'centralization' is created of a different, but scarcely a better kind, than that which Napoleon established in France.

Mr. Brougham's Marriage Bill will, we presume, supersede the unfortunate abortion produced by Lord John Russell. It is an improvement upon its predecessor, but it goes a very little way towards placing that important contract on its true foundation. The validity of the civil engagement is still to depend upon the performance of a religious ceremony, by a recognised Minister of some, though it may now be a Dissenting, sect. The Bill merely provides for registering the performance of the religious ceremony.

This imperfect measure may satisfy the consciences and stay the clamour of a large portion of the Dissenters; but it is impossible that such a settlement can be final. The following intelligence, which we extract from a Nottingham paper, and which is not the first of its kind, is an example of the opinions and feelings which are growing up in the country on this subject:

'At Laurence-street chapel, Birmingham, on Sunday last, after the service was over, the congregation was desired to stay, when four Dissenters took the marriage affair into their own hands, in a very short manner. Charles Bradley rose up and read the following document:

Before this congregation, I, Charles Bradley, jun. give you, Emma Harris, this ring to wear as a memorial of our marriage, and this written pledge stamped with the impressions of the United Rights of Man and Woman, declaring I will be your faithful husband from this time forward. (Signed) CHARLES BRADLEY, jun."

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Emma Harris then in turn read as follows:

"Before this congregation I, Emma Harris, receive this ring to wear as a memorial of our marriage, and give you, Charles Bradley, jun, this written pledge, stamped with the impressions of the United Rights of Man and Woman, declaring I will be your faithful wife from this time henceforward. "(Signed) EMMA HARRIS."

The same ceremony was gone through by Roger Hollinsworth and Mary Louisa Bradley, after which the papers were signed by several witnesses, and thus the marriage contract was made without the intervention of either priest or clerk. It should never be forgotten that two sisters, who married without a priest at Calverton, were incarcerated in the county jail of Nottingham, by the unrelenting severity of the ecclesiastical court, for more than twelve years. They were released in 1798. We opine, that the ecclesiastical court will not serve Mrs. Bradley and Mrs. Hollinsworth in the same way.'

17th May. Sir Edward Knatchbull's Beer Bill.—It is scarcely credible that in the second year after Parliamentary Reform, the reformed Parliament should, by an immense majority, be actually setting itself to undo what a Tory Parliament had done towards the enfranchisement of the working classes; reimposing that censorship over the social enjoyments of the rural population, which public indignation at the purposes to which it was perverted, had wrung out of the hands of the county magistracy, to whom it is now again proposed to be confided under another name and with a different machinery.

Sir Edward Knatchbull's proposal is to make the opening of a beerhouse depend upon the production of certificates from six ten-pound

householders, in favour of the petitioner; which certificates must be renewed annually. These certificates are not attestations to character, which may be demanded in the manner of subpoenaing a witness; but may be given or withheld at pleasure; and though in populous towns any person of creditable character would probably have little difficulty in obtaining them, in a rural district the small number of ten-pound householders, together with the known sentiments of the landed gentry, render the exaction of such a condition tantamount to the entire suppression of beer-houses. We regret to see Lord Howick chiming in with the prevailing false sentiment; though the amendment he proposes would be far less mischievous than the original proposition. His plan is, not to interfere with the opening of beer-houses, but to empower the vestry to close them, by a majority of two-thirds, on a representation from a certain number of householders that any particular beer-house is a nuisance. This is perhaps the least exceptionable form in which the discretionary power of interference, proposed to be created, could exist; and if by a clause in the Bill, the keeper of the criminated place of entertainment were secured a public hearing in his defence, and the right of cross-examining his accusers, with the benefit of an appeal to the judge of assize, or to the local court when such shall be established, Lord Howick's proposition might not be seriously objectionable.

But there is in the Bill, even if it were thus amended, one fatal provision, with which Lord Howick does not propose to interfere, and which brands the whole measure with the double stamp of tyranny and hypocrisy. We allude to the clauses which prohibit the houses from selling beer to be drank on the premises. The debate on this subject was replete with cant; for the expression even of just feelings deserves the name of cant, when the party expressing them would be confounded by being merely taken at his word. Mr. Buckingham said, that if beer is a necessary of life, the labourer might surely fetch it home and drink it there, for he ought not to wish to have his enjoyments separately from his wife and from his children. Very fine certainly; but we detest fine sentiments which are never meant to be acted upon. Do we find Mr. Buckingham, or any other supporter of the Bill, proposing to prevent all houses from taking in labourers to drink with one another, apart from their families? No; the object is to permit one set of houses and to forbid others; to let the houses licensed by the magistrates retain this obnoxious privilege, and to take it away from the remainder; to create a monopoly of the evil they complain of, in favour of the landlords' houses. The obvious effect, doubtless by many of the promoters of the bill clearly foreseen and calculated upon, is to confine the sale of beer to the landlords' houses. The labourer, as every person of common sense must foresee, will generally prefer the place where he can obtain rest as well as refreshment, and where alone he can have the excitements and the pleasures of society. Scarcely a member opened his lips in favour of the measures who did not think it decent to disavow any wish of restoring the former monopoly: is it possible that any one of all who made the disavowal, should not see, that whether this be the purpose or not, it will certainly be the effect?

We, too, detest, probably as much as these careful guardians of other people's morality, the selfishness with which the demoralized and brutal part of the working population squander their earnings on their own

separate debaucheries, leaving their families in want. But if to provide against this evil were the real object, it could be effected, not by restraining the just liberty of the one party, but by giving a remedy to the other. Upon proof that too much of a labourer's earnings was spent from home, his wife ought to have the power of demanding that a suitable proportion of his wages should be paid, not to him, but to her, for the support of herself and of her children. Supposing this done, we know not why the legislature should enact, either directly or indirectly, that a husband should have no society except that of his wife: the misfortune is, that the privilege is not reciprocal; and it is another misfortune that mere defects of physical arrangements prevent the married poor from having their social as well as their domestic life in common. A time will come, when the more general application of the co-operative principle in household economy, will enable the poor to command, without the equivocal instrumentality of public houses, many of those facilities for social enjoyment, even in a refined form, which have hitherto been the exclusive portion of the opulent classes. The attention of all real wellwishers of the poorer classes should be turned to this most important topic. But in the mean time, we protest utterly against making the labourer's cottage a place of confinement, by refusing him shelter or harbour elsewhere.

19th May. My Grandmother's Journal-We seldom see the Morning Herald; but the number for this day accidentally fell into our hands; and of six articles printed in large type, the following was the purport of five. One was a twaddling defence of the pretensions of the Church to superiority of numbers over the Dissenters; this was the least ridiculous of the five; another was a defence of Lord Wynford's Sabbath-day Bill; another of Sir Edward Knatchbull's Beer Bill. A fourth was a philippic against the Poor Law Bill, and its bashaws;' the fifth, a philippic against omnibuses, with a demand that they be prohibited east of Temple Bar. All this in a single number. Any one of these opinions, except, perhaps, the last, might singly be held by a person not absolutely destitute of reason; each is among the extravagancies of some particular creed, when pushed to its utmost; but no one except My Grandmother,' could have united them. That personage has made up her budget of opinions out of the separate anilities of the sillier part of every existing party or persuasion.

22nd May. Death of Lafayette.-There would, in any circumstances, have been something solemn and affecting in the separation of the last link which connected us with the dawn of American Independence and the youthful enthusiasm of French liberty; in the extinction of the sole survivor among the great names of the last age. But this feeling must assume a deeper character when he who has departed from us, was the one man who stood before our eyes, and might, it so seemed, have stood for many years longer, the living representative of whatever was best and purest in the spirit, and truest in the traditions of his age. Lafayette not only had lived for mankind, but every year of his existence was precious to them, and grievously will he be missed. His was not the influence of genius, nor even of talents; it was the influence of a heroic character: it was the influence of one who, in every situation, and throughout a long life, had done and suffered every thing which op

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portunity had presented itself of doing and suffering for the right, and who was ready to repeat the same course of doing and suffering, or a severer one, whenever called upon by duty. Such an example, in so conspicuous a station, is ever most valuable, seldom more needful than now.

If a life made up of the most extraordinary vicissitudes, and a soul on which prosperity and adversity vainly exerted all their most corrupting influences, be the materials of an inspiring biography, the life of Lafayette would be one of the noblest subjects for a writer of genius. Even in the simplest narrative, it is in itself a heroic poem. The different epochs of his existence would afford the finest scope to a biographer. There would be, first, the opening period, when, at twenty years of age, he left the attractive and brilliant life of the French Court, to serve as a volunteer in the apparently desperate cause of the revolted colonies of America; and when, having seen the efforts of the noble constellation of patriots, with whom he had associated himself, successful, almost against all hope, and not without having materially contributed to that success, he returned, and we see him first the idol of the people, heading the enfranchisement of his own countrymen, but strenuously, and at all personal hazard, opposing himself to every excess; and three years later deliberately staking life, liberty, fortune, and the love of his countrymen, and losing all except the first, to arrest the precipitate course of the revolution. We next follow him to the dungeon of Olmutz, where for five years the vengeance of an infuriated despot retained him in secret captivity, without communication by word or writing with any who loved him, or tidings from that external world where so tremendous a drama was then enacting. Here he remained, and remained with spirit unbroken, until, by the treaty of Leoben, his release was made by his country part of the price of her mercy to his unrelenting oppressor. But his country then fell upon evil days: he could in nothing serve her, and he retired into the obscurest private life. He reappeared at the restoration, stood once more at the head of the friends of liberty, and was revered as their patriarch. He saw America once more, on the fiftieth Anniversary of her liberation, and his presence was, from one end of the Union to the other, a national jubilee. He saw the infant people which he had nursed in the cradle, grown into one of the mightiest empires of the earth: he lived to taste all the enjoyment which the heartfelt gratitude and love of ten millions of human beings could bestow. He returned to preside at another revolution; gave a king to his own country; withdrew from that king when he abandoned the principles which had raised him to the throne; bore up, even against the bitterness of disappointment; and died with his hopes deferred, but not extinguished. Honour be to his name, while the records of human worth shall be preserved among us! It will be long ere we see his equal, long ere there shall arise such a union of character and circumstances as shall enable any other human being to live such a life.

23rd May. Lord Althorp and the Taxes on Knowledge.-Lord Althorp's defence for voting against his recorded opinion on the subject of the Newspaper stamps, is truly characteristic, both of the man and of the ministry. Mr. Bulwer and Mr. Roebuck, the proposer and seconder of the motion, introduced it to the House as a question of the highest public policy, or rather above all policy, since it concerns the ends to which go

vernmen titself is but a means. They referred the question to the interests of civilization. Lord Althorp refers it to the interests of the revenue. The tax yielded £500,000 (or some such sum) a year. That was his first averment. His second was, that the House did not force him to abolish the tax, and therefore he would not. This is a favourite argument with the leader of the House of Commons. That the House does not force him to do his duty, is always with him a sufficient plea against the propriety of doing it. The other day, on the subject of the Danish claims, a question of simple pecuniary honesty, a judicial question whether the claimants were or were not entitled to certain monies, did not Lord Althorp tell the House, that since, contrary to his expectation, he saw they were desirous to be honest, he was willing to be so too? He will most uprightly do justice between man and man, provided he is compelled. This predicament of finding their honesty lagging behind that of the House, is one in which Ministers are now well accustomed to find themselves. An example of it was their ignominious defeat on Mr. Lyall's motion respecting the sixpences taken from the wages of merchant seamen to support Greenwich Hospital. It is scarcely credible that so despicable a motive as dislike of the trouble of finding so small a sum as £22,000 elsewhere, should induce men of creditable character to volunteer, in defence of so gross an iniquity, excuses of even a grosser iniquity than the abuse itself. The merchant seaman may enjoy the benefit of Greenwich Hospital! Yes, if you rob him; yes, if you kidnap him; make him a slave, and keep him in your service by force, for wages below the honest price of his labour, until he is lamed and made useless, and an object of charity and, in anticipation of this injury which you intend to inflict upon him, you make him pay beforehand (whether or no he be the unfortunate person on whom the misfortune will fall) a tax out of his earnings, to pay for his maintenance when you shall have disabled him, and rendered him unfit to gain a livelihood. The House was not base enough to let itself be influenced by such arguments: they left Ministers in a miserable minority; and Ministers, no longer finding themselves in the position in which Lord Althorp was on the Danish claims, before he was forced to be honest, have found it necessary to give way.

24th May. Progress of the Poor Law Bill.-The Ministry have held out, with a firmness little usual with them, against the prejudiced hostility to Poor Law Reform. They have compromised none of the essential principles of their measure, and their concessions as to the de. tails have till now been either entirely unimportant, or positive improvements. Among the latter we must rank the discretion given to the Commissioners of suspending the operation of the clause by which the payment of wages out of rates is prohibited after the 1st of June 1834. The success of the whole measure might in many places be greatly endangered, if the alternative were offered to the pauperized population of coming entirely upon the parish, before the introduction or improvement of the workhouse system shall have given them adequate motives to prefer to the life of a pauper the condition of an independent labourer. We however observe, in the debate of last night, a tendency to a concession of a decidedly mischievous character: we allude to the willingness expressed by Lord Althorp, to limit the duration of the Central Board