THE NEW BLACK BOOK.
THE author of this alarming volume has baptized it " Extraordi- nary"—andjustly so : for it exhibits an extraordinary picture of the social state of England; the facts it communicates are extraordinary in their character and their number; the labour that has been bestowed on the collection of them is extraordinary ; and the degree of accuracy that the author has attained to (not abso- lute, but comparative accuracy, and making a fair allowance for the difficulties that attend all such labours) is extraordinary also. This Black Book must not be confounded with the Black List,—a paltry catchpenny affair, got up without the slightest re- gard to truth, or .even probability. The Black. List has been ranch complained of by noblemen and honourable gentlemen, who affected to be injured by its statements; although, how any one could be injured by a document so glaringly inaccurate, it is not easy to see. We have our suspicions, that the complaints against the Black List have been put forward, not so much for the purpose of discrediting so insignificant a work, as to create a con- fusion in the public mind touching it and the Black Book, with which it has nothing in common but the colour of a name.
The first edition of the Black Book, which appeared in numbers, about a dozen years since, was compiled under great and manifold disadvantages. For the value of the pensions, posts, and places, of which the work professed to give a history, and sometimes even for their names, the author had on many occasions little else than rumour for his guide. The publication of a host of Parliamentary documents in the interval, enabled him, before the work was put to press in the collected form in which it first appeared some months ago, to verify an immense number of particulars which had been previously expressed but loosely. In the new edition, this process has been continued; and now, on all matters where docu- mentary evidence is accessible, the Black Book may be consulted as a work of good credit. It is, in fact, a very copious and useful Political Dictionary, or Companion to the Newspapers.
In the present edition, the article CHURCH has been extended, and a valuable chapter added to it on the Dissenting Church ; the articles BANK and EAST INDIA COMPANY have also received large additions. An entire new chapter on the Corporations in towns and cities, and on Companies, Guilds, and Fraternities, will be found peculiarly interesting at the present moment. There is a new chapter on Finance. There is a useful appendix of Tables; not the least interesting of which is one showing the Parliamen- tary patronage, and another the Church patronage, of the House of Lords.
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