eyes around in search of cheap materials to work with, which is a great object with them, and seeing large stores of girls in all directions apparently useless, caught the idea, that it would answer an excellent purpose to work them up into machinery, and so planned the woman machine, the mode of constructing which is after this fashion. You take from one hundred and fifty to two hundred youths, varying the number according to the intended size of your machine; they should be rather of a tender age, from ten to fifteen years is preferable, and mostly females, say not less than nine tenths. After well sorting these, you put them into a large four story building strongly constructed of brick or stone, near a considerable head of water; on the several floors of this building are to be placed various pieces of machinery, called mules, spinning jennies, double speeders, &c. Then having distributed the girls about the rooms according to your taste and judgment, you attach one or more of them, as circumstances may require, to each piece of machinery, and the whole machine is ready for

use.

A machine thus prepared and put together is called a manufactory. The principal rule to be observed in the working of it, is to keep it in as constant operation as possible; the best regulated ones, not being stopped more than three times a day, for about twenty minutes at a time, to oil the wheels and feed the girls. After adhering strictly to this course for two or three years the girls are found, as it were, to become a part of the other machinery, so that neither of them can go to any purpose without being put together, any more than a wheel can go without being attached to a carriage, or a carriage without a wheel. And when the whole machine is in motion, the double speeder and spinning jenny part, appears to be just as much alive as the girl part.

The principal advantages of this machine, as enumerated by the inventors, appear to be these; that a great part of the machinery, as before mentioned, being made out of a very cheap material, goods can be manufactured by them at a much lower rate than in the old way, and so our English and other competitors derive from our market. That by this mode of educating females, four of the principal natural defects in their characters are eradicated, or greatly lessened; which has never before been known to be effected by any other course of education; namely, first, a frequent restlessness and fondness for running about; secondly, a too free use of speech; thirdly, a constant desire for med

dling in other persons' concerns to the neglect of their own; and fourthly, a manifest indisposition to the wholesome control and authority of parents, husbands, and guardians; for the curing of which defects, some dozen years' steady exercise in one of these machines is said to be a most valuable and certain specific, so that it is confidently expected, that by a very general establishment of them, the world will shortly become a very quiet and peaceable place, that all riotous, routous, and noisy assemblages will cease, and that, excepting at Congress and in the state legislatures, excessive talking will only be persisted in when it is to some purpose.

From this statement our readers will plainly see that this machine is unquestionably of modern invention, and that so far from failing to accomplish the purposes contemplated, it promises to be of the greatest advantage to society, whether viewed as a most useful seminary for the education of females, or a cheap manufacturing machine.

The second memoir is that of Quominus; and it narrates the great exertions and sacrifices he made, in pursuing the study of the Perfection of Reason, otherwise denominated the Common Law. He thus introduces the subject.

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My brother Harmony," said Mr Quominus, the second Wise Man of Gotham, "has fallen a sacrifice to the perfectibility of man; I, on the contrary, am a martyr to the Perfection of ReaI was born in a country, where they have sufficient wisdom to make their own laws, but not quite enough, as it would seem, to understand them afterwards. In order to remedy this singular inconvenience, they resorted to a method equally singular, and original. They enlisted the wise men of other nations in their behalf; and justly considering that it was quite a sufficient effort of human wisdom for one country to make its own laws, they determined to resort to another for their interpretation. Accordingly, they made a vast number of laws, believing they could not have too much of a good thing, and then sent beyond sea to get them explained. In a couple of hundred years, these explanations, being all carefully recorded in books, amounted to upwards of three thousand volumes of goodly size, containing upon an average, each, one hundred contradictory interpretations of different wise men. Such a mass of wisdom, and such a variety of opinions, supported by such unanswerable arguments, never got together under the same roof in this world. Some very aged persons, who had lived long enough to get about half through this invaluable collection, discovered that it was like the sermon that

suited any text, and the text that suited any sermon; for every man could find in it à decision, or at least an opinion, to suit his purpose. A system so supported on all sides, by all sorts of opinions, certainly merited the honor of being called a science; and such a science, as certainly, deserved a respectable name. It was accordingly aptly denominated THE PERFECTION OF REASON, because it furnished every man, however different his opinions might be, with reasons in support of them.

In addition to this great requisite of every perfect system, namely, that it should suit every body-this accumulation of contradictory opinions, it was affirmed, possessed another irresistible claim to the dignified appellation it had obtained. It cannot be denied, said the admirers of this science, that although the laws are expressly devised to settle such disputes, or conflicting claims, as might otherwise occasion a resort to force, still it is never the intention of a wise legislator, that people should actually appeal to them for this purpose. They are merely to be held up in terrorem, or rather like buoys, to float on the surface of society, for the purpose of warning mankind of the shoals and quicksands below. In this point of view, then, it is apparent, that the more intricate and inconsistent the laws, and the more various and contradictory their interpretations, the greater delay and expense there will be found in settling appeals to them, and consequently the number of lawsuits be greatly diminished. Thus, when the laws become perfectly unintelligible, they are absolutely perfect, for then nobody in their senses will go to law, and the science will do its duty after the manner of a scarecrow, which frightens the birds from the corn, merely by flourishing its unintelligible rattle. Thus you see, that no other name than that of the perfection of reason, could possibly have suited this excellent science.' pp. 145-147.

And here again our readers will perceive, if they take the trouble to go through the narrative, that the sole object of it is to ridicule that most important and most ancient of all sciences, the common law, and particularly the great improvements made upon it by the moderns.

Nor ought we to be greatly surprised at such an attempt. Experience shows us, that let a science be carried to any state of perfection, however great, there are always found persons enough prepared to pick out some defects in it. For at all periods of the world two principal paths have been pursued in the attaining of distinction, which, though widely apart at their setting off, are found to lead out to the same eminence. The one of these is followed by doing well ourselves, and the other

by finding fault with everything well done by our neighbors. Which latter being by far the easier road, is therefore much the more frequented.

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A very hasty sketch of the principles and foundations of the common law, and of the most remarkable improvements made upon it within a few years, will convince any one of the incorrectness of the views which this memoir would give of that distinguished science. Municipal law, or the law as applicable to particular societies,' the learned Mr Justice Blackstone says, in his Commentaries, vol. i. p. 34, is properly defined to be, a rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power in a state, commanding what is right, and prohibiting what is wrong.' must be apparent, therefore, to the smallest mind, that the essential requisites of good laws are these; first, that they should be reasonable and applicable to the times and to the persons upon which they are to operate; and, secondly, that they should be plain, and an acquaintance with them easily to be come at by all parts of the community. We shall proceed to show that these requisites are most remarkably conspicuous in the common law, and, indeed, are the grounds of that just preference which is given to this over the civil and statute law.

And to the first point we will cite what is laid down by the learned Lord Coke on this subject, namely, that the common law is the very perfection of human reason.' And this, to the minds of all enlightened jurists, at once settles the matter, my Lord Coke being considered the very oracle of the common law, and no equal authority being to be found to the contrary. But in respect that many of our readers may not be so well versed in the legal rules of reasoning, we shall no doubt more satisfactorily prove to them the reasonableness of the common law, and its especial applicability to the present state of the world, by stating the fact that these laws are not written rules, as our statute laws are, and so liable to mistakes in the printing, and to the interpolations of interested persons, and the misconstructions of feeble or perverse minds. Nor have any of them been made in modern times, so as that they might be fashioned to suit any particular parties, persons, or purposes. But they are a collection of customs, never committed to writing, but handed down to us by tradition, and were first adopted, nobody knows when, why, nor by whom. And, as Mr Justice Blackstone says, 'the maxims and customs so collected are of higher antiquity than memory or history can reach, nothing being more difficult than

to ascertain the precise beginning, and first spring, of an ancient and long established custom.' And so my Lord Hale says, "The original of the common law is as undiscernible as the head of the Nile.' And indeed in this seems to consist the very essence and excellency of these customs, for so soon as any one can ascertain the commencement and original reason of them, they cease to be good law, as see Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. i. p. 70, 'So that if any one can show the beginning of it, it is no good custom.' From which preceding remarks and authorities our intelligent readers are no doubt fully satisfied that the common law is admirably well adapted to our times, and in the highest degree reasonable, for although the learned Mr Christian in his notes upon the Commentaries, alleges, that 'it cannot be dissembled that there are decisions drawn from established principles and maxims, which are good law, though such decisions may be manifestly absurd and unjust,' and that 'precedents and rules must be followed, even when they are flatly absurd and unjust,' thereby plainly hinting that these precedents and maxims are sometimes absurd and unjust, yet fortunately the learned Blackstone himself has furnished us with very ready way of getting over such difficulties, for,' says he, speaking of the rules of the common law, though their reason be not obvious at first view, yet we owe such a deference to former times as not to suppose that they acted wholly without consideration;' which key to the proper understanding and due digestion of many rules of the common law, has been of infinite assistance, and is much used, in the study and practice of that science.

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Having thus satisfactorily disposed of the first point, we proceed to show how easily an acquaintance with this law may be attained to. Now these rules of the common law, upon a due knowledge and observance of which the life and property of every member of the community in a great measure depend, are not, as we have before observed, written out and collected in one or more books or sets of books, as the civil and statute law are, so that a person should have occasion to know how to read, and reflect, and reason, in order to come to a knowledge of them; but very happily for us are stored up in the breasts of divers learned judges, whence they are to be extracted by a certain process, called a case in court; so that any one who has a desire to be informed of his own rights, or those of his neighbor, in any particular, instead of tumbling over musty books, to