84 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



llydrauda. An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Water- 

 Works of London, &c. &c. By WILLIAM MATTHEWS. 

 Simpkin and Marshall, London. 



A highly interesting and valuable work, and one particularly well- 

 timed. The outcry which has been raised ahout the Thames water has 

 had some good effects, and the worthy citizens may drink it with perfect 

 impunity in the shape in which it comes to them from the water com- 

 panies. We cannot do more this month than recommend Mr. Mathews's 

 work, hut we shall have occasion to recur to it once and again. 



t 



History of England. The Third Volume of the Continuation of 

 Hume and Smollett. By the Rev. T. S. HUGHES, B. D. And 

 the 16th Vol. of the History of England. A. J. Valpy, M.A., 

 London. 



Mr. Hughes continues his important work steadily and equably. It is 

 with the historian as with the orator, 



" Sapere est principium et fons:" 



and every page of this volume aifords sufficient evidence of research. 

 The progress of the American war, with its collateral troubles, is very 

 minutely traced in the part of the work before us ; whilst the various 

 questions of home policy are treated with an impartiality at once rare 

 and highly honourable: 



" A spirit of disaffection arose in England in 1779, from a cause which 

 never fails to interest the feelings of a nation in distress the expenses 

 of government, and the necessity of economy. Few subjects are more 

 difficult to handle than this ; for while one party declaims, with apparent 

 justice, against the expensive trappings of royalty, and the profusion of 

 ministerial patronage, as unduly extending court influence, and en- 

 dangering popular rights ; others speciously argue, that a systematic 

 frugality is inconsistent with the nature of our government, which cannot 

 be carried on without parliamentary interest ; and that interest cannot 

 be secured without the expensive appendages of pensions, sinecures, and 

 lucrative employments. Two methods only, it is said, have as yet been 

 discovered to rule mankind force and bribery : if we choose to live 

 under a free government, where public employments are open to the 

 honourable ambition of all, and where every man's house is his castle, 

 into which the foot of tyranny cannot enter, we must be content to 

 pay for such privileges ; must bear with minor evils for the sake of higher 

 advantages. 



"Without attempting to controvert these principles, or denying that 

 to possess a guarantee for good government, the services of the best men 

 must be secured by liberal remuneration ; we ought not to shut our eyes 

 against the necessity of checking that lavish expenditure, which, by en- 

 couraging the bad, corrupting the indifferent, and disgusting the virtuous, 

 tends to bring on a paralysis of the body politic : for while the reasons 

 for supporting a system, notwithstanding its expenses, are generally 

 abstruse and philosophical, the abuses of that system are evident 

 and glaring ; so that the evils are easily seen by the many, while the 

 advantages are comprehended only by the few ; and the dangers arising 

 thence are doubled by a free press. The efforts therefore made by 

 Mr. Burke, in the cause of economical reform, to bring back the con- 

 stitution to its first principles, were highly meritorious, The corruptions 



