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" Essay on the Planting of Waste Lands." It appeared in the seventy- 

 second number of the Quarterly Review; and I must say, that, as far 

 as I am a judge, it is, independently of its other merits, one of the most 

 powerful, judicious, and useful practical tracts existing in the language. 

 Such is the essay, and such tlie author, whom, in his second pamphlet, 

 Mr. Withers considers himself as quite able to put down ! From the 

 singularly rapid way, in which the great author is known to write, and 

 from the circumstance of his professing no accurate knowledge of phy- 

 tology, it cannot seem wonderful, that some errors, both in the theory 

 and the practice, should have crept into the essay. But the celebrity 

 of the illustrious person in question, and the fact of his belonging to this 

 side of the Tweed (which gave an additional colour to Mr. Withers's 

 misrepresentation as to the Scotch method), added to Sir Walter's 

 speaking rather slightingly of trenching, as a preparatory measure, 

 seem to have induced Mr. Withers to adopt a personal mode of address. 

 The pamphlet, therefore, is thrown into the form of " A Letter to Sir 

 Walter Scott, Bart., exposing certain Fundamental Errors in his late 

 Essay on Planting Wa,ste Lands, &c., the great loss and disappoint- 

 ment generally attending the Scotch Style op Planting ;" — cum mul- 

 tis aliis. 



Respecting the manner of this composition I shall say little, as "plain 

 and unassuming" are epithets which cannot be applied to it ; and I shall 

 say the less from being informed, that the public in general, and the 

 author's friends in particular, loudly condemned the whole style of 

 address adopted ; and I entertain no doubt, but that his own good sense 

 will ere long induce him to condemn it himself. Mr. Withers may rest 

 assured, that neither the interests of learning, nor the advancement of 

 science, among a polished nation, ever yet were promoted, by a gratui- 

 tous departure from the rules of decorum and urbanity. But the matter 

 is an object of far greater magnitude than the manner ; and as the former 

 might, by possibility, have some weight with the Commissioners of 

 Woods and Forests, I feel called upon to obviate, in as far as I can, the 

 extensive injury, which the principle contended for might occasion, to 

 the " future navies" of the empire. 



The first thing, then, that Mr. Withers does, is, of course, to fasten 

 with eagerness on some of those trivial errors, which, as already said, 

 appear in Sir Walter's powerful specimen of didactic writing, and to 

 magnify them into defects of the most portentous species. This is just 

 the sort of tactic that might have been expected. The next thing is, to 

 fasten as eagerly on Mr. William Billington, a good, plain, and common- 

 place person, who was, some years since. Surveyor General, under the 



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