J 12 
elubs, for prayer and reading scripture, 
which were held at private houses, not 
licensed as places of worship. The same 
vigilant personage also interrupted the 
assemblayes of the boys to play at cricket 
on the sabbath day. What has been the 
consequence? The habit of frequenting 
ale-houses, hitherto confined to the men 
of his district, now extends in no incon- 
siderable degree to women and youths, as _ 
well as men, And shall such magistrates 
escape the reproach of being the corrupt- 
ers of society? © Moral intolerance is but 
too sure a symptom of real inhumanity 
of heart: and too sure a cause of bruta- 
izing the multitude.’ Wor is it to moral 
intolerance only that Mr, Colguhoun be- 
trays an alarming propensity, There is 
a passage which the frends of religious 
liberty should denounce as highly dan- 
-gerous in, us, tendency. It occurs ina 
chapter which respects the education of 
the poor... Mr, Colquhoun is for adopt. 
ing the chuich-catechism, and (p. 154) 
Sor depriving of their legal claim to pa- 
gochiad relief, persons who permit. their 
children to be reared in any other semi- 
nary thun where this church-catechism is 
taught, Thus ali the sectarian poor, if 
_they prefer from hereditary prejudice the 
‘schools of their own denomination, and 
refuse offering up their children to the 
Moloch of the Establishment, are calmly 
to be suffered, in sickness or in age, to-be 
sturved. © It may be hoped, that not the 
temper of the sect, but at most oF the 
individual, has spoken here. Yet the 
general outery raised by the pamph- 
letecrs, who have commented Mr. Lan- 
caster’s plan of tuipon,. and, Mr. Whit- 
bread’s bill for patronizing popular edu- 
cation, approximates, in its bigotry of 
character, so nearly to this enormous effu- 
sion of zeal for the chureh of England, that - 
one-cannot well avon suspecting it to be 
the sentiment of a numerous and porwer- 
ful party in Great Britain; especially of 
those clerical justices who are inclucted 
in the commission for the peace. Ilow 
horrible to a pivus parent the alterna- 
tive of condemning his child to recite 
doetrines which he holds conducive to 
erdition, or to forfeit lis own rights on 
the public beneficence bac 
It is painful to find sentiments of so 
dangerous and cruel a tendency ushered 
into circulation by a writer so much 
trusted as Mr. Colquhoun, The minuter 
practical remarks derived from his expe- 
rience as & magistrate, are of incompar- 
ably greater "value than hts legislative 
~ speculations. What,he says on licensed 
Rfections on the Poor-Laws. 
[{Sept. t, 
ale-houses, deserves general circulation 5 
yet the interference recommended as 
the result would be tyrannically exces- 
sive. \ The discipline of a monastery 
ought not to be geueralized in a great 
political society. 
Tu the varjous economic details, not in 
the general plans and .reasonings, must 
-be sought the merit of theTreatise on In- 
digence. And certainly the mass of 
statistical particulars, of minute informa- 
tion concerning facts, appears to be con- 
sidevable. Is it always trust-worthy ? 
At page 18 occurs an assertion, 
that during the scarcity of 1801, the 
poos rates advanced in Essex, Kent, 
Sussex, and other counties to thirty and 
forty shillings in the pound on:the rack 
rent. Haring enquired of an Essex gen- 
tleman engaged in the manageuient of 
the poor, who is well acquainted witb the 
contiguous counties, no corroboration of 
this assertion could be obtained. Sub- 
sequent investigations have shaken’ in 
other respects iny implicit confidence. 
The rage for meddling and over-regu- 
lating, which distinguishes Sir James 
Stewart, and the politicasters of his 
school, also pervades the writings of the 
author of the Treatise on Indigence. Ins 
stead of sitting down to inquire with what 
laws we could dispense, he sits down to 
inquire what laws we eould enact: as if 
every new infringement of public liberty 
was a just object of public gratitude 
Like the shepherd in the fable; who to 
defend his flock against the wolf, kept 
more doys than sheep; and atlast found 
his lambkins: worried by his protectors : 
so this guardian of public eharity weuld 
presently-institute so many boards of 
agency, and boards of controul, that we 
should find a paltry and transient eco- 
nomy of rate, followed by a perpetual 
and heavy charge for superintendance ; 
and the poor seduced and ruined as bes — 
fore, not by their.own folly and consent,’ 
but by the lewdness and rapacity of their 
guardiaus and managers, - 
——— 
Lo the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
SIR, 4 : 
Vy HENEVER the importation of a 
foreign commodity experiences 
av ititerruption, there will be! individuals ° 
who will endeavour to profit by the cir- 
cumstance, by getting mto their hands 
a large quantity of the article, witholding 
it from the market, and circulating false- 
reports and erroneous statements with the 
view of increasing the apprehension of 
scarcity, and consequently of enhancing — 
greatl y 
