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national works, which private projectors do not consider it their interest to undertake, ought not therefore to be undertaken by the state. The experience of ancient and modern times sufficiently attests the fallacy of this principle. Almost all the great public works of antiquity were constructed at the expense of the Prince, or the State; the importance of leading lines of communication by means of roads and canals was fully understood at a very remote period, and these were in all civilized states an especial object of public attention.

Herodotus relates, that the Cnidians, a people of Caria in Asia Minor, had undertaken to make a canal through the Isthmus which joins that peninsula to the continent, but the oracle interdicted it, and they were superstitious enough to give up the undertaking. If this had happened in modern times, we should have shrewdly suspected that the oracle was a political economist, and had given a voice against the work because it was proposed to be undertaken at the expense of the State. The numerous canals in Egypt which can yet be traced, although they are in a great measure filled up by the sands of the desert, attest how much the commercial greatness of that country depended on its means of internal transport. Several of the Egyptian kings attempted to unite the Nile to the Red Sea by a navigable canal. This great work was begun by Necos the son of Psammeticus, and completed by the second Ptolemy*. It is now difficult to discover the least traces of it.

There is no country of the world where the advantages of canals have been so much appreciated, not even excepting Holland, as in China. The rivers that intersect that empire all intercommunicate by means of canals, and floating cities are there to be found inhabited by multitudes who dwell upon the waters. The grand canal can only be equalled as an example of human labour by the great wall in that empire, and is the most stupendous work of the kind that ever has been executedt. Raynal thus describes the labours of the

* Diodorus says that Darius was prevented from completing it, owing to the greater height of the Red Sea; but that the second Ptolemy obviated this objection by means of sluices. (1. 33.) This canal was opened under the Caliphate of Omar, in (A.D.) 635.

+ This canal is described in the Chinese annals, which, if they were not the most matter of fact people in the world, might well be doubted, to have occupied the labour of thirty thousand men during forty-three years.

VOL. VII.-No XIII.

K

in this respect. Rivers, stars, dreams, moons,-every department of nature and art, in short, is pressed into her service to furnish the most far-fetched metaphors that poor brain was ever tortured to invent. We select a few passages from a chapter concerning the marriage festivities of the Sultan's daughter. She takes for her model a letter addressed by the Seraskier to the Sultan, in gratitude (pretended, says she) for some honour conferred on him by his Imperial Master.

"Your sublime favour has been as a southern sun, piercing even into the remote corner of my insignificance! Had I all the forest boughs of the universe for pens, and the condensed stars of Heaven for a page " -(stars are nothing,-mere points and commas; we advise "the whole firmament" in her next edition)—

"whereon to inscribe your bounties, I should lack both space and means to record them."

We remember certain lines very like this poetic epistle of old Koshrew, but we cannot recollect who the author was; perhaps Miss Pardoe's informant could tell. The lines run somewhat thus:

"Could we with ink the ocean fill,

Were Earth of parchment made,

And every single stick a quill,

Each man a scribe by trade;

To write the praise of half the sex
Would drink that ocean dry,"

&c. &c. &c.

"In this style" (of the letter) "should he or she who undertakes to become their Chronicler shape the period in which are detailed the marriage festivities of the Princess Mihirmàh. The pen should be tipped with diamond dust, and the paper powdered with seed-pearls. All the hyperboles of the Arabian story-tellers should be heaped together, as the colours of the rainbow are piled upon the clouds which pillow the setting sun; and as the gorgeous tail of the peacock serves to withdraw the eye from its coarse and ungainly feet, so should the glowing sentences that dilate on the glories of the show, veil from the vision of the reader the paltry details that would tend to dissolve the enchantment."

Miss Pardoe sticks to her intentions, and gives us little, at least in this chapter, except glowing sentences, " gorgeous tails" of Pashas and commanders, and a full blaze of "colours of the rainbow:"--the following quotation would do honour to the high priest of fire worshippers, and we seriously recommend it to the attention of Moore;-in another edition

of Lalla Rookh he might find it full of good hints for Gheber prayers. It was called forth on witnessing the illuminations of the marriage fêtes.

"And now, ye Spirits of fire, who guard the subterranean flames which are only suffered to flash forth at intervals from the crater of some fierce volcano :-ye, whose brows are girt with rays of many-coloured radiance, whose loins are cinctured by the lightning, and whose garments are of the tint which hangs like a drapery over the cineritious remnants of a conflagrated city:-ye, who must have left your lordliest pageants overmatched, lend me a pen of fire,"

-(and in mercy to her fingers, we hope when they hear and grant her prayer, they will also let her borrow a pair of Asbestos gloves,)

"drawn from the pinion of your bravest sprite, and fashioned with an unwrought diamond!" &c. &c.

ARTICLE IV.

State means of employing labour, and promoting industry in Ireland.

WE have in our preceding numbers advocated the introduction of a Poor-Law into Ireland as a first step in the progress of improvement. It will, we feel satisfied, produce peace-peace industry; and industry in Ireland must precede and invite English capital. But Ireland, herself, has not enough of means and stimulus to produce the necessary degree of active industry. The action of the government will therefore be necessary in the first instance to give the impulse.

A good system of internal communication by means of canals and roads is one of the most powerful engines of prosperity, and this is a work which, where other means do not exist to effect it, the government is called upon to undertake. It has been urged,-and England has been referred to in proof of the soundness of the theory,-that the construction of works for the benefit of the public may be safely left to private projectors, because private interest calculates with the greatest accuracy the works most likely to prove successful speculations; that it is the duty of a government to regulate and control, rather than to originate such undertakings; that if such works be not the object of private enterprise, it is a proof that they are not likely to prove remunerative undertakings; and that to apply capital to their construction must be injurious to the community, by withdrawing it from productive circulation: that, moreover, the experience derivable from the prosecution of public works in Ireland does not hold out any inducement for adopting a different line of policy with respect to that portion of the empire.

This may be a proper rule with respect to a highly cultivated and prosperous country like England; but it cannot be applied generally; and especially, it cannot be applied to Ireland. The great natural capabilities which that country presents remain undeveloped-her numerous rivers unnavigable-canals and roads unfinished-railroads projected,but with one exception, unconstructed; and all this has been the disastrous result of applying to Ireland the principle, that

national works, which private projectors do not consider it their interest to undertake, ought not therefore to be undertaken by the state. The experience of ancient and modern times sufficiently attests the fallacy of this principle. Almost all the great public works of antiquity were constructed at the expense of the Prince, or the State; the importance of leading lines of communication by means of roads and canals was fully understood at a very remote period, and these were in all civilized states an especial object of public attention.

Herodotus relates, that the Cnidians, a people of Caria in Asia Minor, had undertaken to make a canal through the Isthmus which joins that peninsula to the continent, but the oracle interdicted it, and they were superstitious enough to give up the undertaking. If this had happened in modern times, we should have shrewdly suspected that the oracle was a political economist, and had given a voice against the work because it was proposed to be undertaken at the expense of the State. The numerous canals in Egypt which can yet be traced, although they are in a great measure filled by the sands of the desert, attest how much the commercial greatness of that country depended on its means of internal transport. Several of the Egyptian kings attempted to unite the Nile to the Red Sea by a navigable canal. This great work was begun by Necos the son of Psammeticus, and completed by the second Ptolemy*. It is now difficult to discover the least traces of it.

up

There is no country of the world where the advantages of canals have been so much appreciated, not even excepting Holland, as in China. The rivers that intersect that empire all intercommunicate by means of canals, and floating cities are there to be found inhabited by multitudes who dwell upon the waters. The grand canal can only be equalled as an example of human labour by the great wall in that empire, and is the most stupendous work of the kind that ever has been executed+. Raynal thus describes the labours of the

* Diodorus says that Darius was prevented from completing it, owing to the greater height of the Red Sea; but that the second Ptolemy obviated this objection by means of sluices. (1.33.) This canal was opened under the Caliphate of Omar, in (A.D.) 635.

This canal is described in the Chinese annals, which, if they were not the most matter of fact people in the world, might well be doubted, to have occupied the labour of thirty thousand men during forty-three years.

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