consider what has become of the property of those degenerate nobles, who, in the various countries which the French have, overcome, had made themselves the agents of corruption and despotism.

Among the various details into which our author enters in support of his general criticisms on the conduct of the British. government in foreign affairs, he pays particular attention to the situation of Sicily. He appears, from long residence on the spot, to be better qualified for the task than most of our countrymen, by whom the government of Sicily has been most strangely overlooked. It is indeed of late only that it has become in any remarkable degree connected with our interests; but now that it forms so prominent an object in our system of policy, it is not a little to be regretted, that there is not, so far as we know, a book in the English language which conveys a tolerable idea of the internal government and political situation of that island. We are extremely happy that Mr Leckie has afforded us an opportunity of performing, though in a very imperfect manner, this important service; and we give him our sincere and hearty thanks for the aid which he has contributed to us in the outline which we shall here present. We are happy that we shall be able to quote his authority for almost every statement which we shall find it necessary to make.

The distribution of the lands which was originally made by Roger, the Norman conqueror of Sicily, about the time of our William the First, still remains; and forms, in reality, the basis on which the government stands. He divided the lands into three parts; one of which he assigned to himself, as the demesnes of the crown; another he divided among his nobles, on the common feudal conditions of military service; and the third was bestowed upon the church, in the endowment of bishoprics, abbeys, convents, &c.

That portion of the lands which is held as the demesnes of the crown, is under the immediate management of the towns there situated. Each town, according to the estimated revenue of the land within its district, pays to the king a certain annual sum, denominated the King's Patrimony, besides maintaining the police, roads, &c.; and a Board, denominated the Tribunal of Patrimony, is established at Palermo, which takes cognizance of the whole. The barons, holding their lands on feudal conditions, are not permitted to alienate them; and no sale takes place but with the express permission of the king. The lands of the church are of course a fixed and unchangeable possession; and the towns on the demesnial lands having only an administrative right, have no pretensions to any power of alienation. The whole

lands

lands of the island, therefore, are locked up from exchange, and from all the advantages which the free circulation of landed property is calculated to produce. Mr Leckie informs us, that the miseries attendant upon this universal entail had lately produced some futile attempts to relax the restrictions upon alienation,— attempts, however, which experience had proved to be inadequate; that the universal want of money among the owners of land, who are debarred from selling one part of it to improve the rest, perpetuates the desolation of the country. As the land of the nobles is equally debarred from division as from sale, the younger branches of the noble families, such of them at least as do not find a maintenance in the church, are in the most humiliating and wretched situation.

It is unnecessary to mention the king as part of the government of Sicily. The Gothic tribes who overran the Roman empire, everywhere carried with them their original notions of liberty; and the institution of a parliament universally attests the care they had for its preservation. The parliament of Sicily, however, is very circumscribed in its functions. It has no legislative power; it has no right to discuss the measures of government; and no means to influence its determinations, except by preferring sometimes a request in conjunction with a grant. The king, however, complies only as he judges proper. The sole business of the parliament is to grant taxes. These are always voted for three years. It is therefore periodically summoned, at the expiration of that time, to renew the old supplies, or to grant additional ones, if the exigencies of the government render them necessary; and as soon as this business is finished, the parliament is dismissed.

The Sicilian parliament is constituted in the following manner. It consists of three houses: the house of the nobles, or the baronial house; the ecclesiastical house; and the demesnial house, or that composed of deputies from the towns situated within the royal demesnes. The baronial house is composed of the great barons, or the heirs and possessors of those lands which Roger the Norman originally distributed among his chiefs. Every one of those barons on whose lands there is one town, has a seat in the house; and for every town on his own lands he has a vote. The ecclesiastical house consists of archbishops, bishops, and the heads of such monastic houses as possess lands. As these are, in general, the younger sons of noble families, the views of the ecclesiastical are never at variance with those of the baronial house. The deputies who compose the demesnial house, are not chosen by the people. They are merely nominated by the corpora tions of the royal towns which send them; and the members of

those

those corporations, instead of being elected by the people whom they govern, are annually appointed by the Tribunal of Patrimony at Palermo-that board erected by the king for the superintendance of his demesnial patrimony. The deputies whom the corporations choose, are generally their attornies at Palermo; and as one man may be the attorney of several corporations, it very often happens that one man is the representative of two or three towns at once. These men are almost always dependent upon the nobles; and the vote of the demesnial house thus follows that of the baronial as a thing of course.

By this constitution it appears, that the parliament of Sicily is, properly speaking, composed solely of the nobles; and the power of levying the taxes is placed entirely in their hands. The consequence is remarkable and instructive. They have uniformly exempted themselves from the burdens of the state, and imposed them on the rest of the community. The supplies are distinguished into certain portions, called donatives, each consisting of a defined sum, but not all equal in amount. Of these there are eighteen; thirteen of which are denominated ordinary, and five extraordinary. From the thirteen ordinary donatives the barons have voted themselves entirely exempt. The ecclesiastics, though not totally spared, approach to that happy point very nearly. They are entirely exempt, as well as the barons, from five of the ordinary, donatives; and, though they contribute to the remaining eight, it is only at the rate of a sixth, or rather less. The whole, therefore, of the ordinary donatives, with the trifling exception of about an eighteenth part, is laid upon the lower and middling classes of the people. Even with regard to the extraordinary donatives, the barons have preserved themselves almost equally free. They pay a small rate to four of them, which amounts to about a sixteenth only of the whole; and in this they include the quota of those who bear titles without possessing fiefs; so that their real share is considerably less. Of the extraordinary donatives, the parliamentary prelates contribute only to three, or nearly one nineteenth part of the whole. About one tenth, therefore, of the extraordinary donatives are borne by the nobles and the church; and the whole of these also, with the exception of this small proportion, is thrown upon the people. The nobles and the church possess two thirds of the lands of the kingdom; yet they bear between them only one eighteenth part of the ordinary donatives, and one tenth of the extraordinary. The people who have no landed property, the farmers, tradesmen and labourers, are loaded with the buiden, while these contribute only their pittance.

The mode in which these donatives are raised, is the next cir

cumstance

cumstance which requires consideration. The sum to be levied, after deducting the small contributions of the nobles and the church, is distributed among the different corporations of the kingdom. The great cities of Palermo and Messina are assessed, the one at one tenth, the other at two thirds of a tenth of the whole. The other corporations are assessed in the following manner. For ten of the donatives, an equal division is made between the towns on the demesnial, and those on the baronial lands, without any regard to the number or riches of the inhabitants. For the remainder, each order of corporations is assessed by a distinct rule, one according to the population, the other according to a valuation of property. A distribution entirely arbitrary is made with regard to the extraordinary donatives.

The particular sum which every corporation has to pay being thus fixed, an order is issued upon it for this purpose; and it may raise the sum demanded, on the people within its jurisdiction, in any form which it deems most expedient, only subject to the approbation of the Tribunal of Patrimony. It follows, that the revenue-laws are different and discordant in every two districts of the kingdom, and produce confusion and trouble without end. The general plan, however, upon which the business is conducted, is remarkable. The great tax is on bread, or flour. It is levied by the royal towns on the lands within their district, in the following manner. An account is taken of what proportion is under tillage, and what is in pasture. From this an estimate is made of the number of people employed; and from the number of people, an estimate is made of the bread which they annually consume. According to the last estimate, an assessment is levied upon the renter. In some places, the tax on bread is farmed out. The farmers of it go from house to house, says Mr Leckie, to examine the bread which the unfortunate husbandman makes; and he who should sell a loaf to an hungry tra veller, would subject himself to fine and imprisonment.' In regard to the towns, the tax is levied upon the flour. It pays at the gate of the town, as it returns from the mill. This is the principal source of revenue in Sicily. After the tax on the first of the necessaries of life, follow those on articles of secondary necessity. The imposts on cheese manufactured, and on the purchase and sale of cattle, are among the principal taxes of the

island.

Besides the eighteen donatives, an additional contribution has been raised for some years past, which has obtained the name of millioni. It is distributed in the usual manner among the corporations. Of this, however, the barons pay a certain small pro portion, which is about four hundred times less, by Mr Leckie's

account,

account, than the proportion according to which the small farms are assessed. But, what is more remarkable than all, the baron pays not even this small proportion. He assumes the privilege of taxing his vassals to raise the money; and taxes them in such a manner, that he levies five or six times the amount, and puts the surplus in his pocket. After all, these lords,' says Mr Leckie, are now five-and-twenty years in arrear to the crown.' Such is an outline of the system of internal taxation in the island of Sicily.

The taxes on exports and imports, which correspond to the duties of tonnage and poundage, so famous in our own history, are not subject to parliament. They are reckoned part of the hereditary and independent revenue of the crown, which the king may increase or diminish as he pleases. This, with the other branches of the king's revenue, is committed entirely to the Tribunal of Patrimony, who are thus constituted the absolute masters of trade. They make a most extraordinary use of their trust. They establish no general rules; they issue a special order, or permission, for every particular transaction. No article of the produce of the country, as corn, oil, cattle, &c. can be exported, even on paying the duties, without an express permission; and to procure this,' says Mr Leckie, the trader must bribe through thick and thin. Sometimes,' he adds, the right of exportation is allowed for a short time, and then suddenly stopped; and thus causes the ruin of those who had provided a quantity to ship off. The permission to export hemp is annually given as a privilege to an individual, who is chosen solely for the weight of his bribe; and any merchant who may have occasion to deal in it, must purchase leave to export it from the monopolizer of the Tribunal of Patrimony. The city of Palermo is supplied with wine and oil by a set of contractors, to whom the monopoly is secured. These contractors, by bribes to the Tribunal, annually obtain a prohibition of all exportation of those articles, till they are supplied with the quantity which they require; that is to say, till they have compelled the owners to sell to them at the price which suits their own cupidity. It is remarkable, that the duties on the importation of such commodities even as are the produce of the Sicilian soil, bear a very small proportion to the duties on the exportation of Sicilian produce. Even the reexportation of foreign commodities is treated with a similar lenity. It is the policy, therefore, of the Tribunal of Patrimony to encourage the agriculture of other countries, at the expense of the agriculture of their own. The raw produce of the soil,' says Mr Leckie, which is the only source of riches to Sicily, finds so many obstacles to exportation, from the difficulties which VOL. XIII. NO. 25.

N.

are