a two-handled saw, and often a third is attending to hold the piece of wood steady. In national economy these are no trifles. A waste of time and labour in the daily work of a nation is important."-Pages 87, 88. A case of actual occurrence is given by Mr. Laing, as reported in a Danish newspaper, strikingly illustrating the effect of the guild system upon national industry:— "A person had ordered a still to be made by a coppersmith, on some particular plan. The brass cocks and fittings had of course to be cast and adjusted to the machine, as one of the most essential of its parts. But a coppersmith is not entitled to cast metal; that belongs to the corporation of girdlers (the girdle is a flat plate of cast-iron for baking oat-cakes upon), and the coppersmith was prosecuted for unlawfully exercising a trade belonging to another class of tradesmen. It was in vain that he urged the necessity of a workman completing within his own workshop all the parts of a machine, proportioning their dimensions to each other, and fitting them so as to work together:-it was a breach of the corporation law, and he was fined. In Sweden, from its isolated position, and political division into classes, this system is in considerable vigour. With us, everything is lawful that law does not prohibit; here, the maxim seems to be, that nothing is lawful but what law permits. Where law is silent, special permission from government is held to be necessary even to exercise any of the numerous branches of industry which have come into existence since the simpler trades were incorporated."-Page 89. In our review of Mr. Laing's book on Norway, we were at some pains to give the reader a clear and connected view of the Norwegian constitution, especially as far as the legislative and judicial departments were concerned. This we were well able to accomplish from the copious data scattered throughout the work; so that the sum of our labour consisted in collecting, arranging, and abridging the author's ample materials. We should have been well pleased to have given a similar outline of the constitution of Sweden, but we find Mr. Laing's data too vague and scanty to allow us to do so in a manner at all satisfactory. A country in which the government does all things, and in which, consequently, individual energy is paralysed; where industry is under that species of blighting restraint called protection; where taxation is heavy and arbitrary; and where forced contributions of labour, somewhat similar to the old French corvées, are required of the people; where, in short, the people are trained, as Mr. Laing observes, " to consider 66 government, to whom, in the first place, their labour, time "and property must belong ;"-such a community "wants the 66 very foundation upon which civil liberty must stand—a sense ❝ of independence and property." "It is almost ridiculous," continues Mr. Laing, "to hear of the constitutional rights and liberties of a people whose time, labour, and property are not their own, in the sense in which these are enjoyed by free people; but are at the disposal and for the benefit of classes, corporations, and public functionaries. The constitution and civil rights of the nation, mean here the right of corporate bodies to meet in a legislative assembly, without reference to the mass of the community on whom they prey."-Pages 274-5. The Swedish diet consists of four distinct bodies-the nobles, the clergy, the burgesses and the peasants; and they meet in four separate chambers. Every measure has to pass through each chamber and its committees separately, and is adopted or rejected by the plurality of the chambers. If the lower chambers were freely elected by a large body of independent and intelligent men, the constitution of Sweden could not work with the upper chambers, having interests so completely opposed to the interests of the masses: but the several chambers do harmonize, and for the very simple reason, that the houses of the burgesses and peasants are elected by a narrow constituency, with a high electoral qualification,—that is, the occupation of a large quantity of land or the enjoyment of a privilege. For further details we must refer the reader to the work: we shall therefore merely add here, that the qualification in question excludes all that would be valuable in a constituent body. It excludes * -"all persons of condition who, as burgesses, have acquired fortunes in trade or business of any kind in the towns, and have retired to the country. It excludes all who, being allied to noble families, have acquired property in office or public service, as these are considered to be represented in the Chamber of Nobles. By this constitution, all educated persons, unless they belong to one or other of the privileged classes the clerical or the noble-are excluded from the legislative body. Berzelius could neither elect nor be elected, until he was raised to the class of nobility, which qualified him for his seat in the diet.”—Page 285–6. "The clergy elect their members by consistories, and the bishops have ex-officio a seat and voice in their chamber. Although the clergy generally a two-handled saw, and often a third is attending to hold the piece of wood steady. In national economy these are no trifles. A waste of time and labour in the daily work of a nation is important."-Pages 87, 88. A case of actual occurrence is given by Mr. Laing, as reported in a Danish newspaper, strikingly illustrating the effect of the guild system upon national industry:— "A person had ordered a still to be made by a coppersmith, on some particular plan. The brass cocks and fittings had of course to be cast and adjusted to the machine, as one of the most essential of its parts. But a coppersmith is not entitled to cast metal; that belongs to the corporation of girdlers (the girdle is a flat plate of cast-iron for baking oat-cakes upon), and the coppersmith was prosecuted for unlawfully exercising a trade belonging to another class of tradesmen. It was in vain that he urged the necessity of a workman completing within his own workshop all the parts of a machine, proportioning their dimensions to each other, and fitting them so as to work together:-it was a breach of the corporation law, and he was fined. In Sweden, from its isolated position, and political division into classes, this system is in considerable vigour. With us, everything is lawful that law does not prohibit; here, the maxim seems to be, that nothing is lawful but what law permits. Where law is silent, special permission from government is held to be necessary even to exercise any of the numerous branches of industry which have come into existence since the simpler trades were incorporated."-Page 89. In our review of Mr. Laing's book on Norway, we were at some pains to give the reader a clear and connected view of the Norwegian constitution, especially as far as the legislative and judicial departments were concerned. This we were well able to accomplish from the copious data scattered throughout the work; so that the sum of our labour consisted in collecting, arranging, and abridging the author's ample materials. We should have been well pleased to have given a similar outline of the constitution of Sweden, but we find Mr. Laing's data too vague and scanty to allow us to do so in a manner at all satisfactory. A country in which the government does all things, and in which, consequently, individual energy is paralysed; where industry is under that species of blighting restraint called protection; where taxation is heavy and arbitrary; and where forced contributions of labour, somewhat similar to the old French corvées, are required of the people; where, in short, the people are trained, as Mr. Laing observes, " to consider 66 government, to whom, in the first place, their labour, time "and property must belong ;"-such a community "wants the 66 very foundation upon which civil liberty must stand—a sense "of independence and property." "It is almost ridiculous," continues Mr. Laing, "to hear of the constitutional rights and liberties of a people whose time, labour, and property are not their own, in the sense in which these are enjoyed by free people; but are at the disposal and for the benefit of classes, corporations, and public functionaries. The constitution and civil rights of the nation, mean here the right of corporate bodies to meet in a legislative assembly, without reference to the mass of the community on whom they prey."-Pages 274-5. The Swedish diet consists of four distinct bodies-the nobles, the clergy, the burgesses and the peasants; and they meet in four separate chambers. Every measure has to pass through each chamber and its committees separately, and is adopted or rejected by the plurality of the chambers. If the lower chambers were freely elected by a large body of independent and intelligent men, the constitution of Sweden could not work with the upper chambers, having interests so completely opposed to the interests of the masses: but the several chambers do harmonize, and for the very simple reason, that the houses of the burgesses and peasants are elected by a narrow constituency, with a high electoral qualification,—that is, the occupation of a large quantity of land or the enjoyment of a privilege. For further details we must refer the reader to the work: we shall therefore merely add here, that the qualification in question excludes all that would be valuable in a constituent body. It excludes -"all persons of condition who, as burgesses, have acquired fortunes in trade or business of any kind in the towns, and have retired to the country. It excludes all who, being allied to noble families, have acquired property in office or public service, as these are considered to be repreIsented in the Chamber of Nobles. By this constitution, all educated persons, unless they belong to one or other of the privileged classes the clerical or the noble-are excluded from the legislative body. Berzelius could neither elect nor be elected, until he was raised to the class of nobility, which qualified him for his seat in the diet."-Page 285-6. "The clergy elect their members by consistories, and the bishops have ex-officio a seat and voice in their chamber. Although the clergy generally lies, they are the most enlightened and most independent of the four chambers of the diet." The principle on which the chambers of the nobles is constituted, is this: "The stem of each noble family-the head of it—or, reducing the idea to what is familiar to us, the chief of the clan, represents the whole, who are noble by derivation from his stock, by hereditary right, without election or reference to them."-Page 287. This, in fact, only differs from ours inasmuch as the junior Lord Johns and Lord Thomas's are not deemed noble: though Mr. Laing calls it "a system which is representative without being elective," we should hardly be disposed to call this system representative,-a term which, according to our notions, involves the idea of election. Of the administration of justice Mr. Laing says, "The machinery for administering the laws of a country is of as much importance as that for making them: it deserves the traveller's notice, because it is of every-day influence in the business of the people. In Sweden this machinery is superior to our own: there are 264 courts of first instance, called hereds' courts, with a judge or hered-hovding to preside in the court; and the country is divided into hereds or districts, equivalent in judicial affairs to parishes in ecclesiastical. The courts sit three times a year. Twelve peasants are elected by the peasants of the hered, to serve as a jury for two years; and in this election of nammdsman, as they are called, every peasant has an equal vote, be his property or share of a hemman of land great or small.”—Page 294. The access to these courts is easy, cheap and satisfactory to the suitors. The cases tried before these courts of "first instance," or original jurisdiction, amounted in 1836 to 71,312, or about 270 to each court; besides which there were 9288 in the "town courts," and 403 in the "college courts." As in Norway, there are courts of appellate jurisdiction, intermediate and final. The former are called the layman's courts, and answer to the Sorenscrivers courts of Norway; and the latter, the Hof courts, of which there are three answering to the hoiste ret court of Norway; the Hof court alone having criminal jurisdiction. It should seem that the lower courts of Sweden perform their business well, as out of 81,003 causes tried before the inferior courts, only 6090 were appealed. Sweden has not |