military tenure. These are regularly officered, and both men and officers are liable to be called upon to serve six months without pay; if serving for a longer period, rations and a small pay are allowed. They are a highly useful body of men, and quite peculiar to Russia: that they are capable of being moulded into a more regular and efficient military body, admits of little doubt.

At Mosdok, after travelling a distance of 2300 miles, I was obliged to quit my carriage, and proceed on horseback. Through Circassia I had the good fortune to travel in company with Prince Bubatoff, a Georgian officer, with the rank of colonel in the Russian service; his experience was of great advantage, and enabled me to cross the Caucasus, and to reach Teflis, notwithstanding the difficulties of the road, in seven days. At the latter place I halted six days, to hire fresh servants, cattle, &c.

Georgia was taken possession of by the Russians about twenty-two years ago, in virtue of a cession on the part of the vali or prince of the country, who, being a man of weak intellect, could not defend his patrimony against so many turbulent neighbours, as the Turks, Persians, the Ossetian and other warlike mountaineers.

The 5th of Oct. I passed the last military post of the Russians, and the Persian boundary. A desert hilly tract of country marks the limits of these empires. The 7th, I reached Erivan, at the foot (comparatively speaking) of Mount Ararat. It consists of two mounts, the greater and the smaller Ararat; the largest and loftiest is covered with perpetual snow, and quite inaccessible to human steps. The ark is still believed by pious Armenians to rest on the summit. If Noah, with his sons and daughters, after their long confinement in the ark, did, as related in Genesis, descend from the top of Ararat to the plains below, their means and physical powers must have been incomparably greater than those possessed by mankind in modern times.

Tabris, in Aderbijan, is the headquarters of the Prince Royal of Persia, Abbas Mirza, who has twelve batta. lions of infantry, disciplined after the English mode of drill: he was absent on an excursion against the Turks at Erzeroum, with a body of 40,000 troops. The winter, however, which

is very severe in this country, had already set in, and would soon drive him homeward.

Tehran, the present capital of Persia, I reached the 1st of November; and, about the same time, the King Fateh Ali Shah set out on an hunting excursion, into the mountains near Demarand, and by this means I was precluded from paying my respects to his Majesty. After a stay of nine days, I set off for Ispahan, the ancient capital under Shah Abbas the Great. The magnificence of the palaces, gardens, bridges, bazaars, and mosques of this place are extremely well detailed in Sir J. Chardin's Travels; since he had an advantage few travellers enjoy, of having a correct knowledge of the language of the country he describes, and an intimate aequaintance with the people among whom he resided.

Travelling from Ispahan to Shiraz, I was excessively pinched by the cold, since the country is high and mountainous, and covered with snow and ice. My clothes were hardly warm enough, and at night, instead of a snug room and fireside, I had nothing but an open shed or caravansera, without door or window, and often without a fire-place. Shiraz is the pleasantest town I have seen in Persia; its bazaar is excellent, the climate good, and every thing not only plentiful, but moderate. Scott Waring, in his Travels, gives a good account of the town and its curiosities. I went in pilgrimage to the tombs of Sadi and Hafiz, the two greatest poets of Persia. 1 of course visited Persepolis; but it has been described so often and so well by Chardin, Le Brun, Tavernier, and of late by Franklin, Porter, and Johnson, that you would not wish me to repeat the same story.

I could narrate to you the modern history of a Persian Lucretia, who, to escape violation, precipitated herself down a fathomless abyss; but have not room for such detail, and must conclude my letter, by noticing a curious circumstance in regard to the spread of the cholera morbus, a disease most fatal in its effects, and which seems already to have spread over a fourth of the habitable globe. After afflicting Hindostan and the Deccan for the last five years, with a mortality beyond all calculation, it extended itself to the distant countries of Siam, Java, the Manilla Isles, and to China, on one hand; and in October

last

last it reached the western side, to Shiraz in Persia, to Bassora and Bagdad, by the way of Mascat, and Bushire. At Shiraz, in the province of Fars, it is computed to have destroyed 6000 men in the course of eight short weeks.

This calamity, advancing by regular stages over the hilly passes, attacked some stations, and here and there capriciously omitted one. As, for instance, the villages of Dastarjun and Kumaraj, which it passed over. Beyond Shiraz, it advanced in a northerly direction to Zergun, and lastly to Majen, on the high road to Ispahan, where it stopped; and, at the settingin of the cold weather, disappeared. At Mascat and its neighbourhood 10,000 people died of it; at Bassora 15,000, ascending the river Tigris, so far as Bagdad.

Thus, from its very singular and uncontrolable mode of advance, some medical gentlemen of my acquaintance are of opinion, that its future progress will not be retarded by any barrier, or any precautionary measure; but, on the contrary, that with the ensuing spring and summer it will recommence its slow and steady march over the remainder of the Asian Continent, and finally pass on to Europe, through Russia and Turkey; that, in short, its rapacious demand for new objects can be glutted and stayed only by the Atlantic itself, if even that should avail.

The singularity of this species of cholera consists in its progressive advance in defiance of every obstacle, without being infectious; and in its attacking those at a distance, or who would fly from it, and passing by those who, from their necessary attendance on the sick, or their situation, appear the most exposed to its influence. Its cause has been attributed to every thing that wayward fancy can mention to a rice diet, to high and low living, exposure to heat and cold, &c. And its remedy as variously attempted by emetics, cathartics, opiates, baths, hot and cold, spirits, and wines. Dr. M. assures me that he found opium most effectual, with some aperient medicine; and that the drinking of water, for which the patient has generally so great a longing, is certain death.

The cholera, in its capricious route from Bushire into the interior of the country, attacked Barazgun, Daliki, Kazirun, and a great number of other

villages and towns, and spared Daris, Dastarjun, and Kamaraj. In diverging from the high road, it visited chiefly the plain open country, and seemed to spare the more mountainous, such as the Mamasani-hills. It may also be observed that the wandering tribes called II, or Ilyat, escaped this contagious disorder, if such it can be called. In many circumstances, this fatal disease appears to me to resemble the species of plague that England was attacked with some 150 or 200 years ago, and which is so well described, not only in the history of that age, but by the poet and physician Armstrong. J. H. Persian Gulph; Dec. 24, 1821.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

ITV

SIR,

T is now three months since I developed in your pages the true proximate causes of those evils which afflict both rich and poor in this once flourishing empire. Parliament has been sitting ever since; but, like all public societies, it is too polite to adopt any but fashionable doctrines, or too much raised above the labour of original thinking to adopt any doctrines which, like other features of aristocracy have not flourished through many successive generations. Besides, my theory was given to the world in the small type and modest paper of a periodical miscellany; and, to have commanded respect of distinguished personages, it ought to have been printed in an inviting form, in an elegant type, and on superb hot-pressed paper.

Unhappily, men in power, and engaged in wielding authority, are too conceited, or too much engaged, to derive instruction from the press; and all truths so published by one generation are valuable only to the next generation. Hence mankind appear to amend as we view them through the press; but in practice they are governed not by truths, which reason and philosophy elicit from the circumstances of the times, but by established principles, in no way applicable to the new relations in which events place them.

Was ever any nation before so mad as to feign for years together, that, if a certain individual in another country (on whose virtues and talents the population had, in the spirit of idolatry, conferred supreme power,) were not removed from that power, their independance

dependance was insecure? Was ever nation before so mad as to become the willing instruments of the jealousy, envy, and hatred, of its own rulers; and, for the purpose of removing that chief, so infatuated as to mortgage the whole of its rentals to raise the sinews of war against that individual, with whom they had no manner of concern? Such has, however, been the fact, the delirium is past,-the wretched people are fast discovering the arts by which they were duped,but their property is transferred! They not only exhausted themselves by simultaneous taxation, but they pledged all their real property to public creditors, Jews, and money-lenders, for nearly, if not quite, as much money as it is worth; and they are now writhing in all the horrors of infatuated men who have lost their estates in a fit of delirium at the gaming-table. Their estates are gone, and their only equivalent is the dead body of Napoleon at St. Helena!

Is not this a new situation? Was such a picture of national folly ever before presented to the world? Will any antiquated doctrines meet it? Can any principles of political economy, or any arithmetical legerdemain, restore an estate to a man who has spent it? Did any whining about distress ever induce a mortgagee to restore titledeeds, and abate his mortgage? It is nothing to him that the owner was infatuated when he borrowed his money, and he will be paid his interest or foreclose; or if he does not get the one, and finds himself unable to do the other, he will consider himself as swindled, and the borrowers as swindlers! It is nothing to him that the borrowers wasted the money which he lent in gratifying bad passions; and that, after their game is over, they find that the dead body of Napoleon is not a valuable equivalent!

En passant it must not be concealed, that both parties in a moral sense are equally culpable, for each of them pledged their lives and fortunes to sustain an absurd and wicked contest; but it so happens, that the law supports the mortgagee, while it leaves the land and house owners to shift for themselves, and to sink to the level in society to which their improvidence or political gullibility have reduced them.

It is the shifts of the proprietors which create the difficulties. During

2

the war they indemnified themselves by raising their rents, and therefore did not feel the weight of the mortgage; and they were enabled to do this by the enormous purchases of the government, and by reducing the value of the currency in issues of paper. But now, when the government has ceased to expend its thirty millions in agricultural produce, and the currency has partly returned to its standard value, two results take place fatal to the deluded proprietors; one that, in cases where he has not let his property on lease, the tenant cannot pay those factitious war-rents which were derived from the two sources abovenamed ; or that, in cases where he has let on lease, the farmer is paying out of his own capital, and has been ruined, or is on the verge of ruin. It is found, also, that the depreciation of the currency, and the high prices of produce, ruined the labouring classes, who paid treble prices, while they got only double; and that these have now to be repaid out of the land, in poor-rates, the amount of those earnings out of which they were in effect cheated during the war. This charge, and the direct and indirect taxation, operating on the tenant, allow him therefore to pay no rent to the landlord; and it cannot be otherwise, seeing that annuities equal to the rentals have been sold by the landlords to enable former administrations to carry on wars, first against abstract principles, and next against the right of a foreign nation to choose its own chief.

In truth, in the purchases of government the landlords were at the time receiving, in higher rents, the mortgages of their estates. They foolishly thought these high rents so much gain; but, in fact, as from this cause a landlord got 1,0007. instead of 500l. a-year, he was in effect incurring a mortgage upon his estate by a roundabout course of the extra 5007.; and if he spent the extra 5007. he was like any other spendthrift, and the sum of all the extra rentals which he got during the war constitute the greater portion of his present public mortgage.

A still greater absurdity was committed by the purchasers of estates, while the annual public mortgages were added to the rents. Thus, if the government purchases and the papercurrency raised the rental of an estate from 500l. to a nominal 1,000l. per

annum,

annum, and thirty years' purchase were then given for it, the purchaser would lose 15,000l., for prices and rent would necessarily fall half, the moment the government contractors ceased to purchase. Yet this error was committed by thousands. The operation was, that Parliament, year after year, voted 30,000,000l. by loan, which loan was advanced as a mortgage upon all public property; the ministers then expended the loan in the purchase of produce; these purchases caused the demand to exceed the supply, and raised prices: the landlords then raised their rents, and in the rents got the mortgage money, which, not understanding to be a mortgage, but considering as so much gain, they increased their expenses, and thought themselves richer than before, till they are now undeceived, by finding that they have estates which cannot pay any rent! What a vicious and delusive circle!

The poverty of that once interesting class of society, which flourished on rents of land, seems therefore inevitable, they pledged their fortunes in 1793 and 1803, and they are gone,-a man cannot spend and also continue to enjoy an estate. But they were misled,-they knew not what they did, -we sympathize with them, and their loss ought, perhaps, to be alleviated, if it be possible.

It is to no purpose that they exclaim if we are ruined-you are all ruined ;no such thing-the land, the country, its industry, its commerce, its commanding geographical situation, remain, they have by their own folly (and in spite of the warning of those whom they persecuted for giving it,) lost as individuals their social rank; but their estates will change hands, and will prove as productive and valuable to the nation as heretofore. May the new proprietors take warning by the unhappy fate of the old ones, and never pledge their estates to raise the sinews of war, for the purpose of covering foreign nations with blood, or for any warlike object which is not palpably just and necessary!

In the struggle which the landowners will make lies, however, much portentous evil. Many of them will exact rents till they have ruined the cultivators. Much land will consequently cease to be cultivated. Private mortgagees will be involved in

ruin with the owners. Families of cultivators will be thrown on parishes unable to sustain them. The taxes will not yield; and if the current expenses of the government cannot, as the ministers declare, be reduced, then the fundholder must abate part of his interest: and, if part, he will be alarmed for the whole. In these struggles industry and commerce must also suffer, and foreign nations, not indifferent to our condition, will profit by our difficulties.

Such is the true state of the question. It is pregnant with difficulties which no antiquated doctrines will meet. Yet palliatives exist, the choice is among evils, but we are bound to consider them, and choose the least. This is certain, that nothing has yet transpired in or out of Parliament so original as to meet the circumstances, or relieve the anxieties of the nation. The writer of this paper hopes nothing from his contributions, because he has to influence pride, conceit, and a Pharaoh-like hard-heartedness; but his love for his country will stimulate him; and in an early number of the Monthly Magazine, he will submit his views to the public, and, whether they are adopted or not, he shall have done his duty.

COMMON SENSE.

written, I have read a very pompous and P.S.-Since the preceding article was inconclusive article in the Quarterly Review, in which the author adopts the vulgar notion, that the Bank of England has designedly narrowed its issues; it being true that the issues have been narrowed, but not that they have been wilfully narrowed. He speaks of these issues as though the Bank made issues at its pleasure, and seems ignorant that issues of demand, and for value received. The currency have never been made except on truth is, that the Bank has discounted more liberally since the peace, in proportion to the quantity of bills presented for discount, than during the war; but money has not been wanted, owing to the fallingoff of trade, and of war-contracts, which created bills for discount; and, in proof of this, the Bank, for the purpose of drawing customers, has lately undertaken to discount at four per cent. Whether it is

expedient thus to make agriculture dependant on trade for a supply of currency deration. This prominent error of the is, however, a question worthy of consireviewer destroys, however, the force of all his reasonings, and he leaves his readers in a greater maze than that in which he found them.

To

The oldest newspaper in Sweden, and that which is most read, is the Post och Inrikes Tidning (the Post and Domestic Gazette), established nearly a century ago. It is edited by the Secretary of the Swedish Academy, and forms the principal branch of revenue of this Society. At the same time it is considered as the official paper of the court, supplying the public with foreign news, official accounts concerning the court and the country, decrees, promotions, distributions of orders, &c.

Next to this paper, the Stockholms Posten (Stockholm Post) used to be the greatest favourite. It was founded by Kelgern, one of the greatest poets of the country in 1778. In this paper literary reviews and scientific intelligence were mixed with foreign news. But upon the death of its founder it fell off, and only kept part of its reputation, for some time after, by the occasional insertion of the songs of the favourite poetess, Mrs. Lingern, which were soon sung throughout the whole nation. Now it is very little read. The decay of this journal induced Counsellor Wallmark, in the year 1809, to begin another daily paper, under the title of the Literary and Theatrical Journal, but which was soon changed into that of Allmänna Journalen (Universal Journal); the former having been suppressed on account of an article upon Norway. Of all the non-official papers in Sweden, this is most read. In its literary department it vehemently opposes what is termed "the New School," that is, that party which since 1810 have endeavoured to free the nation from the French trammels imposed upon it by the Academy. Mr. W. is the champion of the "correct taste party;" all literary articles in his journal have, therefore, but one tendency, viz. that of refuting the writings of the new party. Sometimes he also treats his readers with short essays against (what he terms) "the

errors of the age," such as nationality in poetry, romance, magnetism, &c. Sometimes he gives larger articles, mostly drawn from the liberal French newspapers, statistical accounts, and sundry informations on domestic matters.

Immediately after the establishment of the liberty of the press in Sweden in 1809, a spirit of freedom began to stir in the nation, and innumerable periodicals appeared in Stockholm, and again vanished. Most of them died from want; others were wrecked against the quicksands of politics. One however, the Polyfem, which was began in 1810, closed in 1812, merely because the time previously fixed for its continuation had expired. This paper was the first that opened the contest against the the French school, in which it employed parody and satire with brilliant success; and in its pages, which are still much read, a fund of humour and wit (although occasionally rather wanton,) is treasured up, such as is perhaps not equalled by any other nation. After this a paper of a very different description was started, it was called Anmärkaren (Observer), and was prohibited in November last, on account of a satirical allegory on the burial of General Cardell. The editor's name was Cederborgh, author of several novels. He pretended to write on the opposition side, but he ultimately attacked every institution and person with vulgar coarseness, so that the paper at last became a public terror and nuisance; and, after having once before been restored to life by the king's special favour, its career is now finally closed.

As a mediator between the demagogical fierceness of the Observer, and the servile partiality of the Universal Journal, by which every act of, and every person in, authority is as much over-praised as they were degraded by the other, a new journal was began in 1820, by two former assistants to the editor of the Observer. They named it the Argus, and its principal object was the publication of inland accounts, remarkable trials, (of which the Observer used to give only such as reflected upon the character of some public functionary,) notices of little incidents, public amusements, &c. The plan of this publication was so much approved of, that they obtained 1,100 subscribers, which in Sweden is a considerable number; the Imperial

Gazette