lock being a thing unknown in those regions. He placed chairs against the entrance, which he proceeded to blockade in the most effectual way, and then, with a sort of reckless desperation, drew them aside, as if resolved to await patiently the issue. About midnight, all remaining quiet, he returned to Charlotte, fully confident that there was no ground for apprehension.

Loud and echoing screams of jackalls* sounded from without, and grew more and more discordant; but the sleepers were insensible of their approach. The Collector dreamt his last dream! A shriek of agony, followed by a deep groan, aroused Charlotte, who, having sufficient presence of mind to preserve silence, crept out of the fatal chamber with her child, and sought the attendant, who swiftly placed her and the infant upon the pony, advising them to lose no time in endeavouring to reach Cawnpore, where they happily arrived in safety.

A scene to freeze the blood, a deed of darkness and of horror, terminated the life of the Collector of Cawnpore. His murderers, as if to glut themselves with crime, left not the house until the floor was strewed with blood and hair. They had dragged him from his bed by the ears, and butchered him piecemeal; at last severing his head, with the exception of a small piece of skin: one eye was bent into the forehead, the other swelled and projecting; the teeth set firmly, and the ghastly grin of convulsive emotion still playing on the mouth! Such was the end of a well-known and much-adinired civilian-a man whose talents were great, as were likewise his errors; and who, had his first marriage been as happy as his last, might have passed through a long life with reputation and tranquillity.

One word in conclusion; and it is not uncalled-for, since otherwise unkind thoughts may rest upon the faithful creature whose description furnished the details of the Collector's death. Our readers must be apprised that, in India, the domestics generally occupy separate huts, at some little distance from the house of their master. They sleep on the floor, covered over completely, head and ears, so that common sounds can scarcely reach them. Besides, in cases of attack, a native never spares his own countryman, lest he should be tempted by the offer of reward to betray him. Add to this, the utter uselessness of one person against numbers, and there needs no farther explanation of the non-interference of the honest servant.

ELIJAH'S INTERVIEW WITH GOD.

ON Horeb's rock the Prophet stood;

The Lord before him past.

A hurricane in angry mood

Swept by him strong and fast.
The forests fell before its force,
The rocks were shiver'd in its course;
God was not in the blast.

'Twas but the whirlwind of His breath
Announcing danger, wreck, and death.
It ceased. The air grew mute-a cloud
Came muffling up the sun;

When through the mountains deep and loud
An earthquake thunder'd on.

The frighted eagle sprang in air,

The wolf ran howling from his lair:

God was not in the stun,

'Twas but the rolling of His car,

The trampling of His steeds from far.

Natives enter tents and even houses frequently, when beat on plunder, under

jackall skins, imitating their wild cry.

'Twas still again, and Nature stood

And calm'd her ruffled frame;
When swift from Heaven a fiery flood
To earth devouring came.

Down to his depths the ocean fled,
The sickening sun look'd wan and dead;
Yet God fill'd not the flame.
'Twas but the terrors of His eye
That lighten'd through the troubled sky.

At last a voice all still and small
Rose sweetly on the ear,

Yet rose so clear and shrill, that all
In Heaven and earth might hear.
It spoke of peace, it spoke of love,
It spoke as angels speak above,
And God himself was here.
For, oh, it was a Father's voice,
That bade His trembling world rejoice.

ON THE CORN LAWs.*

To secure a low price is the first thing which those who have legislated on the trade in corn have always had in view. It cannot be denied, that this is a desirable object; though, in the pursuit of it, legislators have seldom failed to lose their way amidst their enactments on the price of provisions, on public granaries, and on the forestalling of corn; and all their vain attempts to make an article be sold cheap, which cost dear. It would, however, be losing time to combat errors which are abandoned. Every one now admits, that to force the agriculturist to sell at a low price, would be to prohibit production, and instead of causing cheapness, to create dearness and famine; that the supposed forestallers of corn are fair dealers, whose transactions maintain an equality of price in the different provinces of a country, and during the different seasons of the year; that a country is never so well or so cheaply supplied by public granaries as by private merchants; and, finally, that all those antiquated measures, by which governments once imagined the price of corn was to be kept down, had quite the contrary effect.

But it must not hence be inferred, that the low price of corn is not a national advantage. All men are consumers of corn, and all are benefited by abundance and cheapness. The only thing to be wished for is, that this low price should be permanent-that it should be remunerating; that is to say, that it should so amply reimburse the expenses of production, as to stimulate to its continuance. The price of corn becomes the basis of the rate of wages. When corn continues dear, every thing produced by human industry also increases in price; and the rise of corn must, after a certain time, bring about the ruin of all kinds of manufactures intended for exportation.

Yet England, which excels all other nations in her manufactures, her wealth, and her knowledge of political economy, has laws enacted

This article, which has been communicated to us by M. de Sismondi, will be included in his forthcoming new edition of his "Principes d'Economie Politique."

for the sole purpose of keeping up the price of corn. These laws, the abolition of which one half of the English people is now demanding, in a tone of bitter irritation against those who advocate their continuance, while the other half is defending them with cries of indignation against those who insist on their repeal-these laws, about which the English ministry is divided, and respecting which the parliament, consisting, as it does, chiefly of land-owners, is afraid to take a part which may excite violent convulsions, are the only measures of the kind at present worthy of examination.

England is a country abounding in great farms, where cultivation is accomplished, under the direction of speculating agriculturists, by labourers, whose wages are paid weekly in money. The farmer will cease to cultivate if he cannot cover the money thus laid out by the sale of his produce, almost the whole of which is brought to market. He will not continue a losing trade. If the corn sold does not reimburse the expense of raising it, the capital now employed in agriculture will be withdrawn, and the farms thrown back, in a wild state, on the hands of the owners. The landlords will thus be left without any income whatever. But this is no fault of the farmer's. He will discharge his labourers, who will starve (which is no fault of his either); and the production of corn must cease. Now the English land-owners and farmers all declare, with one voice, that from fifty to sixty shillings per quarter is scarcely a remunerating price, that it just defrays the expense of production, and that, if this price be lowered, they must give up cultivating corn.

On the other hand, the countries situated on the shores of the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean, and those which border on the banks of the great American rivers, could supply corn sufficient for the consumption of all England, at a price infinitely lower than this remunerating price. The best wheat, which is sold in England at fiftysix shillings per quarter, is now offered in the ports of Dantzic and Lubeck at seventeen shillings. During last spring the English ministry, alarmed at the prospect of the future harvest, applied to parliament for leave to introduce, in case of necessity, a limited quantity of corn, subject to a tax of ten shillings per quarter. Even this temporary measure encountered the most violent opposition on the part of the aristocracy, and the minister was obliged to exert all his power in order to carry it.

Half

Meanwhile a commercial crisis alarms the manufacturers. the population of England is employed in trade, and dependent on foreigners for the consumption of manufactured goods. One half of the artisans, instead of living on regular wages, earn nothing. The foreign market is lost, and manufactures are no longer exported. The poor experience all the evils of famine, and cannot, without indignation, learn that their scanty share of bread is sold to them at an exorbitant price, to secure more ample rentals to members of the aristocracy, who already receive from forty to eighty thousand pounds a year; that the corn, which is offered at every port for half the present price, is rejected; and that the distress, with which they are afflicted, is consequently the work of the rich. The great manufacturers declare that the overstocked condition of the markets is also the effect of the cornlaws, that the wealthy classes on the Continent cannot purchase Eng

lish merchandise, because the English do not buy their corn; and that the Continental manufacturers are more prosperous than they are, because, provisions being cheaper on the Continent, wages may there be lower, and consequently the expenses of the workmanship less. Thus the two halves of the nation are engaged, one against the other, in a controversy on which not only profit but existence depends; and the ministry, besides being perplexed as to which way they shall decide, know not how to obtain the co-operation of a parliament essentially composed of land-owners, who are at once judges and parties in

the cause.

To open the market for foreign corn would probably ruin the English land-owners, and render farming a profitless occupation. This would be a great evil, no doubt, but it would be no injustice. The landowners are only entitled to receive, for the use of the soil, a compensation equivalent to the service they render to society in lending their land for cultivation. If this service be of no value, they have nothing to expect. To force upon others a service which is not wanted, and then to exact their own price for that service, is nothing short of robbery. Society will, doubtless, be seriously impoverished, if the owners of the land lose their revenues; but it will be no less impoverished if other people's incomes be taken from them to fill the pockets of the landlords.

The land-owners, however, are not the only people interested in agriculture. The case of the farmers and labourers who live on the land they cultivate, also deserves our attention. The farmers will not be slow in proceeding to withdraw their capital, which may, at least to a certain extent, be employed in some other kind of industry; or they will emigrate to America, where their skill may be turned to advantage; for they are not chained to their land or their profession; but the country will feel their loss.

But what is to become of the labourers? In spite of the inconceivable diminution of hands employed in agricultural labour by the system of great farms, there are still perhaps in England six hundred thousand families paid from day to day for labouring in the fields. This labour will cease. The land will be converted into pasture, the agriculturists will confine themselves to rearing cattle,—a business which will not require one tenth part of the hands employed in the production of corn. What then is to become of the thousands of families who will thus be thrown out of employment? Even supposing them fit for some other kind of business, is there at present any prospect of an opening for them? Agriculture, in England, it is true, employs somewhat fewer hands than all the other occupations taken together; while in France it employs four times as many as all other occupations. But still, how could any single branch of industry in England, or indeed all the branches put together, afford employment to the agricultural labourers?

Would any government voluntarily expose half the population of a country to such a calamity? or, if it did, could it withstand the explosion of despair which must inevitably follow? Would any advantage be obtained by those for whom the agriculturists might thus be sacrificed? These agriculturists are the nearest and most certain customers for English manufactures; and the loss of their consumption

would prove a more fatal blow to English industry, than the closing of one of the great foreign markets.

I am aware that I shall be accused of pushing matters to an extremity; and I hear an economist of the new school observe that corn cannot be grown without a remunerating price, in the countries which are to supply England, any more than in England itself;that if the corn-lands of Poland do not return the profit which may be gained in any other business, the Polish farmers will employ their capitals in another way; that the lands No. 4, No. 5, and No. 6 will cease to be cultivated in Poland, as in England; whilst the lands No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3, will continue to be cultivated in England, since they are cultivated in Poland.

Political economists who argue thus, and who imagine that with their eight numbers they can designate, not only every degree of fertility, but all the causes which have an influence on agricultural produce, have never reflected on the different kinds of labour, and are not aware that in cultivation by bondsn.en the labour which produces corn has been paid, once for all, in anticipation, that it thenceforward continues to be due from one generation to another, so that the landowner who sells his grain, never finds that it is produced at too dear a rate, or that he cannot sell it at a price sufficient to induce him to continue to grow it. He raises corn by the application of a few hundred stripes among his serfs, and, at whatever price he may sell it, he finds himself sufficiently remunerated for what it cost him.

In my "Nouveaux Principes d'Economie Politique," I have explained how the landed estates in all the immense countries which are cultivated by compulsory labour, and which include the most fertile provinces of Southern Russia, and many other uncivilized regions, are divided into two parts,-one for the serfs, the other for the lord. The portion allotted to the serfs maintains the population; but the whole produce of the share retained by the owner of the land is exported. It is this produce which now inundates the markets of Europe, and which may be sold at any price; for the corn of Poland and the Ukraine, like that of Egypt and Barbary, costs those who send it to market nothing.

In countries where forced labour prevails, the serf scarcely ever troubles himself with a moment's inquiry respecting the market-price of the articles he produces. He does not cultivate the piece of ground given him by the lord of the soil, as a substitute for wages, with the intention of selling the fruits of his labour; he only looks to a bare existence upon it. He may in a few instances barter with his produce, but he never buys or sells any thing. He does not make payments in money, but in labour. He eats his own corn. cattle he rears give him a supply of milk and butcher-meat; with their hides he makes his boots or shoes, and he clothes himself with the fleece of his little flock. The wood on the land supplies him with timber to build a house, and to make his furniture and tools. His poverty does not so much consist in the want of necessa

The

See Sismondi's" Nouveaux Principes d'Economie Politique,” (tom. 1, liv. iii, c. vi.) which contains an explanation of the mode of cultivation by corvées, or compulsory labour, which throughout the least civilized part of Europe, equal to one third of its extent, is substituted for the farming system.