funds applicable for them are levied, it will only be necessary to present the amount for levy at the assizes in which the works are contracted for. This plan is simple and sufficient. The amounts will then be paid into bank at the next assizes, one assizes before required in full, and in all cases of works of maintenance, and others not completed between assizes and assizes, can be made available to half the amount, on an average, as a fund to give advances on works granted at the intermediate assizes; half the funds applicable for these latter works being available at the next assizes for other works then granted in like manner, and so on. There will always, by this proceeding, be sufficient funds in bank to pay the current expenses of any county. At present, in every county (Drogheda and towns perhaps excepted) there is a considerable surplus fund in bank or exchequer bills lying useless, and only paying interest to the counties or to the county treasurers.* It is, therefore, practicably quite unnecessary to burthen the county with a levy on estimate to meet current expenses, as recommended in the commissioners' report of 1842, or with the complex machinery of wardens and finance committees, even supposing they could be had to act efficiently without payment for their services. The present grand jury law, with some slight alterations and additions, is infinitely preferable to that recommended by them. GENERAL REMARKS.-The suggestion of the commissioners for having six engineers for the purpose of going into the provinces occasionally, with district road-surveyors only in addition, would be found in practice quite a failure, and too expensive to work any way well, from district surveyors having no assistance, than having one or more controlling engineers in each county, and assistants suited for, and proportional to the extent of the duties. From one to four engineers may be very useful in Dublin, for consulting and directing, and one of them should perhaps be an architect; but they, or any greater number, could exercise little control over the district road-surveyors without residing in the county. A county engineer sees and studies every detail himself, and is only dependent for measurements, and carrying out his plans and specifications, on the assistants; and he can easily detect their neglect in his frequent visits through the county. In fact, he is a district surveyor of a higher grade, under the control of the grand jury, instead of district wardens; and therefore, from his position and qualifications, most free from bias in the discharge of his duties. Altogether, we believe a few alterations in the existing grand jury law would render it as perfect as desirable for the management of county public works. There will be objections to any proposed system of grand jury laws, and the mode of carrying it out; but it is easier to get rid of the objections to an existing law, than to alter the system so as to make it free from any. In dwelling on the head of 'prompt payments to contractors,"we have mentioned the alterations and additions that would make the present law unexceptionable, and to these few objec tions, if any, can be made. They would place a county surveyor, even as his staff now stands, in a position to do active good. His whole powers at present are passive, or on a neglected work to refuse a certificate. He is, therefore, in a position between Scylla and Charybdis. The public and the contractor are sometimes both dissatisfied; the former that it is aggrieved the latter that he is not paid; and without a knowledge of the real cause the fault is laid on the surveyor. This renders the office any thing but agreeable. We shall only say a few county; and if both high and low tenders are rejected, or no tender lodged, the injury to the county is increased by the inconvenience the public must suffer from a bad road, or interrupted thoroughfare; and also, by the increased expense roads neglected from one assizes to another require for their repairs. Indeed, it is perfectly impossible that the contract system, under the present grand jury act, can ever work well, or as it ought, until grand juries have this power." *The amount of sums to the credit of the counties in exchequer bills, in 1841, was about £110,000, and the sums lodged in bank from assizes to assizes, unaccounted for, cannot be less than the same amount. Our system, however, does not require the amount lodged in exchequer bills. words here in addition. A "roadcontractor," in Ireland, and "a contractor," are altogether different beings. One begs payment as a favour— the other, having performed his work, requires it as a right. The latter is almost always a capitalist-the former is mostly a pauper, or a small farmer. With respect to the times of holding sessions, for presenting and accounting, as there is no particular time directed by the act, they are held at different periods in different counties. The sessions previous to the summer assizes should not be held before the 1st of May, nor that previous to spring assizes before the 1st of January, as contractors would thereby have more time to complete their works before coming forward to account. In counties where the sessions are held so early as October, previous to the spring assizes, much suffering is inflicted on contractors who cannot come forward to account so early. It appears to us that the first sessions should be solely for the purpose of disposing of applications for new works; and the adjourned sessions for receiving and disposing of tenders for these, should dispose also of the accounts. This would effect some useful purposes. There would be more time for considering the applications at the first sessions, and there would be sufficient time, before disposing of the contracts at the adjourned sessions, for the accounts to be entered into. The contractors would thereby have increased time to complete their works, and the surveyor to inspect them; and as the surveyor should attend at this sessions as well as the first, the magistrate and cess-payers could have his opinion in disposing of the new contracts. In the case of one or more cesspayers only attending at sessions, a cess-payer should have power to preside; and if neither justices nor cesspayers attend, the applications should be dealt with by the next grand jury, as if they had passed the sessions. If no cess-payer or justice attend at the adjourned sessions, the accounts may, in like manner, be dealt with by the next grand jury, as if they had passed, and the tenders be kept and opened at the assizes, where they may be finally adopted or rejected, as if opened at sessions. sociated cess-payers were to be chosen in the same manner as poor law guardians, as recommended by the commissioners, we fear much time would be lost in unnecessary discussion at sessions, and that those who had most interest at stake may not always be returned. Surely the person who has to pay £50 cess, is more interested than the representative of one thousand persons, who each have to pay one shilling. Facts prove this truth. The grand jury, who are the largest cesspayers, always reduce the amounts sent from the cess-payers at sessions. The highest cess-payers are most interested in the public improvementsthe smaller cess-payers most in the local improvements; besides, the exception does not constitute the rule, and, generally, the largest cess-payers are the most intelligent. The commissioners have, therefore, made out no case to alter the present system of associated cess-payers. In cases of road nuisances, &c. the penalties should be made imperative, particularly for swine, manure heaps, and scouring drains, or water tables. Until this is done, a mistaken leniency on the part of justices, in often reducing the fines under the risk, and value gained by the trespassers, will continue rather than prevent these evils. The assistants and police, when offenders are let off easily, are not so particular in bringing them before justices as they otherwise would be. By-the-by, this is a department that ought almost entirely to be in the hands of the police, as from their numerous stations through the country, they are more in the way of preventing injury and detecting trespasses than the surveyors or their assistants. A few words as to grand juries. Under the present grand jury act they have no power but that of adopting or rejecting presentments granted at road sessions, and adopting only in case a contract is declared at the adjourned road sessions. Hence, if a contractor does not tender, or the amount of his tender exceeds the amount granted at road sessions, the work falls to the ground for the time; and in cases of road repairs and maintenance, much injury is often inflicted on the public, and the roads are neglected until new applications come forward, at a greatly increased expense, compared to what would have been necessary if the grand jury had the ordinary powers of turnpike-road trustees. It is a well-known fact that the sums adopted by grand juries are considerably under those adopted at road sessions by the cess payers. Grand-jurors are, therefore, the conservators of the county purse, and to deprive them of the power to levy a sum necessary for the repairs of some important road, because some prescribed forms have not been complied with, tends only to injure the public for the time, and afterwards to add to the county expenditure. Cesspayers, even associated cess-payers, we have found, feel most interested in the repairs of bye-roads, and even sometimes those termed cul-de-sac. The grand-jurors and magistrates are, and feel, most interested in what may be called public works, and those of most importance in every county have always emanated from them. It is to be regretted that in framing acts of parliament for county and public works, the engineer is not more frequently consulted. The principle may be good in an act, but it must fail in its application unless these practical details in the working of the machinery, with which the engineer only can be acquainted, are understood and provided for. The principles of the present grand jury act are good, and they only fail in their application because the machinery is left imperfect. Consolidate and arrange the road contracts; make the engineering staff proportional and suited, on the principle of the division of labour, to the duties to be performed; provide means for prompt payments to contractors; and extend in a few positions the powers of grand juries;—this act will then become superior to any depending on unpaid “road wardens" and unpaid "finance committees" for its success. The modifications in detail, here pointed out as necessary to render the present grand jury act effective in its working, may be effected by the alteration of less than one hundred lines of the text. Grand-jurors would then attend at assizes, and associated cesspayers at road sessions, having the full benefit of their former experience, and conscious that the difficulties which heretofore, in many instances, prevented their labours from being useful, were removed. Their time would not be occupied in discussing the sections of a new grand jury law, and after an assizes or two, from the consolidation of contracts, their duties would be performed in one-third of the time now required to discharge them. J. N. 2 B VOL. XXVII.-No. 159. HUME'S LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE." FIRST ARTICLE. Or the life of Hume, his own memoir, That no such account of Hume as Scotland ought to have supplied to the general literature of the country should have before appeared, is easily to be accounted for. Till of late years the strong feelings which any discussion of his views on religious questions was sure to excite, would have rendered the publication, in all probability, a losing concern, and at all events be regarded by a great portion of the public as an offence. The Edinburgh publishers were not unlikely to remember the spirit in which, when, in the General Assembly, a prosecution against Hume had failed, the parties who were his most active assailants immediately commenced proceedings against the publishers of an essay of Lord Kames's, which essay-so subtle was the zeal of the prosecutors in detecting latent infidelity-was written for the purpose of confuting the principles, supposed to be involved in Hume's doctrine, that we are unable to discover any real connexion between cause and effect. A prosecution for sorcery or witchcraft was no pleasant thing a century ago; and in later times proceedings against a man for blasphemy or heresy were no joke. It The Life and Correspondence of David Hume, from the papers bequeathed by his Nephew, Baron Hume, to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and other original sources. By John Hill Burton, Esquire, Advocate. 2 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1846. The title of Kames's book, which was prosecuted, was Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion." Kames's theory is, that there is no real liberty to human beings, but that in our nature is implanted the feeling that we are free. It seems to be a statement, in the philosophical jargon of his day, of a doctrine that ought not to have been offensive to persons who would have, perhaps, been satisfied had the thought been expressed in the language of the theological schools. There can be no doubt that Kames thought he was answering Hume, though there is no distinct allusion to any particular passage in his essay, nor is he mentioned by name; and that Hume so understood his courteous adversary there is no doubt. In a letter to Ramsay, written in the year in which Kames's book was published, we find the following passage:- "Have you seen our friend Harry's essays? They are well wrote, [written,] and are an unusual instance of an obliging method of answering a book. Philosophers must judge of the question, but the clergy have already decided it, and say he is as bad as me! Nay, some affirm him to be worse as much as a treacherous friend is worse than an open enemy." Mr. Burton tells us, in a tone of grave humour, that "those who constituted themselves judges of the matter seem to have taken example from the stern father, who, when there is a quarrel in the nursery, punishes both sides, because quarrelling is a thing not allowed in the house." would, we fear, be regarded even now as an insufficient defence to such an accusation to be able to show that Lord Brougham has affirmed the first crime to be impossible, or to suggest that it would not be easy to find a tribunal, consisting of more than one individual, likely to agree in what constituted the second. That a serious offence against society was committed by the publication of Hume's writings, was certainly the public feeling of the period in which they appeared; and under what name society was to punish it, was a matter that seemed of comparative indifference. Though the proceedings against Hume were defeated in the General Assembly, yet that against the publishers of Kames failed only by the death of the prose cutor. Of late years the total defeat and rout of speculative infidelity has rendered it possible to reprint all such works with no other danger than the unpleasant consequence of the sale being insufficient to pay the publisher's expenditure. The result of inquiry has, in every instance, as far as we know, been directly opposed to that which the alarm of zealous but ignorant men suggested. Hume's " Inquiry into the Doctrine of Cause and Effect" led to those investigations in Germany which have ended in the total demolition of all the Babels which in Paris and Edinburgh had affronted high heaven. The "Inquiry into Miracles" has issued not only in the signal triumph of the defenders of revelation on the particular subject of controversy, but in what is of almost as much moment-in fixing attention to the fact, that what has been rashly assumed, and even expressed, to be a violation of the laws of nature, is never, in any true sense, such, but is in reality a new phenomenon not within the range of our ordinary experience-most often the expression of some more general law, the constant operation of which would be perceptible, but for hindrances thus for a moment removed. There can, we think, never be danger in the full discussion of any subject of scientific inquiry. Of this how remarkable a proof is given in the fact that Butler's "Analogy" and Hume's "Treatise on Human Nature" were published within two years of each other. Hume's essay is forgotten, or holds a doubtful place in such books as record the shiftings of opinion on topics of metaphysical inquiry. It certainly is not read; while there probably is no man who at all seriously thinks of his own present duties or future existence, to whom Butler's work is not a frequent study; and yet, when the "Analogy" was first published, not only does Butler in his preface represent the prevalent opinion "of persons of discernment to be against the truth of Christianity, but, what is more strange, his own book was looked upon with jealous and distrustful eyes. Even Gray, the poet, spoke of it with dislike and apprehen"He dissuaded me," says Ni " sion. chols, "from reading Butler's Analogy,' and said he had given the same advice to Mason." The true inference is, we think, that when the decencies of society are not invaded, no interruption whatever should be given to the publication of any work. The dull will fall, "swayed by the impulse of their own dead weight." Undoubtedly, prosecutions, whether in the civil or ecclesiastical courts, do nothing but mischief. David Hume was born at Edinburgh, on the 26th of April, (old style,) 1711. His father's family was, he tells us, a branch of the Earl of Home's. His mother was daughter of Sir David Falconer, a successful advocate, compiler of books on Scottish law, and finally President of the Court of Session. Falconer was of a respectable family, and one of his sons succeeded, in the year 1727, to the title of Lord Halkerton. The father of Hume died while David was still an infant, leaving to his eldest son, Joseph, the lands of Ninewells, which had been for many generations in that branch of the family of Hume, or Home. The future historian, and Catherine, the sister, with whom at an after period Hume lived, were slenderly provided for. David had the feeling of family pride in more than its due strength. It is a feeling with which we do not "A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature."-Hume, Essays and Treatises. Edinburgh, 1793. |