RAILWAY AND JOINT-STOCK BUSINESS OF THE MONTH.

||

British Empire Fire Assurance Company.—The annual meeting [] the total formation expenses, of every kind, including 195 agents' was recently held at the office, No. 37, Bridge Street, Blackfriars, outfits, cost of deed of settlement, &c., &c., have only amounted London. The report stated thatto £617 3s. 10d., though it will be found that the ordinary formatory expense of opening a Fire-office exceeds five times that

Up to midsummer 1849, they had executed 1,557 Assurances, for £659,080, upon which the premiums amounted to £988 14s. Sd.

amount.

The report was unanimously approved of, and the Directors

"In addition to this, 168 proposals for £60,894 had also been re-elected. received, which then remained to be disposed of.

"A large and influential agency, consisting of no less than 195 agents, had been established throughout the country, at an exceedingly moderate outlay.

"By the balance-sheet, the members will be glad to learn that

In the department of BANKING, we have nothing new of material interest to record. It is stated, that the Royal British Bank commences operations next month.

All Joint-stock Property, apart from Railways, keeps well up. Mineral stock improving.

OBITUARY NOTICES FOR OCTOBER.

while he held the office of provost of Oriel that Dr. Copleston
published his work upon Predestination, consisting almost wheity
This
of discourses delivered from the pulpit of St. Mary's.
work was followed by two letters to Mr. (now Sir Robert)
Peel, on the currency question, which, though much read and
canvassed at the time, are now forgotten. In 1826, the th
centenary of Oriel College was celebrated, on which occasion
Dr. Copleston preached a sermon at St. Mary's, which was pub-
lished. He was shortly afterwards presented to the deanery of
Chester. While at Oxford, he ranked as a logician with Dr.
Whately, now Archbishop of Dublin; Dr. Hinds, Bishop of
Elect of Norwich; and the late Dr. Arnold, of Rugby School. In

ADMIRAL SIR EDWARD OWEN, G.C.B. At his seat, near Windlesham, near Bagshot, Surrey, on the 8th October, Sir Edward William Campbell Rich Owen, Admiral of the White, at the age of 78. He was the son of Captain Williams Owen, R.N., who belonged to an old Montgomeryshire family. Admiral Owen was born in 1771, and became a lieutenant in the navy in 1793. He attained the rank of Admiral of the White in 1848. In the last war he was employed to watch the movements on the French coast, and commanded a detachment in the Walcheren expedition. It 1822 he succeeded to the chief command, as Commodore, in the West Indies. From 1826, to March, 1829, he sat in the House of Commons as member for Sandwich, and, in 1827, was Surveyor-1827, he became Bishop of Llandaf, and Dean of St. Paul's, General of the Ordnance. In 1828, he was a member of the Council of the Duke of Clarence, when his Royal Highness was Lord High Admiral. In the same year he was appointed Commander-in-chief in the East Indies. In 1834 and 1535 he was clerk of the Ordnance; and, from October 1841 to December 1844, Commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean. In 1845, a short time after his return to England, he was made a Military Knight Grand Cross of the Bath. In 1829 he married the daughter of the late Capt. J. B. Hay, R.N.

THE BISHOP OF LLANDAFF.

London. His consecration as Bishop took place on January 14, 1523. In 1839 he published a dissertation, which excited sore attention, entitled "Who are entitled to preach the Gospel?" The deceased took no very prominent part in politics, and seldom addressed the House of Lords. He died unmarried. The see of Llandaff is valued at only L.1,000 a-year, and the Bishop, therefore, held with it, in commendam, the Deanery of St. Paul's Cathedral. But by a recent arrangement, the stipend of the new Bishop is to be raised to L.4,500 per annum, and the deanery of St. Paul's will not in future be held by any succeeding Bishop of Llandaff,

mons.

At Hardwicke House, near Chepstow, his episcopal residence | in South Wales, on the 14th October, the Right Rev. EDWARD COPLESTON, D.D., Bishop of Llandaff, and Dean of St. Paul's, in his 74th year. The deceased prelate was descended from the Coplestons of Copleston, and Warleigh, Devonshire; a family that can be traced back to the time of the Norman conquest. He was the son of the Rev. John Bradford Copleston, Prebendary of Exeter; and was born at Offwell, in Devonshire, on the 2d of February, 1776. He received his early education at home, and before he was thirteen years of age, he was, in 1789, elected a Scholar of Christ Church College, Oxford. In the third year of his residence, he obtained the only annual prize for Latin verse for which undergraduates of that period could contend. At Easter, 1795, he was elected Fellow of Oriel. He had not been a candidate, and it was not until after the examination of those who competed for that distinction, that the electors invited him to come to Oriel and be chosen a fellow. In 1796, the annual prize for a Latin essay, the subject Agriculture, was awarded to Mr. Cople-by his first marriage, now Sir John Hesketh Lethbridge, Bart. ston; and in 1797, though not yet entitled to proceed to his degree of M.A., he was appointed college tutor, the duties of which office, till the year 1810, he discharged in a manner that acquired for him the gratitude of his pupils, and the approbation of the whole university. In 1802 he was appointed Professor of Poetry, and his lectures were numerously attended.

SIR THOMAS LETHBRIDGE, BART.

At Bath, on the 16th ult., Sir THOMAS BUCKLER LETHBRIDGE, Bart., long a prominent Member of the House of ComThe family to which he belonged claims descent from an eminent legal functionary of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He was the son of the first baronet by the eldest daughter of William Buckler, Esq. of Boreham, Wiltshire, and was born in 1778; succeeded his father in 1815. He was colonel of the 2d Somerset Militia, and a deputy-lieutenant of Somerset, which county he represented in Parliament from June 1806 to 1512, and from 1826 to 1530. Sir Thomas held large estates in Somersetshire and Devonshire. He was twice married-first, in 1796, to the daughter of Sir Thomas Dalrymple Hesketh, Bart., and secondly, in 1903, to the daughter of Ambrose Gol dard, Esq. of Swindon, Wiltshire. He is succeeded by his son,

The substance of those lectures he subsequently published under the title "Prælectiones Academica." In 1807, he filled the office of proctor to the university. On the death of Dr. Eveleigh, provost of Oriel, in 1814, Mr. Copleston was, by an unanimous vote, declared his successor; and early in the next term the degree of Doctor in Divinity was conferred upon him by diploma, under special vote of convocation, for his services in the university. It was

MR. G. E. ANSON.

At Needwood, Staffordshire, on the 8th October, of apoplexy, George Edward Anson, Esq., private secretary to Prince Albert, and treasurer and privy purse to the Queen. He had previously been private secretary to Lord Melbourne, when that noblemsa was premier, and by him was recommended to the notice of the Prince. He was the second son of the Hon. and Very Rev. Frederick Anson, Dean of Chester, and Prebendary of Southwell, He married in October, 1537, and was born 14th May, 1812. the eldest daughter of Lord Sheffield. He was an accomplished scholar, and his urbanity of manners was conjoined with a correct taste and cultivated understanding.

PRINTED BY GEORGE TROUP, 29, DUNLOP STREET, GLASGOW.

TAIT'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

DECEMBER, 1849.

THE POSITION OF THE COLONIES.

coasts, and those who won a kingdom from the sea opposite to our own eastern shores. They have also sent out to western lands one band of emi

NOVEMBER has nearly passed without brightening || those kindred nations who inhabit the Baltic the prospects of our Colonial empire in any corner of its wide horizon. Previous complications have become more tangled than on the anniversary of the Anglo-Saxon empire, dating, as we are dis-grants after another, in an unceasing stream, for two posed to do, from the birth of Alfred. Without centuries. The British people have, undoubtedly, pleading guilty to any superstitious feeling, we do not taken the greatest part of this work. The emideny the coincidences that may be sometimes traced grants went forth more advanced in science and in history, between time and fate. The denial would civilization than their ancestors when they came imply discredence of the faith in the intervention of a from the East. They carried out with them the Supreme Intelligence with the business of the earth. knowledge of Christianity; therefore, they have We know that an abstract Deity is acknowledged || made rapid progress, and they may be destined to by a great number of intelligent men; but is not progress more rapidly hereafter than they have worshipped, because a being of that character, with done before. They may rise on our fall. It is a closed eyes and folded arms, deserves no adoration, course in keeping with the teachings of history and and can neither inspire fear nor love. We cannot of nature; and yet one against which we are called believe in a Deity wearied and fatigued, indolent upon to rebel, and are in duty while resisting. We and slothful, or even careless and negligent of the have no right to commit imperial suicide, even if works he has created and the effects that they may we believe that our hour is come. The edifice produce. Therefore we are constrained to admit erected by the incessant labour and the painful that times and seasons of individual and national sacrifices of our fathers, should not be wilfully greatness and prosperity are measured and marked. thrown down by us, although we may dream that it We may have reached the climax, may have will not last much longer. We should guard it with climbed the peak, and may be rapidly moving down- that religious care bestowed upon a friend, beside wards on our decline to our fall as a great empire. whose bed we watch for parting breath, feeling that Gigantic and new combinations are forming else-it cannot be long delayed; and still we guard the where; and, true to the ordinary types in nature, the parent tree may have commenced its season of decay. Even our national oak dies at last, as Methuselah perished, ere it reaches the millennium. Our race have undergone similar vicissitudes before. Emigration has been always the cause of their prosperity and their doom. They sent down, from the Persian mountains, from the springs of the Assyrian rivers, over from the shores of the Euxine and the Mediterranean to the bleak coasts of the Baltic and the North Sea, bodies of savage adventurers who were doomed to rule a large portion of the world, and to labour in the high places of tho field for human civilization. These men everywhere made rapid progress. The history of their career is strangely interspersed with vice and virtue; but more has been done by them than by any other people to establish freedom, to advance science, to promote literature, to cherish pure faith, to spread blessings over the earth, to raise themselves and all their brethren nearer to happiness-farther from misery. They might have done more with their gigantic opportunities for we do not refer alone to the people of the British isles, but also to

VOL. XVI. —ΝΟ, ΟΧΟΙΙ.

feeble remnant with a reverence not conceded to strength and youth.

These gloomy forebodings are the worst that we could cherish, and we will have nothing to do with them. The wisdom of the West has not yet reached its years of discretion; and the oracular announcements in the United States press, regarding the early demise of the British empire, may not be true, although many influential men in this country act as if they wished to fulfil them. The condition of the concern is not yet entirely desperate, if we take means now to supply its defects. The ship is not absolutely embayed in the storm, and might keep the sea, with clear heads and strong hands at the helm. Difficulties should neither be despised nor exaggerated; and we are in difficulties, but not in despair. Our circumstances should be fully searched, for no greater calamity can occur in a struggle than ignorance of our weak points; and a struggle must come. Fortunately, our danger is not from without, but within. No foreign state can, in the present aspect of politics, endanger the stability and the permanenco of the British union. A repetition of our reasons

8 M

for desiring its permanence is unnecessary. They || perpetually with party movements, the details which have been stated already, and it is of more impor- often become the source of great irritancy and vexatance now to describe the measures by which that||tion to the Colonists are in the care of immovable object may be accomplished. Our Colonial empire has never been fully united. Its different parts never have been run into each other, but merely chained together. The wisdom of past statesmen, who left matters in that position, was certainly not admirable. In this, and in many other respects, they pursued a policy of which we now reap fruits that they might have foreseen. The fashion of holding them up as examples to us has no foundation in fact, for they did little that we should now imitate. They laboured zealously for the extension of this empire, while they planted within it the germs of death and decomposition. They talked, like their followers now, of making the Colonies "integral portions" of the empire, while they adopted measures to alienate the Colonists gradually from their fathers' land. They have gone, and accounted for their works, and we charge not their memory with infidelity to the trust they held, but of those who have succeeded them-of some who even now occupy their places, in right or wrong, many less charitable words are spoken and written.

From the commencement of our colonization, the Colonists were disconnected from the empire. They were denied representation. They were managed like babes. They were not our partners, but our wards-treated as if they were yet of nonage.

The Colonists were not merly deprived of any share in the Imperial Government, but they were denuded of the powers of self-government. They were compelled to resign the privileges which they had enjoyed as British subjects, and were placed under the guidance of that spectral power-the Colonial Office. They wanted local government. All their officials were appointed by the ministry. Even at home no steady scheme of tyranny was pursued. The Colonial Secretary was a member of the Cabinet, dependent for official existence upon the success of his party, whose power existed only along with their majority, and lapsed when that was converted into a minority.

The Colonial Secretary never acquired that intimate acquaintance with Colonial details essential to success in his business. He understood the general scope of the policy pursued by his party towards the Colonies. He was acquainted with their intentions and purposes; but he never acquired a suitable knowledge of details. He was, for all these affairs, dependent on his subordinates. || They became the real pests of the Colonies, the real directors of the Colonial administration. The public know not how closely the subordinates of the public offices cling to their places and their salaries, A change of ministry affects them not. The hostile vote of Parliament may take vengeance on a bad minister; while the men who have made him bad sit secure in their high places, far above Parliamentary censure or control. It is notorious that the real, but the irresponsible, managers of public offices are not affected by the defeat of parties and the overthrow of cabinets. Thus, while the leading features of our Colonial policy change

and irresponsible agents. This arrangement is not without advantages, but it is also liable to many objections, and has not worked beneficially for Colonial interests. Many parties who have maturely and temperately considered the position of our Colonies hold that their direction should be under the management of a board or commission-not affected by the party changes and combinations in home politics-not dependent on or removable with the Cabinet; but forming, de facto, a separate and Colonial Cabinet. If it were possible to elevate this projected body above party strife to the judicial position, it would become irresponsible to a considerable extent, and in important matters. If, on the other hand, it continued to be responsible to Parlia ment, it would necessarily fall with the companion Cabinet which held in charge our home affairs and foreign transactions, Nothing can be more difficult than so to reconcile conflicting interests that we shall have a responsible Colonial Cabinet, yet independent of the agitations solely connected with home affairs-with, for example, the movements against the Irish Church, or for the Irish Municipal Franchises, or the Scotch Sanatory Act. Two suns in one sky would not agree. The Whigs in possession of the Home, and the Tories paramount in the Colonial Cabinet, would carry on perpetual war, to the great damage and discredit of the public service. Therefore, we are bound to dismiss this suggestion as good, if practicable; but not to be thought of by reason of its impracticability,

The revenue system was equally deleterious. We paid for the formation of Colonies, and protected our agriculturists against their produce. Colonial corn was heavily taxed. To increase the consumption of barley in whisky, a heavy duty was laid on rum. The landed proprietors believed that the admission of Colonial corn and provisions free of duty would ruin them, and resisted the proposal until they brought all the world upon their heads. Instead of fostering mutual and reciprocal relations with the Colonies, we endeavoured to buy as little from, and sell as much to them, as possibly could be done.

The gentlemen who contrived that plan of imperial commerce forgot that those who do not sell profitably will not be long good buyers. They adopted an error of the present day, and applied it to the Colonies instead of the home counties. They seemed to think that so long as people bought extensively, they must sell largely. It may appear improbable, but it is true, that the principles of the political economy clubs of 1847 were those on which William Pitt, and other statesmen, considered heaven-born in their time, and by their followers, had long acted towards the Colonies. "Take care of the purchases, and the sales will mind themselves,'' say all the enlightened dabblers in modern political economy. It is only the echo of an old maxim. We once told the Colonists the same figment, whereby now we are self-cheated and injured. Trade must have two sides. A merchant may buy most advantageously, and operate so largely and so well as to get into the Gazette by energy and ingenuity