gar, dried fruit, spices, &c. &c. would not this employ a mighty number of manufacturers, tradesinen, mechanics, &c. who cannot now exist in Ireland? Why cannot this peasantry do this in an equal degree with the peasantry of Britain? Look for an answer to the per centage agents and middlemen -or in other words to absenteeism. It is said that the depravity and tur-, bulence of the Irish peasantry prevent British capital from establishing manufactures, &c. in some of the most distressed parts of Ireland. This depravity and turbulence must be ascribed in a great degree to the per centage agents and middlemen. The latter divest the cultivators of capital, the land must then of necessity be divided into the smallest portions, and the cultivators must be poor, ignorant, idle, and without control. Look at an English estate. The conduet of the farmers is constantly under the eye and control of the landlord, or the agent who acts under his directions; the farmers are men of property and respectability, and the conduet of the remainder of the inhabitants is under their eye and control. What is the consequence? Our village population is kept in the very best order without a single salaried peace-officer-without a single individual's being regularly employed in preserving the peace. Look at the Irish estate of the Duke of Devonshire, which appears to be managed to a great extent after the English fashion. Upon it turbulence and outrage are said to be unknown. On this point, and with regard to the employment of so great a number of troops, absenteeism is still the great cause. We grant the tremendous authority of the Catholic Priests, but nevertheless, a landlord can let his land to whom he pleases; he can let it wholly to Frotestants, or to such Catholics ONLY as will be peaceable and orderly. We will here offer no comment on Mr M'Culloch's opinions touching the Poor Laws. We promised a Paper on these Laws some time since, and our promise is yet unperformed, solely because we think such topics possess the greatest interest when Parliament is assembled; it will not long remain unperformed. We have only space to touch very briefly on two other parts of the Philosopher's evidence. He states that government ought to establish schools in Ireland, to teach what-the leading principles of religion and morals ? No! To teach children between seven and thirteen the elementary principles which show how wages are determined, or on what the condition of the poor must depend!" Now, let Parliament look at the Combinations in Britain and Ireland, and it will discover that in both countries the labouring classes are perfectly familiar with these principles already. The weavers of England, the colliers of Scotland, and the gas-men of Ireland, -the most uncultivated "operatives, know perfectly, that if there be too many of them in their calling, it makes wages bad and work scarce. Several of the Combinations have made and enforced laws expressly to keep apprentices and others out of their callings-or, in other words, to prevent labour from becoming superabundant in these callings. The teach ing of such principles to the labouring population can have no other practical effect than Combination. What effect have the doctrines touching capital and labour had among the labouring classes? They have caused labour to make war upon capital. Every labouring man, we believe, always knows that, if his wages be bad, or if he cannot procure employment, there are too many labourers in his vocation'; but whether he knows this or not, it is a matter of no consequence to him unless the knowledge lead him to Combination. If he do not resort to this, he can apply no remedy to the evil so far as it affects his own occupa tion. We really think there is no necessity whatever for Parliament to establish schools to teach the working classes to form themselves into Com binations. With regard to teaching children at school, that if they marry too soon, they will do themselves great injury -this we think is equally unnecessary. Almost all our young people throughout our labouring population have this continually rung in their ears, from their infancy to the time of their marriage, by parents and every one else and they profit from it very little. People are impelled to marry at too early an age, by a passion which Political Économy can neither extinguish nor regulate-by a passion which laughs to scorn reason, instruction, and even Mr M'Culloch himself. The perfect heartlessness, and the gross ignorance of the influence of the more powerful and ennobling feelings of the human heart, which Mr M'Culloch manifests throughout his evidence, are alike surprising and repulsive. He places the Noble on a level with the Agent; he ascribes the effects of nature to the want of instruction; and he speaks as though human conduct could never be influenced by any other principle than that of pecuniary profit and loss. If philoso phy consist in stoicism he is no doubt a philosopher; and yet his stoicism has nothing stern, daring, and magRificent about it, to save it from being despicable. : If schools be established at all, let them be established to implant in the breasts of the children, not avaricious selfishness, but the kindness and benevolence of the New Testamentthe distinctions between moral right and wrong-the fear of the vengeance of Heaven for misconduct the conviction that they must at last be accountable for the deeds of their whole lives, not to a human priest, but to an omniscient and unerring Deity. Mr M'Culloch asserts that the morality of towns is to the full as good as the morality of the country, meaning by the term morals-honesty, and the intercourse between the sexes. What the case may be in Scotland, we know not, but so far as this regards England, it is totally at variance with truth, and a gross libel upon the village population. In our villages, the doors of the stable, cow-house, and hog-sty, are rarely locked during the night, the poultry is left at large, the barn is very slenderly secured, quantities of valuable property are scattered about the farmstead, wholly unprotected, the dwell. ings of the cottagers are protected in the slightest manner, there is no watchman, or police officer of any description, the whole of the villagers go to bed about the same hour, and are buried in the deepest sleep during the night, and yet a serious theft is seldom heard of. If horse-stealing have now reached a great height, be it remembered that it is chiefly carried on by the inhabitants of towns, or those who have been taught their villainy in towns. When this is contrasted with the state of things in towns, what credit is due to Mr M'Culloch ? If towns were not filled during the night with watchmen and police officers, and if property were not made as secure as bolts and bars can make it, what would then be town honesty? As matters are, weigh the knavery of towns against that of the country, and the latter will kick the beam. So much for honesty; and now for the intercourse between the sexes. Do our villages contain common prostitutes? Do the unmarried men, and part of the married ones, of these villages, constantly cohabit with such prostitutes, like those of towns? Certainly not. In our villages there is very little intercourse between the sexes, save that which is lawful; in each, there are perhaps a couple of married women of light character; these are constrained to be very circumspect in their conduct, and as to their acting like common women, it is out of the question. What the conduct is in towns of the greater part of the single men, of no small part of the married ones, of a large portion of the wives of the lower orders, and of far too large a portion of the female servants, touching this point, we need not say. It must be already known to those who need information on the matter to wit, our legislators. We are aware that what has been said by parishes, with regard to illegitimate children, has caused certain ignorant people ignorant to maintain that our village females are generally unchaste. The fact is, that in almost every case in which an illegitimate child is born in a village, the mother is the victim of seduction. In some cases, perhaps, the seducer has no great difficulty in triumphing, but we believe that in all he is compelled to give a solemn promise of marriage. He prevails by professing honourable love. Virtue is never sold for money. The girl has intercourse with none but the seducer, and after the child is born she goes again to service, and is generally very virtuous in her conduct afterwards. We defend not such women, but they are not to be confounded with those of towns, who, for the sake of money, or from sheer depravity, are common strumpets. In speaking of morals, drunkenness must not be forgotten. Do our husbandry labourers spend nearly every evening, and the chief part of two whole days in the week in addition, at the public-house, like the chief part of the labouring classes of towns? No, they do not expend in public-houses, one-tenth of the time and money which are expended in such places by the town working classes. The Philosopher asserts, that the inhabitants of towns are far more intelligent than those of the country. What has been the conduct of such of the inhabitants of towns as are of the same rank with the inhabitants of villages for many of the past years? What was this conduct in the days of Radicalism-in the days of Luddismwhile the Queen's frenzy raged-and what has it been during the days of Combination? The answer will suffice for the refutation of Mr M'Culloch. He is a perfect stranger to our towns, or a perfect stranger to our villages, or he made assertions to the committee which he knew to be groundless. Want of space here compels us, against our wishes, to close our remarks on his evidence. We, perhaps, should not have noticed it at all, had it not been for its tendency to prevent the absentee landlords of Ireland from doing their duty. That landlord who gives up the cultivators of his estatewho perhaps cannot leave it without actual starvation-into the hands of a per centage agent, or middleman, to be stripped of their little property, fed on potatoes, clothed with rags, and plunged into the lowest abyss of penury, and barbarism, -that landlord is morally guilty of a crime against his species and his country, which cannot be surpassed in enormity. Compared with him, what evils does the common robber, who dies on the gallows, inflict on individuals and society? He who defends this landlord, and prevents him from changing his conduct, is his accomplice in the crime. The feeling which now pervades the country, touching the conduct of the absentee landlords, will not, we trust, be stifled by the nonsense of Mr M'Culloch. We hope it will increase, until it force every one of them to take his estate under his own management. Many of them are now anxious to do their duty; if the remainder shelter themselves under the Philosopher, and persevere in their present course, we trust that at any rate they will not go unpunished. If the laws cannot reach men who consign their fellowcreatures, by hundreds and thousands, to extortion, oppression, want, and misery, the press and public opinion can reach them, and we hope that these will not be sparing in imprinting the brand, and inflicting the torture. THE BLOODY BUSINESS. From Mansie Wauch's Autobiography. Nay, never shake thy gory locks at me; It was on a fine summer morning, somewhere about four o'clock, when I waukened from my night's rest, and was about thinking to bestir mysell, that I heard the sound of voices in the kail-yard, stretching south frae our back windows. I listened and I lis tened-and I better listened and still the sound of the argle-bargleing became more distinct, now in a fleeching way, and now in harsh angry tones, as if some quarrelsome disagreement had ta'en place. I had na the comfort of my wife's company in this dilemmy; she being away, three days before, on the top of Tammy Trundle the carrier's cart, to Lauder, on a visit to her folks there; her mother, (my gudemother like,) having been for some time ill, with an income in her leg, which threatened to make a lamiter of her in her old age; the twa doctors there, nospeaking of the blacksmith, and sundry skeely old women, being able to mak naething of the business; so nane happened to be wi me in the room, saving wee Benjie, who was lying asleep at the back of the bed, with his little Kilmarnock on his head, as sound as a top. Nevertheless, I lookit for my claes; and, opening one half of the window shutter, I saw four young birkies, well dressed, indeed three of them customers of my ain, all belanging to the toun; twa of them young doctors; ane of them a writer's clerk; and the ither a grocer; the haill looking very fierce and fearsome, like turkey cocks; swaggering about with their hands and arms as if they had been the king's dragoons; and priming a pair of pistols, which ane of the surgeonts, a speerity, out-spoken lad, Maister Blister, was hadding in his grip. I jaloused at ance what they were after, being now a wee up to firearms; so I saw that skaith was to come o't; and that I wad be wanting in my duty on four heads,-first, as a Christian, second, as a man, third, as a subject, and fourth, as a father, if I withheld mysell frae the scene; nor lifted up my voice, however fruitlessly, against such crying iniquity, as the wanton letting out of human blood; sae furth I hastened, half dressed, with my grey stockings rolled up my thighs, over my corduroys, and my auld hat aboon my cowl, to the kail-yard of contention. I was just in the nick of time, and my presence checked the effusion of blood for a little-but wait a wee. So high and furious were at least three of the party, that I saw it was catching water in a sieve to waste words on them, knowing, as clearly as the sun serves the world, that interceding would be of no avail. Howsomever, I made a feint, and threatened to bowl away for a magistreet, if they wadna desist, and stop from their barbarous and bluidy purpose; but, i'fegs, I had better have keepit my counsel till it was asked for. " Tailor Mansie," quoth Maister Thomas Blister, with a furious cock of his eye; he was a queer Eirish birkie, come owre for his yedication; "since ye have ventured to thrust your nose,' said he, "where nobody invited ye, you must just stay," said he, "and abide by the consequences. This is an affair of honour," quoth he; "and if ye venture to stir one foot from the spot, och then," said he, "by the poker of St Patrick, but whisk through ye goes one of these leaden playthings, as sure as ye ever spoiled a coat, or cabbaged broad-cloth. Ye have now come out, ye observe, hark ye," said he, "and are art and part in the business; and, if one, or both, of the principals be killed, poor devils," said he, "we are all alike liable to take our trial before the Justiciary Court, hark ye; and, by the powers," said he, "I doubt not but, on proper considera tion, that they will allow us to get off mercifully, on this side of hanging, by a verdict of manslaughter." Od, I fund mysell immediately in a scrape; but how to get out of it baffled my gumption. It set me all a shivering; yet I thought that, come the warst when it wad, they surely wad not hang the faither of a helpless sma family, that had naething but his needle for their support, if I made a proper affidavy, about having tried to make peace between the youths. So, conscience being a brave supporter, I abode in silence, though not without many queer and qualmish thochts, and a pit-patting of the heart, no unco pleasant in the tholing. "Blood and wounds!" bawled Maister Thomas Blister, "it would be a disgrace for ever on the honourable profession of physic," egging on puir Maister Willy Magneesy, whose face was as white as double-bleached linen, "to make any apology for such an insult. You not fit to doctor a cat, you not fit to bleed a calf,-you not fit to poultice a pig, after three years' apprenticeship," said he, " and a winter with Doctor Monro? By the cupping glasses of Pocrates," said he, "and by the pistol of Gallon, but I would have caned him on the spot, if he had just let out half as much to me. Look ye, man," said he, "look ye, man, he is all shaking;" (this was a god's truth,) " he'll turn tail. At him like fire, Willy." Magneesy, though sadly frightened, looked a thocht brighter; and made a kind o' half stap forrit. "Say that ye'll ask my pardon once more, and if no," said the puir lad, with a voice broken and trembling, "then we must just shoot one another." " Devil a bit," answered the other, "devil a bit. No, sir; you must down on your bare knees, and beg ten thousand pardons for calling me out here, in a raw morning; or I'll have a shot at you, whether you will or no." "Will you stand that?" said Blister, with eyes like burning coals. " By the living jingo, and the holy poker, Magneesy, if you stand that if you stand that, I say, I stand no longer your second, but leave you to disgrace, and a caning. If he likes to shoot you like a dog, and not as a gentleman, then his will be done." "No, sir," replied Magneesy, with a quivering voice, which he tried in vain, puir fellow, to render warlike, (he had never been in the volunteers like me.) "Hand us the pistols then; and let us do or die!". "Spoken like a hero, and brother of the lancet: as little afraid at the sight of your own blood, as at that of other people;" said Blister. "Hand over the pistols." It was an awfu' business. Gude save us, such goings on in a christian land! While Mr Bloatsheet, the young writer, was in the act of doing what he was bid, I again, but to no purpose, endeavoured to slip in a word edgeways. Magneesy was in an awfu' case; if he had been already shot, he could not have looked mair clay and corpse-like; so I took a kind of whispering, while the stramash was drawing to a bloody conclusion, with Maister Harry Molasses, the fourth in the spree, who was standing behind Bloatsheet, with a large mahogany box under his arm, something in shape like that of a licensed packman, ganging about frae house to house, through the country-side, selling toys and trinkets; or niffering plaited ear-rings and sic like, wi' young lasses, for auld silver coins, or eracked tea-spoons. Oh!" answered he very composedly, as if it had been a cannister fu' of black-rappee, or blackguard, that he had just lifted down from his tapshelf, "it's just Doctor Blister's saws, whittles, and big knives, in case ony of their legs or arms be blawn away, that he may cut them off." Little wad have prevented me sinking down through the ground, had I not remembered, at the preceese moment, that I myself was a soldier, and liable, when the hour of danger threatened, to be called out, in marching-order, to the field of battle. But by this time the pistols were handed to the two infatuated young men, Mr Bloatsheet, as fierce as a hussar dragoon, and Magneesy as supple in the knees as if he was all on oiled hinges; so the next consideration was to get weel out of the way, the lookers-on running nearly as great a chance of being shot as the principals, they no being accustomed, like me, for instance, to the use of arms; on which account, I scouged mysell behind a big peartree; baith being to fire when Blister gied the word "Off!" I had hardly jouged into my hidyhole, when "crack-crack" played the pistols like lightning; and, as soon as I got my hands ta'en from my een, and looked about, wae's me, I saw Magneesy clap his hand to his brow, wheel round like a pierie, or a sheep seized wi the sturdie, and then play flap down on his braidside, breaking the necks of half a dozen cabbagestocks, three of which were afterwards clean lost, as we couldna pit them all into the pat at ae time. The haill o' us ran forrit, but foremost was Bloatsheet, who, seizing Magneesy by the hand, said, wi' a mournful face, " I hope you forgive me? only say this as long as you have breath; for I am off to Leith harbour in half a minute." The bluid was rinning over puir Magneesy's een, and drib, dribbling frae the neb o' his nose, so he was truly in a pitiful state; but he said with more strength than I thocht he could have mustered, "Yes, yes, fly for your life. I am dying without much pain-fly for your life, for I am a gone man!" Bloatsheet bounced through the bit kail-yard like a maukin, clamb ower the bit wa, and aff like mad; while Blister was feeling Magneesy's pulse with ane hand, and looking at his doctor's watch, which he had in the ither. "Do ye think that the puir lad will live, doctor?" said I till him. In He gave his head a wise shake, and only observed, "I dare'say, it will be a hanging business amang us. what direction do you think, Mansie, we should all take flight?" If I But I answered bravely, " Flee them that will, I'se flee nane. am ta'en prisoner, the town-officers maun take me frae my ain house; but, nevertheless, I trust the visibility of my innocence will be as plain as a pikestaff to the een of the fifteen!" "What then, Mansie, will we do with poor Magneesy? Give us your advice in need." "Let us carry him down to my ain bed," answered I; "I wad not desert a fellow-creature in his dying hour ! Help me down wi' him, and then flee the country as fast as you are able!" We immediately proceeded, and lifted the poor lad, whae had now dwammed away, upon our wife's handbarrow-Blister taking the feet, and me the oxters, whereby I got my waistcoat a' japanned with bluid; so, when we got him laid right, we proceeded to carry him between us down |