question of emancipation so very difficult.' How this contributes to the difficulty, is not explained. If any danger arising from their emancipation to the whites is referred to, nothing can be more fallacious. They have the same physical power as slaves, which they would possess as freemen; they would still be under the same political restraints that now retain them in subjection; all experience proves that slaves are more dangerous to a state, than free labourers; and their numbers, by rendering their labour less valuable, would keep them the more dependent upon their employers. It is only as slaves that their numbers can be formidable.

We have felt it to be our duty to point out these flaws in Professor M'Culloch's truly valuable work; flaws which we hope to see disappear in a new edition. They detract little from its substantial merit and usefulness, nor will they, we apprehend, diminish in the slightest degree its popularity. In fact, in certain quarters, it will only be the more acceptable for the opinions we have ventured to controvert, and the omissions to which we have referred. It would have been easy to extend this paper almost indefinitely by extracts from many entertaining articles; and among other important subjects, that of the East India trade would furnish abundant matter for comment. But our limits forbid, and we can only make room for one more extract, taken from a very long and curious article upon Tea.

The tea shrub may be described as a very hardy evergreen, grow ing readily in the open air, from the equator to the 45th degree of latitude. For the last 60 years, it has been reared in this country, without difficulty, in greenhouses; and thriving plants of it are to be seen in the gardens of Java, Singapore, Malacca, and Penang; all within 6 degrees of the equator. The climate most congenial to it, however, seems to be that between the 25th and 33d degrees of latitude, judging from the success of its cultivation in China. For the general purposes of commerce, the growth of good tea is confined to China; and is there restricted to five provinces, or rather parts of provinces, viz. Fokien and Canton, but more particularly the first, for black tea; and Kiang-nan, Kiang-si, and Che-kiang, but chiefly the first of these, for green. The tea districts all lie between the latitudes just mentioned, and the 115th and 122nd degrees of East longitude. However, almost every province of China produces more or less tea, but generally of an inferior quality, and for local consumption only; or when of a superior quality, like some of the fine wines of France, losing its flavour when exported. The plant is also extensively cultivated in Japan, Tonquin, and Cochin-China; and in some of the mountainous parts of Ava; the people of which country use it largely as a kind of pickle preserved in oil!

Botanically considered, the tea tree is a single species; the green and black, with all the diversities of each, being mere varieties, like the varieties of the grape, produced by difference of climate, soil, lo

cality, age of the crop when taken, and modes of preparation for the market. Considered as an object of agricultural produce, the tea plant bears a close resemblance to the vine. In the husbandry of China, it may be said to take the same place which the vine occupies in the southern countries of Europe. Like the latter, its growth is chiefly confined to hilly tracts, not suited to the growth of corn. The soils capable of producing the finest kinds are within given districts, limited, and partial. Skill and care, both in husbandry and preparation, are quite as necessary to the production of good tea, as to that of good

wine.

The best wine is produced only in particular latitudes, as is the best tea; although, perhaps, the latter is not restricted to an equal degree. Only the most civilised nations of Europe have as yet succeeded in producing good wines; which is also the case in the East with tea; for the agricultural and manufacturing skill and industry of the Chinese are there unquestionably pre-eminent. These circumstances deserve to be attended to, in estimating the difficulties which must be encountered in any attempt to propagate the tea plant in colonial or other possessions. These difficulties are obviously very great; and, perhaps, all but insuperable. Most of the attempts hitherto made to raise it in foreign countries were not, indeed, of a sort from which much was to be expected. Within the last few years, however, considerable efforts have been made by the Dutch government of Java, to produce tea on the hills of that island; and having the assistance of Chinese cultivators from Fokien, who form a considerable part of the emigrants to Java, a degree of success has attended them, beyond what might have been expected in so warm a climate. The Brazilians have made similar efforts; having also, with the assistance of Chinese labourers, attempted to propagate the tea shrub near Rio de Janeiro; and a small quantity of tolerably good tea has been produced. But owing to the high price of labour in America, and the quantity required in the cultivation and manipulation of tea, there is no probability, even were the soil suitable to the plant, that its culture can be profitably carried on in that country.

It might probably be successfully attempted in Hindostan, where labour is comparatively cheap, and where the hilly and table lands bear a close resemblance to those of the tea districts of China; but we are not sanguine in our expectations as to the result.

6

Species of Tea.-Manner in which they are manufactured.-The black teas usually exported by Europeans from Canton are as follows, beginning with the lowest qualities:-Bohea, Congou, Souchong, and Pekoe. The green teas are Twankay, Hyson-skin, young Hyson, Hyson, Imperial, and Gunpowder. All the black teas exported (with the exception of a part of the bohea, grown in Woping, a district of Canton,) are grown in Fokien, a hilly, maritime, populous, and industrious province, bordering to the north-east on Canton. Owing to the peculiar nature of the Chinese laws as to inheritance, and probably, also, in some degree to the despotic genius of the government, landed property is much subdivided throughout the empire; so that tea is generally grown in gardens or plantations of no great extent. The plant comes to maturity and yields a crop in from 2 to 3 years. The leaves are

picked by the cultivator's family, and immediately conveyed to market; where a class of persons, who make it their particular business, purchase and collect them in quantities, and manufacture them in part; that is, expose them to be dried under a shed. A second class of persons, commonly known in the Canton market as "the tea merchants," repair to the districts where the tea is produced, and purchase it in its half prepared state from the first class, and complete the manufacture by garbling the different qualities; in which operation, women and children are chiefly employed. A final drying is then given, and the tea packed in chests, and divided, according to quality, into parcels of from 100 to 600 chests each. These parcels are stamped with the name of the district, grower, or manufacturer, exactly as is practised with the wines of Bourdeaux and Burgundy, the indigo of Bengal, and many other commodities; and, from this circumstance, get the name of chops, the Chinese term for a seal or signet. Some of the leaf buds of the finest black tea plants are picked early in the spring, before they expand. These constitute pekoe, or black tea of the highest quality; sometimes called "white-blossom" tea, from there being intermixed with it, to give it a higher perfume, a few blossoms of a species of olive (olea fragrans), a native of China. A second crop is taken from the same plants in the beginning of May, a third about the middle of June, and a fourth in August; which last, consisting of large and old leaves, is of very inferior flavour and value. The younger the leaf, the more high flavoured, and consequently the more valuable, is the tea. With some of the congous and souchongs are occasionally mixed a little pekoe, to enhance their flavour; and hence the distinction, among the London tea dealers, of these sorts of tea, into the ordinary kinds and those of "Pekoe flavour". Bohea, or the lowest black tea, is partly composed of the lower grades; that is, of the fourth crop of the teas of Fokien, left unsold in the market of Canton after the season of exportation has passed; and partly of the teas of the district of Woping in Canton. The green teas are grown and selected in the same manner as the black, to which the description now given more particularly refers; and the different qualities arise from the same causes. The gunpowder here stands in the place of the pekoe; being composed of the unopened buds of the spring crop. Imperial, hyson, and young hyson consist of the second and third crops. The light and inferior leaves, separated from the hyson by a winnowing machine, constitute hyson-skin,- —an article in considerable demand amongst the Americans. The process of drying the green teas differs from that of the black; the first being dried in iron pots or vases over a fire, the operator continually stirring the leaves with his naked hand. The operation is one of considerable nicety, particularly with the finer teas; and is performed by persons who make it their exclusive business.

The late rise and present magnitude of the British tea trade are among the most extraordinary phenomena in the history of commerce. Tea was wholly unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and even to our ancestors previously to the end of the 16th or the beginning of the 17th century. It seems to have been originally imported in small quantities by the Dutch; but was hardly known in this country till after 1650. In 1660, however, it began to be used in coffee-houses;

for, in an act passed that year, a duty of 8d. is laid on every gallon of "coffee, chocolate, sherbet, and tea," made and sold. But it is abundantly evident that it was then only beginning to be introduced. The following entry appears in the Diary of Mr. Pepys, secretary to the admiralty: September 25. 1661. I sent for a cup of tea (a China drink), of which I had never drunk before." In 1664, the East India Company bought 2 lbs. 2 oz. of tea as a present for his Majesty. In 1667, they issued the first order to import tea, directed to their agent at Bantam, to the effect that he should send home 100 lbs. of the best tea he could get !-(See the references in Milburn's Orient. Com. vol. ii. p. 530; Macpherson's Hist. of Com. with India, pp. 130-132.) Since then, the consumption seems to have gone on regularly though slowly increasing. In 1689, instead of charging a duty on the decoction made from the leaves, an excise duty of 5s. per lb. was laid on the tea itself.

The great increase that took place in the consumption of tea in 1784 and 1785, over its consumption in the preceding years, is to be ascribed to the reduction that was then effected in the duties. In the nine years preceding 1780, above 180,000,000 lbs. of tea had been exported from China to Europe, in ships belonging to the Continent, and about 50,000,000 lbs. in ships belonging to England. But from the best information attainable, it appears that the real consumption was almost exactly the reverse of the quantities imported; and that while the consumption of the British dominions amounted to above 13,000,000 lbs., the consumption of the Continent did not exceed 5,500,000 lbs. If this statement be nearly correct, it follows that an annual supply of above 8,000,000 lbs. was clandestinely imported.

In consequence partly of the increase of duty, but far more of the conduct pursued by the East India Company in relation to the trade, the consumption of tea, as compared with the population, has been steadily declining since 1800! .. Instead of an ad valorem duty of 96 per cent., the teas consumed by the lower and middle classes pay, in monopoly price and duty together, a tax of above 300 per cent. on their cost in the market of Hamburgh! Here is the real and sufficient cause of the declining consumption of tea. It never was attempted, in any other country, to levy a tax of 325 per cent. on the beverage of the poor, or rather, we should say, on one of the important necessaries consumed by them. Instead of wondering at the decrease of consumption that has taken place, the only thing to excite the surprise of any reasonable man is, that this decrease has not been incomparably greater. Besides its other injurious effects, the exorbitant price of tea has led to its extensive adulteration, and to a great deal of smuggling in the finer qualities. It has also driven the poor to less salubrious stimulants, and is the principal cause of that prevalence of gin drinking which is so much lamented. We venture to affirm that the abolition of the Company's monopoly would do ten times more to promote sobriety and good order among the poor, than the formation of a thousand temperance societies, and the preaching of as many ser

mons.

The tea duties have recently declined to less than 3,400,000l.; at an average, however, of the last 14 years, they have amounted to about

3,800,000l. a year. But had tea been supplied under a free system, and government imposed a duty on it equal to the present duty and the increased price caused by the monopoly, it would have produced a revenue of about 5,400,000l.; the balance, or 1,600,000l. a year, being the sum which the monopoly costs this country, exclusive of what it has cost the colonies, and of its influence in raising the duty, and in depressing the trade with China and the East.'

This long extract occupies not quite two pages and a half of the 1150 contained in the volume.

Art. IV. 1. The Messiah.

Montgomery, Author of
Sm. 8vo. pp. 300.

&c.

The Omnipresence of the Deity,' Satan,'
Price 8s. 6d. London, 1832.

2. Jonah. A Poem: in Two Parts. 8vo. pp. 24. London, 1832.

3. David. A Poem. 8vo. pp. 32. London, 1831.

4. The Daughter of Jephthah. A Poem. By a Gentleman of Stoke. 8vo. pp. 32. Devonport, 1831.

66

THI

HE Messiah," by the Author of " Satan," reads strangely. The facile transition from an infernal to a Divine theme, irresistibly recalls the caustic, wicked satire of Lord Byron upon the Laureat.

He had written Wesley's life: here, turning round
To Satan, "Sir, I'm ready to write yours,

In two octavo volumes: there's no ground

For fear, for I can choose my own reviewers.
Well, if you,

With amiable modesty decline
My offer, what
says Michael? "'

We have seen, in some edition of Bunyan's Holy War, portraits of Diabolus and King Shaddai placed face to face. Mr. Robert Montgomery must in like manner have intended to furnish us with opposite pendants. By the same Author, Satan,' in conspicuous display, fronts the title-page; together with the attractive words, Third Edition.' And a sentence from the "University Magazine" informs us, that no conception can be 'more grand, more truly sublime,' than Mr. Robert Montgomery's Satan, whose feelings the Poet has displayed with great power and appalling effect.' To all the admirers of that grand, that sublime poem, to all the purchasers of the first, second, and third editions, we need not recommend the Author's present production, which is of course, if possible, more grand, more powerful, more sublime, more appalling still. What Mr. Robert Mont