This STATESMAN.

Toe object of this little volume is to attempt to supply an acknow- ledged deficiency in literature—a treatise on udotint8trative go- vernment, or, more properly speaking, on official praci ice. MT. TAYLOR (IOUS not aim at laying dawn the principles or politica, or even at producing a regular and systematic treatise on office craft : he has merely thrown together the results of his own ex- perience and refleetion, in the shape of it series of essays, on the subject ot'" statesma nship,"—desul tory perhaps, if their cormexion be rigorously examined, yet so far consecutive that the natural order of events is followed.

Thus, Mr. TAYLOR commences by considering the kind of reading and self-training whieh a would-he statesman should un- dergo, and the age at which he should enibark in public life. Having then derided that in the choiee and use of instruments lies the principal function of a " state-man," (we may obsetae. that he degrades the term, using it in the sense of minister and official employ e% as if statesmen could be raised like crops of ('ableiges,) he proceeds to investigate the best mode of getting and keeping adherents, and to give advice on a variety of important but minor points,—such as ollicial style, the rationale or interviews, mar- riages, points of practice, the arts of rising, quarrelling, consis- tency. secrecy, ambition, and decisiveness, with numerous other heads of matters concerning the mechanical al ts of carrying on the public business. Two valuable chapters on the reform of the executive come next, whielt are full of useful hints on this most important subject ; and these are followed by a dozen sections on miscellaneous points,—ernbracing, inter alia, some deep remarks on the administration of patronage, and some judicious observa- tions on amusements. Mr. TAYLOR opines that a statesman's most agreeable relaxation will be found in a well-chosen drawing- room of company. containing not only men of literature, wit, anti sense, but women of innocence and beauty, as in this case, if the con S ersation flags, there will always be something for hint to look at.

The distinguishing cbaracteri•tic of the matter of The States- man is its freshness. The ideas and opinions have not been drawn from books, but are the results of thoughtful obaervation. Mr. TAYLOR has not only noted the occurrences with which his offi- cial life has made him acquainted, but he has also reflected upon them, and endeavoured to deduce rules frotn examples. To this task he has brought a well-stored mind, as well as an intellect adapted to political inquiries ; having not merely enlarged and enriched his mind by the graceful vigour and condensed thoughts of elegant literature, but studied the more elaborate writers on his own art,— as GUICCIARDINI, MACHIAYEL, HOBBES, and BACON. Of the last, indeed, he has drunk deep, and scarcely yet recovered from the effects of his potations. The style of the

work exhibits, and in a greater degree, the defect which was pointed out by a critic in the London and Westminster Review as belonging to the diction of Philip Van Artevelde. Not only in language, but in thought, 7'he Statesman reminds the reader of another age ; and if it does not become "the copy of a copy," it is at least only the reflection of another writer.

In one point of view, this imitation of BACON has its use; the quaint peculiarity of the style investing the apparently trivial and

commonplace nature of many of the directions with a kind of Doric simplicity, which, if presented in another mode, might ap- pear ludicrous or mean. For example, these hints from the

chapter concerning interviews, are no doubt important to the individuals concerned, but will seem somewhat red-tapish to the

uninterested world--

A minister would do well to have placarded in his ante.chamber a notice in the following or some similar form : " Owing to the many inconveniences which have arisen to the public from oral communications being misunderstood or incorrectly remembered, A. B. thinks it his duty to apprize those who may do him the honour to attend upon him on business, that Ile will in no case hold himself, his colleagues, or his successors, bound by words spoken, unless when they shall have been subsequently reduced to writing and authenticated in that form." I would suggest a matter of management in the disposition of the furni- ture in a minister's room, which may appear at first sight to be more trifling than it is in reality. The furniture should be so arranged as that the chair which is placed for a stranger, without being ungraciously distant from the minister, should be as near as may be to the door. Timid and embarrassed men will sit as if they were rooted to the spot, when they are conscious that they have to traverse the length of a imam in their retreat. And in every case an interview will find a more easy and pleasing termination, when the door is at hand as the last words are spoken. These rue not ftivolous considerations, where civility is the business to be transacted.

The remarks upon the easiness of' a Do-nothing's conscience have a wide application enough. Indeed, we know none of the tribe of "statesmen" whom they do not touch.

It is very certain that there may be met with, in public life, a species of con• science which is all bridle and no spurs. A statesman whose conscience ni of the finest texture as to every thing which he does, will sometimes make no con- science of doing nothing. His conscience will be liable to become to hint as a (pingo ire, in which the faculty of action shall stick fast at every step. And to this tendency of the conscience the worldly interests of a ',lawman will pander. Conscience is, in most men. an anticipation of the opinions of whets ; and whatever the moral responsibility may be, official responsibility is much less RIM to be brought home to a statesman in eases of error by inaction, than in the contrary cases. What men might have dune, is less known than what they have actually done; and the world think. so much less of it, and with so much less definiteness and confidence of opinion, that the sins of omission ate sius on the safe side as to this world's responsibilities.

Here are Mr. TAYLOR'S ideas upon the pros and eons of matri- mony, and the qualities to he sought for in a minister's wife. ii is profession de m, stone difficulties in his way ; but so does every other ; each presenting some obstacle.; awl !wow Civilities peculiar to itself..

ii is dilemma is that, whilst in office, he has not leisure to range widely awl choose his object discreetly. or sedulously to seek m• oil pursue it : and when out of office he has less of worldly advantage for the pursuit.

Upon the whole, he is ill do best to marry; no; indeed in pion; lannyine. since sobriety and perspicacity of judgment in such matters is not to be expected from a youth ; but nevertheless at an early period of manhood, and if possible before or very soon after the commeneement of his public career. Whilst (iii. married, he will be liable, in whatever conjuncture of affairs or exigeury of business, to some amorous seizote, some itecideot of misplaced or ill-timed love, by which his 111111111 will be taken away from his duties. Against these casual- ties, which may happen to a statesman howsoever devoted to political lib., mar- riage will in the least impel feet proffietion ; ffir business dues but lay waste the approaches to the heart, whilst marriage pursuits the fortress.

A woman who idolizes her husband, if she do not hurt his character, will at least not help it. But in most cases she will Ion t it very seriously. For do- mestic flattery is most dangerous of all flatteries The wife aim praises and blames, petsualles and resists, warns or exhoi ts upon occasion given, and car- ries her love through all with a strong heart and not a weak funduess—she is the true helpmate.

To this end, his wife should at least have sense enough or worth enough, (and, where there is no absolute defect of understanding, worth amounts to sense,) to exempt him from trouble in the management of his childien and of his private affairs, and more especially to exempt him ftom all possibility of debt. She should also be pleasing to his eyes and to his taste : the taste goes sleep into the nature of all men ; love is hardly love apart from it ; and in a life of political care and excitement, that home which is not the seat of love cannot be it place of repose; rest for the brain and peace ffir the spirit being only to be had through the softening of the affections. Ile should look for a clear understand- ing, cheerfulness, and alacrity of mind, lather than gayety or brilliancy ; and for a gentle tenderness of dispositi ,,,,, in preferenee to an impassioned nature. Lively talents are too stimulating in a tired luau's house ; passion is too dis- turbing.

A HINT Ti) APPLICANTS.

One who would thrive by seeking favours from the great, should never trouble them for small ones. A minister can probably make a man's fortune with as little trouble as it gives him to write a note or to bear in mind e petty request. Ile will thelefore he hutted by applications for which there is no strong motive to be Mud; or if he does what is asked with complacency, he will, however, measure the fuvour by his standard of trouble, and consider (with equal complacency) that he is as much quits with his client as if he Inv] made his fortune. I have Is now n men mining a numerous pack of influential friends upon a minister to obt iii some trifle which might almost have been had by ueking fur, awl then plowe themselves upon the extreme tenuity of the service which tiny wanted to be thole to them. A man oho acts thus, will be less easily excused than one oho i.textiavagant in his demands. The minister naturally says, " If he wanted next to nothing, why have I had to lead twenty letters of recommendation ?"

A PICTI•RF. OF THE HUMIll'REAUCRACY.

The far greater proportion of the duties which are performed in the office of a wii,ister, are and must be performed under no effective responsibility. WLere polities and parties are not affected by the matter in question, and so long as there is no flagrant neglect or glaring injustice to individuals which a party can take hold of, the responsibility to Parliamerit is metely nominal, or falls other- wise only through casualty, cam iee, awl a misemploy went of the titne due from Parliament to legislative affairs. Thus the business of the office may be reduced within a very manageable compass without creating public scandal. By evading decisions wherever they can be evaded; by shifting them on other departments or authorities where by any possibility they can be shifted ; by giving decisions upon superficial exarnitiations,—categotically, so as not to expose the superficiality in plopoutitliog the reasons by deferring questions till, as Lord Bacon says, " they resolve of themselves ; " huy undertakiog nothing for the public gond which the public voice does not call for ; by conciliating loud and energetic individuals at the expense of such public interests us are dumb or do not attract attention ; by sacrificing everywhere wheat us feeble and obscure to what is iuflueutial and cognizable; by such means and shifts as these, the single functionary granted by the theory may reduce his business within his powers, and perhaps obtain for himself the most valuable of all reputations in this line of life—that of " a safe man."

A WORD ON PROMOTION.

The system of every service which requires energy and ability to he de- voted to it, should be so contrived that a meritorious man may find some ad-

vancement accrue to I at least once in every ten years. It is the nature of most men, and especially of men of lively understandings, not to be well pleased if they find themselves at the end of any decade of their lives exactly in the same position which they occupied at the beginning. In sundry of their na- tural advantages, men suffer a sensible decline with every lapse of ten yeats ; awl they look for an advance in fortunes to indemnify them for the backslidings of nature. It is not indeed by the contemplation of any worldly advantages that we can competently meet or set aside the mournfulness of the text that man abideth never in one stay. Yet is it not the less the part of a genuine and reli- gious philosophy, to consider man as created in the purpose that he should be animated by worldly wants still progressive.—a creature not on this side the grave to be disconnected from the creation of which he is a part, and requiring present fruitions and paulo-post-future expectancies to support and console him, as an addition and suppletnent to that hope which extends over the infinite future, but is flecked and obscured to all men by the intervention of worldly circum- stance. And more especially are these accessories to contentment requisite for men engaged in public affairs; because they whose eyes are accessible to the reflex of a thousand encircling objects, and who are even required by their duty to keep their eyes open to all around, cannot be expected to see more exalted objects in their brightness, as those may who look as it were from the bottom of a well. Active and intelligent men therefore, will, by the communion ordi- nances of nature, become discontented, and gather some rust upon the edge of their serviceable quality, if, whilst they find themselves going with large steps down the vale of years, they do not fancy themselves to be at the same time making proportionate approximations to some summit of fortune which they shall have proposed to themselves to attain. Once in ten years is full seldom for an active man to find himself progressive. We have alluded to the section on Executive Reform; and it is perhaps the most comprehensive, and certainly the most publicly useful part of the Volume. In this Mr. TAYLOR first of all desctibes the general mode of conducting the business of a public office, and the instruments by which it is executed; he then points out the evils attending the existing system in the MOTO mechanical departments, and suggests their retnedies. He also shows the mischief which arises in the originative departments of public offices; or rather, he makes it clear that no such thing exists in any one branch of governtnent. The cabinet minister has not time to attend his daily business, much less to go out of his way itt search of matters host ever important which are not strenuously demanded by the whole public, and whose settlement, moreover, requires inquiry, skill, and deliberation. The offi- cial fixtures are fully occupied, as just shown by our extract ; and it' they were not, they have geneially (though Mr. TAYLOR dues not say so) neither will nor capacity fur philosophic legislation. Hence, nothing in our " embryo government" is done but upon compulsion ; and that is done insufficiently or botched. We may remark generally, that Mr. Tsvsou. suggests the removal of this evil, (the existence of which is daily felt and seen in our cumbrous Statute- book,) by the appointment of several additional permanent under secretaries, or chamber statesmen. But the suggestions contained in the whole section are so important, that no one who does his duty to himself and the public should be satisfied without studying the original.