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press on the comforts and consump

tion of the poor.

All this, the Reformers say, is truly owing to agitation; but the agitation rests with the Conservative party who resisted Reform, and no such calamity would have ensued if they had quietly submitted to the change. This is like a husband, who, one morning, found his wife with the

1. IRELAND, 1829. Catholic Relief Bill passed Universal tranquillity promised - Subsequent Government more lenient and indulgent to that party.

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3. BELGIUM, 1829.

Ships entering Ant-
werp, 1829. Last 1031.
year of old regime,

Expenditure, 29,000,000 gilders.

In other words, successful Reform has brought Ireland to the brink of civil war; it reduced the revenue of France in one year one-third, in 1790, and compelled in peace a loan of £11,000,000, and an increase of revenue of £9,000,000 in 1830, and it lowered to nearly a third of its former amount the trade of the great emporium of Belgium. And yet we are seriously told that Reform, which, when resisted, has already cost the nation £4,000,000 in one year, is, when successful, to restore the revenue and revive the commerce of the state.

The deplorable effects of the misgovernment, or rather the cessation of all government, during the last year, is equally demonstrated in other departments. The Assizes have met, the Special Commissions have opened, and an universal and most lamentable increase of crime is every where conspicuous. The Scotch papers exhibit a train of murders, in that once moral and religious part of the empire, unparalelled in all its annals: the English jails are all overflowing with criminals, and the contests between poach

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Expenditure of year, 41,000,000 gilders.

ers and gamekeepers have become so common and desperate, as to amount almost to a Chouan warfare. In Ireland, thirteen policemen have been murdered at once in the attempt to levy tithes; and a combination to oust the Protestant clergy, by resisting payment of tithes, is universal over a large part of the island. A general dissolution of all the bonds of authority, of all the restraints of power, of all the principles of morality, seems to have taken place. All this flows naturally and inevitably from the reckless measures of Government, and the inflammatory addresses of that portion of the press which they honour and support. When Ministers advise Bishops to put their houses in order, and the ministerial press indulges, month after month, and year after year, in exhortations to every species of outrage, in ceaseless vituperation of the order, and declamation against the wealth of the clergy, it is not surprising that their ruffian followers should imagine that the era of misrule has commenced, that anarchy is to be the order of the day, and the coercion of law and religion speedily cease throughout the land.

The trial of the Bristol rioters, and the tragic act with which they have terminated, must open every man's eyes, whose heart is not steeled by democratic fury, to the enormous, the incalculable danger of the system of rousing the passions of the populace, which the reformingjournals have so long and assiduously laboured to promote. The pretence will no longer do, that the rioters were mere thieves and robbers, who took advantage of the crowd on Sir Charles Wetherell's entrance to perpetrate violence. It is now proved that nine-tenths of them were men of sober, honest, and peaceable habits up to that time; but that they had been goaded on to a state little short of insanity by the declamations of the democratic press, and the exhortations to violence which for months had been ringing in their To be convinced of this, we have only to recollect that the greater part even of the ringleaders were proved to be men of good character, and who engaged in acts of depredation and incendiarism then for the first time. If we would see by what arts this peaceable population has been roused to such acts of fury, we have only to recollect the words proved to have been uttered by Davis when the Bishop's palace was burning :

ears.

"Down with the blasted Bishops: down with the Clergy: down with the Church: we shall in a month have down every church in England, and make roads of the ruins.

This

is the work we want: I could have foretold these twenty years it would come to this: I wish I could set fire to every church and jail in England: in six weeks there shall not be one standing."*

This is exactly what we always have asserted. The cause of reform, in the minds of the great mass of the popular supporters of that measure, is synonymous with a destruction of all the fetters of law and religion; an universal liberation of the passions from every physical or moral control. It is judicially proved that these were the ideas which rou

sed the Bristol mobs; and when we consider the vast pains that have been taken to inspire them with these principles, it is not surprising that in one instance the train took fire.

The tragic fate of Colonel Brereton is a practical proof of the working of that system of submission to the mob, which all the Ministers, from the Premier, have, without one exception, inculcated. They have uniformly held out that the demand for reform could not be resisted, and that it must be conceded, not because it was in itself expedient, but because the people demanded it. With such principles incessantly promulgated in the highest quarters, it is not surprising that the head of an inferior functionary turned on the approach of danger. On the one hand, was the old system of repressing violence the moment it broke forth, and stemming the torrent of popular fury, as you would the letting out of waters; on the other, the new system of conceding every thing to the populace, trusting to their wisdom, justice, and good sense; and, above all things, avoiding the irritation of their feelings by any opposition to their wishes. The commander at Bristol, though a gallant officer in the field, conceived himself bound to adopt, in civil dissensions, the new system so strongly recommended from head-quarters; he yielded every thing to the populace, shook hands with the rioters, bowed to the majesty of the people, and sent the troops out of town, because they promised that if he did so, they would disperse and go home. The burning of the city was the immediate consequence. His better feelings returned when the crisis was over; and the nation has beheld with horror with what a relentless hand he punished himself for having adopted the ministerial system: but those who corresponded with radical meetings where resolutions to pay no taxes were passed, and declared to them that the whisper of a faction cannot prevail against the voice of the English people, of course cannot condemn a proceeding so exactly in unison with the tenor of their own political conduct.

* Trial of Davis,

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Ministers, according to Lord Blaney, urged the King in these perilous days to disband his guards. Reckless as they have shewn themselves to be, we can hardly credit this statement: but if it is true, it is exactly the system acted on at Bristol. Send the dragoons out of the burning city to conciliate the people; send the guards out of a burning kingdom for fear of offending them. The effects of this concession to the mob in the town speedily developed themselves: the effects of the corresponding concessions in a higher quarter promise to be not less fatal; with this difference, that it is not a city but a nation, which will be consumed.

Let the result be what it may, we can never be sufficiently thankful that the Conservative Party have had no hand in producing it. If the last hour of the British Constitution has struck, if the glories and the achievements of a thousand years are to be buried for ever, let us be thankful that the infamy of producing such a catastrophe rests on the Reformers,

and the Reformers alone. Their leaders have said, that fame is now their only object, that they look to the voice of history for a vindication of their motives. Let them not be afraid: History will do them justice. Their names will never be forgotten. The destroyers of such a fabric as the English Constitution are not likely to sink into oblivion. The future Tacitus, who is to paint the corruptions and the vices of the last days of the British empire; the unborn Gibbon, who is to portray its decline and fall, will consign their achievements, in just and merited terms, to futurity: he will contrast theresplendent empire they received, with the distracted and falling state they have surrendered: the glories of their predecessors with the ruin and desolation which they occasioned: the immortal days of heroic renown with the strifes and the fury of revolutionary struggles: the long era of British freedom with the slavery and the corruption of a declining age.

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LETTER FROM PROFESSOR DUNBAR AND MR E. H. BARKER,

TO THE EDITOR OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

SIR, In the last Number (V.) of the "Quarterly Journal of Education," there is an article written by a scholar evidently of considerable acquirements, which contains a review of the Greek and English Lexicon lately published by Professor Dunbar and Mr E. H. Barker, and a comparison between it and the second edition of Dr Donnegan's Lexicon. As there are several strictures in that review which we, the editors of the Lexicon, consider both partial and unfair, and as some of the author's opinions seem to us very questionable, we trust you will allow us, through the medium of your Journal, to state the views and principles we adopted when commencing the work, and to refute some of the charges that have been brought against us.

The author of the review has stated very correctly that Donnegan's Lexicon is based on that of Schneider, and that ours is founded on the second and improved edition of a translation of Schrevelius, publish

ed at Boston, in the United States, in the year 1829. It may be asked why, since Donnegan's first edition was little more than a translation of Schneider's, we were not content with his Lexicon, but chose one for our basis of an inferior character? To this we reply, that we thought neither of these Lexicons well adapted to that class of students who stand most in need of an elementary Dictionary, as they exhibited very few of the tenses of verbs, not many of the varieties of dialect, and a very limited number of apposite quotations from the classic authors; and they also left the quantities of doubtful vowels in syllables undetermined. To these may be added, the entire omission of an English and Greek Lexicon. To supply in some measure these deficiencies, the second edition of the American Lexicon appeared to us the most suitable, as a groundwork on which we might raise a better structure. When, however, we came to examine it minutely, we found that a vast number of words had been omit

ted, few references from approved authors had been recorded, many tenses of verbs and cases of nouns were needlessly repeated, and the etymological derivations of words were, in many places, observed to be erroneous. To remedy all these defects in the first edition of an improved work, appeared impossible, and we were, therefore, obliged to content ourselves with pruning redundancies, correcting errors, and introducing a vast quantity of new matter, supported by numerous references and authorities. That our Lexicon "does not exhibit any systematic developement of the etymological forms of the Greek language," cannot be denied, for very obvious reasons, and chiefly, because such a developement, even upon the plan suggested by the learned Reviewer, would have required a series of dissertations and proofs, entirely out of place in such a manual as we intended our Lexicon to be. That far more might have been done in this department, we will not dispute; but some of the errors and absurdities laid to our charge, are sins of omission, not of commission, as most of them are to be found in the American edition, which, however, we allow ought not to have been overlooked by us. Still, as they did not originate with us, we ought not to be considered as their immediate authors.

The author of the review has favoured his readers with some speculations respecting the roots of words, in general, appear to be sound enough, but which he is egregiously mistaken if he considers to be either new, or at all adapted to the formation of a Lexicon. They may be introduced with much propriety in lectures on the theory and structure of languages, and have been carried to a considerable extent by one of the editors, in his "Inquiry into the Structure and Affinity of the Greek and Latin Languages," &c.; a work with which the Reviewer seems to be wholly unacquainted. Suppose a lexicographer were to state, according to the opinion of the Reviewer, that ἀκμὴ was derived from ax, a point. It might naturally be asked, in what Greek author is az to be found? The enquirer would, perhaps, be told, that it was so stated in a certain review, or a certain pamphlet, and that he will find it in the

Latin words, acies, acus, acidus, &c. It certainly appears to us that this is just going back to Dr Murray's fanciful system of deriving all Greek words from monosyllables, such as Ag, Bag, Dwag, &c., and is not much better than the old Hemsterhusian Duads. Let it not be supposed that we object to all the Reviewer's derivations, as some of them seem to be quite correct, ἀκμαῖος, ἀκμάζω from ἄκμὴ; but we are somewhat sceptical about that of ἀκέομαι, unless he can shew, from good authority, that the inτεροί of old, made more use of the lancet than of pharmacy, and did not deserve the name which the Father of Poetry has bestowed upon them, of being πολυφάρμηκοι. -Il. xvi. 28, τοὺς μὲν τ ̓ ἦτροι πολυφάρμακοι ἀμφιπένον

ται,

Ελκε ̓ ἀκεόμενος.

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We have also very great doubts about the soundness of some of his other dogmas. "When we know," says he, that a very large class of nouns are formed by adding the suffix μη to the stem, of what importance is it to drag the student through the tedious process of deducing this from a perfect passive in μαι?" For no other reason than to present something intelligible to his understanding, which the suffix μη never can do, unless the Reviewer should condescend to tell him something more about its nature and origin than that it is merely a suffix. But there are many suffixes besides μη, and others which the Reviewer has enumerated, added to monosyllabic words, such as πράγ-μα, πραγ-σις, πραγ-της-ποιη-μα, ποιη-σις, ποιη-της, ap

parently formed from the perfect passive of πράσσω (πράγω) and ποιέω. What explanation does he give concerning these? From any thing that can be gathered from his lucubrations, he considers them as suffixes thrown at random to the end of monosyllabic roots, without any definite signification of their own. Classification of the same terminations is no doubt highly useful, and may, in many instances, facilitate the study of the language; but it is a mere mechanical operation, and gives little orno insight into the nature and meaning of the terminations themselves. Having shewn what trifling information could be communicated to students by adopting the etymologi cal process recommended by the

Reviewer, we shall now proceed to notice some particular derivations on which he has commented. In our Lexicon, and in Donnegan's also, ἄρτος, bread, is marked as a primitive. We agree with the Reviewer in thinking that it is not a primitive; but we must be allowed to assign it a different origin from what he has given to it. Donnegan says, "some take aigu, better, perhaps, Th. ἄρω. with Damm, to render compact." The Reviewer derives it from aę, to fit, We cannot see any natural or necessary connexion between ἄρτος, bread, and ἄρω or ἀę as interpreted by these gentlemen. We rather imagine that άρτος is derived from the primitive verb ἀρόω, to till or cultivate the ground; hence ἄρτος, probably from ἀρoras, the product, or what springs from the cultivation of the ground; hence food in gene general, and then bread. We wil willingly surrender to him πρώρα, as being none of our own; but to make its derivation intelligible, we want something more than Donnegan's πρὸ and his suffix ça. Of βροτός, we have said that " it seems to be derived from βρώσκω, to eat." Donnegan, "Th. probably akin to μορτός, from μόρος, hence mors." The Reviewer, "There is no difficulty about preferring the latter explanation (derivation?) to the former, though Dr Donnegan's is not entirely free from objection as to the shape in which it is given." "As we have the word μορτὸς in a fragment of Callimachus, we may have the word μροτός, or βροτὸς, the interchange of the and being a very common occurrence." While we leave our readers to judge of the probability of this derivation, we shall proceed to adduce some arguments in support of our own, at the same time hinting to them, how slippery a subject etymology is. It will scarcely be disputed that the noun ἀμβροσία, the food of the gods, (by the use of which, says Schneider or Schneider Donnegan, immortality was conferred,) and ἀμβρόσιος, are derived from the obsolete verb βρύω, the immediate parent of βρώσκω, to eat. The μ in both has evidently been interposed to make the pronunciation more easy to the organs of the voice, and the sound more agreeable to the ear, as, originally, they must have been, according to the common analogy, αβροσία and αβρόσιος. In II. v. 369,

we have παρὰ δ ̓ ἀμβρόσιον βάλεν εἶδαρ, and threw beside them food, not vulgar food, (such as was used on earth.) In Il. xiv. 78, we find νὺξ ἀβρότη, the same as ἁμβρότη, as the latter adjective is found with the same noun in Odyss. xi. 329. Πρὶν γάρ κεν καὶ νὺξ φθεῖτ' ἄμβροτος. Homer employs the adjective ἀμβρόσιος with viξ, with the very same signification: Il. ii. 57, ̓Αμβροσίην διὰ νύκτα. We would now ask any candid enquirer, not wedded to a particular theory, whether any of these words can be related to such a fictitious monster as μροτός, or to a kind of nondescript as μορτὸς, and are not rather derived from the obsolete verb βρόw, the parent of βρώσκω, according to a well-established analogy in the formation of verbs in σκω ? Βλάξ, and the shad, we shall give up to him to devour as he pleases, though we do not think that βλάξ has any connexion with the adjective μαλακός, passing, according to the Reviewer's usual theory of reduction, into μλακά thence into βλάκ, says he, the transition is easy, as well as to the Latin flac in flaccidus. We can from this, surely, very easily account for the English word black, just as readily as those who derive cucumber from King Jeremiah. We also make him a present of the derivation of βλέφαρον, as not having been concocted by the "combined ingenuity of Messrs Dunbar and Barker," though we take some shame to ourselves for having allowed such an absurd derivation to have escaped our notice. The derivation also of δεσπόζω shall be given up, along with several others, which, we again repeat, did not originate with us, but which ought, undoubtedly, to have been omitted or corrected. We could furnish him with a tolerably extensive list, both from Schneider and Donnegan, to match those that he has pointed out in our Lexicon, though it does not appear to have been convenient for him to bring them before his readers; and we are also of opinion, that several of his own derivations might be sent back to the awkward squad, as not sufficiently drilled to make a respectable appearance. Who, for instance, would think of making the stem of θεσπίζω, δεσπ, or of θέσπις and θεσπέσιος, θεσπ? We differ a little from Blomfield, in his derivation of the latter from 9sòs and ὅπιs, as we think that it is from deès and 4, the voice

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