therefore, could not have taken place before the distresses of the country commenced, and consequently could not have prevented them.

The last branch of the expense of cultivation which we shall notice, the public burdens on the cultivator, could not at that time have been diminished to any considerable extent. Though our war expenditure had ceased, yet there remained the enormous interest of the national debt, and the expences of our peace establishment, which could not at that time have been reduced so low as to admit of any considerable remission of taxes. Those who are eager at all times to censure the measures of government, of course availed themselves of the opportunity of cavilling at the extent of the establishment that was still kept up, and at tempted to persuade the people, that our expenses ought to be as low as if we had been in a state of profound tranquillity of ten years. But the peo ple were, happily, not misled by such representations, but continued to pay the taxes, which they saw were still necessary, with the same admirable equanimity with which they had all along borne them. The nation, however, now has the satisfaction to see that the government is taking every measure to reduce their burdens; and we may hope, that the restoration of permanent tranquillity will render it practicable to diminish very greatly the national expenditure.

As it was impossible, therefore, to reduce the expense of cultivation to such an extent as to enable our agriculturists to raise corn at the reduced prices, it became the alternative, either that they must be enabled by some measure of government to obtain such a price as would remunerate them, or that the agriculture of the country

must be ruined, and the nation left to depend for subsistence on foreign supplies. With this view, the corn bill of 1814 was proposed, but not carried; and in 1815, the corn bill which forms the subject of this discussion, was passed.

We shall not repeat any of the arguments which were advanced in the debates of which we have given an outline. The supporters of the bill painted in such powerful colours the general misery that must infallibly take place, not merely among the agricul tural, but the manufacturing classes, from a great part of our land being thrown out of cultivation, that it is impossible not to deprecate this as the greatest evil that can befall us. Their views of the advantages of preserving this country independent of foreign nations for the means of subsistence, and of the consequences of an opposite line of policy, appear to be correct and conclusive. Some of the advocates of the bill, however, seem to have fallen into an error in supposing that its effects ever could be to make corn cheap; and this attempt, joined to the obvious intention of the measure, to prevent the ruin of the agricultural interest, by keeping up the price of corn, gave an air of inconsistency to their arguments, of which their opponents did not fail to take advantage. Mr Malthus has demonstrated that prices can never be low so long as we continue rich and prosperous; and that "a nation which very greatly gets the start of its neighbours in riches, without any peculiar natural facilities for growing corn, must necessarily submit to one of these alternatives—either a very high comparative price of grain, or a very great dependence upon other countries for it."*

It is objected to the corn bill, that

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currency, occasioned by over-issues, though they have not been able to show that our currency was in a state either of discredit or excess. They attribute them to excessive taxation, though it is not to be doubted that it was by this taxation that we were enabled to accomplish the deliverance of Europe. They attribute them to the injury sustained by our commerce, Occasioned by our own bad policy, though this injury proceeded, first from the unprecedented measures of our enemy, and next from the rash and precipitate speculations of our own merchants, when the power of that enemy was at an end,causes over which our government had certainly no controul. And they describe the measure devised for the relief of these distresses as at best a piece of blind and short-sighted policy, calculated only to aggravate the distresses of the poor, by raising the price of bread, though it cannot for a moment be doubted that it was adopt

ed from the most earnest desire to relieve the hardships of every class of the community. But it is a necessary result of rash and heedless censure, and of party censure, which is often the most rash and heedless of all others, that it draws upon time for its own certain refutation. There is scarcely one of these objections which did not grow weaker under the inves tigation they excited; and during the period which has elapsed since the time when they were agitated, until that at which these annals have been compiled, the conviction of the utility of the measure in question has been gradually strengthening. Various causes, most of which we have already referred to, have no doubt interrupted and thwarted its beneficial results; but these causes, we think, we have also shewn to be merely of a temporary nature, and likely, ere long, to give way to the powerful operation of those general principles upon which the measure is founded.

THE first domestic event which occupied the attention of the public, in the year 1815, is almost too ridiculous for recital, were it not the duty of the annalist to record all that can preserve the form and pressure of the times, from which he forms his record. It was the close of an impious and extravagant imposture, which had long insulted religion, scandalized morality, and entertained the idle and thoughtless.

A wretched old woman, called Joanna Southcote, originally a Metho dist, had, for no less than twenty-five years, assumed the character of a prophetess and an inspired writer. It is impossible to discover, from the foolish and blasphemous trash which she occasionally published, whether she was altogether an impostor, or held that dubious rank between madness and knavery, which may be justly assigned to most founders of false religions. THE WOMAN, as she called herself, pretended to have immediate intercourse with the Deity; held controversies with Satan, whom she banished from her presence in confusion, after sustaining a debate of seve

ral days; and derived no ungainful trade, by selling a sort of sealed passport, which, like the Pope's of yore, was supposed to procure the bearer instant admittance into the heavenly regions. Many condemned criminals, and others, who had not inclination or leisure to repent of their sins, and petition for repentance, embraced this compendious mode of assuring their part of paradise. A seal with the letters J. S., which she found in sweeping out her master's shop, was the only visible proof to which she appealed in support of her celestial mission. She had a formal disputation with her former pastors, some of whom are said to have acknowledged her divine au thority. To the disgrace of an enlightened age, pretensions so blasphemous and extravagant, instead of conveying Mrs Southcote to Bridewell or Bedlam, as her case required, procured her an extended circle of disciples, among whom were enrolled several of those who had been formerly believers in the maniac Brothers. In the month of May, 1814, deceived by some inward complaint, or desi rous to ascertain how far the credulity

of her miserable followers would carry them, she announced, that she was impregnated with a mysterious birth, a new incarnation of the Deity—a second advent. Being unmarried, a virgin, as she said, and certainly in her sixty-fifth year, she was nevertheless, she averred, to become the mother of the promised Shiloh of the Jewish prophesies. Wonderful to say, this annunciation rather extended than abridged the number of her disciples. She could now reckon among them, the Reverend Mr P. Foly, whose name well merited an additional letter; and the no less Reverend Mr Towzer, whose chapel she honoured with her attendance; a third reverend, who afterwards saw visions on his own account; an eminent artist; a half-pay colonel; and some old women of both sexes.

That posterity may judge with what gross, thick, and palpable vulgarity and nonsense, an impostor of the nineteenth century might bait her hook, and yet not fail to catch gudgeons, we will record six lines of the inspired strains of the Prophetess, or rather of the Spirit, by whom, she affirmed, they were dictated:

So now thy writings all may see
The way that I have spoke to thee
Because I said the second Child
That the learned all would foil
way
I said the man that set thee free,
A David's crown I'd give to He.

At such slender expense of reason, rhyme, and grammar, Mrs Southcote went on and prospered. The family of the prophetess was now maintained upon a footing as suitable to her high pretensions, as the means of her followers could support; and several expensive presents of plate, a cradle, or cribb, as it was called, the magnificence of which called forth the superlatives of newspaper eloquence, and other elegant and valuable articles for the use of the expected Shiloh, evin

ced that the faithful possessed wealth in a degree very disproportioned to their allowance of common sense. Nor was it only by such expensive gifts that the disciples of this miserable enthusiast shewed their confidence in the truth of her mission. Wagers, according to Voltaire, are the English test of sincerity; and that it might not be wanting on this occasion, citizen of Gravesend laid a bet of two hundred to one hundred pounds, Joanna Southcote would be delivered of a child before the first day of November. The Chief Justice Gibbs afterwards refused to sustain an action on this wager, as contrary to good morals, so that the defendant escaped for the disgrace of public exposure. Nine medical men (it was pretended) visited her, six of whom, to the credit of that learned faculty, are said to have pronounced her preg nant, while the other three more cau. tiously suspended their judgment. Her followers applied to the Archbi shop of Canterbury to provide her with suitable apartments and assistance worthy of the expected birth; and it was by others gravely suggested, that the Lord Chancellor should take Mrs Southcote under his protection, in order, doubtless, that Shiloh, on his expected arrival, might become a ward of Chancery. But however deeply both church and state were interested in the event, neither the right reverend archbishop, nor the learned lord on the woolsack, could be moved to give such a farce the sanction of their countenance.

Mrs Southcote adjourned her mys. terious delivery from time to time, until at. length she appears to have been partly undeceived by the pain of an internal disease. A female companion addressed a medical gentleman by her desire. "Her case," said her amanuensis, after detailing the symptoms," is singular in other points, this event being the criterion by