panying their wills with a legacy of precepts to posterity, or at least with a handsome anthology of rhimes. This paradise of printers, we are proud to think, is already pretty nearly realized in this happy country. The usurpation of literary rank is become so very universal, that it will shortly be as uncommon not to have written a book, as not to have been taught to write. Not a merchant's clerk now-a-days can cross the seas as supercargo, or exchange his Birmingham razors for silver shaving-basins at Buenos Ayres, but he must print, under the name of a voyage, his captain's-log-bock, and his own accounts of sales, in order to add the -wages of authorship to the profits of his venture. Our inland itinerant traders, we have no doubt, will soon follow the thrifty example; and we shall be entertained with Travels for Orders by every accomplished rider and well-accustomed hawker in Great Britain.

In general, however, we would advise these mercantile literati to digest the plan of their intended publications before they set out. Let them buy and transcribe as much as they please of the books of their predecessors and precursors; but let them compare record with reality, and note carefully the negligences of former observation, and the gnawings of intervening time. Many useful things can be seen and ascertained on the spot, if a man knows what he has to look for; but if, after his return, he first -resolves and attempts to describe them, he will often find himself compelled to trust to uncertain recollections, or to rely on suspicious testimony. There is a palpable want of this preliminary preparation in the work before us. It has been put together, as the author tells us in his first paragragh, out of letters written to his family during a seven years residence at Stabroek, but not destined for publication, until he fell in with the literary societies of Norwich, where, no doubt, a book is the necessary passport to distinction. To supply the defects of personal inquiry, and the incorrectness of cursory observation, Dr Bancroft and other writers have been conscientiously consulted; and thus a geographic medley has originated, full rather of long than of lively descriptions, and evincing less solidity of judgment than industry in compilation.

Mr Bolingbroke's title is a misnomer. His voyage to the Demerary is despatched in the first chapter; and records little more than his nauseous sickness at sea, his double list of wearing apparel, and his borrowed dislike of the navigation-act.

A second chapter is more lively, and more instructive. The sketch of Stabroek is new, picturesque, busy, and comprehensive; the cruciform houses,-the many-coloured inhabitants, the merchants superintending in phactons, and under umbrellas, their

shipments

shipments of cotton, sugar and tobacco,-the silently laborious negroes,-are extraordinary delineations. The estates along the Demerary, which are all intersected by canals, like Dutch meadow-land, and possess the inestimable advantage of transporting their produce by water to the mill and to the haven, form a species of property quite peculiar to Guiana. Mr Bolingbroke thinks, and the observation is certainly important, that sugar may be cultivated with advantage in this district, when its depreciation will no longer repay to the island-planter the cost of cultivation. He infers that, in the long run, the Caribbee islands will be progressively abandoned for continental property; and recommends to Government rather to cede, at a peace, the insular than the mainland settlements. Mr Bolingbroke returns to this topic many times in the course of his work, and every time with arguments more and more plausible. His statement, however, in the full extent which he gives it, we conceive to be very clearly erroneous. Considered merely with regard to their fertility and physical properties, there can be no doubt, we believe, that the settlements on the mainland are more valuable than those in our islands. But even for the nation at large, it is something to have the immediate proprietors of the estates British-born subjects, rather than Dutchmen or mongrels; and the hardship and injustice of subjecting the properties of our island-planters to the dominion of an alien government, is so glaring, that we are persuaded no administration would venture upon such a transference, even if the political weight of the old West India interest was much smaller than it is.

The third chapter continues to delineate, with interesting detail, the various classes of inhabitants at Stabroek, and to paint the localities of their household manners. There are no inns; but every merchant's house is at all times open, both to the planters who sell him their produce, and to the Europeans who receive it. The guests sleep in hammocks, which are slung in requisite numbers in the same room which had served for the repast. The floors are scrubbed with lemons; and the mosquitoes are expelled by the smoke of segars. Soup is served at every breakfast, and even fish. At dinner, Madeira wine is drunk during the meal, and porter brought between the courses as a luxury. Sangaree, or negus, is the favourite beverage during the subsequent inhalation of tobacco fumes. The fruits are various and delicious; shaddocks, guavas, and avoiras, are severally praised. Pine-apples are weeded up, unless in the hedge-rows, and given to the pigs. Every gentleman has his appropriate concubine; mestee women are preferred, and inconstancy is very rare. There is no established theatre; but privateering players cruise from island to

419

island in the West Indies, and occasionally pass three months at Stabroek. The price of admission was two dollars for each representation; the actors were six in number, and gave only select scenes of those plays of Shakespeare which are too full of

characters.

The commodities of Europe are distributed among the plantations by hucksters, or, as we say, hawkers; who buy of the merchant and carry to the consumer the various wares in demand. These itinerant store-keepers discharge in Guiana the same important services, which, during the feudal ages, the Jew pedlars performed in Europe. Every village, and every detached plantation, rejoiced in their arrival. They afforded the rare opportu nity of seeing fashions, and of purchasing accommodations; yet the dearness and frailty of their merchandize commonly supplied, after their departure, motives for penitence and topics of abuse to their customers.

Mr Bolingbroke describes the Dutch and English languages as strangely mixed in Guiana. The talkee-talkee, or negro jargon, is now chiefly English, deprived of its inflections, and softened by vowel terminations; yet, it contains many Dutch and many African words. In a higher class of society, Dutch and English are still mingled, but with less corruption or alteration. The Essequibo Gazette frequently contains macaronic advertisements, in which phrases alternately occur in either dialect. The low Dutch is so rapidly losing ground in Europe, and has asserted, as a literary language, so little claim to distinction, that its continuance and propagation can only add new embarrassments to commercial and social intercourse. Surely the British Government might allowably do something towards accelerating the extinction of this barbarous idiom, by causing the Dutch laws to be compiled and translated, and then ordering justice to be ad ministered in the English tongue.

The fourth chapter describes and criticizes the form of government, which is awkwardly republican, and is too much moulded on the institutions formerly prevalent in the United Provinces in Europe. Every shire is administered by six keizers, and a governor, who has a casting vote. Their seats are for life, like those of a court of aldermen in England. They have a power of taxation for all purposes of internal improvement ;-they regulate the police of roads and canals;-they appoint the subordinate administrators of justice, and exercise many functions which in England are peculiar to the House of Commons. But the body of keizers is indissoluble. When a member drops off by death, the issues a notice for electing another. Every proprietor of twentyfive negroes, whether merchant or land-owner, has a vote, which governor

he

he transmits in writing, under seal, to one of the public offices: There is at present a competition between the old Dutch landed interest and the new English colonists, who adhere together at elections. The English party at Stabroek have succeeded in obtaining a majority in the college of keizers.

The fiscal, or attorney-general, is a legal officer whose powers appear excessive and ill digested. Mr Bolingbroke suggests giving to him for assessor an English barrister. A similar institution has been tried with success in Ireland. But we are inclined to doubt, whether the learning and experience to be derived from practice in the English courts of law, would be found very applicable to the exigencies of a Dutch colony of slave owners in a tropical region.

The fifth is one of the most important chapters in the book. It gives an accurate detail of the improved treatment of negroes on the plantations at Reynestein and elsewhere. It defends the slave trade, however, with a perverse, and, we think, with an uncandid ingenuity. The author begins, indeed, by allowing that piracy and kidnapping are reprehensible; and that free negroes ought not to be seized in Africa, and sold in America ;—a concession of some moment. But he seems persuaded, that the mass of transported slaves were slaves at home, and slaves of harsher masters than those to whom they are transferred in the West Indies. He endeavours to show, that, after the first sale by auction, a negro, in the Dutch colonies, is no longer a slave, but only a vassal, legally ascribed to the soil, and secure of a maintenance in sickness and old age; and then he discovers, that vassalage is a necessary step in the progress of new countries, where he thinks that agriculture could not go on, unless the planter provided, in large quantities, food, shelter, and clothing for his peasants; there being no stationary shops, or inns, at which such things can be had. He admits that there is room for considerable improvement in the system of vassalage; but he contends, that the system itself is for the present indispensable. Now, without pretending to expose all these fallacies in detail, we may be permitted just to hint, that Mr Bolingbroke vastly underrates the proportion of slaves born free, and forced, by foul means, into an interminable exile and servitude. The greater the number of such captives, the greater the admitted injustice and the misery occasioned by the slave trade. We presume, too, that Mr Bolingbroke softens, in description, the habitual treatment of black vassals, as he wishes to call them, even in the Dutch colonies; or judges, indeed, of their general condition from that of the labourers on his friend's plantation at Reynestein, which he holds cut, at the same time, as a rare instance of humanity and

wise management. It is obvious, however, that if such management were common, there would be no need of importation; and that the more rare and meritorious it is, the more exceptionable must be the general condition of the negroes.. Even from Mr Bolingbroke's own documents, it appears that the treatment of slaves has everywhere improved (see especially the documents at p. 399, &c.) with the increased value of the commodity; and therefore it follows, that the abolition of the slave trade, by increasing the value of this live stock on the several estates, will secure a more careful treatment, and a more equitable usage.

The sixth chapter utters many names new to geography. The seventh treats of the several Caribbee nations; and confirms or repeats some strange statements. The eighth relates to the colony of Berbice, of which the history is more completely given than of the other colonies. The ninth continues this variegated narration. The tenth and eleventh chapters are miscellaneous; and describe the Abary, the Mahaica, the Mahaicony, the Pomaroon, and other smaller rivers of Guiana, which are beginning to attract settlers. A multitude of particulars, interesting to the emigrant, to the merchant, and to the legislature, are scattered in this part of the work; and statistical details occur which the geographer will one day have to transcribe. The twelfth chapter describes the animals; and the thirteenth the vegetables of Guiana.

The fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chapters seem intended to prove, that a vast mass of British capital has been vested advantageously in these colonies; that by giving them back at the peace of Amiens, a great injury was done to the most rapidly increasing branch of West Indian commerce; and that it behoves the State to determine never more to relinquish this acquisition; in which case, the inhabitants of the Caribbee islands would very generally transfer their vassals to the continent, where hurricanes are almost unknown; where fevers are less common in the uncleared, and droughts in the cleared districts; where fuel and staves are at hand; and where boats, and not mules, are employed to remove the sugar-canes from the field to the mill. Thus the continental planter economizes in the greater certainty of his crops; in the inferior mortality of his labourers; in the cheapness of fire and package; and especially in the sparing of horses and mules, which are imported and fed at a vast expense in the West Indian islands. These are advantages which, in Mr Bolingbroke's opinion, will secure to the continent, under equal privileges, a preference of colonization; and will occasion a progressive desertion of the minuter and more northerly islands in the West Indian archipelago.

VOL. XII. NO. 24.

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