language holds: he places it earlier in time, and gives it a more prominent and more dominant position among languages than we have been accustomed to assign it, which is our excuse for having enlarged on this point.

Dr. Bosworth is most at home in the Scandinavian languages and literature, and only touches incidentally on the Oriental questions; but, on this very account, his publications are highly interesting, and we had almost said indispensable; for we know no other works which contain the same kind of information presented in so good a form. Dr. Bosworth has paid great attention to the differences produced in the same language by difference of dialect, which he maintains is not owing to ignorance or barbarism, but to differences in the organs of speech; and, consequently, that original words which have been lost in one dialect may often be recovered by means of another. He illustrates this in English by specimens of the dialects of Lancashire, Devon, &c.

In Frisian, Icelandic, and foreign languages, Dr. Bosworth has obtained the assistance of the best native scholars he could engage to examine what he has written on their several languages, the knowledge of which fact gives us the greater confidence in his general accuracy; and his Anglo-Saxon dictionary is a work which was greatly wanted, for those already published, being both bulky and scarce, were beyond the reach of readers in general; and, in the increasing attention which is now being given to these branches of enquiry, a dictionary was required which should be, at the same time, portable and sufficiently full and accurate.

The age of pedantry is, we trust, past for ever; and we hope that no more will be heard of the fopperies of antiquated spelling or the revival of obsolete words and phrases. But the more we investigate the true nature of our language, and the sources from whence both its substance and enrichments have been derived, the more we shall be able to increase both its strength and its polish, and make it thus a suitable receptacle and channel for the ever-growing varieties and refinements of this intellectual age. As science itself enlarges, the language for imparting it must enlarge, and the action of each is reciprocal and reflective: improved science advances language, and improved language tends to the advancement of science. A wise man will not seek for a new word when there is an old word at hand which fully expresses his meaning; but a wise man will restrict the words he uses, as far as possible, to one sense; and things which were previously unknown cannot be named correctly in words already known.

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ART. IX.-Mr. Disraeli's Speech on the Labours of the Last Session. London: Painter. 1848.

THE close of the late session demands attention from us for several reasons. Probably, in modern history, there is nothing that can readily find a parallel with it, no less for the length of its duration, the inordinate quantity of debate within and comment without, than from the melancholy and meagre results which characterized it. The mountain in labour has often been adduced to exemplify those events where much has been threatened and "little done, and that little done badly;" but the mountain which brought forth a mouse was certainly more to be marvelled at, in everywise, than a session lasting little short of a year, which is remarkable for its lamentable vacillation and want of energy, and out of which are elaborated only a few abortive bills which are, to the imminent cases in hand, about as useful as carrying coals to Newcastle or skates to the West Indies.

An interminable quantity of "talk" night after night gives to a man, at the least, a liberal reputation for prosiness; but this is logic in a circle: the repetition of the same facts and arguments begin to weary those who look on when they behold the disastrous results of a Ministry hesitating what to do between inadequacy to meet the pressure of affairs and a perpetual recurrence to "feeling the pulse" of the people, in order to ascertain whether the screw cannot be turned a little tighter, and so save the country by expediency.

Certainly, a Ministry, called together at the commencement of the session, could not fail to be struck at the immense labour which lay before them: for years nothing in comparison to that crisis had appeared-nothing of such perilous magnitude had ever demanded the attention of statesmen. A commercial panic-nay, it had grown beyond a panic and taken the semblance of an actual fact-appeared, and men were paralyzed as they beheld the crumbling ruins around them. Day by day increased the disastrous news. Firms of the stablest kind, names that were as a tower of a strength, gave way beneath the irresistible influence of the torrent of ruin which ran through the extent of the land. The merchant and the trader, the manufacturer and the shopkeeper, all fared alike; but the effect of these, individually, was to add an enormous aggregate to the distress of the people. Lack of employment and scarcity of gold increased pauperism; and we were then in almost as bad a position as Ireland was a short while back-we had none whose liberal hands might aid us but the hand of God. How

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we got through it we can scarcely tell; but in the Gazette, whoever chooses to look it over, will be found a fearful chronology of private misery and the almost total overthrow of public credit: it is one bulletin of insolvency-one universal bankruptcy pervaded all and characterized all: and this, too, is the more remarkable, inasmuch as the period of depression was immediately succeeding one of prosperity.

When the currency is encumbered, or rather gyved, with Banking Acts of such distracting kinds that it is at one moment judged convenient to infringe or violate the law under the plea of emergency-and when the sanctioners of this infringement rejoice that such was not done because a providential interposition had made that unnecessary, and thus relieved them from a responsibility that was anything but reputable-what faith can be put in the promises of such a Ministry? What hope can we entertain of their aid in a perilous crisis, when even the proposed assistance is of so dangerous a nature. Save us from our friends, we say, in such an event! And, in addition, we may deduce that the reckless principle of free trade, and in particular the pernicious propagandism of those of the Manchester school, would overthrow the equal scales of fair and honest trading; and the first bad season, limiting the supply of food, would try these said free trade measures to their utmost: they were, therefore, tried and found wanting.

The Ministry, beholding this terrible disorganization, were called upon some months earlier than usual to look instantly into the evil and in somewise to remedy it-to remedy it how they could-patched and tinkered as these crazy matters had been before by bills whose inanity developed only more the imbecility of their concocters-immediately set to work, and the question of their labours is the history of the session, and it is upon that head we are about to offer our strictures.

Mr. Disraeli's able and spirited reply at the close of the session, in which a castigation as severe as it was merited is inflicted upon the Premier and his party, is before us now; and in this speech is recorded the "sayings and doings" of about ten months of misrule; for to end thus, as they have done, leaving us in the same predicament for any aid we have received from them-what is it but misrule?

At a time when men were looking to the Government for aid, either by the suspension of the Bank Act or by some sleight of hand devised by Sir Robert Peel or Sir Charles Wood-the latter characterised as "the worst financier that ever disgraced the memory of Cocker"-at a time, we say, when men, for lack of work, were becoming Chartists, Revolutionists,

or any other "ists"—when the factories were either shut up or only partially at work-when the forges in the iron districts were blown out and the colliery and the pottery contributed their quota of tumult and disorder-when the completion of several railways loosed a vast number of "navvies" upon the land and added to the general alarm-at the very period when Ireland was howling out for "bread" or blood and the repeal of the union-the Prime Minister brought forward in the house his budget, by which, with a deficiency of three millions! and an increased expenditure in prospect-military, naval, and miscellaneous, which would swell the debts of the nation--those without the house, who trusted that now at least they were to have aid given them, were thunder-stricken, paralyzed, amazed, when they were told that, instead of receiving the immediate help they counted upon, the income-tax was to be increased! Thus, men who were on the very verge of bankruptcy, and whose fall this disgraceful attempt at further imposture only hastened, were comforted! Mr. Disraeli thus cuttingly comments upon it:

"I am using no term of exaggeration if I express the feeling of the house, after hearing that budget, as one of considerable dissatisfaction. Every hon. gentleman who represented a party or a section rose (almost even behind the Treasury bench) and expressed an indignant protest against the Government scheme. But this was only a murmur compared with the roar which took place out of doors. A menagery before feeding-time could alone give an idea of the unearthly yell with which the middle classes-especially the inhabitants of towns-especially the advocates of liberal opinions-and more especially the disciples of free-trade principles-met this demand. Day after day Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, and Bradford sent up their protests: meetings were held in the city of London at which the scheme was condemned; and persons were, in fact, so much alarmed that they had not time to investigate the causes of their condition; but there was a general impression that the income-tax was about to be doubled because we were going to war!"

This odious tax was imposed by Sir Robert Peel upon the nation with plausibility, and certainly with something like clever State craft: to be swindled cleverly has a sort of saving clause in it. The bitter pill was thus offered to us, and the plea of "necessity"-the assurance that it was to be merely temporary" had their weight. The pill was swallowed; and, not yet recovered from its effects, we were desired to swallow more! But the attempt to increase this burden-(a war-tax in times of peace, nothing more or less)-was rejected with one universal shout of indignation, and the Whig Ministry fell below par.

The maxim of the free-trader may be good enough for trade itself, but what is it for the workman? Who is it that is, after all, sacrificed in order that goods may be bought in the cheapest and sold in the dearest market? The home trade must perish, or all must be absorbed into the huge maelstrom of the capitalist, who devours all the smaller fry of the industrious poor shopkeepers in his path. The poorer classes, therefore, as the police reports testify but too frequently, are almost ground to the point of annihilation; and there is not a small master of any craft in England who is not a living testimony to this fact. The capitalist points to his factories, his mines, his smelting furnaces, to his railway undertakings, and says-"There is labour for all we have called upon you to come and work—we are short-handed: therefore change your habits, your manners, and your occupations, and dig and delve, spin and weave, hammer and weld for us." Very fine all this, Messieurs the Freetraders; but how are you to do it? How are you to destroy the fabric of social life, and mould men in a new organization of labour of your own? Why, even the ateliers nationaux of Louis Blanc show as fair, if not a fairer, front: there is a maxim there which at all events shews an element of fair play, and it is, “a fair day's wages for a fair day's work." What have you done, therefore, but swollen the rank of the turbulent and the disaffected, and given a new impulse to the demagogue? To return to Mr. Disraeli, however

"There is (he says) another cause alleged for the unsatisfactory state of public business, and that is, the forms of this house-the constitution of this house-which are now discovered to be cumbersome and antiquated, and to offer a great obstacle and barrier to the efficient, satisfactory, and speedy transaction of public affairs. This is the view of the case which is, I believe, principally relied on by her Majesty's Government."

This may be or may not be the truth. It is, however, a fact that institutions, modes, and fashions, which may have suited people at one time may not at another; and it is not at all improbable but that in some instances the Commons may be trammelled with a series of "forms" which they find cripples their motions and retards the advancement of public business, and, by consequence, the public interest. But that a full discussion of any important question, whatever be the time taken up by it, so that it is not wilfully and vexatiously opposed, does aught but good to the subject in hand, we must at once deny. Men cannot at once "jump to a conclusion" pro or con; and a deliberate argument tends to make converts to the wiser side, while it enlightens all.