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The physical development of the human race in France, whether from the effects of the conscription or from those of the extreme and increasing division of the land, is no longer what it was. This had been long cursorily remarked by travellers, but without any pretensions to accuracy; it seems now, however, to be incontrovertibly true that the general height has been diminishing gradually since 1790.

"Before the Revolution the standard for the grenadiers was 5 feet 5 inches, (French,) under the Republic 5 feet 4 inches, under the Emperor 5 feet 3 inches, and, at the present time men of 4 feet 9 inches 7 lines are admitted into the infantry of the line."*

"It has been calculated, that even under the most favourable circumstances, it will still require two generations to enable the human species in France to become what it was in 1789."

This ill-fed race works, according to Tapïès, 154 days to obtain the same measure of wheat in that country which an average English labourer receives in exchange for 11 days in this.

Another of their statists, Snitzler, calculates the average allowance of wheat to be 182 kilogrammes, "un livre du pain par jour, c'est bien peu-aussi le moindre deficit affecter apidement et forcément le prix de grains." Our own consumption is reckoned to be a quarter per head, (on the wheat-eating population,) or 480 lbs. per annum, just one-fourth more than the French of Snitzler. From Messrs. Rubichon and Mounier, it may be collected that a Frenchman consumes in the year about 11 cubic feet of grain, legumes, buck-wheat, &c., of which only 6 are wheat, while in England the ration of wheat alone exceeds 10

cubic feet.

M. Rubichon's fears of ruin and extinction from the morcellement in rapid progress in France, are quite as vivid as Mr. Doubleday's encouraging anticipations of national bankruptcy amongst ourselves. Such is the poverty of the smaller owners, (and they are the great mass,) so weighed down are they by taxation and hypothèques, (mortgages) that he is almost prepared for a jacquerie in which the peasants will levy war against the higher, more easy classes, and even on the bourgeoisie. the impôt-foncier, with the centimes additionels—a sort of land or property tax-does not, by any means, bear the same high proportion to its annual value that our own general and local rates of taxation in this country to the rental of the property subject to them. For the other burdens (the mortgages) are almost exclusively of their own contracting, the insane avidity of

Yet

* Approximately 5 feet 10 inches-5 feet 9 inches-5 feet 8 inches-and 5 feet 2 inches.

Parallel between England and France.

353

the lower orders for purchasing where they have not inherited, and for adding some wretched half-acre to the plot they have succeeded to, having impelled them to burden their little possessions with a charge they can have no hope of redeeming. The whole face of the soil they possess is thus steeped in penury. It can afford no additional contributions to the State desirous of sustaining the extraordinary expenditure of a costly war. Nay, even the present amount cannot always be now collected, still less can it be relied upon for the future. A hail-storm, a flood, a blight, or frost, frequently necessitates a rémission de l'impôt throughout whole communes. The natural causes of mischief recurring as usual, their effects will come to be more serious as the multiplication of parcels goes on, and the margin between numbers and food is lessened. France is still eminently an agricultural country; by far the largest portion of her inhabitants obtain their living from industry connected with the soil, which, as in Ireland, yields to those who now till it little more than a bare subsistence; there is not that division of profits beyond the expenses which even in the poorest districts of England enables the cultivator to become the customer of the manufacturer and trader. Our 26,000,000 of people pay us £23,000,000 of customs' duties upon imports, an average contribution of 18s. a-head; 34,000,000 of Frenchmen afford to their Government only 6s., or one-third.

We have been led to diverge at disproportionate length into the parallel condition of the only European country which can be compared with or become an object of serious apprehension to us, because there is a tendency to believe that our population and resources are in a less flourishing state than that of our ancient, but now, as we hope, friendly rival. Critical as our position might be on the outbreak of a war, the knowledge that discontent and poverty press with as great, though a different form of severity abroad, should reconcile us, notwithstanding the denunciations of Mr. Doubleday and a portion of our daily press, to bear with while we endeavour to better the normal frame of society on this side of the Channel.

But for these multifarious evils a remedy is proposed by Mr. Doubleday, who says, "one measure alone can avert the violent destruction of the system, and that is, the sweeping away of the national debt, and the reduction of the taxes to one-fifth of their present amount." We should have thought the precautionary measure would have left behind it little capable of destruction, violent or gradual, and that the insurance proposed, as in the case of an American prairie or forest on fire, was as dangerous as the conflagration for which it is to be substituted. Suppose, however, this notable advice followed-the 280,000 public creditors, who with their families represent a million of our fellow

VOL. VII. NO. XIV.

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subjects, robbed of their all, another million of savings' bank depositors equally plundered of that little pittance, (amounting, however, in all, to £32,661,924 in 1845,)* which their confiding and hopeful frugality has economized from their ceaseless toil, and laid up against a rainy day; suppose all this remorselessly confiscated by the counsel and procurement of this friend to the poor, and advocate of the rights of labour-the evil would not stop there; every contract and engagement, public or private, either in or with this country, would be wiped out-so essentially is credit become a part of our industrial existence, so necessarily is solvency of all kinds linked with the maintenance of public faith, that we not believe our manufacturers could continue their business, or that Manchester and Glasgow, in the general moral ruin of the national character, would be secure even for one month in occupying the working masses now dependent on their wages for their daily bread.

Diris agam vos: Dira detestatio

Nullâ expiatur victimâ—

seems to be Mr. Doubleday's inclination.

"Individual villanies are often permitted to die in prosperity and unpunished-their retribution being reserved for another state of being; but corrupt national systems always meet their punishment here. God has never yet failed to give this lesson to the world, from Tyre and Babylon downwards-nor will this government be an exception. The hand-writing is now evident on the wall."

We earnestly hope that the hand-writing may not be Mr. Doubleday's.

In 1845, the number of depositors was 1,063,418-the amount £32,661,924, of whom 597,631 had sums of less than £20, amounting to £3,851,027.

De Wette's Introduction.

355

ART. III.-A Critical and Historical Introduction to the Canonical Scriptures of the Old Testament. From the German of W. M. L. DE WETTE. Translated by THEODORe Parker. 2 vols. 8vo. Boston, 1843.

THE continually increasing influence exercised by the Infidel Theology of Modern Germany upon the literature of Great Britain and America, must be a matter of no slight or transient importance to thoughtful observers. It is not merely to the halflearned pretender that German Theology presents strong temptations. Doubtless a literature such as it presents, with its redundant supply of text-books, manuals, and dictionaries of reference-rich in all the helps which ambitious sciolism requires, and teeming with the appliances necessary for learned parade-strange terms, strange languages, strange theories, (suited to every variety of taste,) and strange authoritics-must possess invincible attractions to men who are in haste to teach, but have little time to learn, and who prefer the glitter of the surface to the solidity of the substance. But the literature of German Theology has attractions also for a higher class of minds than these; minds stimulated to inquiry by an ardent love of real knowledge; minds that cannot be satisfied with the poor and schoolboy exercises which in England have so long filled the place of criticism with their shallow and formal pedantry of minute scholarship, nor yet with the profound researches in Rubrical and Legendary lore which compose to so great an extent the more serious theology of that country. German Theology attracts such minds by the richness of its universal learning, by the manliness with which it wields that learning for higher and nobler purposes of investigation-measuring their value by their usefulness, and not by the fantastic standard of a foolish and capricious national prejudice-by the boldness and originality of its speculations, grasping, as they do, the grandest subjects of human thought, and embracing themes upon which British literature has been too long silent. We must not dissemble the truth: The danger to be dreaded from the influence of German theological literature arises from the miserable deficiencies of our own. There are, to be sure, some splendid exceptions to the general poverty. There are some universal minds that may recall to us the good days when British theology was cosmopolitan, but they stand alone like tall trees in a barren landscape, and make the general desolation more remarkable,

If Christianity is to continue, this state of things must not continue. Christian learning and Christian thought must keep pace with the progress of the times. The Church must make all Science, and all Art, and all the lore of past time, and all the experience of the present, her own. She must show herself as that Eternal City into which "all the forces of the Gentiles" shall be brought, there to be consecrated to God's honour, and wielded in his service. It is shame enough to the Christians of these islands, that, possessing so many advantages, in a pure faith, a free constitution, such large endowments for the support of learning, and such ample means of acquiring it-it is shame enough for us that we have not been the leaders, instead of the followers of the rest of Europe;-that the honest and generous love of truth for its own sake, has not been sufficient to stimulate us to thought and exertion, without waiting for a crisis wherein the very safety of religion demands that we should rouse ourselves from our dreams and inactivity.

The proper remedy against the evil influence of an infidel literature is to supply a Christian literature, equally opulent in all the resources that make its rival valuable. The proper remedy against false reasoning is right reasoning. Contemptuous silence will not do. Threats and attempts at coercion, whether moral or physical, will not do. Nothing but argument can refute argument; nothing but truth can displace falsehood. The evil cannot be met by periodical essays such as ours; by a few hours' thought and study, or a few hours' labour in composition. It must be met by the creation of a literature, not merely directly apologetic, but compensatory;-such a literature as that which the Cudworths, the Clarkes, the Warburtons, the Lardners, the Butlers of a better age produced, when English Deism was as formidable as German Pantheism is now. In the meanwhile, however, we-the light battalion-the TEXTAσTIKOì avdρες μισθοφόροι ἐν λογοῖς—may be able to do something in the good cause. We may draw attention to the sources of really useful information which reviving Christianity has begun to open largely upon the Continent; we may occasionally be adequate to single out some particular error and expose it, or warn the reader of concealed danger where he might not at first suspect it.

It is with the hope of being able to do some little good in this way, that we enter at present upon a brief examination of the work on Biblical Criticism, now extensively circulated in England, the title of which we have prefixed to this article, De Wette's Introduction to the Old Testament, translated, enlarged, and improved by a Mr. Theodore Parker, " Minister of the Second Church in Roxbury." In introducing this work to our

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