The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-06-28 00:00:00

" Dr. Jones, author of the Greek and English Lexicon, a
gentleman with whom I had the honour of an intimate ac-
quaintance, once told me, that he had a strong dislike to that
portion of Franklin's works called Poor Richard ;" Because,'
said. he, it has imparted a bias to American principles, and has
rendered. them too parsimonious and mercenary.' I cannot
view it in the same Light with that gentleman. Poor Richard,'
at its first production, was disseminated among a people with
whom its maxims were congenial, and did not produce con-
tracted views, but confirmed them. Its precepts are a treasure-
house of domestic prudence and economy to persons in the
situation of Americans, but have been,acted upon too closely."

Finding it impossible to settle in America with any
reasonable chance of success, Mr. Fidler proceeds to
Canada, of which country the work contains some in-
teresting accounts. For reasons which do not appear,
he subsequently abandons the idea of settling there, and
returns to England via New York. On the subject of
Mrs. Trollope's book we subjoin a quotation which ap-
pears to us confirmatory of its fidelity.
" I inquired of every lady I conversed with in the States if
she had read Mrs. T.'s book. The same question was asked
here. The professor's lady was the only female in America
who made the acknowledgement of having read it; although I
ant persuaded that it is generally read 1;1 Americans from one
extremity. of their country to the other. Can you believe, Mr.
F.,' she inquired, that any clergyman would act as Mrs. Trol-
-1 lope has described?' I have not witnessed,' I replied, any
thing approaching to it; yet as every thing described by her,
of which 1 could form a Judgment, is circumstantially correct,
I have no reason to disbelieve her on that point.' We can
generally tell,' she then said, 'from what class those we con-
verse with have come. The best informed from England al-
ways speak of us in the same way. But it is very hard that
we can admit no respectable English, person into our houses,
without running the hazard of being exposed or caricatured.'
You will shortly have an opportunity, I replied, 'of reading
another work on America; since it is my intention to publish
my remarks, on my arrival in England. •
." In the preface to the American edition of Mrs. T.'s work,
the writer mentions the probability of Mrs. Trollope and Cap-
tain Hall being one and the same person. This opinion was
entertained by arrnOst every American I spoke to on the sub-
ject. 'the real ignorance there, as respects literary subjects,
is quite surprising. Scarcely any are able to distinguish one
style of writing from another. If an American editor should
assert that all the English books he edits were the produc-
tions of one author, let them be ever so dissimilar in composi-
tion or argumentation, he would be believed by almost every
reader from Maine to New Orleans."
" What a foolish pieface that is,' I observed to the profes-
sor's lady, which some editor has prefixed to her book!'
Pray, Mr. F.' said she, make no more observations. The
writer of it is a particular friend or ours.' `Pardon me, Ma-
dam,' said 1, 'for my freedom in proposing one question.
Could the author of it really persuade himself that Mrs. Trol-
lope and Captain Hall are one and the same person ? The
styles are so uifferent that it is impossible to mistake them as
identical.' The truth is,' she replied, that Mrs. 'l'. had an in-
troductory letter to us; and was introduced to the writer of that
preface, and to some others of our acquaintances. She was
personally known to several in New Yolk, but not generally
known. The great fault of Mrs. Trollope,' she proceeded, 'is
this. She resided in a remote part of our country; and has
described the manners of the people there as the manners of
Americans in general.' To this I replied, 'that in those cir-
cles in which I had the honour to move, during my stay in New
York and Boston, I observed no correspondence with her Cin-
cinnati delineations. But Mrs. Trcillope herself admits the
same thing.'
" We had again taken up our residence at the lodgings which
Mrs. F. had formerly selected during my first Canadian tour.
The medical gentleman, who, when I disputed the superiority
of Arnerican to English physicians, told me I should never be
able to gain a respectable living in their country, boarded at
the same house. He and some other Americans declared Mrs.
T.'s book a fabrication of falsehoods. In that land they always
denounce as false whatever truth offends them. Her statements
were always expressed, said they, in illiberal and vulgarian-
garage, and arose from dissappointinent. 'lf you can shew me,'
I observed, one statement in her book which you can prove
false or illiberal; I- pledge myself to do penance for my fair
countrywoman, and will eat her book.' The book was procured,
and I 'have no doubt examined with great attention. On the
following morning I desired them to tell me if they had suc-
ceeded in detecting one. The further mention of her name was
immediately interdicted. At the shop of a bookseller, from
whom Mrs. F. and myself had received many kindnesses, I in-
quired ior Mrs. T.'s work. He replied, I would not keep it
in my store.'
" Mrs. 'F.'s book is producing, and will produce incalculable
good in America, and a wonderful alteration in the manners of
the people. Their great removal from other nations more ad-
vanced in refinement and civilization debars them from pos-
sessing the same facilities with other countries of divesting
themselves of national foibles and partialities. The poor emi-
grants also, who flock from other countries to their shores, are
really behind them in some kinds of information; and they
hence infer that all those of the same countries are also behind
them. The highest class alone have abandoned this opinion.
When, however, they have perceived that no really respectable
and well-informed European will continue in their country
longer than his business or the purposes of travelling and
making observations may require, they must find out that some-
thing not entirely attractive pervades their national character.
They possess a high degree of native talent, and of emulation
as far as commerce is concerned. When they find leisure for
emulation in, polite literature, and foster with greater patronage
the arts and sciences, and the embellishments of life, then Eu-
ropean emigrants of a higher class may continue in their
country, and find a comfortable home. Till that period, many
a Capiain Mall and Mrs. Trollope will be found among the
'lumber of their visitors."
Mr. Fidler's style of writing is rather colloquial, and
not always quite intelligible.

LAW OF ARREST.

(FROM THE LITERARY GAZETTE.)

That man should prey upon his felloW man to a cer-
tain extent must result from the depravity of our natures;
but that he should revel in the utter wretchedness and
misery he is capable of producing to his species, .is de-
vilish. And yet such has mainly been the practice of our
law of debtor and creditor; under which events have oc-
curred, compared with which the horrors of human sa-
crifices by despot, by pagan, or by cannibal, are venial
and inoffensive. Not only the original indulgence in had
passions which caused the creditor to pursue his unfor-
tunate debtor to the wreck of all his happiness on earth
—not only the infliction of mental torture, of the dismal
and demoralizing goal, of want, of ruin, and of miserable
unfriended death ;—not only these have been the daily and
hourly results of this abominable system, but the evil was
aggravated beyond imagination by the cruelties and op-
pressions perpetrated by that numerous and ravenous class
to whom the power was given to enforce the law. .In
1832, last year, the Morning Herald (a journal whose
constant efforts in the cause of humanity, especially in
mitigating the severity and correcting the anomalies of
the laws, are above all praise,) states, that eight thou-
sand four hundred attorneys took out certificates to prac-
tise in our courts. In liberality of construction we will
grant that the four hundred might repudiate the common
law work, and subsist on honest means—on means con-
sistent with the comfort and safety of their fellow crea-
tures. But the vast majority—how were they to live ?
The eight thousand harpies—the product. of a single sea-
son—how were they to be fed
.but on desolation and
blood ? No matter what the agonies of the parent, the
tears of the widow, the wail of the orphan ; their bu-
siness must proceed, their profits must be realized, their
households must be established in plenty, their plea-
sures must be gratified. At first, perhaps, the sufferings
they witnessed might, in many of the less needy indi-
viduals, paralyse their arm; but the softest tempera-
ment is hardened by use—and soon the attorney feels as
much for human distress as the butcher feels for the
struggles of the lamb whose throat he has cut, or the
dying groans of the ox he has felled to the earth. Lewis
Roberts, a pressman, an industrious mechanic, unhap-
pily owed one Robotham, a publican, from whom he pur-
chased refreshments for his family, ten pounds. • For this
sum, worried by an attorney, (whose name the journals
ought to have blazoned to the country, had he been
worse than hundreds and thousands. of his associates), the
poor wretch gave what is called a cognovit, and under
this instrument paid off £5 15.; thus proving 'his inte-
grity and earnest disposition to acquit himself of the
debt. He fell into bad health, and could not proceed
with the arrear. The attorney added costs to this £4 ss.
and 'swelled the amount to £l6. By a desperate exer-
tion £5 were obtained and offered—more than the debt,
had the wretched man been allowed but time and oppor-
tunity to clear himself. The offer was rejected with de-
rision. On the sth December, a cold and wintry clay,
but not so cold as his persecutors' hearts, Roberts, at the
age of forty, was taken from his sick bed and borne to
White-cross Prison, where he arrived only to die! if
And this happened in the land of liberty, in England,
six months ago! and this was no uncommon case—it
was but one drop in the waters of misery overflowing
from the same source.

Who can doubt that litigation in this country inflicts
more individual sufferings, and contributes more to ag-
gravate commercial and national distress than any other
cause (we would almost say any other combination of
causes) whatever? Taxes and poor's rates are, indeed,
heavy in their pressure, but even these are rendered
worse by their legal association; and it would be easy to
show that a single law process, from which few of the
middling ranks of life can hope to be so fortunate as
to escape, is more grievous and ruinous than years of
government and parochial taxation. Look around to our
prisons ; look at the fearful returns from them of thou-
sands of beggared debtors and starving families; and
try for a moment to contemplate this huge mass of hu-
man misery with reference to its origin—the inability to
•pay, on the instant, perhaps from the insignificant sum
of two or three shillings to the amount of some ten or
(on an averar) less than twenty pounds in each case.
Awl torA sue an offence men are deprived of their li-
lierty, and with their liberty, of the means of discharg-
ing-their obligations or providing for their children : the
law takes its cruel course, and the struggling mechanic
and honest shopkeeper are doomed to hopeless incarcera-
tion; their creditors unpaid, and some attorney enabled
!alive heartless extiavagance, expending tens ofthou-
sands of pounds in luxuries—as in a shameful instance
Which has just occurred—upon expenses wrung from ma-
lignant passions on the one band, and vain and helpless
efforts on the other,
We have alluded to the malignant passions of men as
one great source of the mischief, for it .must be' obvious
that the law is only the minister of resentments and of
the pursuits of supposed interests; anFi in favour at the
profession it should be said, that its honourable members
often and often allay irt i unions, and prevent the lawsuits
into which angry parties would heedlessly rush. But it
Its not in 'nature to expect such conduct from the majority
of practitioners, who must subsist upon the disputes and