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crammed his mouth with the flesh, he cut, or rather sawed, it from the remainder, upwards instead of downwards.

In thus sketching the condition of the aboriginal inhabitants of New Holland in some of the most important concerns of their existence, too great an encroachment has already perhaps been made upon the patience of the reader. His cookery, agreeing in its highest advance with that of the islanders of the South Sea, his domestic utensils, and his arms of offence and defence, arms coexistent every where with that pugnacious animal-man, must therefore be passed over to make room for a brief review of the practical and scientific results of the expedition.

Imperfectly known as much of the coast of New Holland remained previously to Captain King's survey, the field presented for his examination was sufficient to require upwards of four years of laborious research, interrupted only by the rainy and dangerous seasons. During this period he surveyed and laid down the line of the eastern coast between Cape Hillsborough and Cape York, a distance of six hundred and ninety miles; and examined carefully the northern and north-western coasts, to the extent of seven hundred and ninety miles, from Wessel Islands to Port George the Fourth. From this point to Depuch Island, a distance of five hundred and ten miles, the coast still remains unknown, nothing having been yet seen except detached portions of islands lying off it; but from that island to the north-west Cape, an extent of 220 miles, has been carefully surveyed by the expedition. On the western coast few observations could be made, the examination being performed during an almost continued gale of wind; and on the southern coast little was added to the information formerly obtained with respect to it. In the very ample "Sailing Directions," which occupy upwards of 160 closely-printed pages of the Appendix, Captain King has so condensed the materials obtained in all the points of his survey, as to furnish a practical manual to the future navigator, which, from the known experience and nautical skill of its author, will be found, we doubt not, a valuable and essential guide through the numerous besetting perils of these seas.

The most generally useful result of the voyage, is the establishment of the superiority of the in-shore route through Torres Strait over that without the reefs. The passage within the reefs is not only shorter, but presents also other advantages, the principal of which are, as Captain King informs us," that the weather is more generally fine; the sea is always perfectly smooth; and wood and water may be procured upon various parts of the coast: with only common attention there is no risk; and however laboriously the day may be spent, the night is passed without disturbing the crew; for safe and good anchorage may be taken up every night under the lee of an islet or a reef, which, in the event of bad weather, may be retained as long as is requisite or convenient. No time is

lost by the delay, for the anchor may be dropped in the ship's immediate track; and if the cargo consists of live animals, such as horses, cattle, or sheep, grass may be obtained for them from the islands near the anchorage. In the outer passage, the sea is strewed with numerous reefs, many yet unknown, which render the navigation at night extremely dangerous; and if, on approaching the part where it is intended to enter the reefs, the weather should be thick, and the sun too clouded at noon to procure an observation for the latitude, the navigator is placed in a very anxious and a very unenviable situation; for the currents are so strong, that the position of the ship is by no means sufficiently known to risk running to leeward to make the reefs. The ensuing night must therefore be passed in the greatest uncertainty, and in the vicinity of extensive coral reefs."

It is certainly important to the commanders of vessels navigating between our Indian possessions and Port Jackson to be apprised of these facts, derived from the experience of Captain King, and confirmed by that of Captain Bremer. Another advantage has also resulted from the report made by Captain King to the Admiralty, in the establishment of a settlement, Fort Dundas, in Port Cockburn, between Melville and Bathurst Islands, which is likely to prove highly serviceable to ships engaged in trading between the East Indies and New Holland. Its local position is well calculated for the protection of such vessels, and for affording to them, in cases of necessity, the supplies which they may require.

The papers on Natural History, which complete the Appendix, have strong claims on the attention of the naturalist. In proof of this, it will be sufficient to mention the names of the gentlemen by whom they were supplied. The most extensive contributor in the department of Zoology, is Mr. J. E. Gray, who has named and described all the specimens collected by the expedition in that branch of science, with the exception of the birds, which have received their elucidation from the scientific pen of Mr. Vigors, and of the annulose animals, which are admirably illustrated by Mr. W. S. MacLeay. The general remarks by Mr. Allan Cunningham, on the vegetation of the coasts visited, are full of new and interesting facts, and prove that the long residence of that indefatigable collector in Australia has been well employed in gaining a thorough acquaintance with its plants. But the most interesting contribution in this department consists in a paper by Mr. R. Brown, read before the Linnean Society, and which, for the importance of its facts and the novel light which it throws upon the structure of the unimpregnated ovulum, and upon the manner in which fecundation is effected in phanogamous plants, deserves a place in, and would do honour to, the transactions of any scientific society in the world. Indeed it is a matter of general regret among botanists that so many invaluable memoirs from the same pen, developing the most masterly views with respect to the principles of that science, should

be scattered in the appendices to the travels of Captains Flinders, Ross, Parry, and others, locked up, by the expensive nature of these works, from the limited means of the far greater number of naturalists. Measures are, it is true, in progress both in Germany and in France, for the collection and publication of these precious documents; but it is mortifying to think that in England, to which they of right belong, the student of the vegetable kingdom should be in a great measure precluded from having recourse to those truly scientific productions which ought to form the basis of all his investigations.

The geological sketch of the coast is the work of Dr. Filton, whose extensive acquirements in that attractive and daily advancing study are well known to all by whom it is cultivated or admired.

SONG.-FAREWELL.

SINCE this night

Of dear delight

Is the last before we sever,

Fill the cup

With nectar up,

And joyful let us quaff as ever.

Let pleasure still

Our pulses fill,

Nor seek the future scenes to scan;

But, as we pass

The sparkling glass,

Be quite as bless'd as mortals can.

Woman may try

Her tearful eye

To ease the soul when ills assail

We, wiser grown,

Will only own

That wine 's the cure for every ail.

Then send around

The goblet crown'd

With the red grape sparkling high,

And bid old Care

For once despair

To draw one tear to dim our eye.

L. L. L.

54

THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL VIEW OF THE LAW OF LIBEL IN ENGLAND AND IN INDIA.

No. III.

Theoretical View of the Law of Libel in England.

As religious bigotry was the rock on which James II. split, so a passion more congenial to tyranny, an insatiate thirst of foreign conquest and dominion, proved fatal to the system which Bonaparte had constructed, and which time promised to consolidate. A view of the facility with which he had reduced the French to the tamest servitude, from which they were delivered by no exertion of their own, afforded abundant matter for reflection to those who had escaped the general contagion.

Les hommes (says Benjamin Constant) tendent toujours à s'affranchir de la douleur. Quand ce qu'ils aiment est menacé, ils s'en detachent ou le defendent.

Les mœurs, dit M. de Pauw, se corrompent subitement dans les villes attaquées de la peste. On s'y vole l'un l'autre en mourant. L'arbitraire est au moral ce que la peste est au physique. Chacun repousse le compagnon d'infortune qui voudroit s'attacher à lui. Chacun abjure les liens de la vie passée. Il s'isole pour se defendre, et ne voit dans la foiblesse ou l'amitie qui l'implorent qu' un obstacle à sa sureté.

En vain direz vous que l'esprit humain pourroit briller encore dans la litterature legere, qu'il pourroit se livrer aux sciences exactes et naturelles, qu'il pourroit s'adonner aux arts. La nature en creant l'homme n'a pas consulté Î'autorité. Elle a voulu que toutes nos facultés eussent entre elles une liaison intime, et qu'aucune ne pût etre limitée sans que les autres s'en ressentissent. L'independance de la pensée est aussi necessaire même à la litterature legere, aux sciences et aux arts, que l'air à la vie physique. L'on pourroit aussi bien faire travailler des hommes sous une pompe pneumatique, en disant qu'on n'exige pas d'eux qu'ils respirent, mais qu'ils remuent les bras et les jambes, que maintenir l'activité de l'spirit sur un sujet donné, en l'empechant de s'exercer sur les objets importans qui lui rendent son energie parcequ'ils lui rappellent sa dignité. Les litterateurs ainsi garrotés font d'abord des panegyriques: mais ils deviennent peu à peu incapables même de louer, et la litterature finit par se perdre dans les anagrammes et les acrostiches.

Et ce ne seroit pas tout encore. Bientôt le commerce, les professions, et les metiers les plus necessaires se ressentiraient de cette apathie. Le commerce n'est pas à lui seul un mobile d'activité suffisant. L'on exagere l'influence de l'interet personel. L'interet personel a besoin pour agir de l'existence de l'opinion. L'homme dont l'opinion languit etouffée, n'est pas long tems excité même par son interet.

Lorsque chacun est libre, chacun s'amuse et s'interesse de ce qu'il fait, de ce qu'il dit, de ce qu'il ecrit. Mais lorsque la grande masse d'une nation est reduite au role de spectateurs forcés au silence, il faut pour que ces spectateurs applaudissent ou seulement pour qu'ils regardent, que les entrepreneurs du spectacle reveillent leur curiosité par des coups de théatre, et des changemeas de scene. Enfin, la lethargie d'une nation, où il n'y a pas d'opinion publique, se communique à son gouvernement quoiqu'il fasse.

Les institutions qui servent de barriere au pouvoir, lui servent en même tems d'appuis. Elles le guident dans sa route: elles le soutiennent dans ses

efforts: elles le moderent dans ses accés de violence, et l'encouragent dans ses momens d'apathie.*

The practicability of inducing such national debasement was also insisted on by Sir James Mackintosh, as supplying a powerful motive to deter Parliament from further abridging the liberty of the press. The oppressions which provoke armed resistance and civil wars must not only be of a grievous and intolerable kind, but shock some sentiment, principle, or prejudice, to which the mass of a nation are passionately attached; but where such violences are avoided, successive ligatures may be applied, till habits of entire pliability and submission are confirmed. The degraded and transformed people make a virtue of the fawning suppleness which gradual" necessity" has taught them, and they are not ashamed to boast of the gloria obsequii.

The mind of man, (said Sir James Mackintosh,) is generally in a state of activity and excitement, and if it cannot vent itself against those who misgovern, it works itself into a state of sympathy and even affection for what it is not allowed to hate. Those who are not permitted to follow the bent of their inclination, frequently become the sycophants of those whom they had before detested. Perhaps they would be sometimes insincere in their praises. If the mind is not sincere on such occasions, it certainly is a fault, but it is the very sincerity of the mind which stamps it with baseness.+

The fourth argument that may be offered in favour of unlimited toleration is founded on the absence of all danger and inconvenience from the observance of such a policy. Historical testimony so fully establishes the fact, that in every instance libels have been the effects and not the causes of political disturbances, and that they are rather" the gusts of liberty of speech restrained," than the expression of minds entrusted with the free use of their own powers of deliberation and discussion,-that this consideration alone ought to evince the inexpediency of violently repressing the complaints instead of healing the disorders of the patient. Amidst the confused cries exhaled by the public uneasiness, the wise and good not only can trace the true seats of the evil, but they could not do so if the mingled voice of distress, impatience, suspicion, and of the multitude of good and evil counsellers, were in any degree obstructed, so that the whole symptoms of the case were not before them.

If " a species of men to whom a state of order would become a sentence of obscurity are nourished into a dangerous magnitude by the heat of intestine disturbances," it follows that such men can only be disarmed of their influence by reforming abuses, and bringing back public establishments to their true principles, and especially by withholding from them the palm of martyrdom. But while the frame of government stands, while its fundamental safe

De l'esprit de conquete et de l'usurpation dans leurs rapports avec la civilization Européene.

+ Speech, Dec. 19, 1819.

Burke, Causes of present Discontents.

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