his property. Lectures upon political economy will not cure the evil of Irish pauperism. If no system for employing them be arranged and carried into effect, the poor of that country will continue, as felons, to purloin, or, as importunate vagrants, to extort a subsistence from the owners of property; and as Ireland gradually emerges from her poverty, and the capital of the farmers accumulates, the grievance of this wasteful and improvident system must become daily more oppressive and intolerable. Without referring to higher considerations, there can be no question that an organized system of maintaining the poor would produce a great saving of expense. The sums which the importunity of starving vagrants now extorts from the compassion of the more wealthy classes in Ireland would, it is our firm belief, subsist twice that number of individuals, if expended upon a settled and well-arranged plan of systematic provision. Nay, this is not a theoretical assertion, resting merely upon analogical reasons, drawn from general principles; it has been actually put to the proof. Mr. Douglas's pamphlet informs us that during the prevalence of fever in 1817, the inhabitants of Dublin found the evils of mendicity too enormous to be longer endured, and they resolutely set on foot an arrangement for its suppression; the city was regularly divided into districts, and the whole horde of vagrants were taken up and examined. While this measure was in agitation, a number of beggars fled from Dublin: but those who remained behind amounted to ten thousand. A system was then arranged to provide work for the able-bodied, and gratuitous relief for the impotent. When the athletic found that no food was to be obtained without working, they took up their wallets and went elsewhere. Those who remained were employed in various ways, and provided with food, clothing, and lodging, in some old barracks. The streets were cleared of beggars, and the inhabitants released from their importunity. This part of the plan was easily executed, but it was not quite so easy to provide funds for its continuance. The inhabitants of Dublin were willing enough to get rid of the mendicants, but not quite so ready to subscribe to the fund required for their support. As there were no laws to enforce their contributions, the committee hit upon an ingenious expedient to stimulate the reluctant citizen. They arranged a procession of beggars to be led through the streets: they stopped before the houses of such as refused to subscribe, and gave them pretty convincing proofs that the lungs of the mendicants were sound and vigorous. This quickened the hearts of the opulent, and after the mendicant procession had gone many rounds, the sum of nine thousand five hundred pounds was raised by what we suppose must be termed voluntary contributions. With this inconsider G 2 able able sum the streets of Dublin were entirely freed from the intolerable nuisance of mendicity; and upwards of five thousand beggars were employed and maintained for a period of six months. It was calculated that each beggar cost the committee about fourpence a day. Independent of the other incalculable advantage resulting from the suppression of mendicity, the exertions of the committee produced a great pecuniary saving. Before they began their labours, there were at least twelve thousand beggars roving throughout the streets of Dublin; and if we estimate what each obtained by begging at the moderate sum of one shilling per day, it will appear that an organized system reduced the number of paupers one-half, and the expense of supporting the remainder from one shilling to four-pence per day for each individual. A difficulty might, perhaps, be started as to the party upon whom the charge ought, in the first instance, to fall, if the legislature should think proper to establish a compulsory provision for the poor of Ireland. The present occupiers would urge, that a burden, which had no existence when they took their farms, ought not in justice to fall upon them, but upon the owners of the land. To this it may be replied, that the charge of supporting the poor does now really fall upon them alone: it is by them alone that the paupers of Ireland are now maintained in idleness and vagrancy. A legal assessment would form merely a substitute for the alms which they now voluntarily give; and there can be no question that it would be infinitely less than the amount of what they are now called upon to contribute. But it should be also recollected, that the beggars, whom they now support in idleness, would, under a more provident system, be employed productively either in manufactures or in the cultivation of the land; and the profit of this improved industry would, until the expiration of their present leases, fall to the share of the tenants. It must, lastly, be added that, if the rate be not made to fall upon the occupier, many of the most important political benefits which we anticipate from the measure would be rendered precarious. The excess of population, which is now said to oppress particular districts in Ireland, arises, it is manifest, from the ignorance or shortsighted cupidity of the middlemen and occupiers, who indefinitely subdivide their tenements for the sake of a little temporary profit. By rendering these parties responsible for the evil resulting from their mismanagement, we shall establish an adequate guarantee against its recurrence. Self-interest will thus be brought to bear directly upon the conduct of the Irish farmer, in the same manner as it now operates upon the English, and deter him from allowing the settlement of any pauper for whose labour he sees no demand. ART. ART. IV-Memoirs of the Life and Travels of John Ledyard, from his Journals and Correspondence. By Jared Sparks. London. 1828. THE traveller, of whose life and adventures Mr. Jared Sparks* has published these very interesting Memoirs, may, with great truth, be called an extraordinary man. John Ledyard, by birth an American, was, in all respects, from the habits of his life, a citizen of the world. He was born at a small village called Groton, in Connecticut, on the banks of the Thames: his father was a captain in the West Indian trade, but died young, leaving a widow and four children, of whom John was the eldest; his mother is described as a lady of many excellencies of mind and character, beautiful in person, well informed, resolute, generous, amiable, kind, and, above all, eminent for piety and the religious virtues.' Her little property, it seems, was lost through fraud or neglect, and the widowed mother, with her four infant children, thrown destitute upon the world. In a few years, however, she was again married to Dr. Moor, and John was removed to the house of his grandfather, at Hartford, where, at a very early age, it is said, he showed many peculiarities in his manners and habits, indicating an eccentric, an unsettled, and romantic turn of mind. Having gone through the grammar-school, he was placed with a relative of the name of Seymour, to study the profession of the law; but this dry kind of study was soon found to have no attractions for one of his volatile turn of mind. Something, however, was to be done to rescue from sheer idleness a youth of nineteen, with very narrow means, few friends, and no definite prospects; and, by the kindness of Dr. Wheelock, the pious founder of Dartmouth College, who had been the intimate friend of his grandfather, he was enabled to take up his residence at this new seat of learning, with the ostensible object of qualifying himself to become a missionary among the Indians. The whole period of his studies at Dartmouth did not exceed one year, of which he was absent nearly a third part, rambling among the Indians, in order to acquire, it was supposed, some practical knowledge of their habits and mode of life; at the same time, no doubt, to indulge the bent of his genius, and to escape from the studies and the discipline of the college. It ap Mr. Sparks is an American of some literary reputation, who has come to this country, principally, as we hear, for the purpose of examining the public offices for documents connected with the history of Washington. He has been engaged for some time in arranging the private and public papers left by the General at Mount Vernon, and announces a selection from them in from eight to twelve volumes octavo. We doubt if Mr. Sparks will find much encouragement, in England at least, unless he considerably reduces the scale of his intended publication, which, therefore, we hope he will do. pears, pears, to us, indeed, obviously enough, that the scholastic life was as little suited to his disposition as had been the study of the law; he was impatient under discipline; he felt it irksome to tread the dull round, from day to day, of the chapel, the recitation-room, the commons'-hall, and the study. To vary this routine, Ledyard introduced the acting of plays, of the success of which we are told nothing, except that he performed Syphax in a long grey beard. Impatient of restraint, and indignant at remonstrance and admonition, he soon abandoned the missionary scheme that appeared to require such severe initiation, and resolved to make his escape from the college. The mode adopted to carry this project into execution was strongly marked with that spirit of enterprise by which, in after-life, he was so highly distinguished :— 'On the margin of the Connecticut river, which runs near the college, stood many majestic forest trees, nourished by a rich soil. One of these Ledyard contrived to cut down. He then set himself at work to fashion its trunk into a canoe, and in this labour he was assisted by some of his fellow-students. As the canoe was fifty feet long and three wide, and was to be dug out and constructed by these unskilful workmen, the task was not a trifling one, nor such as could be speedily executed. Operations were carried on with spirit, however, till Ledyard wounded himself with an axe, and was disabled for several days. When recovered, he applied himself anew to his work; the canoe was finished, launched into the stream, and, by the further aid of his companions, equipped and prepared for a voyage. His wishes were now at their consummation, and, bidding adieu to these haunts of the Muses, where he had gained a dubious fame, he set off alone, with a light heart, to explore a river, with the navigation of which he had not the slightest acquaintance. The distance to Hartford was not less than one hundred and forty miles, much of the way was through a wilderness, and in several places there were dangerous falls and rapids.'— p. 21, 22. With a bear-skin covering, and a good supply of provisions, he launched into the current and floated leisurely down, seldom using the paddle, till, while engaged in reading, the canoe approached Below's Falls, the noise of which, rushing among the rocks, suddenly aroused him; the danger was imminent; had the canoe got into the narrow passage it must instantly have been dashed in pieces, and himself inevitably have perished. By great exertion, however, he escaped the catastrophe and reached the shore; and by the kind assistance of some people in the neighbourhood, had his canoe dragged by oxen around the falls, and again committed to the water. On a bright spring morning,' says his biographer, 'just as the sun was rising, some of Mr. Seymour's family were standing near his house, on the high bank of the small river that runs through the city of Hartford and empties itself into the Connecticut, necticut, when they espied, at some distance, an object of unusual appearance moving slowly up the stream.' On a nearer approach it was discovered to be a canoe, in the stern of which something was observed to be heaped up, but apparently without life or motion. At length it struck the shore, and out leapt John Ledyard from under his bear-skin, to the great astonishment of his relatives at this sudden apparition, who had no other idea than that of his being diligently engaged in his studies at Dartmouth, and fitting himself for the pious office of a missionary among the Indians. By the advice of his friends and two clergymen, he was prevailed upon to apply himself immediately to a preparation for discharging the sacred functions of a divine, and turn the ruffled tenor of his life into the quiet and grateful occupation of a parish minister.' It was soon found, however, that his qualifications were not exactly such as were suited for the priesthood, and the discouragement, if not the rejection, he met with from the clergy, appears to have very much mortified and wounded him; he talks about inquiries made after the strange man in Hartford;' and of his being the mock of impertinent curiosity.' In short, it was deemed expedient, both by his friends and by himself, that all further thoughts of his becoming a divine should be abandoned; and in the course of a few weeks we find him a common sailor, on board a vessel bound for Gibraltar. While at this place Ledyard was all at once missing: he had enlisted into the army. The master, being the friend of his late father, went and remonstrated with him for this strange freak, and urged him to return-to which Ledyard assented, provided he could procure his release; though he said he liked the service, and thought the profession of a soldier well suited to a man of honour and enterprise. The commanding officer assented to his release, and he returned to the ship. The voyage being finished, the only profit yielded by it to Ledyard was a little experience in the hardships of a sailor's life, as his scanty funds were soon exhausted and poverty stared him in the face. At the age of twenty-two he found himself a solitary wanderer, dependent on the bounty of his friends, without employment or prospects, having tried various pursuits, and failed of success in all. But poverty and privation were trifles of little weight with Ledyard: his pride was aroused, and he determined to do something that should exonerate him from all dependence on his American friends; but it never once entered his brain to accomplish this by walking in the same path that all the world were walking in, or of attaining common ends by common means. He generally acted on the spur of the moment, and the first idea that crossed his brain and suggested some pursuit he immediately took up |