announce this enterprise at a public dinner, but replied with naïveté, 'I would do it with the greatest pleasure, I am enchanted with your "Peninsule Ibérique," but your "Collection de Résumés" may do considerable injury to my "Précis." You cannot expect that I should break my own bookseller's neck; I promise you, however, that, although the position in which I am placed renders it impossible for me to praise your work, I will on no account say a word against it.' Malte-Brun strictly kept his word, and his silence was looked on as a proof of loyalty.

Malte-Brun had acquired a vast extent of knowledge, because he was, in every sense of the term, what is called a grand travailleur. He undertook nothing in science in which he did not thoroughly succeed. No difficulty impeded his progress; but, as the author of an excellent necrological notice observes, human power is limited. Malte-Brun did not perceive that his own was nearly exhausted; his friends were the first to make the melancholy discovery,—an entire repose of some weeks would have sufficed to re-establish his health, of which the decline became every day more visible.

This repose was recommended to him, but he neglected the advice of his friends; and in a short space of time, the malady had made a frightful progress. He alone seemed unconscious of it. The crisis, however, arrived; for three days only he had confined himself to his room; but even in this state, he still continued his labours; and death alone, which was, happily for him, devoid of much pain, could make his powerless hand relinquish the pen.

It was on the 17th of December, 1826, that this celebrated man expired; who, never having thought of the future, except as it regarded the glory he might derive from his works, has left his children no other inheritance than his fame. His name will resound through all enlightened Europe. Denmark, which disowned him, will envy France the adoption of this illustrious writer. The young heirs to his celebrated name will, we doubt not, be objects of the solicitude of a Government which gives every encouragement to the progress of science, and protection to those men who labour for its advancement.

THE SLAVE-SHIP.

HARK! far o'er the breast of Ocean
Sweeps the dark wing of the storm;
Like a war-host set in motion,

On the waters rush-their form
Prouder, loftier, appearing;

Crested waves on waves uprearing,
Threat the shore to which they're steering,
Spreading terror's wild alarm.

Roars like conqueror's voice the thunder,
Leaps the lightning from the cloud,
Like a prison, burst asunder,

By the form it aim'd to shroud;
Flashing from its dusky dwelling,
First the hated roof assailing,
Then o'er all around prevailing,
Scattering every turret proud.
Blacker grows the moonless midnight,
Blacker grows the beamless deep,
Darkness, like a hell-wove mantle,
Wraps Creation in its sweep;
Takes in all the far horizon,
The mid vault, the earth, it lies on,—
All-as if, in one wide prison,

Earth, sky, ocean, it would keep !

Hark! the billow echoes louder,
Loftier rears its foamy crest.
Hark! the thunder's voice is prouder,
As it all the earth address'd.
Fiercer, quicker come the flashes,
As they'd lay the world in ashes;
Every wave, that shore-ward dashes,
Seems to fire the cavern's breast!

What is heard amid the roaring
Of the billow and the blast,
As if thousand shrieks were pouring
Death's last agony?-Tis past.-
Watch the next blue lightning's gleaming
O'er the roaring surges streaming;

Mark,-Oh heavens! Oh mercy's beaming

"Tis a bark's engulphing mast.

Where was the sweet Heaven's compassion,
On the wanderers of the deep?
Heard it not love's intercession?
Saw it not the orphan weep?-
For this bark no prayer ascended,
Round it no affections blended,—
None in danger's hour extended
Thought, or trembling hope, to keep!
It was throng'd by men disowning
Nature's feelings, nature's ties;
It was throng'd by men dethroning
Mercy's angel from her skies ;—
Those who child and parent sever,
Lover from beloved for ever,
Friend from soul-knit friend, oh never
More to meet each other's eyes!

Did they kneel to Heaven to shield them
In this night of storm and death?
Heaven could not such succour yield them;
For its own avenging breath

In that tempest round them hover'd,
Ocean's gaping gulphs uncover'd,
Sounded in each wave that smother'd
Every death-cry gasp'd beneath.

And is there no tempest waiting
Those dark bosoms, who retain
Yet, with rigour unabating,

Afric's children in the chain?
Yes! ye dungeon isles,-it lours
Now around your rulers' bowers;
' ;-
Speed the retributive hours

In Heaven's high-appointed train!

Britain! oh, our bosom's glory,-
Haste thee to avoid its wrath;
Let it not be writ in story

That o'er thee it took its path.
Shalt thou sink amidst its slaughters ?
Glorious empress of the waters,
Free thy sable sons and daughters
Where thy rule the power hath.

ORIGIN, HISTORY, AND PRESENT STATE OF THE CENSORSHIP OF THE PRESS IN INDIA.

No. III.

In the three last Numbers of 'The Oriental Herald,' we have given the private history, as it may be called, of Dr. Maclean's treatment by the Indian Government of that day, and of his sufferings and feelings, as detailed in his own Journal, kept at the time. We now follow this up, by continuing the series of his letters addressed to Lord Wellesley, after his arrival in England, which we take from a copy furnished to us, and carefully revised and amended by himself, the original being entirely out of print, and not to be procured in England. They contain a series of arguments which deserve as much consideration at the present moment, as at the period in which they were written and which are therefore worthy of preservation in a permanent form.

LETTER II.

:

To the Marquis of Wellesley, &c. on his new and extraordinary doctrines, that Magistrates can do no wrong, and that apologies to a Governor-General are a sufficient atonement to the offended laws of the country; and on his union of the judicial with the executive authority.

"The freedom of writing and speaking upon the topics of government and its administration' (in which I must presume the subordinate as well as the more dignified magistrates are comprehended) has ever been acknowledged, by our greatest statesmen and lawyers, to be the principal safeguard of that constitution, which liberty of thought originally created, and which a free press for its circulation gradually brought to maturity.'

Erskine's Declaration on the Liberty of the Press.

MY LORD,-In order to enter fully into the merits of the case between us, it becomes necessary to undertake the irksome task of analysing the preceding correspondence. In the first notification, with which I was honoured by your command, dated the 1st of June, 1798, you, my Lord, in requiring an apology for an insinuation of improper conduct against a magistrate, were doing that which you must have known you had no right to do; the demand was therefore not only illegal, but arbitrary, capricious, and tyrannical; and on these grounds ought to have been resisted, even if my insinuation had been groundless, and the magistrate innocent. If every line of my letter had been libellous, seditious, or even traitorous, you could have no right to require an apology. If I had really committed a crime, by what act of the legislature could an apology made to a Governor-General of India be deemed an atonement to the offended laws of my country? But that my insinuation

could be more than justified, and that the magistrate knew himself to be exceedingly culpable, are obvious, from his great anxiety to prevent the publication of my promised appreciation of his conduct, in palliation of which he even got a friend of mine to write to me from his house at Ghauzeepore.

If you did not know that your demand was illegal, why did you not endeavour to enforce it by legal means? If you did not know that the magistrate was culpable, why did you not leave him to take his remedy by the ordinary course of law? But in a legal or constitutional view, the guilt or innocence of the magistrate, or of myself, are things indifferent. The principle extends much beyond the merits or demerits of individuals. Under any circumstances, such an interference, on the part of a Governor, is an usurpation of the judicial function, by the executive power, of which the constitution of this country does not admit. Is it not besides a gross insult to the Judges of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Calcutta, and to the persons who usually compose juries there, for any Governor, in any case, to take the law into his own hands? Were these Judges and these Jurors deemed by your Lordship incapable of fairly trying an offender against the laws of the country? Or were you apprehensive that, in this case, they would not inflict the precise measure of punishment which was agreeable to you? Such apprehensions would in reality be the highest possible eulogium on the Courts of Judicature in India, the establishment of which has conferred such immense benefits on the inhabitants of that country.

Thus it stands clearly proved, if I be not widely mistaken in the nature of proof, that you, my Lord, did wantonly unite, in your own person, the judicial with the executive authority, in violation of one of the fundamental principles of the British Constitution; and I am now going to prove that you committed this violation of the constitution, this usurpation of the rights of the Supreme Court of Judicature, for the express purpose, in the first instance at least, of shielding, with the strong arm of power, an individual magistrate from censure, for having, in the exercise of his authority, committed illegal, oppressive, and scandalous acts; in effect, asserting a general principle that magistrates can do no wrong.

Your Secretary in his letter of the 1st of June, states that it was in consequence of a representation to Government (from the magis trate of course) that he was directed to write to me. Mr. Maclean informs me that the magistrate had written to the Supreme Board, complaining; and I receive a letter from a friend, written from the magistrate's house, dissuading me from publishing the promised appreciation of his conduct. Five weeks afterwards, I receive another letter from your Secretary, dated July 2, requiring me to return to Europe, your emissaries at the same time making an attempt, which I frustrated, to seize my person. From all these