"Between all abuses whatsoever, there exists that connection-between all persons who see each of them, any one abuse in which an advantage results to himself, there exists, in point of interest, that close and sufficiently understood connection, of which intimation has been given already. To no one abuse can correction be administered without endangering the existence of every other. "If, then, with this inward determination not to suffer, so far as depends upon himself, the adoption of any reform which he is able to prevent, it should seem to him necessary or advisable to put on for a cover, the profession or appearance of a desire to contribute to such reform-in pursuance of the device or fallacy here in question, he will represent that which goes by the name of reform as distinguishable into two species; one of them a fit subject for approbation, the other for disapprobation. That which he thus professes to have marked for approbation, he will accordingly, for the expression of such approbation, characterise by some adjunct of the eulogistic cast, such as moderate, for example, or temperate, or practical, or practicable. "To the other of these nominally distinct species, he will, at the same time, attach some adjunct of the dyslogistic cast, such as violent, intemperate, extravagant, outrageous, theoretical, speculative, and so forth. Thus, then, in profession and to appearance, there are in his conception of the matter two distinct and opposite species of reform, to one of which his approbation, to the other his disapprobation, is attached. But the species to which his approbation is attached is an empty species-a species in which no individual is, or is intended to be, contained. The species to which his disapprobation is attached is, on the contrary, a crowded species, a receptacle in which the whole contents of the genus-of the genus Reform are intended to be included."-(Pp. 277, 278.) Anti-rational Fallacies.-When reason is in opposition to a man's interests, his study will naturally be to render the faculty itself, and whatever issues from it, an object of hatred and contempt. The sarcasm and other figures of speech employed on the occasion are directed not merely against reason but against thought, as if there were something in the faculty of thought that rendered the exercise of it incompatible with useful and successful practice. Sometimes a plan, which would not suit the official person's interest, is without more ado pronounced a speculative one; and, by this observation, all need of rational and deliberate discussion is considered to be superseded. The first effort of the corruptionist is to fix the epithet Speculative upon any scheme which he thinks may cherish the spirit of reform. The expression is hailed with the greatest delight by bad and feeble men, and repeated with the most unwearied energy; and to the word Speculative, by way of reinforcement, are added, theoretical, visionary, chimerical, romantic, Utopian. "Sometimes a distinction is taken, and thereupon a concession made. The plan is good in theory, but it would be bad in practice, i.e. its being good in theory does not hinder its being bad in practice. "Sometimes, as if in consequence of a further progress made in the art of irrationality, the plan is pronounced to be too good to be practicable; and its being so good as it is; is thus represented as the very cause of its being bad in practice. In short, such is the perfection at which this art is at length arrived, that the very cir cumstance of a plan's being susceptible of the appellation of a plan, has been gravely stated as a circumstance sufficient to warrant its being rejected; rejected, if not with hatred, at any rate with a sort of accompaniment, which, to the million, is commonly felt still more galling -with contempt."-(P. 296.) There is a propensity to push theory too far; but what is the just inference? not that theoretical propositions (i.e. all propositions of any considerable comprehension or extent) should, from such their extent, be considered to be false in toto, but only that, in the particular case, inquiry should be made whether, supposing the proposition to be in the character of a rule generally true, an exception ought to be taken out of it. It might almost be imagined that there was something wicked or unwise in the exercise of thought; for everybody feels a necessity for disclaiming it. "I am not given to speculation, I am no friend to theories.' Can a man disclaim theory, can he disclaim speculation, without disclaiming thought? The description of persons by whom this fallacy is chiefly employed are 2 GG those who, regarding a plan as adverse to their interests, and not finding it on the ground of general utility exposed to any preponderant objection, have recourse to this objection in the character of an instrument of contempt, in the view of preventing those from looking into it who might have been otherwise disposed. It is by the fear of seeing it practised that they are drawn to speak of it as impracticable. "Upon the face of it (exclaims some feeble or pensioned gentleman), it carries that air of plausibility, that, if you were not upon your guard, might engage you to bestow more or less attention upon it; but were you to take the trouble, you would find that (as it is with all these plans which promise so much) practicability would at last be wanting to it. To save yourself from this trouble, the wisest course you can take is to put the plan aside, and to think no more about the matter." This is always accompanied with a peculiar grin of triumph. The whole of these fallacies may be gathered together in a little oration, which we will denominate the Noodle's Oration:-" What would our ancestors say to this, Sir? How does this measure tally with their institutions? How does it agree with their experience? Are we to put the wisdom of yesterday in competition with the wisdom of centuries? (Hear, hear!) Is beardless youth to show no respect for the decisions of mature age? (Loud cries of hear, hear!) If this measure be right, would it have escaped the wisdom of those Saxon progenitors to whom we are indebted for so many of our best political institutions? Would the Dane have passed it over? Would the Norman have rejected it? Would such a notable discovery have been reserved for these modern and degenerate times? Besides, Sir, if the measure itself is good, I ask the honourable gentleman if this is the time for carrying it into execution-whether, in fact, a more unfortunate period could have been selected than that which he has chosen? If this were an ordinary measure, I should not oppose it with so much vehemence; but, Sir, it calls in question the wisdom of an irrevocable law-of a law passed at the memorable period of the Revolution. What right have we, Sir, to break down this firm column on which the great men of that age stamped a character of eternity? Are not all authorities against this measure-Pitt, Fox, Cicero, and the Attorney and Solicitor General? The proposition is new, Sir; it is the first time it was ever heard in this House. I am not prepared, Sir-this House is not prepared, to receive it. The measure implies a distrust of his Majesty's government; their disapproval is sufficient to warrant opposition. Precaution only is requisite where danger is apprehended. Here the high character of the individuals in question is a sufficient guarantee against any ground of alarm. Give not, then, your sanction to this measure; for, whatever be its character, if you do give your sanction to it, the same man by whom this is proposed, will propose to you others to which it will be impossible to give your consent. I care very little, Sir, for the ostensible measure; but what is there behind ? What are the honourable gentleman's future schemes? If we pass this bill, what fresh concessions may he not require? What further degradation is he planning for his country? Talk of evil and inconvenience, Sir! look to other countries-study other aggregations and societies of men, and then see whether the laws of this country demand a remedy or desire a panegyric. Was the honourable gentleman (let me ask him) always of this way of thinking? Do I not remember when he was the advocate in this House of very opposite opinions? I not only quarrel with his present sentiments, Sir, but I declare very frankly I do not like the party with which he acts. If his own motives were as pure as possible, they cannot but suffer contamination from those with whom he is politically associated. This measure may be a boon to the constitution, but I will accept . no favour to the constitution from such hands. (Loud cries of hear, hear!) I profess myself, Sir, an honest and upright member of the British Parliament, and I am not afraid to profess myself an enemy to all change, and all innovation. I am satisfied with things as they are; and it will be my pride and pleasure to hand down this country to my children as I received it from those who preceded me. The honourable gentleman pretends to justify the severity with which he has attacked the Noble Lord who presides in the Court of Chancery. But I say such attacks are pregnant with mischief to Government itself. Oppose Ministers, you oppose Government; disgrace Ministers, you disgrace Government; bring Ministers into contempt, you bring Government into contempt; and anarchy and civil war are the consequences. Besides, Sir, the measure is unnecessary. Nobody complains of disorder in that shape in which it is the aim of your measure to propose a remedy to it. The business is one of the greatest importance; there is need of the greatest caution and circumspection. Do not let us be precipitate, Sir; it is impossible to foresee all consequences. Everything should be gradual; the example of a neighbouring nation should fill us with alarm! The honourable gentleman has taxed me with illiberality, Sir. I deny the charge. I hate innovation, but I love improvement. I am an enemy to the corruption of Government, but I defend its influence. I dread reform, but I dread it only when it is intemperate. I consider the liberty of the press as the great Palladium of the Constitution; but, at the same time, I hold the licentiousness of the press in the greatest abhorrence. Nobody is more conscious than I am of the splendid abilities of the honourable mover, but I tell him at once, his scheme is too good to be practicable. It savours of Utopia. It looks well in theory, but it won't do in practice. It will not do, I repeat, Sir, in practice; and so the advocates of the measure will find, if, unfortunately, it should find its way through Parliament. (Cheers.) The source of that corruption to which the honourable member alludes, is in the minds of the people; so rank and extensive is that corruption, that no political reform can have any effect in removing it. Instead of reforming others-instead of reforming the State, the Constitution, and everything that is most excellent, let each man reform himself! let him look at home, he will find there enough to do, without looking abroad, and aiming at what is out of his power. (Loud cheers.) And now, Sir, as it is frequently the custom in this House to end with a quotation, and as the gentleman who preceded me in the debate has anticipated me in my favourite quotation of the 'Strong pull and the long pull,' I shall end with the memorable words of the assembled barons-Nolumus leges Angliæ mutari." "Upon the whole, the following are the characters which appertain in common to all the several arguments here distinguished by the name of fallacies: 1. Whatsoever be the measure in hand, they are, with relation to it, irrelevant. "2. They are all of them such, that the application of these irrelevant aguments affords a presumption either of the weakness or total absence of relevant arguments on the side on which they are employed. 66 3. To any good purpose they are all of them unnecessary. 4. They are all of them not only capable of being applied, but actually in the habit of being applied, and with advantage, to bad purposes; viz. to the obstruction and defeat of all such measures as have for their object the removal of the abuses or other imperfections still discernible in the frame and practice of the government. 5. By means of their irrelevancy, they all of them consume and misapply time, thereby obstructing the course and retarding the progress of all necessary and useful business. "6. By that irritative quality which, in virtue of their irrelevancy, with the improbity or weakness of which it is indicative, they possess, all of them, in a degree more or less considerable, but in a more particular degree such of them as consist in personalities, they are productive of ill-humour, which in some instances has been productive of bloodshed, and is continually productive, as above, of waste of time and hinderance of business. "7. On the part of those who, whether in spoken or written discourses, give utterance to them, they are indicative either of improbity or intellectual weakness, or of a contempt for the understanding of those on whose minds they are destined to operate. "8. On the part of those on whom they operate, they are indicative of intellectual weakness; and on the part of those in and by whom they are pretended to operate, they are indicative of improbity, viz. in the shape of insincerity. "The practical conclusion is, that in proportion as the acceptance, and thence the utterance, of them can be prevented, the understanding of the public will be strengthened, the morals of the public will be purified, and the practice of government improved."— (Pp. 359, 360.) WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA, &c. Wanderings in South America, the North-West of the United States, and the Antilles, in the MR. WATERTON is a Roman Catholic gentleman of Yorkshire, of good fortune, who, instead of passing his life at balls and assemblies, has preferred living with Indians and monkeys in the forests of Guiana. He appears in early life to have been seized with an unconquerable aversion to Piccadilly, and to that train of meteorological questions and answers, which forms the great staple of polite English conversation. From a dislike to the regular form of a journal, he throws his travels into detached pieces, which he, rather affectedly, calls Wanderings-and of which we shall proceed to give some account. His first Wandering was in the year 1812, through the wilds of Demerara and Essequibo, a part of ci-devant Dutch Guiana, in South America. The sun exhausted him by day, the mosquitoes bit him by night; but on went Mr. Charles Waterton ! The first thing which strikes us in this extraordinary chronicle, is the genuine zeal and inexhaustible delight with which all the barbarous countries he visits are described. He seems to love the forests, the tigers, and the apes ;-to be rejoiced that he is the only man there; that he has left his species far away, and is at last in the midst of his blessed baboons! He writes with a considerable degree of force and vigour, and contrives to infuse into his reader that admiration of the great works, and undisturbed scenes of Nature, which animates his style, and has influenced his life and practice. There is something, too, to be highly respected and praised in the conduct of a country gentleman who, instead of exhausting life in the chase, has dedicated a considerable portion of it to the pursuit of knowledge. There are so many temptations to complete idleness in the life of a country gentleman, so many examples of it, and so much loss to the community from it, that every exception from the practice is deserving of great praise. Some country gentlemen must remain to do the business of their counties, but in general there are many more than are wanted; and, generally speaking also, they are a class who should be stimulated to greater exertions. Sir Joseph Banks, a squire of large fortune in Lincolnshire, might have given up his existence to doublebarrelled guns and persecutions of poachers-and all the benefits derived from his wealth, industry, and personal exertion in the cause of science would have been lost to the community. Mr. Waterton complains that the trees of Guiana are not more than six yards in circumference-a magnitude in trees which it is not easy for a Scotch imagination to reach. Among these, pre-eminent in height rises the moraupon whose top branches, when naked by age or dried by accident, is perched the toucan, too high for the gun of the fowler ;-around this are the green heart, famous for hardness; the tough hackea; the ducalabali, surpassing mahogany; the ebony and letter-wood, exceeding the most beautiful woods of the Old World; the locust-tree, yielding copal; and the hayawa and olou-trees, furnishing sweet-smelling resin. Upon the top of the mora grows the fig-tree. The bush-rope joins tree and tree, so as to render the forest impervious, as descending from on high it takes root as soon as its extremity touches the ground, and appears like shrouds and stays supporting the mainmast of a line-of-battle ship. Demerara yields to no country in the world in her birds. The mud is flaming with the scarlet curlew. At sunset the pelicans return from the sea to the courada-trees. Among the flowers are the humming-birds. The columbine, gallinaceous, and pesserine tribes people the fruit-trees. At the close of the day the vampires or winged bats suck the blood of the traveller, and cool him by the flap of their wings. Nor has nature forgotten to amuse herself here in the composition of snakes,-the Camoudi has been killed from thirty to forty feet long; he does not act by venom, but by size and convolution. The Spaniards affirm that he grows to the length of eighty feet, and that he will swallow a bull; but Spaniards love the superlative. There is a whipsnake of a beautiful green. The Labarri snake of a dirty brown, who kills you in a few minutes. Every lovely colour under heaven is lavished upon the Counachouchi, the most venomous of reptiles, and known by the name of the bush-master. Man and beast, says Mr. Waterton, fly before him, and allow him to pursue an undisputed path. We consider the following description of the various sounds in these wild regions as very striking, and done with very considerable powers of style. "He whose eye can distinguish the various beauties of uncultivated nature, and whose ear is not shut to the wild sounds in the woods, will be delighted in passing up the river Demerara. Every now and then, the Maam or Tinamou sends forth one long and plaintive whistle from the depth of the forest and then stops; whilst the yelping of the Toucan, and the shrill voice of the bird called Pi-pi-yo, is heard during the interval. The Campanero never fails to attract the attention of the passenger: at a distance of nearly three miles you may hear this snow-white bird tolling every four or five minutes, like the distant convent-bell. From six to nine in the morning, the forests resound with the mingled cries and strains of the feathered race; after this they gradually die away. From eleven to three all nature is hushed as in a midnight silence, and scarce a note is heard, saving that of the Campanero and the Pi-pi-yo; it is then that, oppressed by the solar heat, the birds retire to the thickest shade, and wait for the refreshing cool of evening. "At sundown, the Vampires, Bats, and Goatsucker, dart from their lonely retreat, and skim along the trees on the river's bank. The different kinds of frogs almost stun the ear with their hoarse and hollow sounding croaking, while the Owls and Goatsuckers lament and mourn all night long. "About two hours before daybreak you will hear the red monkey moaning as though in deep distress; the Houtou, a solitary bird, and only found in the thickest recesses of the forest, distinctly articulates, 'houtou, houtou,' in a low and plaintive tone, an hour before sunrise; the Maam whistles about the same hour; the Hannaquoi, Pataca, and Maroudi announce his near approach to the eastern horizon, and the Parrots and Parroquets confirm his arrival there."—(Pp. 13-15.) Our good Quixote of Demerara is a little too fond of apostrophising :— "Traveller! dost thou think? Reader, does thou imagine?" Mr. Waterton should remember that the whole merit of these violent deviations from common style depends upon their rarity, and that nothing does for ten pages together but the indicative mood. This fault gives an air of affectation to the writing of Mr. Waterton, which we believe to be foreign from his character and nature. We do not wish to deprive him of these indulgences a together, but merely to put him upon an allowance, and upon such an allowance as will give to these figures of speech the advantage of surprise and relief. This gentleman's delight and exultation always appear to increase as he |