mariner's compass, and even this was lost at Kirree, which is placed about one hundred and eighty miles in a direct line from the mouth of the river; therefore, in the absence of all means of ascertaining, with any pretensions to certainty, a single geographical point, the position of Boossà, and that of the mouth of the river Nun, lying nearly at the two extremes of the whole journey, were adopted as limits within which the course of the river navigation between these places must necessarily fall. The daily progress of the travellers in course and distance, according to their own estimation, was then subjected to rigorous scrutiny; and the probable distance supposed to have been travelled each day, in which allowance was made for the rate of the stream, (never exceeding three miles, and decreasing downwards,) was adopted and laid down on a large scale. This was next reduced into the five sheets that accompany the present paper, which, when joined together as they are marked, show the general course of the river, with such remarks from the journals relating to its banks as occurred during its construction. The materials, thus brought together, underwent a further reduction, on being copied in the general map, between the points before mentioned; and it is with some satisfaction, even after the necessarily rough manner in which the whole has been put together, that the following particulars may be pointed out as throwing a degree of probability on the course now laid down being nearly that of the Quorra, which was scarcely to have been expected. The mouth of the river Nun in the map is nearly due south of Boossà, and the course of the river to the east is about the same as that to the west, which corresponds with that condition. The river Coodoonia falls into the Quorra nearly in the same place as before laid down. The great Tshadda was also found to enter the Quorra at about the point before reported. And with respect to Yàoori it may be added, that Soccatoo was said to be five days' journey from it; while the distance from the former, as laid down by Lander, to the latter as given by Clapperton, is about one hundred miles, which nearly corresponds with a journey of five days.'-pp. 190, 191. Thus at length has this geographical problem been solved, and for its solution we may thank the efforts by which hypothetical or speculative geography had kept alive curiosity. Since Park's first discovery of the Joliba, every point of the compass has been assumed for the ulterior course and termination of that river. M. Reichard the German hit upon the happy conjecture, for it was nothing more; he arrived at a conclusion which happened to be right, though every stage of his reasoning was grounded on false data; he had not a single fact to guide him; he assumed a large lake which has no existence, for our modern travellers have sought for Wangara in vain; he filled it with the waters of the Niger, and other rivers that are equally nonentities with the lake; he assumed dimensions for the one, and the volumes of water thrown in by the other; he calculated the waste by evaporation and absorption, and from the surplus he formed the waters which are discharged through through various channels into the Bight of Benin. Mr. M'Queen, almost as ingenious as M. Reichard, but a humble copyist, with an equal poverty of facts, claims the merit of the discovery; which however is due, and solely due, to Richard Lander, on whom the Society has very properly bestowed his Majesty's royal premium of fifty guineas. Two questions are put-is this Quorra in reality the continuation of Park's Joliba? and is the Joliba or the Quorra the Niger? To the first we reply, without hesitation, YES; but, to the second, if by Niger is meant the river so named in the works of ancient geographers and historians, we say decidedly, No. That the Quorra is identical with the Joliba, we have the strongest testimony short of ocular proof. Mungo Park, on his departure from Sansanding, writes to Lord Camden and to Mrs. Park, to say he means to follow the river in his double canoe or schooner as, if our recollection serves us, he calls it, until he reaches the sea, and that he will probably come home by the West Indies. The Mandingo priest, who was sent to make inquiries after the fate of this traveller, reported the loss of his vessel, and the destruction of himself and remaining companions, at a place called Boossa. No one had before this ever heard of such a place as Boossa. When Clapperton went from Badagry on his second expedition, he found this Boossa situated on the right bank of the Quorra, and there ascertained the fate of Park, in the manner described years before by the Mandingo priest. He saw the ledge of rocks on which the boat was wrecked, and was told of books and papers in the hands of the Sultan of Nyffe. On the return of Lander he was kept by the Sultan of Boossà to clean some muskets which had the Tower mark on them. No reasonable doubt therefore can be entertained that Park had arrived as far as Boossà. But the late voyage has produced something still more decisive; the old king showed the travellers a book of logarithms and a hymn book, on which was the name of Mr. Anderson, Park's companion, and which they brought home. There was also in the former book a note from a gentleman in the Strand, inviting Mr. Park to dinner; and another from Lady Dalkeith, thanking him for some drawings. These are sufficient proofs of Mungo Park's having been at Boossà; it is also clear that his canoe was wrecked there; and if so, the river must either have been continuous or he must have carried his vessel-his double vessel-over land into the Quorra; in which case he must have acted contrary to his avowed intention, and abandoned his quest of the Joliba's termination for the discovery of that of some other river. Such a supposition would be absurd. Not less absurd is the notion of those who contend that Herodotus, Pliny, and Ptolemy, or any of them, were acquainted with, or or had the slightest knowledge of, any portion of the Joliba or Quorra under the name of Niger. That Herodotus should be lugged in by our modern writers, in support of this opinion, is inconceivable. He knew of no such river, nor even mentions the name. He tells a story (which he received at fourth hand,) of some young fellows who were supposed to have crossed the desert of Lybia, which desert he describes as extending from Egypt to the promontory of Soloeis; and who, as he says, had travelled directly west, (ngos ZeQugov aveμov,) and not either to the south or the southwest; they could never, therefore, let them travel all their lifetime in either of these directions, have come near to the Joliba. Of the great desert of Zahara, in point of fact, Herodotus knew nothing, and therefore says nothing. Beyond the Lybian desert, that is at the southern foot of the Mauritanian Atlas, these youngsters are related to have come to a city on a great river, running from the west towards the rising sun. The Adjidi, which flows into the Lake Melaig to the southward of Algiers, or one of the many streams in Segelmessa, running easterly, might be reached by travelling westerly; and one of these is called Ghir by Leo Africanus, and appears under that name on Carey's last map of Africa. The Niger of Pliny points evidently at one of these streams. He informs us that the Roman general, Suetonius Paulinus, who first crossed the western Atlas, fell in with a river running to the eastward; that its name was Niger; that it lost itself in the sands, and after emerging and sinking two or three times, finally flowed into the Nile, dividing the Lybians from the Ethiopians. We may rest assured that when any of the ancient writers talk of Ethiopia, they mean nothing more than a complete terra incognita, peopled with all manner of monsters. The Ghir of Leo Africanus, or the Adjidi, may have been the Niger of Paulinus' expedition, and furnished materials for the confused and unintelligible description of the Geir and Nigeir of Ptolemy. Whatever Ptolemy was able to glean of Africa beyond Lybia (and this is the case with all the ancients) was obtained by the owners or pilots of coasting vessels on the west, and by means of the Nile of Egypt on the east of this continent. The Zahara was more recently and for the first time passed by the Arabs on their camels. But on this subject we must refer our readers to our review of Sir Rufane Donkin's 'Dissertation on the Course and probable Termination of the Niger' (No. lxxxi., p. 226); and after what is there stated, we trust that the word Niger, so vaguely employed by the ancients, will be expunged from the map of Africa. ART. ART. IV.—An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and the Sources of Taxation. By the Rev. Richard Jones, A.M. of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. London. 1831. THIS work is the first systematic attempt that has been made to pursue the inquiry into the production and distribution of wealth upon the Baconian principle of cautious induction from an extended range of observations. The first book, which alone has at present appeared, is occupied by a dissertation on rent. The remaining books, we are told, will be devoted to the examination, in a similar manner, of the other main channels into which wealth distributes itself, namely, wages, profits, and taxation. In the glimpses which the author affords, in the preface to his present volume, of the conclusions at which he has arrived on these different subjects by a close process of induction from a wide survey of facts, we are pleased to perceive that they will be found to coincide almost wholly with our own views, as they were developed, with unavoidable brevity, in January last.* Our opinions, as there given, upon rent, the subject matter of the volume we have now in review, agree likewise very closely with those which Mr. Jones has deduced from an examination of the nature of the tenure and occupation of land throughout the known and cultivated regions of the globe. He has dealt the finishingstroke to the miserable theory of rent' of the Ricardo school of economists, which declares what they call the decreasing fertility of soils to be the sole cause of rent, and the cause, at the same time, of a progressive reduction in the profits of capital and the wages of labour (that is, of the share of wealth which falls to every other class of society than the landlords), of such magnitude and power as finally to overwhelm every other,' +-to be, in fact, a great law of nature, from whose all-pervading influence the utmost efforts of human ingenuity cannot enable man to escape,' and which is sure in the long run to overmatch all the improvements that may occur in machinery or agriculture.' § Upon this theory, * Since the article here alluded to was printed, Mr. Senior's 'Three Lectures on the Rate of Wages' issued from the press, and we were gratified to find this able writer completely agreeing with us on several of the points in which we ventured to differ most widely from the prevailing opinions; as, for instance, on the doctrine of absenteeism-the limitation of the principle of free trade-the separation of national wealth from national welfare-and the paramount importance of a sufficiency of food to all other considerations. We mention this not for the foolish purpose of establishing a claim to the original discovery of these principles, but as exhibiting a pleasing instance of independent thinkers arriving at the same conclusions at the same time, though in complete opposition to the current and accredited notions. The confirmation thus afforded to a chain of reasoning is greater than that derived from the subsequent assent of thousands. Malthus, Principles of Political Economy, p. 317. G § Idem. p. 489. narrow, narrow, vague, and visionary as it is, suggested by a contracted view of an exceedingly limited class of facts, contradicting the experience of almost every country in the world, and opposed to the most obvious theoretical considerations, a whole system was, in truth, founded of hypothetical maxims relative to the great subjects of wages, profits, and taxation, as well as rent; and, dignified by the title of political economy, has been for some years past referred to in the senate and the council-chamber as the oracle of statesmen and the text-book of legislators! The task of destroying this false and pernicious theory, and of establishing the true character of rent, and its real bearings upon the interests of the classes who are not possessed of property in land, has been accomplished by Mr. Jones with a fulness of research which scarcely leaves anything to be desired, and with a novelty in his mode of treating the subject which renders his work one of the most valuable contributions to the study of human welfare, perhaps the most valuable that we have had since the immortal essay of Adam Smith. He is the first writer we are acquainted with who has drawn the attention of the public to the striking fact of the immense importance, with regard to the social and economical condition of any division of the human race, of the laws and customs that prevail among them respecting the occupation of land, and the share of its produce received or claimed by the landowners. There is no exaggeration in the assertion that it is by these circumstances almost alone that the position of any nation in the scale of civilization is practically determined. Nor can any one be surprised that the fact is so, when he adverts to the simple consideration that it is from the land, and the land alone, that nations derive as well the whole of the food on which they are supported, as the raw materials out of which, by the exertion of their industry and ingenuity, they elaborate all the other necessaries, comforts, and luxuries of life; that, therefore, the class who are possessed, no matter how or why, of the exclusive property of the land, have it in their power, by the more or less easy and equitable terms upon which they choose to admit of its cultivation, either to restrain production of every kind within the narrowest limits, or to permit its full development to the utmost extent of which human industry is capable. The terms which circumstances have in practice led the owners of the soil to make with its cultivators, vary very materially in different parts of the globe; and a review of these different customs, and of their effects, during an experience of ages, as unfolded to us in history and from recent observation, by exhibiting their respective merits and defects, and the influence they severally exercise over the moral, economical, and political condition of the inhabitants |