Swing is not to be" unmasked" for nothing. During the
time Mr. WAKEFIELD came to town to print his history of the notorious Captain, the corn-stacks, 87.c. of one of his own farm-yards were burnt. While the writer was illuminating the metropolis, the doer got up a light of his own in Gloucestershire. Just as the last page of Swing Unmasked was going to press in town, a sheet of flame announced the revenge of Swing in the country. This, at any rate, puts to flight the wicked insinuation that had been spread abroad by some literary incendiary, that Mr. WAICE-• FIELD was his own Swing.
Cobbett's Register of this morning gives the following information re- specting the " whereabout" of the future candidate for Manchester, together with intelligence of a well-managed hotel, interesting to coun- try gentlemen.—" A friend in the country asks me when I shall be at leisure to see him when he comes to town, and what house will suit me best. I have never any leisure. I am always at work or asleep. But I rise so early, and I waste so little time at meals, that, except some- times on a Wednesday or a Thursday, I can see anybody, at any time, upon any business whatever, and am always happy to give every one that applies to me the best advice, or most correct information, in my power. As to whether I ant to be found at Kensington, or at Bolt Court, that is a matter of complete uncertainty; but at Bolt Court, in- formation as to this matter may always be had. Sometimes gentlemen call here, find me here, but engaged, and then they go away, naturally. disliking to wait in the shop. They should not do this, if they really want to see me ; for there is just opposite a very nice coffeehouse and tavern, called the Doctor Johnson, kept in a very excellent manner, where there is lodging and every accommodation. I have now been an ob- server of the conduct of the persons in this house for more than a year; and I venture to recommend it to gentlemen who come from the coun- try, and who wish to live a sober and orderly life while they are here.. The court itself is a remarkably clean place. Opposite the entrance of it, is the great coach-office called the Bolt-in-Tun. We are situated within a step of the Temple, and other Inns of the Courts, and at only about a quarter of an hour's walk from the Royal Exchange, and at five minutes' walk from the foot of Blackfriars Bridge. The best time in the day to see me is, a little before day-light in winter, and a little after day-light in summer. A Norfolk farmer knocked at the door here half-an-hour before day-light last winter. I was very busy, but the great merit of the hour made me cast aside all business, and attend to his affair with the utmost diligence and zeal."
Mr. Loudon, the well-known author of the Dictionary of Gardening, has published in the Morning Chronicle a proposal for the employment of the poor, more especially of the agricultural poor, by a General Road Improvement Act ; the expenses of carrying it into execution to be defrayed by the taxes. Mr. Loudon suggests an income-tax for that purpose. The question whether the roads of the kingdom might not be improved by placing the whole under the management of Go- vernment, has often been mooted.
The Morning Post gives us to understand, what we certainly did not expect to learn from that quarter, that "it must be universally felt that the American nation has attained, and is promised a continuance of5 a degree of prosperity which may well excite the envy of every Euro- pean Power, England herself not excepted."—So much for cheap Re- publics. Toryism must be going out of fashion since the Morning Post acknowledges Yankee prosperity.
Refreshers are sometimes necessary. The Scotch Athenians have been employed lately in cutting the name of Henry Lord Melville on the pediment of the statue that graces the Parliament House. His Lordship has fallen into such disrepute since the times of Reform set in, that his most intimate friends pretend not to know him. When this statue was first erected, the famous John Clerk was asked his Opinion of it. John admitted the excellence of the workmanship, but observed, that it was placed too high : the people of Edinburgh would no longer be capable of offering to it that homage which they had so long been in the habit of paying—kissing the seat of honour of the great man was now out of the question, without a ladder.
The Baroness de Feuclulres, who figures in another page of this paper, has lately purchased of Lord Stuart de Rothsay the marine villa of Bure Homage, near Christchurch, and intends to make it her future residence.
SHIPPING AND NAVIGATION LAWS.—II is curious, while the British shipowners are so generally found objecting to Mr. Huskisson's modi- ficatioas of the Navigation Laws, to find the Americans, on the con- trary, attributing the decay of their shipping to those very prohibitions for the restoration of which the British shipowner is so anxious. Mr Cambreleng, in his report to Congress in 1830, says of the American commercial marine—" The most important change occurred soon after she (England) began to remove her prohibitor;duties, and we com- menced augmenting ours. In 1820, we (the United States) had 159,418 tons in the trade with Great Britain ; ancl in 1828 only 138,174 tons ; decline 91,'2-I4 tons. She had in the same trade, in 1820, 29,490 tons ; in 1824, 80,138 tops ; increase 50,668 tons ! A Parliamentary table shows, that taking the average of the two first and two last years, from 1814 to 1828, the tonnage of all foreign nations trading to Great Britain had increased about 20,000 tons, or 5 per cent. ; while British navigation had augmented 660,000 tons, or about 50 per cent. ! The British ton- nage employed in the direct trade between the United States and Great Britain was, in 1820, which was about the period when the two coun- tries simultaneously changed their policy, 151 per cent. of the whole ; in 1828, it had reached 384- per cent. We have been beaten since the war, not only in our navigation with England, but Scotland and Ire- land; their tonnage is regularly advancing; and if the laws of both countries remain unchanged, we shall be driven out of our own ports by British navigation."
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