human family by which those shores are occupied; and, above all, of the revolutions which the miraculous agency of steam is preparing throughout that world of waters-a world hitherto almost as unknown as America was before the discoveries of Columbus.

Fifty years ago, the Turkish flag alone waved in the Bosphorus, the Euxine, and the Danube. Russia, by the treaty of Kainardji, obtained the right of navigating that sea in 1774. A similar privilege was conceded to other countries about thirty years afterwards; but it was frequently interrupted by war, or by the caprice of the Turkish government, until 1829, when by the arrangements concluded at the peace between Russia and the Porte, the passage through the Hellespont and Bosphorus was opened for ever to the mercantile flags of all nations. Nevertheless, down to a very late period-we might say so late as four years ago-nothing was known of the vast resources presented to commercial enterprize by the first river in Europe. The populous cities, towns, and villages, the dense forests, the teeming fields, along its borders of full sixteen hundred miles in

length, seemed to have been wrapped in a universal lethargy, and so they would doubtless have remained hybernating for centuries yet to come, had they not been touched by the wand of that enchanter, who is now traversing all lands and waters, and summoning them to new stages of existence, that as we rise with them, still, like new Alps, rise higher above our heads, baffling all conjecture as to the destinies to which they may ultimately lead.

It was curious to hear-as it was our fortune to have heard— some of the countless objections that were at first urged against the plans of those men, who introduced the steam-boat in the eastern waters of Europe. The Austrians were too poor, the Hungarians too lazy, the Servians too ignorant, the Turks too sedentary, the Wallachians too barbarous, the Greeks too contemptible, to afford it anything like adequate support; and the Moscovite, bearing with all his weight upon the failing energies of the Sultan, ambitious to grasp the whole power and monopolize all the commerce upon which he could lay his colossal arm, from the Baltic to the Dardanelles, would never, it was said, permit that element to contend against him, which, once set in motion, he could never hope to control.

The very first steamer that went down the Danube, set the question at rest as to the profits of the speculation. The eyes of the apathetic Austrian were opened, when he found it returning with a cargo that ensured him, upon a moderate calculation, seven per cent. upon his shares. Before the end of the first season, that seven was raised to ten. The Hungarian, who, when he first saw the tall sooty cylinder shooting its column of smoke into the air, and leaving a long track of mysterious cloud behind it, ran away into his hut or his forest as if he had beheld a demon, anticipated even the Austrian in leaping on the deck, and revelling in the luxurious rapidity with which he was conveyed, even against the current, from Moldava to Presburg. The Servian and the Wallachian, with a shrewdness for which they had before obtained no credit, saw at once that the new political existence which they had acquired, would soon be converted into real independence by the aid of that friendly visitor. The Russians speedily found out, that the game was of that sort at which two could play, and built a fleet of steam-boats of their own. Without the Birmingham engine, that despiser of protocols, Greece, though elevated diplomatically to the rank of a kingdom, would have already fallen back into anarchy. And as to the "sedentary" Turks, let Mr. Spencer be heard, immediately after he enters the "Crescent," an English steamer, on its way, not along the Turkish coast of the Danube, where the auto

maton had already ceased to be a novelty, but from Varna to Trebizond:

"The Crescent' was literally filled with passengers: the greater number Turks. The passion of these people for travelling in a steamboat, who at first would not enter one, is now so great, that it may almost be termed a mania; but this is in consonance with the general tenor of their character; when once excited by any new change, or popular reform, their enthusiasm knows no bounds. I have seen the steam-packet bureaus in Constantinople besieged by multitudes in search of tickets, having no more important business than the enjoyment of an agreeable trip; and never was a Margate steamer, in the height of the season, more densely crowded than those which leave Constantinople. You may, therefore, easily imagine what a lucrative speculation the navigation of these seas by steam has been for the proprietors. To a European it was not a little amusing to observe their movements on deck: each Turk, armed with his little carpet, provender-bag, and tchibouque, appeared the very picture of contentment."-vol. ii. p. 187-8.

So much for the Turk, whose modern antipathy to locomotion was represented to be as invincible as his propensity to emigration was at the Hegira! In the same "Crescent," moreover, were assembled Armenians, Greeks, and Jews, in their varied costumes, turbans, and caps, of both sexes, and of every age and tongue.

Surely," adds Mr. Spencer, "the world has never witnessed an invention better adapted than steam to connect the inhabitants of the earth by the same ties of religion, habits, customs, and manners; in one word, to effect a complete moral revolution. Its influence has been already felt by the benighted inhabitants of those beautiful countries on the banks of the Danube; and, if to this we add rail-roads, with their steam-carriages, which, from their convenience and celerity, must, in process of time, become universal, what may we not expect in a few years?

"Do we not already see the whole of the nations of the East, wherever the arms of Europe or her commerce have penetrated, beginning to evince a taste for European habits? They are partial to our clothes, furniture, and even fashions. In the Ottoman empire we find not only the Sultan, but his grandees, who only a few months since ate with their fingers, and sat upon the ground, now making use of tables, chairs, knives, forks, and spoons, and furnishing their apartments with costly looking-glasses, chiffoniers, secretaires, chests of drawers, &c. and I assure you, in a few years, we shall find that they will entirely conform to the customs and manners of Europe. At present I do not know a speculation more likely to prove profitable, than to send cargoes of furniture to Constantinople, and other large towns in Turkey and the East; and any of my mercantile readers who may act upon this hint, will remember with gratitude the writer of these letters.