parishioners at the rate of 250l. per annum. The poor inan, actuated by those principles of common sense which are so contrary to all the provisions of the bill, chooses to make a good thing of it, because he knows it will not last; wears his old coat, rides his lean horse, and defrauds the class of curates of all the advantages which they were to derive from the sleekness and splendour of his appearance. It is of some importance to the welfare of a parish, and the credit of the church, that the curate and his rector should live upon good terms together. Such a bill, however, throws between them elements of mistrust and hatred, which must render their agreement highly improbable. The curate would be perpetually prying into every little advance which the rector made upon his tithes, and claiming his proportionate increase. No respectable man could brook such inquisition; some, we fear, would endeavour to prevent its effects by clandestine means. The church would be a perpetual scene of disgraceful animosities; and the ears of the bishop never free from the clamours of rapacity and irritation. It is some slight defect in such a bill, that it does not proportion reward to the labour done, but to the wealth of him for whom it is done. The curate of a parish containing 400 persons, may be paid as much as another person who has the care of 10,000; for, in England, there is very little proportion between the value of a living, and the quantity of duty to be performed by its clergyman. minister to disclose the full value of h living. After all, however, the main and conclusive objection to the bill is, that its provisions are drawn from such erroneous principles, and betray such gross ignorance of human nature, that though it would infallibly produce a thousand mischiefs foreseen and not foreseen, it would evidently have no effect whatsoever in raising the salaries of curates. We do not put this as a case of common buyer and seller; we allow that the parish is a third party, having an interest; we fully admit the right of the legislature to interfere for their relief. We only contend, that such interference would be necessarily altogether ineffectual, so long as men can be found capable of doing the duty of curates, and willing to do it for less than the statutory minimum. If there is a competition of rectors for curates, it is quite unnecessary and absurd to make laws in favour of curates. The demand for them will do their business more effectually than the law. If, on the contrary (as the fact plainly is), there is a competition of curates for employment, is it possible to prevent this order of men from labouring under the regulation price? Is it possible to prevent a curate from pledging himself to his rector, that he will accept only half the legal salary, if he is so fortunate as to be preferred among an host of rivals, who are willing to engage on the same terms? You may make these contracts illegal: What then? Men laugh at such prohibitions; The bill does not attain its object in the best and they always become a dead letter. In nine way. Let the bishop refuse to allow of any cu-instances out of ten, the contract would be rate upon a living above 500l. per annum, who is not a Master of Arts of one of the universities. Such curates will then be obtained at a price which will render it worth the while of such men to take curacies; and such a degree and situation in society will secure good curates much more effectually than the complicated provisions of this bill: for, primâ facie, it appears to us much more probable, that a curate should be respectable, who is a Master of Arts in some English university, than if all that we knew about him was, that he had a fifth of the profits of the living. The object is, to fix a good clergyman in a parish. The law will not trust the non-resident rector to fix both the price and the person; but fixes the price, and then leaves him the choice of the person. Our plan is, to fix upon the description of person, and then to leave the price to find its level; for the good price by no means implies a good person, but the good person will be sure to get a good price. Where the living will admit of it, we have commonly observed that the English clergy are desirous of putting in a proper substitute. If this is so, the bill is unnecessary; for it proceeds on the very contrary supposition, that the great mass of opulent clergy consult nothing but economy in the choice of their curates. It is very galling and irksome to any class of men to be compelled to disclose their pri vate circumstances; a provision contained in, and absolutely necessary to this bill, under which the diocesan can alway compel the honourably adhered to; and then what is the use of Mr. Perceval's law? Where the contract was not adhered to, whom would the law benefit?-A man utterly devoid of every particle of honour and good faith. And this is the new species of curate, who is to reflect dig nity and importance upon his poorer brethren! The law encourages breach of faith between gambler and gambler; it arms broker against broker:-but it cannot arm clergyman against clergyman. Did any human being before, ever think of disseminating such a principle among the teachers of Christianity? Did any ecclesiastic law, before this, ever depend for its success upon the mutual treachery of men who ought to be examples to their fellow-creatures of every thing that is just and upright. a We have said enough already upon the ab surdity of punishing all rich rectors for nonresidence, as for a presumptive delinquency. A law is already passed, fixing what shall be legal and sufficient causes for non-residence. Nothing can be more unjust, then, than to punish that absence which you admit to be legal. If the causes of absence are too nume rous, lessen them; but do not punish him whe has availed himself of their existence. We deny, however, that they are too numerous. There are 6000 livings out of 11,000 in the English church under 80l. per annum; many We are of these 20%, many 30l. per annum. The whole | fortunate to follow such a leader. extremely happy the bill was rejected. We One glaring omission in this bill we had almost forgotten to mention. The chancellor of the exchequer has entirely neglected to make any provision for that very meritorious class of men, the lay curates, who do all the business of those offices, of which lazy and non-resident placemen receive the emoluments. So much delicacy and conscience, however, are here displayed on the subject of pocketing unearned emoluments, that we have no doubt the moral irritability of this servant of the crown will speedily urge him to a species of reform, of which he may be the object as well as the mover PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE [EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1809.]* A SOCIETY that holds out as its object the | weekly pay for prying into the transgressions suppression of vice, must at first sight conciliate the favour of every respectable person; and he who objects to an institution calculated apparently to do so much good, is bound to give very clear and satisfactory reasons for his dissent from so popular an opinion. We certainly have, for a long time, had doubts of its utility; and now think ourselves called upon to state the grounds of our distrust. Though it were clear that individual informers are useful auxiliaries to the administration of the laws, it would by no means follow that hese informers should be allowed to combine, to form themselves into a body,-to make a public purse, and to prosecute under a common name. An informer, whether he is paid by the week, like the agents of this society or by the crime, as in common casesis, in general, a man of a very indifferent character. So much fraud and deception are necessary for carrying on his trade-it is so odious to his fellow subjects,—that no man of respectability will ever undertake it. It is evidently impossible to make such a character therwise than odious. A man who receives Statement of the Proceedings of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, from July 9 to November 12, read at their General Meeting, held November 12, 1804. With an Appendix, containing the Plan of the Society, &c. &c. &c. London. 1804. An Address to the Public from the Society for the Suppression of Vice, instituted in London, 1802. Part the Second, Containing an Account of the Proceedings of the Society from its original Institution. London. 1804. of mankind, and bringing them to conse quent punishment, will always be hated by mankind; and the office must fall to the lot of some men of desperate fortunes and ambigu ous character. The multiplication, therefore, of such officers, and the extensive patronage of such characters, may, by the management of large and opulent societies, become an evil nearly as great as the evils they would suppress. The alarm which a private and disguised accuser occasions in a neighbourhood, is known to be prodigious, not only to the guilty, but to those who may be at once innocent, and ignorant, and timid. The destruction of social confidence is another evil, the consequence of information. An informer gets access to my house or family,-worms my secret out of me,-and then betrays me to the magistrate. Now, all these evils may be tolerated in a small degree, while, in a greater degree, they would be perfectly intolerable Thirty or forty informers roaming about the metropolis, may frighten the mass of offenders a little, and do some good: ten thousand in formers would either create an insurrection, or totally destroy the confidence and cheerful. ness of private life. Whatever may be said, therefore, of the single and insulated informer, it is quite a new question when we come to a corporation of informers supported by large contributions. The one may be a good, the other a very serious evil; the one legal, the other wholly out of the contemplation of law, which often, and very wisely, allows individu- | bine for the purpose of turning informers, als to do what it forbids to many individuals is lawful for the lowest and most despicable assembled. race of informers to do the same thing; and then it is quite clear that every species of wickedness and extortion would be the consequence. We are rather surprised that no society of perjured attorneys and fraudulent bankrupts has risen up in this metropolis, for the suppression of vice. A chairman, deputy. chairman, subscriptions, and an annual sermon would give great dignity to their proceedings; and they would soon begin to take some rank in the world. If once combination is allowed for the suppression of vice, where are its limits to be? Its capital may as well consist of 100,000l. per annum, as of a thousand: its numbers may increase from a thousand subscribers, which this society, it seems, had reached in its second year, to twenty thousand: and, in that case, what accused persons of an inferior condition of life would have the temerity to stand against such a society? Their mandates would very soon be law; and there is no compliance into which they might not frighten the common people, and the lower orders of tradesmen. The idea of a society of gentlemen, calling themselves an association for the suppression of vice, would alarm any small offender to a degree that would make him prefer any submission to any re-bers. It may therefore trust to a grand jury sistance. He would consider the very fact of being accused by them, as almost sufficient to ruin him. An individual accuser accuses at his own expense; and the risk he runs is a good security that the subject will not be harassed by needless accusations,-a security which, of course, he cannot have against such a society as this, to whom pecuniary loss is an object of such little consequence. It must never be forgotten, that this is not a society for punishing people who have been found to transgress the law, but for accusing persons of transgressing the law; and that before trial, the accused person is to be considered as innocent, and is to have every fair chance of establishing his innocence. He must be no common defendant, however, who does not contend against such a society with very fearful odds;-the best counsel engaged for his opponents, great practice in the particular court, and particular species of cause,-witnesses thoroughly hackneyed in a court of justice, and an unlimited command of money. It by no means follows, that the legislature, in aliowing individuals to be informers, meant to subject the accused person to the superior weight and power of such societies. The very influence of names must have a considerable weight with the jury. Lord Dartmouth, Lord Radstock, and the Bishop of Durham, versus a Whitechapel butcher or a publican! Is this a fair contest before a jury? It is not so even in London; and what must it be in the country, where a society for the suppression of vice may consist of all the principal persons in the neighbourhood? These societies are now established in York, in Reading, and in many other large towns. Wherever this is the case, it is far from improbable that the same persons, at the Quarter or Town Sessions, may be both judges and accusers; and still more fatally so, if the offence is tried by a special jury. This is already most notoriously the case in societies for the preservation of game. They prosecute a poacher;-the jury is special; and the poor wretch is found guilty by the very same persons who have accused him. If it is lawful for respectable men to com It is true that it is the duty of grand juries to inform against vice; but the law knows the probable number of grand jurymen, the times of their meeting, and the description of persons of whom they consist. Öf voluntary societies it can know nothing,-their numbers, their wealth, or the character of their mem what it would by no means trust to an unknown combination. A vast distinction is to be made, too, between official duties and voluntary duties. The first are commonly carried on with calmness and moderation; the latter often characterized, in their execution, by rash and intemperate zeal. The present society receives no members but those who are of the Church of England. As we are now arguing the question generally, we have a right to make any supposition. It is equally free, therefore, upon general princi ples, for a society of sectarians to combine and exclude members of the Church of England; and the suppression of vice may thus come in aid of Methodism, Jacobinism, or of any set of principles, however perilous, either to church or state. The present society may, perhaps, consist of persons whose sentiments on these points are rational and respectable. Combinations, however, of this sort may give birth to something far different; and such a supposition is the fair way of trying the question. We doubt if there be not some mischief in averting the fears and hopes of the people from the known and constituted authorities of the country to those self-created powers;—a society that punishes in the Strand,-another which rewards at Lloyd's Coffee-house! If these things get to any great height, they throw an air of insignificance over those branches of the government to whom these cares properly devolve, and whose authority is by these means assisted, till it is superseded. It is supposed that a project must necessarily be good, because it is intended for the aid of law and government. At this rate, there should be a society in aid of the government, for procuring intelligence from foreign parts, with accredited agents all over Europe. There should be a voluntary transport board, and a gratuitous victualling office. There should be a duplicate, in short, of every department of the state,-the one appointed by the king, the other by itself. There should be a real Lord Glenbervie in the woods and forests,--and with him a monster, a voluntary Lord Glenbervie, serving without pay, and guiding gratis, with secret counsel, the axe of his prototype. If it be asked, who are the constituted authorities who are legally appointed to watch over morals, | and a murderer must be knocked on the head and whose functions the society usurp? our an-like mad dogs; but we have no great opinion swer is, that there are in England about 12,000 of the possibility of indicting men into piety, elergy, not unhandsomely paid for persuading or of calling in the quarter sessions to the aid the people, and about 4000 justices, 30 grand juries, and 40,000 constables, whose duty and whose inclination it is to compel them to do right. Under such circumstances, a voluntary moral society does indeed seem to be the purest result of volition; for there certainly is not the smallest particle of necessity mingled with its existence. It is hardly possible that a society for the suppression of vice can ever be kept within the bounds of good sense and moderation. If there are many members who have really become so from a feeling of duty, there will necessarily be some who enter the society to hide a bad character, and others whose object it is to recommend themselves to their betters by a sedulous and bustling inquisition into the immoralities of the public. The loudest and noisiest suppressors will always carry it against the more prudent part of the community; the most violent will be considered as the most moral; and those who see the absurdity will, from the fear of being thought to encourage vice, be reluctant to oppose it. of religion. You may produce outward conformity by these means; but you are so far from producing (the only thing worth producing) the inward feeling, that you incur a great risk of giving birth to a totally opposite sentiment. The violent modes of making men good, just alluded to, have been resorted to at pe riods when the science of legislation was not so well understood as it now is; or when the manners of the age have been peculiarly gloomy or fanatical. The improved knowledge, and the improved temper of later times, push such laws into the back ground, and silently repeal them. A suppressing society, hunting every where for penalty and information, has a direct tendency to revive ancient ignorance and fanaticism,-and to re-enact laws, which, if ever they ought to have existed at all, were certainly calculated for a very different style of manners, and a very different degree of information. To compel men to go to church, under a penalty, appears to us to be absolutely absurd. The bitterest enemy of religion will necessarily be that person who It is of great importance to keep public is driven to a compliance with its outward opinion on the side of virtue. To their autho- ceremonies, by informers and justices of the rized and legal correctors, mankind are, on peace. In the same manner, any constable common occasions, ready enough to submit; who hears another swear an oath, has a right but there is something in the self-erection of to seize him, and carry him before a magistrate, a voluntary magistracy which creates so much where he is to be fined so much for each exedisgust, that it almost renders vice popular, cration. It is impossible to carry such laws and puts the offence at a premium. We have into execution; and it is lucky that it is imno doubt but that the immediate effect of a possible,-for their execution would create an voluntary combination for the suppression of infinitely greater evil than it attempted to vice, is an involuntary combination in favour remedy. The common sense and common of the vices to be suppressed; and this is a feeling of mankind, if left to themselves, would very serious drawback from any good of silently repeal such laws; and it is one of the which such societies may be the occasion; evils of these societies, that they render abfor the state of morals, at any one period, de-surdity eternal, and ignorance indestructible. pends much more upon opinion than law; Do not let us be misunderstood: upon the oband to bring odious and disgusting auxiliaries ject to be accomplished, there can be but one to the aid of virtue, is to do the utmost possi-opinion;—it is only upon the means employed, ble good to the cause of vice. We regret that that there can be the slightest difference of mankind are as they are; and we sincerely wish, that the species at large were as completely devoid of every vice and infirmity as the president, vice-president, and committee of the suppressing society; but, till they are thus regenerated, it is of the greatest consequence to teach them virtue and religion in a manner which will not make them hate both the one and the other. The greatest delicacy is required in the application of violence to moral and religious sentiment. We forget that the object is, not to produce the outward compliance, but to raise up the inward feeling, which secures the outward compliance. You may drag men into church by main force, and prosecute them for buying a pot of beer, and cut them off from the enjoyment of a leg of mutton;-and you may do all this, till you make the common people hate Sunday, and the elergy, and religion, and every thing which relates to such subjects. There are many crimes, indeed, where persuasion cannot be waited for, and where the untaught feelings of all men go along with the violence of the law. A robber sentiment. To go to church is a duty of the greatest possible importance; and on the blasphemy and vulgarity of swearing, there can be but one opinion. But such duties are not the objects of legislation; they must be left to the general state of public sentiment; which sentiment must be influenced by example, by the exertions of the pulpit and the press, and,. above all, by education. The fear of God can never be taught by constables, nor the pleasures of religion be learnt from a common in-former. Beginning with the best intentions in the world, such societies must, in all probability, degenerate into a receptacle for every species of tittle-tattle, impertinence, and malice. Men, whose trade is rat-catching, love to catch rats; the bug-destroyer seizes on his bug with de light; and the suppressor is gratified by finding his vice. The last soon becomes a mere tradesman like the others; none of them mo ralize, or lament that their respective evils should exist in the world. The public feeling is swallowed up in the pursuit of a daily occu pation, and in the display of a technical skill. I can be any cruelty in hunting." The next 18, Here, then, is a society of men, who invite a process for making brawn-a dish never accusation, who receive it (almost unknown tasted by the poor, and therefore not to be disto themselves) with pleasure,-and who, if they turbed by indictment. The fourth is the mode hate dulness and inoccupation, can have very of crimping cod; and the fifth of boiling lob little pleasure in the innocence of their fellow-sters; all high-life cruelties, with which a jus creatures. The natural consequence of all tice of the peace has no business to meddle. this is, that (besides that portion of rumour The real thing which calls forth the sympawhich every member contributes at the weekly thies, and harrows up the soul, is to see a meeting), their table must be covered with number of boisterous artisans baiting a bull, anonymous lies against the character of indi- or a bear; not a savage hare, or a carnivorous viduals. Every servant discharged from his stag, but a poor, innocent, timid bear;-not master's service,-every villain who hates the pursued by magistrates, and deputy lieutenants, man he has injured,-every cowardly assassin and men of education,-but by those who of character,-now knows where his accusa- must necessarily seek their relaxation in noise tions will be received, and where they cannot and tumultuous merriment,-by men whose fail to produce some portion of the mischievous feelings are blunted, and whose understanding effects which he wishes. The very first step is wholly devoid of refinement. The society of such a society should be, to declare, in the detail, with symptoms of great complacency, plainest manner, that they would never receive their detection of a bear-beating in Black-boy any anonymous accusation. This would be Alley, Chick Lane, and the prosecution of the the only security to the public, that they were offenders before a magistrate. It appears to not degrading themselves into a receptacle for us, that nothing can be more partial and unmalice and falsehood. Such a declaration just than this kind of proceedings. A man of would inspire some species of confidence; and ten thousand a year may worry a fox as much make us believe that their object was neither as he pleases,-may encourage the breed of a the love of power, nor the gratification of un- mischievous animal on purpose to worry it; charitable feelings. The society for the sup- and a poor labourer is carried before a mapression, however, have done no such thing. gistrate for paying sixpence to see an exhibi They request, indeed, the signature of the in- tion of courage between a dog and a bear! formers whom they invite; but they do not (as Any cruelty may be practised to gorge the they ought) make that signature an indispen-stomachs of the rich,-none to enliven the sable condition. holidays of the poor. We venerate those feelings which really protect creatures susceptible of pain, and incapable of complaint. But heaven-born pity, now-a-days, calls for the income tax, and the Court Guide; and ascertains the rank and fortune of the tormentor before she weeps for the pain of the sufferer. It is astonishing how the natural feelings of mankind are distorted by false theories. Nothing can be more mischievous than to say, that the pain inflicted by the dog of a man of quality is not (when the strength of the two animals is the same) equal to that produced by the cur of a butcher. Haller, in his Pathology, expressly says, that the animal bitten knows no difference in the quality of the biting animal's master; and it is now the universal opinion among all enlightened men, that the misery of the brawner would be very little diminished, if he could be made sensible that he was to be eaten up only by persons of the first fashion. The contrary supposition seems to us to be absolute nonsense; it is the desertion of the true Baconian philosophy, and Now we do fairly admit, that such abomi- the substitution of mere unsupported conjecnable cruelties as these are worthy of the inter- ture in its place. The trespass, however, ference of the law: and that the society should which calls forth all the energies of a suphave punished them, cannot be matter of sur-pressor, is the sound of a fiddle. That the prise to any feeling mind.-But stop, gentle reader! these cruelties are the cruelties of the suppressing committee, not of the poor. You must not think of punishing these.-The first of these cruelties passes under the pretty name of angling,-and therefore there can be no harm in it-the more particularly as the president himself has one of the best preserved trout streams in England.-The next is hunt-human character brutal and ferocious," &c. g-and as many of the vice-presidents and the committee hunt, it is not possible there Nothing has disgusted us so much in the proceedings of this society, as the control which they exercise over the amusements of the poor. One of the specious titles under which this legal meanness is gratified is, Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Of cruelty to animals, let the reader take the following specimens: Running an iron hook in the intestines of an animal; presenting this first animal to another as his food; and then pulling this second creature up, and suspending him by the barb in his stomach. Riding a horse till he drops, in order to see an innocent animal torn to pieces by dogs. Keeping a poor animal upright for many weeks, to communicate a peculiar hardness to his flesh. Making deep incisions into the flesh of another animal, while living, in order to make the muscles more firm. Immersing another animal, while living, in hot water. 66 "How reasonable creatures" (says the society) can enjoy a pastime which is the cause of such sufferings to brute animals, or how they can consider themthose animals, by means of the antipathies which Proselves entitled, for their own amusement, to stimulate vidence has thought proper to place between them, to worry and tear, and often to destroy each other, it is bution peculiarly just, tends obviously to render the difficult to conceive. So inhuman a practice, by a retri &c. reader sees clearly that no part of this description can possibly apply to the case of hunting. (Address, p. 71, 72.) We take it for granted, that the |