increased in the proportion of 150 to 100; and that by equal advances, in equal times, or per cent. annually; the income of the incumbent in money; the nominal fum, equal in value in each term, to rool. in the year 1700, may be found; and the real value of the income of that term, as measured by commodities, at the prices eftablished in 1700. Thefe parti culars are contained in the following table, to which are added, computations for two other periods, defcribed in the two first columns. 10 1783 1792 2 14 0 94 19 0144 0 65 18 9 Let any perfon confider, in the cafe we have produced, what muft have been the lot of thofe younger part of the clergy of 1700, if this commutation had taken place. 100l. was then (we fpeak on the authority of the eminent Mr. King) a liberal income in the church: reflect on their numerous, increafing families; the cares of fathers to provide decently for them; their incomes perpetually dropping, as their neceffities and expenfive duties increafed. See, in the table, their calamities redouble upon them, in the fecond period of ten years, commencing in 1731: when this whole clafs may generally fuppofed to have been between fixty and feventy years old, to fee poverty, and the debility of old age, advancing rapidly upon them: their incomes reduced a full third; and the remainder, by the fall of the value of money, able to provide them little more than a half the conveniences and neceffaries they enjoyed in youth. Laftly, contemplate the melancholy band of furvivors in the years 1743, 4, 5; bending down with The quarter in Windfor market. + Explanation of table. The quantity of corn, which at 21. 12s. 6d. per quarter, fold for 1ool.; in the following thirty years, the average falling to forty-three fhillings, would have produced to the clergyman only, communibus annis, 761. 4s. but now it requires 1071. 155. to purchase the fame commodities which he obtained before for 100l.; his reduced income, therefore, will not now go any further, than 7ol. 15s. did at firft, or in 1701. the the last feebleness of nature to the grave, and under an added load of affliction; their nominal income falling off 541. per cent. and, in actual value, reduced to a third of what it reached to forty-three years before, or in the very prime of life. : The price of wheat from 1595 to 1764, fufficiently shows the impoffibility of commuting the tithes for a fixed corn rent. The improvements in mechanifm, and the extention of chemistry, may reduce its value, and even fuddenly, more than can be foreseen but a thorough difcuffion of the fubject, would exceed very much the length of the pamphlet we are reviewing. There occurred to us in the perufal of this work, nothing to object to the ftyle of the writer: and fuch of the clergy into whofe hands it may fall, we are perfuaded will find no violations of that decorum, with which questions relating to their order fhould always be treated. ART. IX. Le Comte de Strafford: Tragedie, en Cinq Actes, et en Vers. Pur Le Comte de Lally-Tollendal-The Earl of Strafford, a Tragedy, in Five Acts, and in Verfe; by the Count de Lally-Tolendal. 8vo. 138 pp. London, printed by Spilfbury fold by Elmfly, Edwards, White, and de Boffe; and by Jones, Dublin. : THE celebrated Count Lally, and the Earl of Strafford, fuf fered each an unjuft death by the fword of the law: both were condemned on the doctrine of accumulative, and conftructive treafons: a fpirit of popular fanaticifm, excited against each of them by the most criminal arts, enabled their enemies by these means to effect their deftruction. The former was the father of the writer of this tragedy, which was intended as a monument of filial piety. The picture he has given of the arts and crimes of the profecutors, by which Strafford was brought to the scaffold, tranfmits alfo to pofterity the injuftice of his father's fate. This tragedy, which had been left imperfect, was finished in 1789, at the defire of Prince Henry of Pruffia, to whom it is dedicated at the period when the meeting of the States. General occupied the public attention in France. A continuation of the arts and the crimes fo well delineated in this tragedy, by the fame men, produced the depofition and murder of Charles; and the repetition of them in France, destroyed the s N n monarchy BRIT. CRIT. VOL, VIII. NOV. 1796. monarchy there likewife, and brought Louis XVI. to the guil lotine. This work, therefore, which originally was intended as an hiftorical allegory in a dramatic form, has acquired, from this event, a double application of that kind: the first to the unjuft condemnation of Count Lally; the fecond to the unhappy fate of Louis XVI. "my tragedy, fays the noble writer, has become a prophecy." The object of the greater drama being to teach as well as to pleafe, it may be divided into fpecies from the matter taught: as the ethical, political, and, perhaps, fome others: Cato and Tamerlane are political tragedies. This fpecies has been much more cultivated in France than in England, the dialogue of that ftage draws many of its ornaments from the fentimenti di libertà e pratiche di politica*. We shall give a light fketch of the hiftory of this fpecies of the drama in France. It is connected with the tragedy before us by a double relation; it is a hiftory of the school, from the pen of one of the most eminent difciples, to which the work we are confidering belongs: we are tracing alfo one very leading caufe of that revolution of fentiment in France, which produced the event, of which this tragedy is an allegorical de fcription. The great Corneille, the father of the French theatre, formed himself chiefly upon the ftudy of Lucan and Seneca. We fee him the rival, and almoft the fuperior, of the former, in his Cinna, his Sertorius, in the death of Pompey; and particularly in the laft; the character of which feems not duly eftimated. Whoever looks for examples of the utmost fplendor of his ardent genius, will find them there: and whoever is defirous of pointing out how far he could fall below that elevation, in his fondnefs for meretricious glitter, will find it there. Lucan was a republican: Corneille gave his own vigour and beauty to the fentiments of Lucan; he fet them in the most feductive point of light, and gave them currency. Still however we hitherto fee nothing more than the application of Roman principles, to the events recorded in the Roman hiftory. Voltaire fucceeded him as master of this political fchool: he went further; he gave these principles a fecondary fenfe, applicable to the state of fociety and of opinions, in modern Europe. He fometimes indicated this in the titles of his tragedies; thus we have Mahomet, or Fanaticifm; the Guebres, or Toleration; in his Brutus, he has apparently laid *Sentiments of liberty and political intrigues; Lettera del Signor Algarotti al Sig. Abato Franchini. down down his principles of civil liberty. The death of Cæfar and the Triumvirate have a fimilar character. That the principles contained in the tragedy of Brutus were meant by Voltaire to have this fecondary fenfe, we have his own avowal, in his dedication of it to Lord Bolingbroke; in which he fays the fubject is, "of all others perhaps, the most proper for the English theatre." There is a party in England who, from the very first diftich, may think this not to be true, in the manner he has handled it. He makes Brutus thus addrefs the Romans. Scourges of tyrants! who revere alone As kings, the Gods, the virtues, and the laws!” Omitting one particular, this is the very language afterwards made ufe of by the hypocritical and bloody Robespierre in his harangues. In the fifth scene of the first act of Catiline, Cicero is introduced fupporting the rights of the (peuple fouverain) the fovereign people: and we have the exprefs authority of this celebrated writer, to give this political character to the French drama, before the revolution. We tranflate a paffage from his differtation on ancient and modern tragedy." I go further, and I affirm, that those men who have been fo passionately attached to liberty, as to have often faid, that no one but a native of a republic can think with elevation, might have learned to speak with the dignity of liberty itself, in fome of our dramatic pieces." Thus the tragedy of Brutus teaches the doctrines of liberty, but republican liberty. It exhibits a comparifon of the evils of the monarchy of France, as it formerly existed, with the advantages of republican government. The former is cenfured allegorically, under the name of Etruria. We cannot refer to all the paffages in this tragedy, which exaggerate the evils of a fimple monarchy, an aristocracy, and a hierarchy; but we will give the purport of four lines from the fecond fcene of the first act, which may ferve as the text to which all the reft are a comment. Slaves to her kings, even to her priests enslaved: Adores Antiquity's degrading chains, And longs to fix them on a world enslaved. Perhaps when Voltaire wrote the tragedy entitled the Laws of Minos, the political fentiments inculcated in which are very different, he might be endeavouring to expiate fome offences which had been taken at these pieces. In the last note on this tragedy, he pays a compliment to the late King of Sweden, on the revolution he effected in that kingdom, From this very fcene we might alfo point out the fource of the theatrical pageantries of French politics; their confederation and national oaths: and from other parts of the fame drama, the arrogance of their language, and the fpirit of foreign conquest common to republics and fimple monarchies. It was thus that in France the drama acquired its fententious and political ftyle, and prepared the fpirit of republicanism and revolution. But it may be employed alfo to fuppress it, and to inculcate that fubordination without which liberty cannot fubfift: this is one of the objects of M. Lally's tragedy of the Earl of Strafford. We fhall give a few paffages from it, with a tranflation, and then add fome sketches toward its general character. The first extract we shall produce is from the defence of Lord S. before the pcers; the laft lines of which, diftinguished by afterifms in the margin, the noble author has felected to place below a very elegant engraved portrait of his hero, at the beginning of the work. "Ah! pour les droits du peuple, & pour fa liberté Pour l'Etat en péril, pour le trône opprimé, Pour maintenir la force à nos loix tutélaires, *Pour arracher le Peuple aux fureurs populaires." P.65. "None for the people's rights, their liberties, Gave truth a fterner or augufter voice: None with more firm reftraint has curbed that power, More the confpirator than citizen; This, fetting up to fale the painted femblance The |