of which no honest man ever did in fact avail himself, and which notoriously is only beneficial to the most unprincipled of men;-to demand where is the consistency of protecting the landed estate of a man the moment he dies, while you leave it at the mercy of elegit during his lifetime, or to suggest that every session promulgates, and of necessity must promulgate laws, by which the laws of our ancestors' are repealed, and their wisdom' disre garded, if, indeed, it be disregarding their wisdom, to do the very things which, in all probability, they would have been too wise to leave undone, had they been called to legislate in circumstances like ours. Nevertheless, these topics, if such they may be termed, were eagerly caught, for the purpose of exciting clamour. The No-Popery cry being raised, the ministry with which Sir Samuel Romilly was connected were turned out ;and, on the day of their resigning, the same courtiers (we allude to the secret advisers of the King and Royal Family), unable to resist the abolition of the Slave-Trade, so hateful in their sight, consoled themselves for its being extorted from them on that very day, by rejecting Sir Samuel Romilly's bill. During the short session in summer 1807 which soon followed, he renewed his efforts with exemplary perseverance, and succeeded in carrying a portion, but the most material part, of the former measure. It was enacted, by the 47. Geo. III. st. 2. c. 84, that the freehold estates of persons deceased, who were, during their lifetime, traders within the bankrupt laws, shall be assets for the payment of their simple contract debts, preference being given to their specialty debts. How much soever we may rejoice at so wise and just a bill having received the sanction of Parliament, it is not very easy to descry the consistency of the silent acquiescence given to this measure, with the loud outcry raised against the other a few months before. In the same short session, Sir Samuel Romilly carried another act, which might be thought to trench somewhat on parliamentary privilege; and indeed would, in all probability, have been thrown out, had it been proposed to Parliament after three years additional experience had taught most of our public men far higher lessons of privilege. Members of Parliament had a most useless, and in many cases oppressive, right, when sued in courts of equity, of receiving, at the cost of the plaintiff, a copy of the bill filed against them. The expense of this not being allowed It is a melancholy but unquestionable fact, that his Majesty, the Prince of Wales, and the whole of the Royal Family have (with the honourable exception of the Duke of Gloucester), uniformly and zealously opposed the abolition of the Slave-Trade. The courtiers have of course agreed. lowed in costs when the suit was determined in favour of the plaintiff, a serious burden was imposed upon every one claiming his rights against those having privileges of Parliament, a burthen quite sufficient to prevent the suit, where the value of the matter in dispute was inconsiderable, or where (as frequently happens) several must be made parties to the bill who were members of Parliament. By the 47. Geo. III. st. 2. c. 40, Sir Samuel Romilly put an end to this odious privilege, as far as regards members of the House of Commons. The next subject which engaged his attention, is so closely connected with the reforms discussed at large in the former part of this article, that we shall not enlarge further upon it, than merely to indicate it. Since the reign of Elizabeth (8. Eliz. c.4.), the picking of pockets had been punishable as a capital felony; though, for a long time past, like the acts already discussed, this penalty never had been inflicted, unless something else came out against the culprit. By the 48. Geo. III. c. 129, this offence is made a felony within clergy, and punishable with transportation or imprisonment. It seems strange that the legislature which repealed the statute of Elizabeth, should, immediately afterwards, have made such a stand against the repeal of the statutes of Anne, William III, and George II, so often a bove referred to. The argument is the very same in all these cases; and it was treated in the same way when broached in Parliament. Nevertheless, Sir Samuel Romilly having attempted twice to carry these last bills, was defeated sometimes in the one, and sometimes in the other House; so that the objections able laws remain on our statute-book, and the evil practice still subsists in full force. With a discrimination, however, which we must rejoice in, without pretending to comprehend the grounds of it, the same persons who so vehemently and successfully resisted the innovations attempted upon the statutes of King William and Queen Anne, have suffered Sir Samuel to carry a bill repealing the capital part of the felony created by the more recent act 18. Geo. II. c. 27, against stealing from bleaching grounds; and, while we write, intelligence has reached us of his having been permitted to carry a repeal of that most sanguinary and disgraceful law (39. Eliz. c. 17.), inflicting the pu nishment of death on soldiers and sailors who shall be found begging without testimonials of their discharge;-a law which was far too barbarous to be executed later than a very few years after it was made. This statement of the seven bills which Sir Samuel Romilly has succeeded in carrying, and of the four in which he has failed, may serve to show the reader, not previously acquainted with these matters, what the real extent is of those reforming and innovating designs about which he must have heard so much. He will probably rise from the consideration of the subject, with a conviction that no clamours were ever raised upon a more slender groundwork; and will feel disposed, after contemplating the sum of his legislative labours, to admire, for his exemplary caution, and temperance, and wisdom, the man, whom he has been accustomed to venerate for his devotion to the cause of liberty, and to love, for the purity of his blameless life, and the generous warmth of his feelings towards his fellow-creatures. From such grateful reflections, we would not rashly or hastily withdraw the reader of these pages to the spectacle he will encounter, upon casting his eye towards the antagonists of this eminent legislator. But our sketch, feeble at the best, would be still more imperfect, if we forgot to note, that they who thus persecute, with their base clamours, the author of such moderate and disinterested reforms as we have been discussing,-they who affect to hold up this profound and practical lawyer as a theorist rashly seeking the destruction of English jurisprudence, they who would set a mob upon him if they durst, for striving to render the people more virtuous, more peaceful, more orderly-without any party view or bias whatsoever-(for the faction whose cause he espouses is that of his country and his kind)They, are the very men who for the last twenty years have been tampering with every principle and bulwark of the constitution,-levelling about them, to serve party and personal interests, all the fundamental laws of the realm,--suspending the statutes in which the English government is embodied,*—violating the solemn compacts between prince and people, upon which the throne was limited to the reigning family,*-repealing the safeguards of the estates annexed to the Crown, in order to humour, or enrich, the individual who, for the time, happens to wear it, --multiplying capital felonies, in order at one time to crush the spirit of the people, † at another, to protect some trading company in its undue gains, §-and (to pass over numberless lesser extravagances) oversetting the most ancient and venerable parts of the law of the land, by interfering between debtor and creditor, landlord and tenant,-destroying the existing contracts of the former, and the established securities of the latter. **Habeas Corpus,---Bill of Rights, &c. 39. Geo. III. c. 88. repealing 1. Ann, st. 1. c. 7. + Gagging Bills. Bank Bills. The Bank Note Bills of 1811 and 1812. ART. ART. VIII. Travels in the Island of Iceland, during the Summer of the year 1810. By Sir GEORGE MACKENZIE, Bart. 4to. Constable & Co. Edinburgh. Longman & Co. &c. London. 1811. Ic CELAND is perhaps the country in the whole world where civilization has proceeded the greatest length, considering the physical difficulties it has had to encounter. In a remote island, situate on the farthest verge of the habitable globe; encompassed by polar ice, and ravaged by volcanic fire; in a climate where a long winter, cold, dark and tempestuous, is succeeded by a short summer, so little genial that it is insufficient to ripen grain of any species:-In such a country, it is wonderful that the industry of man has been able to do more than to supply the most urgent of his wants. Yet, here, learning flourished at a very early period; poetry was cultivated; and here the mythology of the northern nations was first reduced into a systematic form. A people, independent and free, enacting their own laws, and choosing their own magistrates, found, in the possession of these inestimable blessings, what was more than a compensation for all the physical evils which they endured. Accordingly, while feudal tyranny, by the bloodshed and oppression to which it everywhere gave birth, retained the finest countries of Europe in a state of barbarism;-liberty and peace, with learning and the arts in their train, took refuge in this inhospitable clime; and found, on the confines of the polar circle, an asylum which the plains of France or Italy could not have afforded them ;-a memorable example how much worse the sufferings are, produced by art, than those produced by nature. Iceland, indeed, in the state to which it is now reduced, does not exhibit so agreeable a spectacle. The physical evils remain, and perhaps have increased; but the moral and po litical resources, by which their bitterness was allayed, have nearly vanished. The conquest of Iceland by the Norwegian princes, and the union of Norway to the crown of Denmark, have converted Iceland into the poor appendage of an absolute monarch. In the ignorance of political economy, or the contempt for it which always prevails in such governments, even the means devised for promoting the advantage of this unfortunate island, have proved fatal to its prosperity; and the exclusive privilege of a commercial company-an engine of such destructive power, that even the wealth of India is, as has been found by experiment, hardly able to withstand it-quickly prov ed ruinous to Iceland. The arts, however, the knowledge and the learning, which once flourished so remarkably in that island, have not entirely abandoned it; and there still remains much to excite and to gratify the curiosity of an enlightened traveller. The manners of civilized nations, however much they may resemble one another, must assume a different aspect in countries of which the natural history is very different; and it must be always interesting to observe, when the change is great, how the former of these accommodate themselves to the latter, and how they contrive to diminish the evils which they cannot remove. In the instance of Iceland, there is added to all this the peculiarities of its natural history, derived from the extensive operation of volcanic fire. It has accordingly been three times visited by travellers from Britain, within the last forty years. In 1772, Sir Joseph Banks, who had already circumnavigated the globe, thought it worth while to visit the shores of Iceland; being willing, it would seem, after having seen the most delightful dwelling of savage life, to look on civilization in its poorest abode. He was accompanied by Drs Solander and Lind, and by M. Von Troil, who afterwards, in a series of letters, gave some account of Iceland. In the year 1789, Iceland was again visited by Sir John Stanley, accompanied by some other gentlemen, who sailed with him from Leith. An analysis of the water of the Geyser, so remarkable for the silicious incrustations it produces, made by Dr Black, was a consequence of this voyage. To the account of this analysis was added a letter of Sir John Stanley, which caused much regret that the author of such a lively and picturesque description should not have favoured the public with a fuller account of his observations. In the beginning of summer 1810, Sir George Mackenzie, accompanied by Dr Holland and Mr Bright, performed the same voyage; and the volume before us gives an account of the part of Iceland visited by these gentlemen. Iceland is a very large island; but its coasts only are inhabited, and of these the part that is most accessible and best known, is that which fronts the south-west. It was for this part that our travellers shaped their course; and the tract they visited comprehends an extent of about 120 miles in length along the coast in a direction nearly north-west, by a breadth that varies from 40 to 20 miles. In a country, consisting almost entirely of rocks or of marshes, where there are no roads, the horses weak, and the people slow, motion must needs be difficult; and to have visited so large a tract of country, in the course of an Icelandic summer, required no small share of activity. The line of the coast being deeply indented by the sea, is, in fact, much longer than could be inferred from the measures above mentioned. The south-west corner of the island sends out two extensive promontories, between which a deep gulph, called the Faré Fi ord, |