PART 1.] Englishmen buried abroad.-Sir Thomas Gage. The infantry soldiers belong to a class, who, either from their dress, or from the fierce looking heads painted on the shields, have been denominated tigers of war, and who, says Mr. Ellis, may be called the monsters of the Imperial Guard. They are literally covered from head to foot with garments striped black and yellow. These consist of a loose jacket and trowsers, and the head itself is covered with a close cap of the same material and colour, to which are moreover attached a pair of ears. Some of those observed by the traveller just mentioned, had a coloured cloth wrapped like a scanty clout round their heads. The Chinese themselves admit, that the monstrous face on the capacious basket-work shield, is intended to frighten their enemies and make them run away; but from their general appearance, these tigers, unlike their four-footed brethren, are much more likely to excite ridicule than terror. In their exercise, the men belonging to this corps of infantry, assume all sorts of whimsical attitudes : jumping and capering about and tumbling over one another, like the clowns and pantaloons of our Christmas pantomimes. When they appear under arms, they hold their shields in front, close to their breasts, and allow a few inches of their rusty blade to appear above it. Indeed, the whole of the military tactics of the Chinese is not less ridiculous. Their Emperor Hoang-Ti divided his army into six bodies, to represent the heavens, the earth, the clouds, the winds, the balance of heaven, and the pivot of the earth. TayKoung drew up his in five bodies, in allusion to the five planets; and other generals ranged their battalions in the form of the famous five-clawed dragon or mystical tortoise. These tactics, however, are not more absurd than those of a general of the Eastern empire, who, in a campaign in Sicily, drew up his troops in the figure of the human body, so as to represent the head, arms, trunk, and lower extremities. A signal defeat was the just reward of so childish a proceeding. 607 buried abroad,” I trust will be acceptable. Bertram de Verdon, the founder of Croxden Abbey, co. Stafford, died at Joppa, in the Holy Land, and was buried at Acre. Hugh de Novant, 38th Bishop of Lichfield, a person eminent for eloquence and piety, died March 27, 1199, and was buried at Caen, in Normandy. He was an inveterate enemy of the Monks; whom he deservedly opposed. In 1190 Richard I. gave him authority to remove the monks of Coventry, and put secular priests in their place; but the monks refusing to obey, he made way by the others to flight. He is said to have sword, wounding some, and putting been wounded in this conflict as he was standing by the altar. Sir Thomas Gage, 7th bart. of Hengrave, co. Suffolk, died Dec. 27, 1820, at Rome, and was buried in the Chiesa del Gesù there. The marble over his remains has the following inscription by the Rev. Charles Plowden, late President of Stonyhurst, in Lancashire, and afterwards Pastor of the Catholic congregation at Bristol. "Qvieti. et. memoriæ THOME. GAGE. ANGLI. BARONETTI Domo. Hengrave. castro. gentis. svæ Qvi. disciplinarvm. curricvlo Svmma. ingenij. lavde. confecto in. Collegio. saxosylvano. Societ. Iesv splendorem. generis. svi Litteris virtute. et. avitæ . religionis studio. avxit Vixit. Ann. XXXVIIII. M. VIIII. D. XXV. Graphicen botanicen. monesq. hominvm. et. regionvm. historiam. edoctus peregre decessit. vi. kal. Jan, a. M.D.CCC. XXI M. Anna, ex. comitib. de. Kenmare. vxor ave. As you have not in your valuable Obituary preserved any particulars of this amiable gentleman, the following notices, extracted from his brother's History of Hengrave*, " will preserve a record of one who ought always to be esteemed and remembered among your Worthies. "Sir Thomas Gage, F. L. S. married in 1809 Lady Mary-Anne Browne, dau. of Valentine, Earl of Kenmare, by whom he * Reviewed in vol. xc. ii. p. 521. left 608 Sir Thomas Gage. left two sons, Sir Thomas Gage, the present and eighth baronet, born on the fifth of September, 1810, and Edward, born on the twentieth of March, 1812. As it would be impossible for the author to speak of his brother's character, without seeming partiality, he feels it a satisfaction to be in possession of the sentiments of a friend*, who writing to him, says, 'In my view of your brother, enthusiasm and delicacy distinguish ed his character, and were blended in a manner as happy as unusual. Had these been supported by strong health, there was no perfection in art or science to which he would not have been capable of attaining. His tastes and pursuits were all elegant. Whatever he said or did, was eminently marked by gentlemanly feelings. It was both from nature and from cultivation, and scarcely less from cultivation than from nature, that he possessed a tact, which, while it was essential to the pursuit of botany, his favourite science, rendered him tremblingly alive to the beauties of art, and the more sublime charms of creation. In the most abstruse parts of the vegetable world he had laboured hard by the lamp, as well as the sun; studying the works of his predecessors in the closet, and exploring the objects themselves in the fields. The minute accuracy of his remarks, the care with which he recorded them, and the still greater in dustry that he employed in perpetuating the recollection of the living plants by drawings, are best known to you who are in possession of his journals and portfolios. But the value of his notes and sketches were also well known to all of us who enjoyed the happiness of his correspondence; for no man was ever more liberal in his communications. Of the virtues, and the higher qualities of his mind, it would be presumption in me to speak; my knowledge of him was not sufficient to enable me to do it with justice; nor indeed could I make the attempt without feeling myself under the bias of partiality: to know him was to love him.' Mr. Mathias, unquestionably one of the ablest judges of human nature, became acquainted with him a few years before his death, and in one of his letters to me, just previously to that event, he said, "How much I lament the delicate state of the health of your friend, Sir Thos. Gage; he appears to me to be one of the men whom the Redeemer intended expressly to designate, when he pros nounced his blessing upon the meek, who should inherit the earth'." The author acknowledges himself indebted for an etching of Sir Thomas Gage, given in his work, to the elegant taste of Mrs. Dawson Turner. Yours, &c. STEMMALYSMU. *Dawson Turner, esq. General Dumoriez. THIS Mr. URBAN, Muirtown, March 25. HIS day I have perused the account of the death of General Dumoriez*; a man to whose skill in opposing the enemies of France, that nation certainly owed the success of her first military struggle. I do not count so much upon the battle of Jemappe, and his subsequent invasion of Holland before Jemappe; he had 84,000 men around Valenciennes, most of whom had only 18 miles to march to that battle, while Clairfait had not 25,000 men; but his great prudence early in September 1792, near Chalons, with only 17,000 men, certainly formed a bius Maximus.-I happened to be at brilliant parallel to the conduct of FaChalons, on my route to Geneva, the 13th Sept. 1792, when the army of Bournonville (with which I travelled from Rheims) joined the army at Chalons, having previously occupied the camps of Maulde, and Famars, near Valenciennes; and well remember the shouts of "vive Dumouriez,” which constantly resounded. After his defection he passed through Ostend in June 1793, and was nearly killed by the French emigrants; he dined one day at the 37th regiment's mess with Lieut.-Col. Sir Charles Ross, and I remember that his sagacity was much observed the conversation happened to turn on the English and Scotch Officers in the British Service; he said they were easily to be distinguished by their features, and turning to Captain Cameron, (a brave and worthy Highlander) said "now I am sure this is a Montaignard Ecossois." The siege of Valenciennes was then expected to begin, and his remark was, you'll take it after six weeks of open trenches-according to rule; I should not follow regular custom, and I think would take it in three weeks." The trenches, where I passed half my time on duty, were open from 13th June till 26th July so he was just in the first part of his remark. His defection seems never to have been forgiven by one party, nor his services rewarded by the other; but it was a measure forced upon him, for no one could doubt a moment that the loss of his army at Tirlemont must have cost him his head, had he delayed the measure 24 hours longer. H.R.D. See the Obituary of the present Num ber, page 645. PART 1.] [609] REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 117. Relative Taxation, or Observations on the Impolicy of taxing Malt, Hops, Beer, Soap, Candles, and Leather; with Reasons for substituting a Tax on Property. By Thomas Vaux, Land Agent and Surveyor. 8vo. pp. 232. are always admitted with reluctance by those who guide the affairs of mankind. It is now about 70 years since Du Quesnay formed the sect of the Economists, and although his principles have been so admirably stated and Aed, that the last art that is under- have in speculation received the ap put into form by Adam Smith, and N Author of celebrity has observ stood or brought to perfection by mankind, is perhaps the most necessary of all arts the art of Government; to this may be added, with equal truth, that Taxation is the last branch of the art of Government upon which mankind come to any definite and undisputed notions. At this moment, in the science of finance, we have truisms and axioms contradicted, and the very first principles of abstract reasoning set at nought, by the most eminent Statesmen of Europe, and we yearly witness their acting upon a contradiction of those simple but unerring principles of figures, in the truth of which the most ignorant as well as the most learned of mankind have impressed upon them by nature an unalterable conviction. That nations, any more than individuals, can incur debt otherwise than by an expenditure exceeding their income or revenue, or that they can relieve themselves of debt otherwise than by an excess of income over expenditure, are like abstract truths, to contradict which would be to insult the common sense of mankind; and yet Mons. Necker, and Dr. Hamilton, in his work on the National Debt, have very justly observed that every Finance Minister of the present age has successively contradicted these obvious truths, and has acted as if they were injurious falsehoods. These mischievous absurdities evidently cannot arise out of any complexity or abstract difficulties in finance as a science, they owe their birth and maturity to the passions that are excited, and to the individual, as well as party, schemes and interests that are involved in the treatment of the subject, and all such errors may be traced to corrupt and sinister views, rather than to intellectual aberrations. Improvements, however, in all subjects that relate to public measures, GENT. MAG. Suppl. XCIII. PART I. E probation of Statesmen of every description, yet it is only within these three or four years, that, even in this enlightened country, these principles have been allowed to influence practical measures of polity. One great disadvantage has attended all works that have been written upon the wealth of nations; they have proceeded from theorists, and men unacquainted with practical details, and therefore more capable of generalizing their subject, of forming abstract theories, than of drawing just inferences by a deduction from numerous facts. It is, however, principally by the inductive process of reasoning, that the most important truths relative to taxation, and to its effects upon society, can be arrived at; and for this reason we are disposed to pay much attention to the work of Mr. Vaux; for, with the necessary faculty of generalizing his ideas, this gentleman appears to possess an intimate acquaintance with the numerous and diversified practical effects of particular measures of Finance upon industry and upon lands, an advantage which few authors on such subjects have hitherto possessed. We do not mean to say that we agree with Mr. Vaux in all his opinions; on the contrary, although we are compelled by the merits of his work to pay much deference to his general views, and to acknowledge the correctness of by far the greater part of his volume, there are several points in which we decidedly differ from him. Mr. Vaux has with great perspicuity shown that the taxes upon malt, beer, soap, candles, and leather, not only have a most injurious effect upon the landed interest, and upon the peasantry of the country, but that they impose upon the landed interest by far a greater portion of the national bur dens 610 REVIEW-Vaux on relative Taxation. dens than justice or sound policy can authorize. So far we agree with Mr. Vaux, and think that he has done the community much service by the able manner in which he has established such important points, beyond, it appears to us, the possibility of dispute. But we must beg leave to dissent from him, when he would select a Property Tax as a panacea for all the evils that the present inequality of taxes upon agriculture produces in society. There is no tax more specious in theory, and more iniquitons in its effects, than a Property or an Income Tax. It falls with a quadruple severity upon some species of property; whilst it places a large portion of the community in a continued conflict between principle and duty, and therefore tends to corrupt the general morals of society. To prove both of these assertions, we need but go a little into detail. If, for instance, A possess an income in the funds of 2000l. per ann. the Income Tax being at 10 per cent. he pays to the State his full contribution of 2001. per annum; but his neighbour B makes an equal income by trade, but returns that income only at 5001. per annum, and consequently pays the State only 50l. per annum, or one-fourth of what A contributes. B therefore saves 150l. which he may invest in the funds, and which yielding him 77. 10s. per annum, pays a tax of 15s.; and thus B, by fraud, acquires a property of 150l. more than A, and contributes to the State only 50l. 15s. to A's 2001. The bounty which this advantage holds out to concealment and perjury, is often too powerful for human virtue to resist; and independently of the injustice of making men of equal incomes pay such unequal taxes, the continuance of an Income Tax for any length of time, would destroy every thing like morals in any community. The case we have put is by no means supposititious; and even if the ratio of A and B's return be denied to be possible or probable, the principle of the case is unanswerably conclusive to our argument. In short, a Property or Income Tax of any amount, would increase the great evil of which Mr. Vaux complains, that of one branch of the community paying more than its due proportion to the exigencies of the State. A much more equitable, and we trust, a more feasible antidote to the evil of disproportionate taxation, presents itself in the thrift and economy of the Executive Government. Our public establishments are acknowledged to be in most cases unnecessarily large, and in a vast number of them the wages or salaries paid for labour, are by far greater than are paid by merchants, lawyers, or even by wealthy trading companies, for similar services. Here then are abundant sources of saving to the State, and the amount of such savings will of course enable the Government to abolish, or at least to diminish, those taxes which press exclusively or unequally upon the agriculturists. The improved state of our commerce will also enable the Government to diminish the amount of Excise Duties, and the present inequalities of taxation, which Mr. Vaux has so ably pointed out, may be relieved without a resort to any measure so objectionable as that of making up the losses of the agriculturist by an exclusive pressure upon the public mortgagee or fundholder. Finally, without committing the error of considering the funded and landed as hostile interests, we may be allowed to state that the landholders have a vast preponderance in our legislations; that they have themselves imposed, or enabled the Government to impose, those very burdens which they now declare to be unjust and intolerable; and they have enjoyed infinitely more than their portion of the expenditure of the general revenue, by their exclusive monopoly of the immense patronage of Government. But it is almost absurd to talk of the two interests as distinct, for there are few funded capitalists that are not also landholders, and most of the great or principal landholders have directly or indirectly an advantage in the funds. The fact is, that taxes, however modified, must deteriorate the improvement of society, and it is almost impossible to proportion them so that their pressure be equally felt by every class of the community. That out taxes are not equally poised, the work before us proves to demonstration; and although we agree with Mr. Vaux that it is both possible and necessary to ad just their balance more equitably and rationally, yet we must confess that a paramount desire on the part of the philanthropist ought to be that of see PART I.] REVIEW. Vaux on relative Taxation. There is one more point upon which we beg leave to differ from this able author, we allude to his opinions upon the use of Machinery in manufactures and in agriculture. We are advocates for the utmost possible extension of Machinery, and even deny that the sudden invention of a machine can be an evil of any continuance even to those labourers whom it may throw out of employ. The adequate supply of the conveniences of life to the lower orders, entirely depends upon the extensive use of machinery, and it is this alone that can relieve large portions of the community from the necessity of continued toil, and diffuse amongst them those intellectual and social blessings which are the result of a state above the necessity of application to the drudgery and labour of producing or manufacturing consumable commodities. The policy of using machinery is either a specific question or a question of degree; if the former, we must either refuse machinery in toto, or avail ourselves of it to its utmost possible extent; if it be a question of degree, what human wisdom will determine the point beyond which the use of machinery is not to be permitted? Mr. Vaux talks of the agriculturists having to bear "the expense of supporting that class of workmen, whose labour is superseded by machinery;" and he continues to state, that "machinery supersedes labour to such a degree, that many thousands of men with large families have been and continue to be removed from manufacturing to country towns" and he then draws the inference that their parochial support is an evil falling exclusively on the farmers and landholders. Now on this point we must join issue with him, and deny that the throwing of these men out of employ is any evil at all, except, at the worst, to a portion of the men so discharged. Suppose, for the sake of argument, the sudden invention of a stocking machine, which throws 1000 workmen out of employ. Of these, perhaps, a half or two-thirds find employment in some other business; but suppose even that the whole of them are thrown into the work houses of the neighbouring parishes. The consequent increase of Poor Rates is borne in proportion by agriculturist, tradesman, manufacturer, 611 merchant, and capitalist, who may be of such parishes. But the machine which thus burdens the parish, manufactures more, probably at least twice as many pairs of stockings as were before manufactured by the workmen. This additional quantity is thrown into the market, and the agriculturist, tradesman, manufacturer, merchant, gentleman, and even labourer, buy their goods at half their former price. The transportation of these goods occasions an increased demand of waggons, horses, barges, and of every trade incidental to their production. The increased demand for raw produce to supply the machine, puts into requisition more seamen and more tonnage, and calls into employ a proportion of every labourer necessary to the building and equipment of ships, such as miners, iron and copper founders, shipwrights, riggers, sail-makers, ropemakers, &c. &c.; so that in point of fact, if the stocking labourers thrown on the parish be as 10, the increased demand for labour of a different species is as 9. Only one individual is therefore rendered an idle member of the community, and he finds employment by the natural inclination which we all have to improve our condition. Added to all this, the inventor of the machine and the manufacturer acquire fortunes; their money being brought into the market, increases the competition, and consequently the price of land and of its produce, and thus the agriculturist as well as every other man is benefited, and the convenience of apparel is diffused to individuals who otherwise would have been destitute or deficiently supplied with it. Ex uno disce omnes. This is the common effect of the invention of machinery; so unfounded is the notion that the invention of a machine is not a great and even an immediate benefit to all classes and individuals. We believe these are the only two material points upon which Mr. Vaux has committed any error of reasoning; and we shall now have the pleasurable task of approving of his invaluable performance. Mr. Vaux first proves that the agriculturists are more distressed than any other class of the community, and he then argues conclusively that classes cannot, like individuals, ruin themselves, but that their distresses must originate from extraneous causes. That ᎥᏝ |