: alms-taking indigent peasantry; but laborious and independent ; living upon little, and heedless how but nothing of the negligence which is the constant companion of hopeless poverty, is discoverable in their fields; on the contrary, these are cultivated with garden-like exactness. Their lands and their cattle shew that they are far removed from beggary and want. In the richer tracts, where their little estates are productive with moderate toil, the inhabitants are living in great plenty and comfort. Those beautiful and fertile vallies which converge at Tarascon, seem to unite lowland abundance with mountain simplicity. On the labouring class, and farm Servants, Mr. Birbeck has furnished the following interesting facts, which I have extracted from his work without any regard to the order in which they are there placed. On my first landing, I was struck with the respectable appearance of the labouring class; I see the same marks of comfort and plenty, every where as I proceed. I ask for the wretched peasantry, of whom I have heard and read so much; but I an always referred to the revolution; it seems, they vanished, then.---Wages about Lunel; 204, a day the men; 10d. to 15d.. the women. Asked some men who were digging in a vineyard, how many shirts they had---fifteen to twenty," suivant la personne," was the reply. I have met with this unequivocal proof of riches in every part of the country. The labouring class, formerly the poor, are now rich, in consequence of the national domains having been sold in small allotments, at very Jow rates, and with the indulgence of five years for completing the payment. Thus there are few labourers or domestic servants who are not proprietors of land, the busy season (which is of pretty long duration, including harvest and threshing, then the vintage, and afterwards the olives) 40 sous and board, women 25 sous, without board. The allowance of board is 3lb of bread, 1lb of meat, besides vege. table dishes, such as haricos, &c and three bottles of wine, per day: in harvest and threshing, six bottles of wine. The pound French, is about equal to 18 ounce, English. His wife The Shepherd is a wealthy man. shewed us her ample stores of home-spun linen, She sows the heap, prepares and spins it herself. The labouring class here [at Isy near Paris} is certainly much higher, on the social scale, than with us. Every opportunity of collecting information on this Subject confirms my first impression, that there are very few really poor people in France. In England a poor man and a labourer are synonymons ternis; we speak familiarly of the poor, meaning the labouring class: not so here. I have now learnt enough to explain this difference: and having received the same information from every quarter, there is no room to doubt its correctness. The general character of the French, lution has produced, particularly on the and the beneficial effects which the revohabits of the people, are thus spoken of : denotes prosperity and comfort. The approach to Rouen is noble: every object the country I have been looking, in all directions, Since I entered the revolution, of which so much is said on one for the ruins of France: for the horrible effects of, side of the water: but instead of a ruined I see fields highly cultivated, and towns full of incountry. habitants. No houses tumbling down, or empty, no ragged, wretched-looking, people. I have enquired, and every body assures me, that agriculture years; that the riches and comforts of the cultivators has been improving rapidly for the last twenty-five and that vast improvement has taken place in the of the soil have been doubled during that period; condition and character of the common people. In the early part of the revolution, more was done in the promoting the instruction of the lower order than the simster policy of the late Emperor was able to destroy: and, though much remains to be desired on this point, enough has been effected to be wanting in industry or subordination. shew that a well-educated commonality would not The Na Lying between the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean, Roussillon enjoys mountain gales and sea breezes, with the fertility of a southern vale, and, what adds much to the delights of this paradise, a happy peasantry, MI. confirmed my general obse:vations on this head, He also Informed me tunt it was usual for a youth of sixteen, 10 hire himself, as a domestic servant in agriculture; and, when he arrives at twenty-one or twenty-two. to have laid up 400 or 800 franks, 181, or 201. sterling. With 400 tranks, he ways a cottage and marries: his wife has proba-ional Domains, consisting of the confiscated estates bly a little portion. He has an opportunity also of ¦ of the church and the emigrant nobility, were ex. buying 1500 square toises (nearly an acre and half posed to sale during the pecuniary distresses of the English) of uncultivated mountain land, rocky revolutionary government in small portions, for the and poor, but fit for vines: for this he pays accommodation of the lowest order of purchasers, úteen or twenty franks, and becomes 1 proprietor; and five years allowed for completing the payirent. having a constant resource of profitable industry. This indulgence, joined to the depreciation of assig in winter, when work may be searce. Wages, in nats, cuabled the poorest description of peasants te become proprietors; aud such they are almost universally; possessing from one to ten acres. Ara as the education of the poor was sedulously promoted during the early years of the revolution, their great advance, in character as well as coudition, is no mystery. I prefer the country character of France to that of the city. In the former, the good fruits of the Revolution are visible at every step: previons to that æra, in the country, the most numerous class, the bulk of the population, all but the nobles and the priests, were wretchedly poor, servile and thievish. This class has assumed a new character, improved in proportion to the improvement of its condition. Servility has nished with their poverty; their thievishness, an effect of the same cause, has also in great measure disappeared. va As a proof of the honest disposition of the lower orders, 4r. Birbeck gives the following anecdote of a posililion: On our arrival at our hotel, the postillion deranded double for the last post, as a Poste Royale; armed a l'Anglois at all points agaiast imposition, I objected; he proposed going to the Bureau des Postes, to prove his right; I curious to be introduced to a French Authority, went to the willingly consented, and away we Boreau des Postes: there he established his claim. On returning to the hotel to his voiture and horses, en article of our baggage was missing; the postillion declared he had not seen it, and as we could not ascertain at what place it had been left, it was given up as lost; it was a suc de nuit, containing sundries of som: value. In three days the same postillion left our sac at the hotel unopened, not an article missing: he had traced it back until he found it; and considering the hode of our sctement, it was more than we expected. I give it as a sample of French honesty As another instance and regard for character. of the same kind; a postillion gallopped after us three miles, with a small article which had been overlooked in shifting the luggage. In several points I found the French character different from what I had conceived it, from the common report. There is a sort of independence, an uprightness of manner, denoting equality and the consciousness of it, which I was not prepared for. This is sometimes, in the lower class, accompanied by something like American roughness, and is not altogether agreeable to our habits. In general however they are extremely attentive to good manners in their intercourse with each other, and with their superiors; but you may look in vain for that deference, bordering on servility which we are accustomed to from our dependants; who are, notwithstanding, free born Englishmen. -I have had constant occasion to remark the The decoram of manners in both sexes which pre- portion than in England. Such is the habitual A habit of economy and frugality, accompanied by a perfect indifference to stile and shew, is another characteristic of the French nation, extending through all ranks and entirely inconsistent with the fashionable trivolity which has been attributed to them. I am a countryman, and it is France as a country that I came to visit and am describing, not Paris in particular. The exceptions to my statement will be found in the latter, where no doubt there are too many examples of every enormity. Yet Paris itself will bear me out when compared with London. I had heard much of French beggars, and there are too many to be seen hovering around the posthouses, and on the hills of the great roads, espccially north of Paris: they are mostly very old or blind people who follow begging as a profession,. without exhibiting marks of extreme poverty, being often neatly, and even well, clad. Beggars seem. to be an essential part of the Catholic system, affording occasion for the meritorious work of giving alms: but as the amount required to constitute a title to reward has not been exactly stated, very . small coins are chiefly in request for that purpose,. and people generally carry a store of them. One of my fellow travellers from Clermont, who was on his way to Paris, I believe, to purchase an estat was a fine example of French economy, and Catho- f female character in France is a proof of it. There lic charity united. He gave a beggar a sous, and is that freedom of action, and reliance on their own took back two liards in change. powers, in the French women, generally, which oc of superior talents in England. casionally, we observe with admiration in women The contrast drawn by our author between the ancient nobility and the preseut occupiers of land in France, possesses no small degree of interest: The following very interesting particulars, as to the occupations of the fair sex, are highly deserving of consideration: In every part of France women employ themselves in offices which are deemed with us unsuitable to the sex. Here there is no sexual distinction of employment: the women undertake any The ancient nobility, before the revolution, task they are able to perform, without much notion were not very refined in their mode of living of fitness or unfitness. This applies to all classes. at their chateaux. These houses, generally The lady of one of the principal clothers at Lonin a ruinous state and badly furnished, were viers, conducted us over the works; gave us pat- occasionally visited by their owners, accompanied teras of the best cloths; ordered the machinery to probably by a party of guests, and a numerous be set in motion for our gratification, and was evi- tribe of domestics. These visits were the result of dently in the habit of attending to the whole detail caprice sometimes; often of necessity: to recover of the business. Just so, near Rouen, the wife of fresh vigor for the expences of Paris: but rarely the largest farmer in that quarter, conducted me to for the true enjoyment of the country. Their apthe barns and stables; shewed me the various im- pearance was not welcomed by their tenants, from plements, and explained their use: took me into whom certain extra services were then required. the fields, and described the mode of husbandry, Provisions of all kinds, grain, fish, fowl, all were in which she perfectly understood; expatiated on the requisition. The dependants, almost plundering, excellence of their fallows; pointed out the best and insolent of course. The gentry, spending their sheep in the flock, and gave me a detail of the ir time at cards or billiards; or 'promenading in their management in buying their wether lambs and fatstrait lined gardens, in stiff Parisian dresses, were tening their wethers. This was on a farm of about only known on their estates to be hated and des400 acres. In every shop and warehouse you see pised, A better spirit prevails at present. Prosimilar activity in the females. At the royal porce-tleman, and are cultivating their estates; whilst the prietors have acquired a touch of the country genMain manufactory at Sevres, a woman was called to receive payment for the articies we purchased. In the Halle de Bled, at Paris, women, in their little counting-houses, are performing the office of factors, in the sale of grain and donr. In every department they occupy an important station, from one extremity of the country to the other. In many cases, where women are employed in the more daborious occupations, the real cause is directly opposite to the apparent. You see them in the south, threshing, with the men, under a burning sun;-it is a family party threshing out the crop of their own freehold : a woman is holding a plough ;-the plough, the horses, the land is -her's; or, (as we have it) her husband's ; who is probably sowing the wheat which she is turning in: You are shocked on seeing a fine young woman -loading a dung cast; belongs to her fathre, who is ranuring his own field, for their common support. In these instances the toil of the woman denotes wealth rather than want; though the latter is the motive to which a superficial observer would refer it. Who can estimate the importance, in a moral and political view, of this state of things? Where the women, in the complete exercise of their pental and bodily faculties, are performing their full share of the duties of life. healthy condition of Society. Its influence on the It is the natural, tenants are relieved from degrading corvecs and other odious oppressions. Still, much is wanting to render a country residence inviting to those who cannot be satisfied in the society of their own domestic circle; or who may not be blessed with a numerous and happy family. When capital, in the hands of well educated men, begins to be directed to rural affairs, a foundation is laid for a better state of society. A broad foundation of this sort has been already laid in France. Thanks to the Revolut on Police, and the number of crimes in We have heard much respecting the Tradesmen. Many have gone so far as to attribute the increase of crimes with us to a defect in our laws of police.— But whatever may be in this, it is clear from Mr. Birbeck's statement, that crimes are by no means so prevailing there as in this country. Whilst waiting for my passport of departure, at receiving passports of removal from one section of the Bureau of the Prefecture, many persons were Paris to another. A strictress of police of which I before had no conception. I imagine a register is the arrangement-of-the pumerous clerks in this long kept of the inhabitants of every house; and from with a pike in his hand, met me, and civilly enquired if the were good. grapes Les raisins sont ils bons ?" " Non," replied I. "Comme | ca;" and shewed him the bunch I had gathered. You must go with me "a la Ville," says he, devant le Maire." I remonstrated -be threatened: at length he consented to let me off for a frank. This I should not have complied with, if my company had not been forward, and waiting for me; but would have south, where vineyards are universal, the same degree of strictness would not have appeared in this particular, but the watchful spirit is perceived every where. and commodious apartment, called the Bureau des Passports, I have no doubt but this important object is attained without difficulty or confusion. 1 presume passports are procured witlioʻt much tronble or any expence to the parties: they are there fore not likely to be neglected by any but the evil disposed; and as general security is the aim, and in a great degree the result, of these seemingly severe regulations, they may be submitted to with cheerfulness. A police of this kind must prevent the existence of such hordes of banditti as infest our me-paid the legal penalty before the mayor. In the tropolis. Here can be no dark and inscrutable recesses where villains by profession may collect in a mass, and conspire against the public. This is the fair side. How much these regulations favour political tyrauny, I am not qualified to say; but here I suspect mischeif. However, the clerks in this office appear to be a civil, respectable set, and much better employed in preventing crimes, and are probably better men, than the swarm of police officers, with us, who live by them; who, by overlooking small offences, nurse up the criminals to that eminence in guilt, which entitles the thief-taker to a reward. Security of person and property, two great ends of Society, are attained in a higher degree under the French than under the English system. With a Government really Representative, such a police would not be an engine of oppression: and to estimate its value in comparison with a vindictive police, such as that of England, we must consider the wretchedness of the agent of a criminal act, as well as the suffering of its object. Its watchfui character renders pilfering unprofitable and dangerous, therefore it is not followed as a pro fession: a man rises to an accomplished villain by degrees, therefore the prevention of small offences hinders the commission of atrocious crimes. (To be continued.) MARSHAL MARMONT. Prevention of crimes is the very spirit of the former, which pervades every place, and meets you at every turn. In the country, the Gardes champetres, a revolutionary institution, are the SIR, At the time the influence of the great means, always in activity, of crushing them allies caused the defection of the Duke in the egg. One or more of these officers is ap- of Ragusa from Napoleon, the Duke was pointed in every commune, whose duty it is to stationed at the head of forty thousand prevent all petty depredations, and even trespasses of the finest troops in the French serout of the public paths. In every case they may vice, to act as a screen on Paris, on the arrest the offender, and carry him before the approach of the allies to that capital. mayor of the commune, who levies a penalty This command formed an important post according to law. These men are always on the in the plan of a master-piece of Genealert; aimed, mostly with a pike, sometimes with ralship, by the execution of which, had a gun; and are authorized to use force in case of Marmont only remained faithful, the alresistance. In towns, the preventive police is p.r-lies would have fallen in the hands of formed by the military, and most effectually. Being under the direction of the civil power, it such a force must be maintained, perhaps thi, is the best mode of employing it. The regularity and strictness of military discipline, form the French soldiers into excellent civil guards, and the end is so beneficial that the means may well be tolerated. The Gardes champetres are so watchful and alert, that they seem to possess a sort of ubiquity which is very effectual in preventing petty depre dations. Walking up a hill from Gorbeil, I strayed into a vineyard by the road side. The grapes were: miserable; small as currants, and unripe. To plunder was the last thing I should have thought of; however I picked a little bunch. As I came out of the vineyard, a stout young fellow, Napoleon, When the Duke of Ragusa consented to betray Napoleon, he detached twenty thousand of these troops from his army; sending them quite out of the way; the affectionate devotion to the cause of their country, and the entbusiastic attachment to Napoleon of the whole of this veteran army, rendering even the remaining twenty thousand men a formidable corps. To these the Duke of Ragusa contrived to have THIRTY pound shot served out, although their largest guns carried only TWENTY poun lers; and so minutely did he enter inta the details of treachery, that he caused SAND to be mixed with the powder which was to be used by these brave fellows!!!The attempt made by the Duke of Ragusa to vindicate his conduct towards Napoleon, obliges me, in com mon justice, to refute all n laboured | defence, by this plain statement of FACTS: for confirmation of the truth of which, I appeal to the survivors of all those brave soldiers, whom he THUS left to be SLAUGHTERED!! I am, &c. MIRATOR. Clifton, April 13, 1815. pendence of Europe may be possibly Yours, &c. &c. G. G. F. LORD COCHRANE. His Lordship has addressed a Letter "To his Constituents," in which he fully explains his motives for leaving the King's Bench prison, and the objects he had in view in taking his seat in the House of Commons. Justice requires that this publication should be read, before any one ventures to censure the conduct of THE ADDRESS. MR. COBBETT.-In the Regent's Message to Parliament, we are told, that the events which have recently occurred in France, threaten consequences highly dangerous to the tranquillity and independence of Europe. Let us pause here for a moment, and consider whether or not this broad assertion be true.--Bonaparte, we know, has declared his deter mination to rest on the Treaty of Paris; he has declared that he will not invade other countries, but only defend himself against foreign attack. In what then consists the danger to the tranquility his Lo.dship. I have no room for more and independence of Europe? Why than the following extracts:should not all Europe continue in the present state of peace? France es, by a calm Revolution, changed her Ruler; Louis left the throne, and Napoleon took it; and it is clear that Napoleon is the choice and approbation of the French People. Who dare dispute the right of the People to the choice of their Rulers? In what respect then does this simple, but wonderful change endanger the tranquillity of Europe? We are told that there is to be an augmentation of his Majesty's land, and sea forces. For what purpose is this augmentation? Will not this augmentation of land and sea forces lead to an augmentation of land and sea taxes? Is not the whole world now in a state of Peace, and ought not every thing to return to a peace esta blishment? Must we be for ever in the expensive attitude of war, because the tranquillity of Europe may, some time or other, be disturbed? Who is to disturb it? At one time, the Emperor of Russia; at another time the King of Prussia; at another, Napoleon Bonaparte, or Louis the 18th, 19th, or 20th; may be said to endanger it. And so we are to be perpetually burdened with increasing taxes, because the tranquillity and inde "I have heard much about the duty of quit them from the childish motive of 1 |