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Arabs, in fact, are looked upon by the natives of eastern Africa with a favourable eye, and altogether they enjoy opportunities, which, if judiciously made use of, would lead to an indefinite increase of their commerce, and to a happy change in the circumstances of a people whom they themselves are far from deeming barbarous.

The actual prosperity of Zanzibar may be said to have commenced with the abolition of the foreign slave trade;—a measure by which the Sultan of Muscat acknowledged the influence possessed over him by his British allies. In 1811, the revenues derived by that prince, from his possessions on the eastern coast of Africa, amounted, according to Captain Smee, to only 60,000 dollars; at present the revenues of Zanzibar alone are farmed for 170,000 dollars_a-year. The Arabs, sensible of the rapidly increasing population of that island, already swell it in their exaggerated estimates to 400,000 souls. The town of Zanzibar contains, we believe, not less than 10,000 inhabitants. The recent establishment in that flourishing place of the agent of a London firm, will, we trust, lead to important results ; by infusing liberality into the commercial system of the Arabs, and promoting the developement of the trade carried on with the natives of the interior.

If our enterprising countrymen should think of exploring the rivers of eastern Africa with commercial views, we recommend them strongly to begin with the Pangány. That river is said to have depth of water sufficient for the largest vessels for three long days (that is from 80 to 100 miles), up to the rapids. The country, on its banks, near the coast, abounds in the finest copal. The rapids are, we believe, navigable with rafts. Above them the river becomes both broad and deep; encircling in its winding course a great number of islands, which are all comprised in the kingdom of Cazíta, the most populous part of Eastern Africa known to the Arabs. The M'sambára, who occupy Cazíta, are said to take the field against the Galla, at times, with an army of 100,000 fighting men. Their chief town, Vúga, situated a little way above the rapids, is three or four times as large as Zanzibar. Such are the accounts of the Arabs. The river Pangány is not within the acknowledged dominion of the Sultan of Muscat, nor is it, we believe, much navigated by the Arabs of Mombása, who supinely allow the produce of the interior to find its way to the coast as it best can. It is possible that the Pangány might be ascended to Cazíta with little difficulty; and in such a case, it is obvious enough, that both the native and foreign merchant would find it more advantageous to traffic there than on the coast. The Livúma also, and the Lufigy, are worth explor

ing, particularly the latter; but we are apprehensive that its exploration might prove a tedious and laborious undertaking.

The perfect freedom of trade established in the eastern seas, which may now be navigated in all directions by vessels of any size; the progress which civilisation has made in Madagascar; the prosperity of our colony at the Cape of Good Hope; the extension of Mohammed Ali's power through the Red Sea, as far as Mocha; the improvement of Zanzibar, and its trade just opened with London ;—are all comparatively recent occurrences; indicating and aiding the important revolution which is about to take place in the circumstances of Eastern Africa. This revolution or developement will be still further promoted, if the East India Company purchase (as it is said they intend to do) the Island of Socotra, as a depôt of coal in the projected steamnavigation between Bombay and Suez. That island was colonized at an early age by Greeks, Arabs, Egyptians, and Hindoos, a mixture evidently mercantile. The Portuguese held it a few years, in the beginning of the sixteenth century; but, under their system, which was to reap rather than to sow, they found it not worth retaining. But if Socotra, in the second century of the Christian era, was inhabited or frequented by the merchants of the most commercial nations of antiquity, why might it not rise to some commercial importance at the present day? Situated as it is, at the mouth of the Red Sea, and at equal distances from Kosseir, Bombay, and Zanzibar, it seems particularly well adapted to be a general entrepôt, and if made a free port, might it not become the Sincapore of the Arabian seas ? It would, under those circumstances, be soon frequented by the Somâly merchants; and thus a considerable commerce, which has flourished from remote antiquity, but in which Britain has never had the slightest share, would be gradually opened to us, we mean the commerce carried on by caravans from Zeïla and Borbora through the Somâly country to Abyssinia. The pastoral inhabitants of the mountains of Socotra, a wild but simple and inoffensive people, themselves of Abyssinian and Christian origin, might perhaps, with kind treatment, and in due time, be made instrumental in extending the commercial intercourse of the island with those continental nations to whom they are naturally allied.

Having alluded to the steam navigation now about to be established in the Arabian seas, we must not conclude this article without mentioning a circumstance which may possibly be of great importance to those who are interested in that speculation; and the importance of which will be much enhanced if the project of steam navigation to India by the Cape of Good Hope be

not (and we have heard that it is not) wholly abandoned. We have been informed (and we see no reason to doubt the correctness of the information) that coal is found in abundance in Madagascar, and in a situation whence it might be conveyed to the coast at a trifling expense. Bembatooka bay, on the western side of Madagascar, is a safe and capacious harbour, conveniently situated, and having on its northern side the Arab town of Majunga, the chief commercial seaport of the island. At the bottom of the bay is the mouth of the river Betsibooka, which river is navigable 160 miles up, according to our European authorities, to a place called Mahatsara, where two streams fall into it. From that place to Tanân-arivo, the capital of the Ovah kingdom, and indeed of the whole island, is a distance of 85 miles by land. The trade with the capital is nearly all carried on by the river Betsibooka. Now, our Arab informant, who ascended from Majunga to Tanân-arivo, by the river Betsibooka about two years ago, confirms these statements, and adds a few interesting particulars. The river, according to him, is navigable for Arab dows of 200 tons burden to a place called Bondúni, a distance of 14 days' good travelling from Majunga. But he, travelling in state as ambassador from the Sultan of Muscat to the Queen of Madagascar, spent twenty-four days in performing the same distance. From Bondúni to the capital was a week's journey. The obstruction to the navigation at the former place appeared to him to be of a trifling kind, and such as Europeans would easily overcome. The stream was navigable, he thought, nearly all the way to Tanân-arivo. About a league N. W. from this place, the river Manára, which joins the Betsibooka, flows through a village called Andávi, where there are great iron works, under the management of a Frenchman, named Doroite (such was the Arab's pronunciation), who was at that time instructing 380 Madegass youths in the art of making muskets. The furnaces of these works were fed with coal, which was found hard by, and which our informant examined both in its native bed and in the foundery. If a good seam of coal were discovered in the vicinity of the Betsibooka, there is no room to doubt that the rivers, as well as seas, of Eastern Africa would soon witness the astonishing activity of steam navigation, and its happy effects on commercial intercourse.

ART. IV.-Deontology; or, the Science of Morality: in which the Harmony and Coincidence of Duty and Self-interest, Virtue and Felicity, Prudence and Benevolence, are explained and exemplified. From the MSS. of JEREMY BENTHAM. Arranged and edited by JOHN BOWRING. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1834.

No OTHING but our profound respect for the late Mr Bentham's originality of thought and logical acumen could have induced us to drag our weary way through these posthumous volumes. We have risen from them with a fatigue very different from that which, after a stern intellectual exercise, brings with it the delightful consciousness of power. We recollect Dr Brown's theory of muscular feeling as a sixth sense, and his illustration of it by the animal pleasure which we derive from activity; but that activity can only be pleasurable in a healthy atmosphere; and so in this work, its rigid thought and long-sustained induction, that at other times would delight, here speedily oppress, for the mind instinctively feels that the element it is inhaling is unnatural. If it had the attractions of novelty, curiosity being thus indulged, it would then be at least tolerable; but it simply contains Mr Bentham's thrice told tale' upon utility: it furnishes us with no fresh illustrations, no better system than we had already found in his Principles of Morals and Legislation.' There is thus nothing to relieve that mental nausea, without which we defy any unprejudiced reader, however familiar and delighted with recondite abstractions, to study these volumes;-a nausea that arises perhaps partly from the exertion they require, but chiefly from the constant violence they commit upon human nature. The whole of Mr Bentham's theory is a denial of a class of feelings, the existence of which, until very recently, no one seriously questioned; and his doctrine, therefore, gives us just as much satisfaction as would an ingenious attempt to prove that we had no faculties for perceiving beauty, or for discerning sounds. When we use this language, we speak of the theory, as it was stated and left by Mr Bentham. Some of his supposed followers have recently recognised in letter, and we hope in spirit, the sentiment of moral approbation;' in other words, of conscience. This admission completely alters the whole case. Under it, the doctrine of utility, considered both metaphysically and practically, may be more or less reasonably explained. Not so, the philosophy of Mr Bentham.

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In plain terms, his philosophy assumes that we are only susceptible of pleasures and pains physical or intellectual;' that consequently our enjoyments and sufferings must be purely animal

or purely rational. Physical sensation and passionless thought are the two, and the only two, possible modes of our existence. It thus follows, that all those feelings of love for the beauty of virtue, and of abhorrence for the deformity of vice, which we call moral, have been both illusive and unnecessary.

He who would obtain a clear and candid conception of Mr Bentham's theory of utility, as applied to morals, must previously imagine society to be resolved into its primitive elements; just as, in an enquiry into man's abstract rights, he must go back to the origin of government. As, in the latter case, in order to avoid those modifications which have arisen from conventional peculiarities, he must think of man insulated,—having formed no social compact with his fellows; so, in the former case, he must think of him before he has committed any one action towards his fellows, or has been the object of any one action that could, properly speaking, be called moral. Either, agreeably with the inspired record, one man was the origin of human population, or several must have simultaneously been created. Starting from either of these periods, the enquirer must conceive of him when he first became a moral agent. As yet he has done no good, he has inflicted no wrong; he has drawn no inferences; he has imbibed no prejudice. According to Mr Bentham, his moral character has to be created, as all his future moral conduct must be regulated solely by experience. A sense of duty is no part of his original nature; it cannot therefore immediately lay hold of and attach particular facts and feelings. He has no anterior conviction that truth and falsehood are so opposite, that the one deserves approbation and the other disapprobation. Honesty and theft, fidelity and treachery, the rescue or the murder of a fellow-being, these opposites are, morally, alike to him. Experience of the utility of the one, and the inutility of the other, of the tendency of the one to promote his own happiness, and the tendency of the other to destroy it,-that, and that only, will be the ground on which he will approve or disapprove. Until his lie has been detected, and it rebounds upon himself, so as to prove its inutility, he will in his own consciousness approve of it. If Cain had less pleasure in the companionship of Abel than in the gratification of his malignant feelings, it is impossible, upon the supposition of assured impunity, that he should have experienced any internal moral disapprobation. And thus, now that society has advanced, we only, both as individuals and as communities, approve of justice and veracity, because we have found out that they are the most useful to ourselves.

This is no distorted representation of his theory. Throughout his volumes (and it is essential to the consistency of his school) it is maintained that there is in man's constitution no faculty,—no

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