Germany and Italy. Indeed, as it has been very justly observed by The Westminster Review, the rights of the Ross-shire tenants were of the same character with those of the English copy-holders; but, alas! the difference between the position of the poor Celt and that of the English yeoman was great indeed! For the latter the laws were created, they were framed out of the ancient customs on which his tenure was founded. The Celt, overlooked as a member of the body politic, too insignificant in his rights to be regarded since he had ceased to be unpleasantly conspicuous as a fighter, had to submit to the arbitrary operation of laws made for other races of men and different social habits. the proprietors began to exact a rise of rent. | been respected by the despotic governments of Though the first demands of the kind were extremely moderate, the rents being still below the real value of the land, yet the circumstance was so unprecedented that great dissatisfaction ensued, and the removal of some of the tenants who refused to comply, excited still more indignation. Accustomed to transmit their possessions from father to son, as if they had been their property, the people seem to have thought that, as long as they paid the old and accustomed rent, and performed their usual services, their possessions were their own by legal right. The discontents that arose from these causes were for a time but partial; for the progress of raising rents was slow. The gentlemen who had been educated amidst the habits of the feudal times, could not at once relinquish all the sentiments of their youth. The attachment of their people was of so flattering a nature, that it was often preferred to pecuniary advantages; and little alteration seems to have been made till the generation of old proprietors was extinct. Gradually, however, men educated under different circumstances came forward, and feeling more remotely the influence of ancient connexions with their dependants, were not inclined to sacrifice for a shadow the substantial advantage of a productive property. The more necessitous, or the less generous, set the example; and one gradually followed another, till at length all scruple seems to be removed, and the proprietors in the Highlands have no more hesitation than in any other part of the kingdom, in turning their estates to the best advantage." At length came the great Sutherland clearings, when people, as many as might make the population of a secondary German state-people who believed that they had as good a right to their cottages and paddocks as their chief had to his castle and forests-were driven from their homes by an armed force. It is a deep scandal to our legal institutions that such a thing should have been. So long as history is written minutely enough to chronicle such transactions, this one will ever be marked as a barbarous adaptation of the law of one people to do injustice to another. The cry of tyranny raised by the ignorant sufferers has received an echo in the far south; and one of the first historians and philosophers of his day, has dedicated a great portion of a work likely to live for ages, to an exposure of the injustice of the Sutherland clearings. M. Simonde de Sismondi, in his "Etudes sur l'Economie Politique," having entered, on politico-economical grounds, on the question of the proper adjustment of the rights of customary holders and tenants, has paid this country the compliment of devoting a whole essay to our Highland clearings as a signal instance of outrage on all the principles that ought to rule in the adjustment of such mutual rights. It is shown that throughout all Europe there are rights of occupancy founded on immemorial custom, like those of the Highland tenants, but which, unlike the treatment which they have received from the free government and the "equal laws" of this happy country, have It has always been maintained by the defenders of these clearings, that they were conducted with signal humanity. The proprietor, being entitled to do what he liked with his own, said he liked to treat his own well, and wondered how his own were not thankful for so much kindness. On this the adopted commodity was so ungrateful as to repudiate the claim of ownership. The vassals denied that their leader was absolute owner of their holdings, and could not see any thing to praise in those relaxations which were to them, at best, only not carrying out injustice and cruelty to the full extent to which the tyrant possessed the power of persecuting them. And M. Sismondi shows that, had they been in almost any other part of Europe, the law would have been in favour of these poor people. There is a vindication of these Highland clearings which demands our attention before we have done with them. It has been said, that they are very profitable to the community, and that the pecuniary advantage which the landlords have reaped has been occasioned by a change, by which enlightened and industrious capitalists have displaced hordes of semi-barbarians, serviceable only for war and depredation-a burden on a wellordered community. We admit that the sheepfarming system has been advantageous to the community at large, as well as a great gain to the Highland landlords; and that Europe cannot produce a more admirable illustration of the beneficial effect of an enlightened system of agriculture thần the farm-steadings of Sutherland afford, when compared with such Highland huts as are to be seen in other places, models no doubt of those which the Sutherland estates would have exhibited if the clearings had not been made. A system of husbandry which produces much, in place of one which produces little, is the same kind of gain to the community that a railway is when it displaces a line of rickety coaches on a turnpike road. The simile has a farther and deeper application. When the directors of a railway make up their minds that their line shall pass through certain proprietors' grounds, the law does not allow them to go to a proprietor and tell him that as their project is very much for the benefit of the community, they intend to cut away a portion of his lands for the use of the railway, without giving him any compensation. On the same principle, the Highland proprietors ought not to have been allowed to clear their estates without giving compensation to those whose interest in the land was by the custom of the country as well established as their own. In what manner it may be just to deal with rights which probably are of a somewhat similar character in Ireland, we cannot pretend to say. We have not sufficiently studied that great subject. On the Highland tenures, however, we are bound to say, that though we think a system of adjustment of rights ought to have been adopted before the clearings commenced, we think it would now be too late. Fieri non debuit-Factum valeat. Those who had the principal interest at stake have suffered the injustice, and are under the sod, or are passing the latter years of their age, whether in prosperity or adversity, in distant lands. A race has grown up who are to a certain extent aware of the precarious character of their tenures, though they may not be brought up with the best notions of the means of making a livelihood in places distant from their original homes. We fear that the only remedy for the remaining evil-the inflammation remaining after the amputation is a stringent application of the poor law; compelling Highland proprietors to provide for the surplus population reared by them, when they endeavour to get large rents by increasing the number of small holdings, and for the people who are rendered homeless by their clearings. We fear that that blundering and purposely-incomplete measure, the Scottish Poor Law Act, has not strength for carrying out this principle. It has been well observed by The Westminster Review, that the powers which have been exercised in the Highland clearings are powers which a despotic monarch is never known to possess. This is one of the evils arising out of the indiscriminate application of the laws of property. When the laws made for a populous and highly-cultivated district, where land and its occupancy are matters of regular traffic, are transferred and made applicable to wide, thinly-peopled tracts, occupied by poor, half-civilized people; instead of conveying to them the benefits of equal laws and protection to their rights, these laws inflict upon them the scourge of an arbitrary government, fortified in its operations by all the array of power that has been established for the purpose of enforcing, in the place from which the system has been taken, just proprietary rights. We shall give some illustrations of this. A monarch, however despotic, must still be, to a certain extent, the representative of the will of his people. It is as the embodiment of the accumulated strength of the community that he acts on individuals. He may be able to hang, imprison, or expel from his territory, any small number of persons who have displeased him: but he cannot put to death the whole or nine-tenths of his people; nor can he expel them from the country, as the Highland landlords did. Whatever acts he performs against one portion of his people, must be through the instrumentality of the other. And herein consists the difference between sovereignty and proprietary right, that the latter is not left to the enforcement of those that are subject to it, but, in such a country as ours, demands the whole concentrated power of the incorporated states of which the British Empire consists. A monarch cannot set his face against the prevalent religion of his people. Indeed, he must generally be a votary of it, and must confine his intolerance, if he be intolerant, to some small minority, whom the majority helps him to persecute. What monarch of a small kingdom was ever able to prohibit the whole of his people from having a place of worship within his territory? Yet this is what the great Highland proprietors are able to do, through the misapplication, to their case, of that right of property, which declares that a man is not bound to allow his land to be used for purposes he dislikes. The rule is perhaps a sound one in Middlesex and Midlothian. There, in the multiplication of proprietary rights, the abundance of wealth, and the diversity of religious opinions, it will be strange indeed if any sect cannot get itself acccommodated. It may be driven from one place, because the neighbours do not like an organ; from another, because the plan of the church is not in conformity with the architecture of neighbouring houses; or from another, because the spot is part of a pleasure ground: but somewhere or other, in return for their money, the congregation will be allowed to worship God according to their conscience; and the worst that befals them is, that some neighbour in his spite builds a wall as near as he can to the spot to shut out the light, or the pious children of the neighbourhood, hearing how the sect are spoken of by their parents, break the windows. The owner of Highland estates, issuing his mandates from Piccadilly or Grosvenor Square, about a people of whose habits and opinions he knows no more than he does of the Caffres, finds that the Free Church is a church he does not like, and refuses a site as unhesitatingly as if he had been asked to give a piece of his pretty lawn at Kingston for a synagogue-the Jews being also a people whom he does not like. When proprietors are compelled to give the lands which they cultivate, and the pleasure grounds which are the object of their enjoyment, because the public demands them for railways, it were surely not a very tyrannical law which should compel the proprietor to give up a few roods of ground on some desolate wild which he does not cultivate, and never sees, in order that a whole territory, as large as those German states from which we take our royal consorts, may not be able to lift their voice and say that they are denied the use of the barren surface of the earth for the celebration of the rites of that religion to which they all belong. The rules of absolute proprietorship, now so much indulged in, being quite inimical to the old territorial notions in the Highlands, their full effect has only developed itself gradually. The idea, for instance, of treating his waste districts of country as an English proprietor would his lawn and gravel walks, and attempting to preclude access to them, never would have occurred to a Highland chief in his most despotic moments. An English duke, however, having become the tenant of the wild mountain district at the head of the Dee, deeming that he can conduct his field sports with more success and more satisfaction to himself if the wild waste which calls him occupant be surrounded by a legal cordon excluding it from intrusive footsteps as securely as if it were a walled garden, has made a new law for himself, and instructed his keepers to stop people who are found crossing this wilderness. The glen principally watched is the Glen Lui Beg, the natural passage towards Ben Muich Dhui, the centre of the Cairngorm range, the highest mountain in Britain, and for abundance of summer snow, precipices, and cataracts, the most worthy of a visit. As the interruption of the passenger over uncultivated and unfenced wilds, is a new thing in Scotland, it has not yet received the sanction of any law, and till it has done so, must be held illegal. If any bill, perhaps in the form of an act, "to interpret' some game act, should be brought in to extend the law of trespass to such new exigencies, we hope the public will be on their guard to defeat it. A neighbouring Scottish proprietor, the Duke of Athole, following so comfortable an example, has lately attempted to prohibit, in the same manner, the passage through Glen Tilt, the ancient thoroughfare between the basin of the Tay and that of the Dee. The English duke's hint must be very valuable to the Athole family, who previously had followed the understood rule in Scotland, that to keep a place sacred from intrusion, it must, if not cultivated, be at least fenced in. The visiter of the falls of the Bruar is preceded by the keeper thereof with a key, who having first received the proper fee, or satisfied himself that the visiter is good for the amount, opens and admits. We quarrel not with his grace for the price he charges for a walk in his pleasure grounds, or for the vigilance with which his agrarian police take care that those who attend the church within the old cathedral on Sundays, shall not filch a gratuitous glance of the exhibition. His grace has as good a right to be a showman as the lessee of Vauxhall; but, giving him full license to do what he likes with his own, it does not follow that he is to do what he likes with that which belongs to the public; and the right of passage through Glen Tilt belongs to the public, if the free use for centuries, of the only road which leads from one district to another without going thirty miles round, can be secured to the public in Scotland by being used for centuries. We do not believe that the Highland landlords in general will be inclined to adopt measures so utterly irreconcilable with the old habits of the people; but there is much fear that English gold may buy up this tempting privilege of exclusion, if it can be legally exercised, and that the proprietors may say, "Thou canst not say I did it." Some remarks on the closing of Glen Lui Beg having appeared in The Examiner, were answered by the Don Quixote of the game laws, Mr. Grantley Berkeley. He, being an honest enthusiast, disdains to adopt any sophism, but exhibits the project in its most offensive shape. He says, "The writer in The Examiner perhaps is not aware that the breath of a single sight-seeing individual up-wind of the deer, is enough to drive the whole forest side, and to render impossible any sport to the proprietor and his friends, for that or for days to come, so wary and peculiar is the nature of the animal for which we pay." The philosophy of this is, that the absolute solitude of the district being necessary for the sport in which a rich man delights, he must be entitled to it by paying for it. This sentiment was echoed by a letter signed "Leather Stocking," in The Aberdeen Herald, evidently written by no mere impartial spectator. He tells us that "one man on a sky line, or before the wind, on a mountain or in a glen, will put every deer away for miles; a single herd moving will alarm others, so that a small district may be swept clean by one reckless or incautious traveller." We beg attention to the wide terms of measurement applied here to the tracts of country that on this system must be kept clear of even one man. This writer gives a case of hardship, which we shall do him the service of repeating. "I remember last year a gentleman coolly walking down Glen Tilt, and driving every deer out of it, when Lord Glenlyon was endeaThe vouring to show sport to his friends. traveller intended no harm, yet he did irreparable mischief; and this, had he given notice, or applied beforehand, might have been avoided," i. e. of In one of course, had he applied, to be refused. Hood's tales some one speaks of 'a impudent fellow, a standing up for his rights. The person who exercised his right of walking along this public thoroughfare contrary to the will of Lord Glenlyon, must have been of the class so described. The writer we have just quoted tells us that the Duke of Leeds pays £1400 a-year for his glens. This is the formidable feature of the affair. It shows what sums the Highland lairds may obtain for their wastes, provided they can give them the character of unapproachableness. A few rich English lessees may, by judiciously blocking up the passes as the Highlanders did of old, shut up the whole of our mountain ranges from intrusion. It is true they must have a new law to put this new restriction on the liberty of the people. But such restrictions have occasionally been created when they were required to serve very worthy and beneficial purposes. The law of copyright is a restriction for the benefit of literature; the law of patents is a restriction for the encouragement of invention. It remains to be seen whether deer-stalking be considered a pursuit so ennobling, and so valuable to the community, that a new restriction on personal freedom, not needed by graziers and others who rear the ordinary food of man, shall be made for its special encouragement and protection. women. LORD NELSON'S LETTERS AND DISPATCHES.* with his watcher, always prudently returned to shelter. One day Nelson writes: "Do not think I am tired of watching Mr. La Touche Tréville. I have now taken up a method of making him angry. I have left Sir Richard Bickerton, with part of the Fleet, twenty leagues from hence, and, with five of done for some time past, off Cape Sicie. Mr. La Touche the line, am preventing his cutting capers, which he had has several times hoisted his top-sail yards up; and on the 4th of June, we having hoisted the Standard and saluted, he sent outside Sepet, about one mile, five Sail of the Line and two Frigates, and kept three Sail and them, and the Rear-Admiral another, therefore I did not three Frigates with their yards aloft, himself one of believe him in earnest ; however, we run as near as was proper, and brought to. They formed a pretty line at sunset, and then stood into the Harbour. A Ship of the tween Sepet and La Malgue. Some happy day I expect Line and Frigate every morning weigh, and stand beto see his eight sail, which are in the Outer Road, come out; and if he will get abreast of Porquerolle, I will try what stuff he is made of." Tréville, to please Napoleon and the nation, at this time officially reported that Nelson feared to encounter him. The Frenchman's misrepresentation-if falsehood be not rather the proper wordfired him with indignation, and, giving the statement a flat contradiction in his letter to the Admiralty, he more characteristically wrote to his brother : THIS Voluminous work-nationally important tiently longed to measure strength and skill with as an historical record, and yet more interesting this formidable La Touche Tréville, and did what as the autobiography, the "Confessions" of an he could to tempt him to leave port; but the illustrious man, remarkable as much from indi- | Frenchman, after sundry feints, and coquettings vidual character as for heroic achievements-is brought to a close by the publication of a seventh volume; and very little more, we apprehend, remains to be added to the most enduring of all monuments the literary monument of a great man. And in spite of his many weaknesses," amiable weaknesses" all,—and of his vanity, vain-glory, credulity, and susceptibility of flattery, and the errors which arose from worse frailties, " England's Nelson" was not only her greatest sea-captain, but a man to be beloved; a type of her cherished, if beau-ideal, sailor; the very sublime of her Jack Tar; as brave and enterprising ; as devoted to her glory, and his own fame; and without much more thought or comprehension of any thing beyond his own ship's deck. As free, too, and liberal-hearted; and quite as much the dupe of his own narrow prejudices and self-conceit, and of the arts of profligate The main difference, if not the only one, was, that the officer, the commander, the admiral, had a wider sphere of duty and enterprise; and that the Queen of Naples and Lady Hamilton were his inspirers, instead of Doll of Plymouth, or Sue of Wapping, who dupe Tom or Joe, the equally brave hero of the deck, the gun, the cutlass, or boardingpike. Generically, the characters are one; but Nelson was the sublime of that character; and in addition, a thoroughly trained, as well as a most zealous, naval officer; quite as capable of discharging the minutest duty of his rank, from that of midshipman to Admiral of the fleet, as the most obscure seaman under his command could be to perform his well-learned routine task in skilfully working the ship, or bravely fighting the enemy when before him. The secret of Nelson's great popularity lay partly in his sailor-like qualities; and we imagine that although St. Vincent or Collingwood-to take opposite instances had been the victors of the Nile and Trafalgar, they never could have become equal favourites, either with the nation or the navy. We took leave of Nelson in 1804, watching the Toulon fleet as a cat does a mouse; ardently impatient for action, and, as at all times, confident of success, yet omitting no duty, however minute or trivial its details, that could maintain discipline, promote the comfort, or keep alive the spirit of the crews of the ships under his command. The commander of the Toulon squadron at this time was Vice-Admiral La Touche Tréville, whose premature death, according to M. Thiers, was the reason that England, so often menaced, was not then invaded and annihilated. But when M. Thiers writes upon certain delicate subjects, his assertions are to be received with considerable allowance. At all events, Nelson impa : "You will have seen Monsieur La Touche's letter, of how he chased me, and how I ran. I keep it; and, by God, if I take him, he shall Eat it." Nelson wanted that rare element of greatness, that self-relying power which prevents distinguished and high-minded men from grumbling even when their merits are overlooked. He loved to serve his country, but he equally desired to have his services duly appreciated, highly applauded, and—though far from sordid-well paid for in honours and in cash. There was, in particular, no end to his grumbling discontent with the Admiralty, however it happened to be composed. It had become a habit, a chronic complaint; and at this period he had an access. The Toulon fleet, after all his care and vigilance, escaped him, and he was fit to shoot himself. One cannot help sympathizing in his mortal chagrin, when it was too certain that he had been baffled. "I have nothing to wish for but to meet them; and am in truth half dead; but what man can do to find them out shall be done. I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep. It cannot last long what I feel.' The wind was against him. His "good fortune" seemed flown away. "I cannot," he writes, "get a fair wind, nor even a side-wind. Dead foul! dead foul!" Nelson was not distinguished by the heroic virtue of magnanimity. He never felt * Volumes VI. and VII. London: Colburn. - either wives or mistresses. The aged Neapolitan Admiral experienced none of her ladyship's tender mercies. A most romantic episode in Nelson's life, which is recorded in the last volume of his correspondence, is the mysterious story of his putative daughter, Horatia Nelson Thompson. No one, we think, who soberly reads even the statements of Sir Nicholas Harris, can hesitate to come to the conclusion, that this child was neither the daughter of Nelson, which is half affirmed, nor of Lady Hamilton, which we presume no one ever imagined except Nelson himself. That he, however, believed himself the father of Horatia is not more certain than that he believed his dearest Emma," otherwise his equally beloved "Mrs. Thompson,”—evidently the same individual,—the mother of the mysterious foundling. But it is not quite certain that the editor does not come to our own conclusion; namely, that Lady Hamilton was not the mother, and that Nelson erroneously believed himself the father. Mr. Haslewood, the professional adviser of Lord Nelson, is said to know the name of the mother, "but a sense of honour 66 himself in the wrong, and never scrupled to throw blame upon any one who he imagined had impeded his fortunes. He had at this time been misled by information sent to him about the French Fleet, in all good faith, by General Brereton. To one friend he writes in his despair:-"I am as completely miserable as my greatest enemy could wish me; but I neither blame fortune nor my own judgment. Oh, General Brereton! General Brereton !" To Mr. Davison his agent, his warm admirer, and the very indulgent censor of his frailties, he unfolds his whole mind, and makes one almost fear that the glory of Nelson was at least as powerful a motive as high-souled, disinterested patriotism. He thus writes:-"I am as miserable as you can conceive. But for General Brereton's d-d information, Nelson would have been, living or dead, the greatest man in his profession that England ever saw. . . . When I follow my own head, I am in general much more correct than in following the opinions of others." And this professionally was quite true. Every able man best understands his own business, and what in any emergency is required of him. While thus watching, pursuing, and being baffled-we must not say, being out-prevents him from disclosing it." And it is likely manoeuvred by the French commanders, two years of irksome duty revolved, during which Nelson had not once left the Victory. In the meantime, M. La Touche Tréville had died, and been succeeded by Admiral Villeneuve, and it was now July 1805. From his private correspondence at this time, we shall select a few characteristic paragraphs. The first is from a letter to Lady Hamilton,—a lady who places Sir Nicholas Harris in a somewhat awkward dilemma. From either not having quite made up his mind about the character of the lady, or the nature of her connexion with Nelson, he seems to feel as if on slippery ground. At first he had resolved to print none of the letters addressed to her; and he plainly intimates that he places no faith in their authenticity, unless where it is established by existing autographs. But again, the complete suppression of these letters would have been a great blank in the life and correspondence of Nelson, as Lady Hamilton now held the place of his deserted wife, and into her bosom he for many years poured his most secret feelings. It would, however, have been desirable that the editor should have made up his mind about this lady, which, up to the death of Nelson and the close of the correspondence, he does not appear to have done. But whatever doubts still remain in his mind, there can be none, we think, in the mind of any unbiassed reader. There can be no question that the sailor Nelson was throughout the dupe of an artful woman, possessed of many of the fascinations or meretricious arts which captivate men of Of the authenticity of the autograph letters no his character. Nor is it wonderful that the incense doubt can possibly be entertained; but it is very diffshe continually burned before him should have in-cult to decide how far the printed letters [of Nelson to toxicated his brain. But again, Lady Hamilton was "good-hearted." She used her influence with the hero of the Nile to obtain the pardon of offending sailors, though, for aught that is seen, this may either have been properly or improperly; and one would like to see English seamen protected by the laws of their country, without the intercession of enough that he knows who Lady Hamilton, after Nelson's death, said was the mother. Lady Hamilton, after Nelson's death, always affirmed that her protegée, and his daughter, was the child of a lady of rank "too great to be mentioned." This much alone is certain, that Lady Hamilton, by some unknown means, came into the possession of a female infant, which she placed with a nurse named Gibson, with whom the child remained for several years, and whose birth was registered in the baptismal records of the parish of Marylebone, by the name of Horatia Nelson Thompson, born in October 1800, and baptised in May 1803. The child was occasionally visited by Lady Hamilton and Nelson, and when he was at home it was sent for with its nurse. For some good reason, doubtless, the date of its birth was mis-stated. It was placed, by Lady Hamilton, with Mrs. Gibson the nurse, an infant of a week old, in January or February 1801, and its birth is recorded as in October 1800. The only theory upon which the affair can be explained is a double mystification, of which Nelson was as much the dupe as Sir William Hamilton, and that when Mrs. Thomson or Thompson is addressed by Nelson under cover to Lady Hamilton, her ladyship is herself the person really meant. This may seem an uncharitable construction, but it is the only rational one the mysterious affair will bear. We shall now quote Sir Nicholas, who at times seems to entertain our opinion, though he is chary of pronouncing it : Lady Hamilton] are genuine, and it is certain that some important passages in them have been suppressed. The child always bore the names of HORATIA NELSON THOMPSON, and, in the printed letters, Lord Nelson not only often speaks of a" Mrs. Thompson, and her child." in terms of the greatest affection, as well as of its father" Thompson;" but he is said to have addressed two remarkable letters to Mrs. Thompson herself, under cover to Lady Hamilton. That by "Thompson," Lari |