fuch a number of palpable blunders, as to produce a very uncom fortable feeling of diftruft and infecurity with regard to the accuracy of almost every doubtful and important paffage. In the very first page that is fo printed (vol. I. p. 367.) befides feveral faults of orthography, we have diforders for difcordes; and a little farther on, haftelie' for hartilie. In p. 411, we have for flowe? for forflowe;' and in p. 431, we have the fol lowing unintelligible gibberish. She abafed the congregation without confent of the counfaile, to the gref and impoverishment of their commonwealth. Now, we are almost certain that the editor has here mistaken the word coigne,' or perhaps cunzie,' for the abridgement of congregation; and written gref and' for grete;'-the charge being, that fhe, i. e. the Queen Regent, debafed the current coin of the kingdom of her own authority, to the great impoverishment of the commonwealth. If Mr Scott will condefcend to write notes to old state papers, we wish he would condefcend to acquire the accuracy which contitutes the whole merit of that humble fpecies of writing. We have here plenty of heraldic and genealogical learning; but little of a proper hiftorical nature that is remarkable for correctness; and we have met with a great number of mistakes, which might have been prevented by a moderate degree of refearch in the right places. Newhaven,' for inftance, the place from which the Trench army embarked for Scotland, he tells us, was Nieuport in French Flanders. Now, though it be true that these two names fuggeft the fame idea to an English ear, ftill it is equally true, that the place which the English then called Newhaven, was not Nicuport in French Flanders, but Havre de Grace in Normandy. This mistake is repeated, vol. I. 494, 506, 516. And again, in vol. II. 50, Mr Scott fays, that Sir Edward Horfey diftinguifhed himfelf at the fiege of Nieuport in 1563. We never heard of the age of that town in 1563. It is likely (for we have not the book before us) that Hollinfhed, whom Mr Scott quotes, calls it Newhaven; but, if he is at the pains to inquire, he will find that the hiftorian fpeaks of the well known fiege of Havre in that year. Knox, in one of his letters, uses the expression, my mother Elizabeth Bowis; and f,m this, Mr Scott thinks he has discovered the name of Knox's mother. I do not know (says he, with much simplicity) that the name of our reformer's mother is to be found elsewhere. His father resided at Gifford,' &c. (vol. I. p. 456, and repeated 479, 509.) But Mr Scott should have recollected,' that it is common for married people to speak of their wife's mother as their own: and, that Knox's first wife's name was Bowes, and her mother's name, E Zabeth zabeth Bowes, assuredly was no secret. (see his History, p. 93, 260.) Mr Scott blunders again, when he says (vol. I. 455.) this celebrated reformer, in his passage from Geneva to Scotland, had had an interview with Cecil, and was well acquainted with his views.' So far from this, Knox had requested, but could not obtain, an interview with Cecil, or even liberty to pass through' England; and therefore sailed directly from Dieppe to Leith. (Hist. p. 205-207.) He had indeed corresponded with that? statesman, and was the principal instrument of establishing that in-. tercourse which produced the sending down of Sadler to Berwick. Mr Scott says, that Sir James Crofts (whom Sadler associated with him in the first negotiation with the Scotish regent) was attainted by Queen Mary, but restored by Queen Elizabeth,' (vol. I. 387.) He was indeed ad an.condemned by Queen Mary, for joining in the insurrection not Sir Thomas Wyatt; but obtained a pardon; and was afte, harus restored to Queen Mary's favour: for, in 1557, he was se** to the Borders with a military command, and entrusted with the management of important affairs in the war with Scotland at that time. (See Strype's Memorials of the Reformation, vol. III. p. 266-275.) It appears from some of the letters, wat a ler and Crofts had expressed some dissatisfaction with. the conduct of Henry Balpaves of Halhill: upon this Mr Scott says in a at The objection of Queen Elizabeth's agents seems to have rea to the Calvinistical, and, possibly, fepublican principles of Bainaves,' (vol. I. 515.); and again-Balnaves and Knox, as appears from various passages in these letters, do not appear to have been highly in the confidence of Sadler at this moment, probably owing to their republican tenets, (p. 548.) Now, is it possible that Mr Scott should have indulged himseit in such guessing, if he had known that we have in print (Keith, App. p. 43.) Balnaves's letter of defence, from which it appears, that the charges laid against him were, that he had been dilatory in sending information to Sadler of the affairs of the Congregation; that he was too importunate in craving supply; not sufficiently close in concealing what had been sent; and that he had bestowed on private persons part of the money intended for the common cause?from all of which charges he exculpated himself to the sati faction of Sadler and Crofts. These are charges very different from Calvinistical or Republican principles! There have been times, indeed, in which the name of republican was a sufficient stigma, and used as a term of reprobation to all who might encertain sentiments respecting government more free than were acceptable to their rulers; and Mr Scott might suppose that that was the custom in hose days. But perhaps it will be difficult for Mr Scott t w, that Eainaves, or any of the Scotish ish reformers, advanced principles more republican than he has published in Cecil's Memorial, (vol. I. p. 377.) As to Calvinistical principles, if this was an offence or bugbear to Elizabeth and her ministers, she ought not to have assisted the Scotish reformers, who were all of this stamp and she was particularly ill advised in sending an army to relieve, from the French forces, the jhabitants of Zeith, who, if we may believe Mr Scott, have, from the year 1543 down to the present day, been eager Calvinists, or, as Sadler then called them, good Christians, (see vol. I. p. 242.) Mr Scott is not more happy in accounting for the prejudice entertained by Elizabeth, and some of her courtiers, against the two preachers Knox and Goodman, which he imputes also to Geneva discipline and republican principles, (p. 532.) The unpardonable offence, however, which Knox had committed, was his publishing The Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous Re giment of Women. This appears, not only from his History, (p. 206-210.), but also from Sir Nicolas Throckmorton's despatches, in which he endeavours to persuade Elizabeth to pass. over this offence; and, in recommending Alexander Whitlaw,. having mentioned that he was a friend of Knox, he takes care to add, that he was sory for his boke rashly writen,' (Forbes, I. 119, 129, 149.) Christopher Goodman had also written a book, in which he adopted Knox's opinion respecting female government, which, as he was an Englishman, gave still greater offence to Queen Elizabeth. On the whole, though there are many very curious things in this publication, and though it appears in a very beautiful and even superb form, we are constrained to say, that it is deficient in far more essential qualities. For our own parts, though we admire handsome books as much as our neighbours, we would willingly give up two inches of the margin, to have the text arranged in a more-business-like, and printed in a more scholar-like manner; and, since the thing cannot now be helped otherwise, sl be glad to exchange the fine plates at the beginning of the volumes, for a full table of errata at the end. เก di ART. XI.^^ Disquisitions on Population. By Robert Acklom Ingram, B. D. 1809. Reply to the Essay on Population by the Rev. T. R. Malthus: Eshould scarcely have thought it worth while to take any notice of these disquisition, which consist, in a great de gree, s gree, of strange misapprehensions and misrepresentations of the doctrines they profess to discuss, if we had not observed, among many persons, besides Mr Ingram and his anonymous coadjutor, an ignorance of the principles of population, which seems to us nearly unaccountable, considering the careful and detailed manner in which the subject has been lately explained. The excel lent work of Mr Malthus, though it has certainly produced z great and salutary impression on the public mind, appears to us to have been much more generally talked of than read, and more generally read than understood. To those who have gone over it with attention, without being able to understand it, we cannot flatter ourselves, that the few observations which we are about to make will be of much use; but there is a class of readers for whom we cannot help feeling considerable affection, who are tempted, we believe, occasionally to turn over our transitory pages, when they would shrink from the perusal of a bound quarto, two massive octavos. That these judicious persons are in nowite deterred from discussing the merits of the said quartos and octavos merely because they have not read them, every day's expe rience sufficiently proves; and, indeed, it would be a cruel pr ventive check on conversation, to insist upon such previous drud gery; but still, if we may judge of the feelings of others from our own under similar circumstances, it is, upon the whole, an advantage to a man to understand something about the subject on which he is going to deliver his opinion. It is a great gratifica tion to us to think, that we have afforded this advantage to our friends, on many important subjects, in morals, politics, and the various branches of science; and, we would fain hope, that we may now render them a small service of the same kind, on the no less important subject of population, At all events, we can promise them, that what we are going to say will, in one respet at least, have a much stronger claim on their attention than the work of Mr Malthus, that of brevity. This celebrated work may be said to consist of two separate parts. In the first place, of some very important statements in point of fact, the truth of which neither is nor can be denied, though the different parts of the statement had never before bec: brought together, nor the nature of their connexion pointed out a and, in the second place, af certait reasonings and practical inferences deduced from these facts. Now, the first part, or the mere statement of indisputable facts, forms by far the large est and the most important part of the work; and, strange as it must appear to every one who is capable of forming an opinion on the subject, it is to this part that the most violent objections have been made. It is for having stated, with inimitable caution › and and accuracy, facts which cannot possibly be called in question, that Mr Malthus has been assailed with such clamorous reproaches, --that he has been accused of sophistry, of presumption, of blasphemy, inhumanity, and love of vice and corruption. Against such charges, we know that he would disdain to be defended; nor would our compassion for those who have advanced them have been quite strong enough to make us undertake the hopeful task of undeceiving them, if their errors did not appear to originate in a few fundamental mistakes, which may probably obstruct the reception of important truths in more dispassionate minds. The radical proposition, then, which we wish to impress upon our readers is, that throughout the greater part of his invaluable work, Mr Malthus is occupied merely with the statement, detail and illustration, of a few very important and radical facts, the truth and certainty of which, none of his detractors have been bold enough to call in question; and that, disclaining all preten sions to discovery, he has aimed only at fixing the attention of mankind on the true character of certain phenomena that have alwways been before their eyes. To satisfy the most suspicious of our readers, how very innocent, and, at the same time, how.very important this task was, we shall now endeavour to give such a short abstract of the fundamental principles of the work, as, we fatter ourselves, will occasion no perplexity to persons of the most slender capacity. In the first book of the Wealth of Nations, Dr Smith, when explaining the causes which proportion the reward of labour to the extent of the funds for its support, justly observes, It is in * this manner that the demand for men, like that for any other commodity, necessarily regulates the production of men ;-quickens it, when it goes on too slowly; and stops it, when it advances too fast. It is this demand which regulates and determines the state of population in all the different countries of the world-in North America, in Europe and in China; which renders it rapidly progressive in the first, slow and gradual in the second, and altoge ther stationary in the last.' This passage of Dr Smith, which we think we have heard first suggested to Mr Malthus the idea of his essay, is illustrated and confirmed by a crowd of indisputable facts, to whatever country on the globe our view may be directed. In taking a survey of this kind, it will speedily be discovered to be a fact that admits of no dispute, that the rate of population is by no means the same in all the countries of the world,—and that, there is a notable difference in its progress, not only in North Ame pica, for instance, compared with Europe or Asia in general, but a similar difference in the different states of Europe, at the same per |