MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 233 



INFORMATION RECEIVED BY Hts MAJESTY'S COMMISSIONERS AS TO THE 

 ADMINISTRATION AND OPERATION OF THE POOR LAWS, PUBLISHED BY 

 AUTHORITY. 



This is the celebrated report of the Poor Law Commissioners, which, 

 during the present session of Parliament, has furnished so many facts to the 

 Irish Members against the establishment in Ireland of a system of compul- 

 sory relief for the poor. We fear, however, that in accordance with the 

 views and wishes of the government, the evidence and inferences of this re- 

 port are somewhat unfairly coloured upon the dark side. In recent years, 

 the degeneracy of feeling has indeed been fearfully rapid amongst our 

 labouring population ; but to the demon of necessity, engendered by the 

 operation of corn laws, monopolies, changes in the currency, and the weight 

 of taxation upon the commonest articles of the consumption of a rapidly in- 

 creasing population, is to be attributed the loss of all energy and self-dependence 

 on the part of the poor of England. A rational reformation of the general system 

 of government, we fear, is the only true remedy for the evils and deformities of 

 the pauper system ; and were the diabolical tax upon bread, and the other 

 aristocratical oppressions of this country removed from the shoulders of the 

 poor, very little pauperism would then remain in England. The volume be- 

 fore us contains an immense mass of information upon the working of the 

 poor-law system, and as opening out most extraordinary views of human 

 nature and human habits amongst the mass of our labouring population, we 

 recommend it to the earnest perusal of all who are curious in the philosophy 

 of human life, and solicitous to alleviate the miseries of mankind. 



THE SHELLEY PAPERS. T. MEDWIN. LONDON : WHITTAKER, TRKACHER, 



AND Co. 



NOTWITHSTANDING all the abuse that has been so lavishly bestowed upon 

 Shelley and his poetry, in defiance of malicious bigotry and envy fighting 

 against him under the specious banner of religion, with falsehood for their 

 ally, the pure philanthropy of his nature has enshrined him in the hearts of 

 the good, while the eloquence with which he has clothed the brilliant con- 

 ceptions of his imagination has placed him on a level with the first poets of 

 his age. The remembrance of his melancholy fate gives to our contempla- 

 tion of aught that appertains to Shelley the character of a secret sorrow 

 rendering his memory more dear, and bestows an additional interest on the- 

 minutest particle of his short life. To the readers of the Athenseum the 

 Shelley papers are already familiar ; but we think their intrinsic merit fully 

 justifies Captain Medwin in publishing them in a separate form, and we 

 earnestly wish that all those who have known Shelley would do as much 

 towards his biography as the author of the little work before us. In the 

 memoir, which forms the greater part of the book, Captain Medwin has 

 executed his task in a manner that, while it does great credit to his judg- 

 ment, proves him to have been worthy of the friendship entertained for him 

 by the deceased poet. 



HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE PRINCES OF INDIA, WITH A SKETCH OF THE 

 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE BRITISH POWER IN INDIA. LONDON : 

 SMITH, ELDER, AND Co., CORNHILL. 



THIS work is an elaborate account of the origin, progress, and present 

 condition of that colossal wonder of the world, the Anglo-Indian empire, de- 

 scribing the progress of events from the first formation of the East India 

 Company to the progressive conquest of the whole empire of the descendants 

 of Tamerlane, and the final consolidation by the Pindarree war of 1817, of 

 the greatest extent of dominion ever ruled by a people foreign to the soil. 

 Their first division of the work, containing the sketch of the history of the 



M.M. No. 92. 2H 



