them, they pay it to the dead, or to those whom they regard as their own property. They had exhausted it on Frederic; and many now turned their whole practised talent for ridicule against Napoleon. Most of them, however, hated him with gloomy earnestness.'

Here we must pause. We are arrived at the crisis at which the work of regeneration is about to commence. A long and dreary night is before us; but in that night the German nation will recruit itself, and arise like a strong man refreshed. We have still to witness great sufferings; tragical destinies of the high and the lovely; we have still to see in some of its multiform details what it is to be a conquered people. Six years of such sights as these are before us; painted by those who lived, suffered, and acted in the midst of them.

The truth,' says Arndt, is beyond all power of description. We look back as upon a black dream, and are amazed at what we have seen and suffered, and can hardly believe it. Years must elapse before it can be described, nor will our grandchildren then believe what was the state of Germany in the years 1808, 9, 10, and 11. The base and the bad openly triumphed and domineered; the indolent and the cowardly served with hopeless and thoughtless obsequiousness; many of the good despaired; only a few noble spirits still hoped.'

But the hope of those few noble spirits, far different from the presumptuous and inane confidence which is the forerunner of destruction, contained within it the germ of deliverance. It rested not only on their own conscious energy and determination, but on experience of human things, and observation of the ways of Providence. They saw that their oppressor was sowing the dragon's teeth, and they knew that the harvest of armed men would not long be wanting: They saw that the chastisements of heaven were doing their work in the hearts of the German people, and they placed a just reliance on the result. This is admirably expressed by Steffens.

The more all prospect of external help vanished, the more threatening the aspect of things around us, the stronger became our internal confidence, our firm conviction that the Holy and the Good, the germs of which were springing up in Germany, could not be annihilated by the rude trampling of a conquering soldiery. In this view, I often ventured to express what was the guiding principle of all my thoughts so long as the French occupied the land, even in those days of despair. I maintained that the battle of Jena was the first victory over Napoleon,* for that it had destroyed the weaknesses which were his best allies, and had awakened a spirit which must in the end arise and conquer. The certainty that I should witness his fall never left me.'

* The converse of Börne's equally true paradox, that the battle of Jena was lost by Frederic the Great.

ART. IV.-The Progress of America, from the Discovery by Columbus to the year 1846. By John Macgregor, Secretary to the Board of Trade; author of Commercial Statistics, &c. &c. 2 vols. large 8vo. London: 1847.

THES

HESE volumes contain by far the most valuable store of facts which has ever been collected respecting the commercial and social history of the New Continent. It requires, indeed, some courage even to glance over the enormous mass of details, which these 3000 closely printed pages present to the eye. But a very brief examination dispels any doubt as to the serviceable and practical character of the work. Mr Macgregor is so thoroughly conversant with the art of dealing with statistical figures, and long habit has rendered him such a master of arrangement, that an inquirer even moderately familiar with such studies will find himself easily enabled to turn to the particular pigeon-hole in which the materials he is in search of, are deposited. The first volume embraces a general sketch of the history of discovery in the New Continent; its more recent political annals; the separate history and geography of British America, Brazil, and Spanish America; and the statistics of the two latter countries, together with those of Hayti and the foreign West Indies. In the second volume, Mr Macgregor returns to the statistics of the United States of North America; and this is by far the most complete part of the work, as the subject is more important, and the materials more trustworthy.

We do not understand on what principle the British dominions in America are left out, or rather treated of in part only; a sketch of their history and geography being given, while the statistics both of British North America and the West Indies are wholly omitted. Perhaps Mr Magregor was of opinion that these regions, forming part of the British empire, would be more properly included in compilations treating of our own domestic affairs. Perhaps he intended at some future period to supply the omission. If otherwise, we cannot but regret it; not only on account of the peculiar interest which those parts of America possess for the British reader, but also because Mr Macgregor is personally familiar with them. He illustrated their condition some years ago in his British America,' of which the statistical part is already antiquated, from the rapid changes which the subject-matter has undergone.

6

The enthusiasm,' says Mr Macgregor, which accompanied me in my youth to the British settlements in America, was first inspired by

the writings of Robertson, Charlevoix, and Raynal-by poring over Hakluyt and' Purchas, and the more recent collections of voyages and travels; and an ambition, entertained on perusing with delight the travels of a near relation, the late Sir Alexander Mackenzie, to the Arctic shores, and afterwards across the broadest part of America to the Pacific. The more I study the progress of the European settlements in America, the more thoroughly am I convinced of an infallible truth, that the history of navigation and commerce is the history of civilisation.'

To enthusiasm of this order, the history of American progress affords the most ample nourishment. The visions and speculations of the people of a new country are almost wholly of a material order. Wrestlers against nature, conquerors of the wilderness, their chief attention is concentrated on a struggle which, among inhabitants of the Old World like ourselves, is long ago over, and forgotten; and excites only the interest of romance. We have become settled in our present condition. There are many among us-nay, most of us, in some mood, have shared the feeling-who could be content to remain stationary, and to be neither more numerous, nor wealthier, nor more advanced in our command over nature, than we are at present, provided only the rest of the world could gain no advantage by slipping past us. Our cherished dreams are generally of other conquests and glories than these, and are not easily kindled by statistics; but statistics constitute the favourite excitement of the imagination of most Americans, and of Mr Macgregor no less. He evidently enjoys himself amidst the long array of figures, which prove the rapidity of past advance, and illustrate the laws of future development.

A very large part of his first volume, however, contains matter more attractive to ordinary readers, being composed of extracts and summaries of modern travels, after the fashion of Pinkerton and other compilers; and here Mr Macgregor has drawn very largely on American stores with which we were previously unacquainted. This is particularly the case in relation to Mexico, the old Internal Provinces,' so long unvisited, but now opened by the commercial and military enterprise of the Anglo-Americans-California, Oregon, and the interior of Brazil. Many of the sources from which he has derived this part of his collections are almost inaccessible to English readers in general.

As to the Spanish-American republics, Mr Macgregor appears to have been perplexed between the necessity of making his work as complete as possible, and the extremely worthless character of the materials with which in their case he has had to deal.

We place very little reliance on his political arithmetic respecting these regions, which, feebly disclosed to us in the personal narratives of a few occasional visitors from Europe and the United States, are sinking, for the most part, back into the darkness which concealed them from the eyes of the civilised world during the century before their emancipation; and are left as it were aside in the rapid movement of the rest of Christendom. As to these, the statistician has to elicit his results from a multitude of old, ill-arranged, and contradictory authorities; and it is not altogether to be wondered at, if, with that propensity, which certainly belongs to his class, and from which Mr Macgregor is not wholly free-to prefer collecting to analysing-to fling down cart-loads of figures on the desk, and trust to chance for the arrangement-his tables are often not only inaccurate, but sometimes inconsistent in their details.* These portions of the work, however, will be consulted more as matters of curiosity than utility; except the commercial returns from the various ports of South America, which appear to rest, for the most part, on better authority, and to be compiled with great labour from sources generally unattainable.

As matters of political interest, the chapters relating to the United States constitute the main value of the work. Mr Macgregor is well known in this country as the laborious and steady champion of the cause of free-trade. He has had a share, and no trifling one, in directing the movement of the last few years. To many minds, his figures have brought stronger conviction than all the eloquence enlisted on the same side, both in and out of Parliament. And now that the battle is won (or nearly won) in his own country, there is no more glorious victory left to be achieved, than that which must ultimately be won, over the party prejudices and class-interests which still govern the commercial legislation of the great republic. That legislation may not be worse than what still prevails in many European countries; but it stands in more striking contrast with the character and the other institutions of a people so shrewd and far-sighted in all matters concerning their interests. Nor has it arisen, as in less enlightened states, from the successful intrigues, or the arbitrary exercise of power, of

* E. g. Lima, at vol. i., p. 955, is made to contain 54,096 inhabitants, with an average of 2350 deaths annually. At p. 956 it is stated to have a population not exceeding 45,000, with 3500 interments in the year; a mortality at which even Mr Chadwick would stand aghast. We are ashamed to notice such trifles in a work of this magnitude, but we might have multiplied instances; and the hint may direct attention in some future revision. 2 A

VOL. LXXXVI. NO. CLXXIV.

a protected class of monopolists. Nothing is more clear, to any one who has studied the history summed up in Mr Macgregor's pages, than that the American system' of protection arose from political and not from commercial motives. We are ourselves the fathers of it. It began in a desire of just, but impolitic retaliation on England. Once implanted in the state-according to the uniform history of such evil growths-it struck its roots too deeply in popular feeling to be eradicated, so long as the close balance of parties, and the difficulty of conducting the govern ment, might render it an object with statesmen to bid for the votes of a protected class, strong in united self-interest rather than numbers.

In 1785, Mr Adams, then the United States' minister at the Court of St James's, proposed to place the navigation and trade between the dominions of Great Britain and all the territories of the United States upon a basis of complete reciprocity. The proposal was not only rejected, but he was given to understand that no other would be entertained.' Mr Adams, accordingly, advised his countrymen (in a letter to the Foreign Secretary, Mr Jay): You may depend upon it, the commerce of America 'will have no relief at present; nor, in my opinion, ever, until the United States shall have generally passed Navigation Acts. If this measure is not adopted, we shall be derided; and, the more we suffer, the more will our calamities be laughed at. My most earnest exhortations to the States, then, are, and ought to be, to lose no time in passing such acts.'

Advice to adopt a measure of retaliation, so justly provoked, however questionable its real policy might be, could hardly fail of being received with favour. The difficulties which the then constitution of the United States interposed in the way of unity of commercial legislation, prevented Mr Adams's suggestion from being acted on for a few years. But, in 1789, on the adoption of the new Federal constitution, Congress passed a navigation law, which has since led to reciprocity treaties between us and them. Unfortunately, pursuing the same policy, they enacted in the same year their first tariff-innocent, indeed, in comparison with its successors, but the commencement of a series of legislation most mischievous to the people of both countries.

It is therefore but too true, as Mr Macgregor shows, that 'the American government, at the outset of its independent existence, would have agreed to commence and maintain an inter'course which would have enabled England to enjoy every pos'sible advantage which could be derived from the United States, if they had remained colonies; and all those advantages, without either the perplexity or expense of governing them. The