lands afford to every man who can, by saving a few hundred dollars, acquire and enjoy the independent situation of land owner and cultivator, our manufacturing capitalists, are incessantly in jeopardy. In Europe, the redundant population, and great difficulty of procuring employment, renders the capitalist beyond comparison more secure there, than he can be here for half a century to come. X. After all, if it be right that manufactures should be encouraged, let us at least inquire whether they are not in the actual state of things, sufficiently encouraged.

The duties on importation of foreign articles, extend from 25 to 33 1-3 per cent. That is, there is already a bounty in favour of the home manufacturer, from this source, of about 30 per cent. Add to this, the freight which the importer pays, equal on an average to five per cent: add to this the importer's profit, who sells to the same class of people who are the customers of the manufacturer at home, 15 per cent at the very least. That is, there is actually in the present circumstances, an average bounty of 50 per cent, in favour of the domestic manufacturer of every imported article. If this be not a tax on the consumer high enough in all conscience, I know not where the legislature is to stop, short of absolute prohibition. What a contrast between commerce and manufactures! The first, except when a war is wanted, says 'let us alone:' the constant outcry of the other, is, additional duties, additonal prohibitions, pains and penalties on our competitors, and monopoly under the name of protection, for us!

Those who have attended to the history of the wool trade in Great Britain, know, that the profits of the woollen manufacturers have chiefly arisen from their having worried and teazed the government of that country into a continued system of fraud upon the farmers. Not content with saying to the credulous people, 'it is your interest to buy your goods from us, and to drive away all foreign articles,' they have had the address to persuade parliament to prohibit the farmer from selling his sheep and his wool to foreigners at a high price, in order that these jugglers may buy it at a low price-or rather at their own price.

By and by, we shall have petitions to congress, founded on the example of Great Britain, to prevent us from selling our wool at a foreign market, in order to protect domestic manufacture!

So the callicoe-printers of Great Britain, persuade parliament that it is wise to make the home consumer pay a penny a yard more upon his printed muslins than the foreign consumer, in order to create a foreign market for his goods. In like manner, high duties are laid upon white as well as upon printed callicoes and muslins from India; thus taxing the consumers at home for the benefit of the manufacturers, who enjoy the laugh as well as the profit, at the expense of the people who patiently submit to these impositions. Mr. Pitt very properly resisted the clamours of the same class of men, on the subject of the Irish propositions; still the manufactures of

that country were long depressed for the sake of their English competitors.

I do not dwell, on the productive source of foreign war which the manufacturing system has been, to the most manufacturing of all European nations, wars that have consumed ten times the profit of the system-on the premature decrepitude of a manufacturing population-on the demoralizing effect of large manufactories -on the abject slavery of the men, women, and children, who in a crouded population can find no employment in agriculture, or who from habit have accustomed themselves to the unhealthy occupations of manufacture-on the great inferiority of such a poppulation, to an agricultural yeomanry-or on many other topics fruitful in remark, that this discussion naturally suggests. I leave the reader to reflect for the present, on the view of the subject just given, and of need be, I shall resume it. INDAGATOR.

B

ART. VI.-The Scottish Bar.

(From Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk.')

Y the unanimous consent of his brethren, Mr. JOHN CLERK is the present Choryphæus of the bar-Juris consultorum sui seculi facile princeps.' Others there are that surpass him in a few particular points, both of learning and of practice, but on the whole, his superiority is entirely unrivalled and undisputed. Those who approach the nearest to him are, indeed, so much his juniors, that he cannot fail to have an immense ascendancy over them, both from the actual advantages of his longer study and experience, and without offence to him or them, be it added, from the effects of their early admiration of him, while he was as yet far above their sphere. Do not suppose, however, that I mean to represent any part of the respect with which these gentlemen treat their senior, as the result of empty prejudice. Never was any man less of a quack than Mr. Clerk; the very essence of his character is scorn of ornament, and utter loathing of affectation. He is the plainest, the shrewdest, and the most sarcastic of men; his sceptre owes the whole of its power to its weight-nothing to glitter.

It is impossible to imagine a physiognomy more expressive of the character of a great lawyer and barrister. The features are in themselves good at least a painter would call them so, and the upper part of the profile has as fine lines as could be wished. But then, how the habits of the mind have stamped their traces on every part of the face! What sharpness, what razor-like sharpness has indented itself about the wrinkles of his eyelids; the eyes themselves, so quick, so gray, such bafflers of scrutiny, such exquisite scrutinizers, how they change their expression-it seems almost how they change their colour-shifting from contracted, concentrated blackness, through every shade of brown, blue, green, and hazel, back into their own open, gleaming gray again. How they glisten into a smile of disdain!-Aristotle says, that all laughter springs

from emotions of conscious superiority. I never saw the Stagyrite so well illustrated as in the smile of this gentleman. He seems to be affected with the most delightful and balmy feelings, by the contemplation of some soft-headed prosing driveller, racking his poor brain, or bellowing his lungs out-all about something which he, the smiler, sees through so thoroughly, so distinctly. Blunder follows blunder; the mist thickens about the brain of the bewildered hammerer; and every plunge of the bogtrotter-every deepening shade of his confusion-is attested by some more copious infusion of Sardonic suavity into the horrible, ghastly, grinning smile of the happy Mr. Clerk. How he chuckles over the solemn spoon whom he hath fairly got into his power. When he rises at the conclusion of his display, he seems to collect himself like a kite above a covey of partridges; he is no hurry to come down, but holds his victims with his glittering eye,' and smiles, sweetly, and yet more sweetly, the bitter assurance of their coming fate; then out he stretches his arm, as the kite may his wing, and changing the smile by degrees into a frown, and drawing down his eyebrows from their altitude among the wrinkles of his forehead, and mak ing them to hang like fringes quite over his diminishing and brightening eyes, and mingling a tincture of deeper scorn in the wave of his lips, and projecting his chin, and suffusing his whole face with the very livery of wrath, how he pounces with a scream upon his prey-and may the Lord have mercy upon their unhappy souls.

He is so sure of himself, and he has the happy knack of seeming to be so sure of his case, that the least appearance of labour, or concern, or nicety of arrangement, or accuracy of expression, would take away from the imposing effect of his cool, careless, scornful, and determined negligence. Even the greatest of his opponents sit, as it were, rebuked before his gaze of intolerable derision. But careless and scornful as he is, what a display of skilfulness in the way of putting his statements; what command of intellect in the strength with which he deals the irresistible blows of his arguments-blows of all kinds, fibbers, cross-buttockers, but most often and most delightedly sheer facers choppers. Ars est celare artem, is his motto; or rather, Usus ipse natura est;' for where was there ever such an instance of the certain sway of tact and experience? It is truly a delightful thing, to be a witness of this mighty intellectual gladiato, scattering every thing before him like a king upon his old accustomed arena; with an eye swift as lightning to discover the unguarded point of his adversary, and a hand steady as iron to direct his weapon, and a mask of impenetrable stuff that throws back like a rock the prying gaze that would dare to retaliate upon his own lynx-like penetration-what a champion is here! It is no wonder that every litigant in this covenanting land should have learned to look on it as a mere tempting of Providence to omit retaining John Clerk.

As might be expected from a man of his standing, in years and in talent, this great advocate disdains to speak any other than the

language of his own country. I am not sure, indeed, but there may be some little tinge of affectation in his pertinacious adherence to both the words and the music of his Doric dialect. However, as he has perfectly the appearance and manners of a gentleman, and even, every now and then (when it so likes him), something of the air of the courtier about him,-there is an impression quite the reverse of vulgarity, produced by the mode of his speaking; and, in this respect, he is certainly quite in a different situation from some of his younger brethren, who have not the excuse of age for the breadth of their utterance, nor, what is perhaps of greater importance still, the same truly antique style in its breadth. Of this, indeed, I could not pretend to be a judge; but some of my friends assured me that nothing could be more marked than the difference between the Scotch of one who learned it sixty years ago, and that of the younger generation. These last, they observed, have had few opportunities of having Scotch spoken, but among servants, &c. so that there clings to all their own expressions, when they make use of the neglected dialect, a rich flavour of the hall or the stable. Now, Mr. Clerk, who is a man of excellent family and fashion, spent all his early years among ladies and gentlemen, who spoke nothing whatever but Scotch; and even I could observe (or so, at least, I persuaded myself), that his language had a certain cast of elegance even in its utmost breadth. But the truth is, that the matter of his orations is far too good to allow of much attention being made to its manner; and after a little time I scarcely remarked that he was speaking a dialect different from my own, excepting when, screwing his features into their utmost bitterness, or else relaxing them into their broadest glee, he lanched forth some mysterious vernacularism of wrath or merriment, to the tenfold confusion or tenfold delight of those for whose use it was intended.

I had almost forgot to mention that this old barrister, who at the bar has so much the air of having never thought of any thing but his profession, is, in fact, quite the reverse of a mere lawyer. Like old Voet, who used to be so much laughed at by the Leyden Jurisconsults for his frequenting the town-hall in that city (where there is, it seems, a very curious collection of paintings), Mr. Clerk is a great connoisseur in pictures, and devotes to them a very considerable portion of his time. He is not a mere connoisseur however, and indeed, I suspect, carries as much true knowledge of the art in his little finger, as the whole reporting committee of the Dilettanti society do in their heads. The truth is, that he is himself a capital artist, and had he given himself entirely to the art he loves so well, would have been, I have little doubt, by far the greatest master Scotland ever has produced. I went one day, by mere accident, into my friend John Ballantyne's sale-room, at the moment when that most cunning of all tempters had in his hand a little pen and ink sketch by Mr. Clerk-drawn upon the outer page of a reclaiming petition'-probably while some stupid oppo

VOL. XIV.

nent supposed himself to be uttering things highly worthy of Clerk's undivided attention. I bought the scrap for a mere trifle; but, I assure you, I value it very highly. It hangs, at this mo ment, over my chimney-piece, just under your old favourite, the blister-piece, by Jack. I have shown it to Mrs. and Tom and several others of my friends, and they all agree it is quite a Bijou. The subject is Bathsheba, with her foot in the water. The David is inimitable.-Mr. Clerk is a mighty patron of artists, and has a splendid gallery of pictures in his own possession.-Vol. i. pp. 502-510.

MR. CRANSTOUN.

There cannot be a greater contrast between any two individuals, of eminent acquirements, than there is between Mr. Clerk and the gentleman who ranks next to him at the Scottish bar-Mr. Cranstoun. They mutually set off each other to great advantage; they are rivals in nothing; notwithstanding their total dissimilitude in almost every respect, they are well nigh equally admired by every one. I am much mistaken if any thing could furnish a more unequivocal testimony to the talents of them both.

It was my fortune to see Mr. Cranstoun for the first time, as he rose to make his reply to a fervid, masculine, homely harangue of my old favourite; and I was never less predisposed to receive favourably the claims of a stranger upon my admiration. There was something, however, about the new speaker which would not permit me to refuse him my attention, although I confess I could scarcely bring myself to listen to him with much gusto for several minutes. I felt, to use a simile in Mr. Clerk's own way, like a person whose eyes have been dazzled with some strong, rich, luxuriant piece of the Dutch or Flemish school, and who cannot taste, in immediate transition, the more pale, calm, correct gracefulness of an Italian Fresco; nevertheless, the eyes become cool as they gaze, and the mind is gradually yielded up to a less stimulant, but in the end a yet more captivating and soothing species of seduction. The pensive and pallid countenance, every delicate line of which seemed to breathe the very spirit of compact thoughtfulness-the mild contemplative blue eyes, with now and then a flash of irresistible fire in them-the lips, so full of precision and tastefulness, not perhaps without a dash of fastidiousness in the compression of their curves-the gentle, easy, but firm and dignified air and attitude-every thing about him had its magic, and the charm was not long in winning me effectually into its circle. The stream of his discourse flowed on calmly and clearly; the voice itself was mellow yet commanding; the pronunciation exact, but not pedantically so; the ideas rose gradually out of each other, and seemed to clothe themselves in the best and most accurate of phraseology, without the exertion of a single thought in its selection. The fascination was ere long complete; and, when he closed his speech, it seemed to me as if I had never before witnessed any specimen of the true 'Melliflua Majestas' of Quintilian.